Back home in Bosnia and Herzegovina — the old country, as Jusuf Nurkic calls it — one meets strangers with a wary eye. Maybe this reticence was born from the wars the region has endured, or maybe it comes from the hardships of poverty. Or perhaps, as Nurkic says, it is simply a mindset that has been passed down from generations.



“It probably comes from the old people,” he says. “I don’t think it’s a new thing.”



The origins can be debated, but the trait is concrete: Trust is to be earned, not given.



“If I meet a person, there are a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t trust them,” Nurkic says. “There’s only one why I should.”



That one reason, of course, is the person might turn out to be worthy of trust, worthy of friendship. But to Nurkic, that one reason goes against the odds.



So it was with that frame of mind that Nurkic came to the United States in 2014 and...