The Stuttgart players jockey for position during training. It's a Tuesday in early February. A defender grabs Vedo, and he throws an elbow, shaking clear, his legs pumping, driving toward the goal with the kind of focus that scares people who don't understand it. When the drill ends, Vedo wheels around and shoves the defender. The other players pause, but he keeps shooting at the goal, hitting a line-drive volley, then a header. Clearly, he is filling himself with joy and purging himself of something too.

Every day his intensity makes him the emotional center of practice. Sunday's game looms closer. On Thursday, coaches clap. Players windmill their arms. Everyone breaks for water, except Vedo, who lines up two balls just outside the penalty area. Every other player loafs as he drills the shots toward the goal. Both miss, and practice resumes. During the next break, he's repairing divots, obsessing about the poor condition of their pitch, anger rising as he works tufts of sod back into the ground. Practice begins again and he bowls over a teammate chasing a ball. Sunday remains three days away. He cannot tell you why he acts like this, only that something inside demands it from him.

THAT SOMETHING IS an emptiness, roughly the same size as the hidden bunker his mother dug all those years ago. He spends a lot of psychic energy, and money, trying to make himself and his family whole. When he searched for a house in Stuttgart a few years ago, he found himself drawn to one in a village half an hour outside of town. Picture windows cover the back, looking out on fog-covered mountains, just like his father's house in Gerovi. And like his father's childhood home, his house is also at the end of a dead-end road, last one on the right. Echoes fill his life.

After practice one evening in February, he drives the half-hour from Stuttgart to his home. His young son, Ismail, runs out of the house to meet him. In the house, his wife, Zerina, takes out a photo album and lays it on the dining table. Her enormous tangle of red hair makes her look exactly like the main character of the cartoon Brave. She points to a recent picture of Vedad's father, with his trademark white mustache, wearing the little smirk that, for him, indicates almost transcendent joy. He's got his arms around Ismail, who squirms in a Smurfs shirt.

"Tuzla," one of them says.

While Saban Ibisevic promised to come back to Tuzla, he never earned enough money. But Vedad makes enough for five lifetimes, and he wants to buy his father back those lost years.

"I am sure there are some things I just cannot fix," he says. "But I just know -- know for a fact -- what they've been through, and what they did for me and my sister, so I just try to be the best kid possible for him, and to just try to make his life a little easier. Just a little bit easier. And try to have him enjoy the years that are left for him."

Vedad searches for big gestures, to match the size of the destruction he needs to undo. In Tuzla, his father's old boss went bankrupt, and his big house came up for sale. That home had always been a symbol of what the war had taken, and of the financial stress that forced Saban to leave a country he loved. Vedad bought the house and gave it to his father, a dose of spiritual medicine. Saban's physical life remains in St. Louis, where his daughter raises a family with her husband, a policeman, and where he manages apartments owned by Vedad. But his heart lives in the house his son bought him in Tuzla. "That's the whole point," Vedo says. "It's the meaning behind it. Otherwise I would buy him another house in St. Louis, you know?"

Zerina continues the tour of their past.

The albums and laptop contain countless recent pictures from both of his parents' villages. He'd loved both those places as a child, spending weekends and summers helping with the livestock, running free through the fields, and over the years, a safe, warm feeling returned whenever he thought of those little towns. In his mind, the villages pulsed with life, full of people, perfect and whole. In reality, though, they remained unhealed wounds, open and raw. His grandfather's bones decayed in a hastily dug grave, carved out with picks and with hands the day after he'd been killed in front of the shop. They hadn't even held proper funerals for the 11 murdered that morning in May, trying to get the bodies in the ground before the soldiers returned. The greatest casualties of war are the small rituals that make us human, and so the dead got buried like animals, not like beloved fathers, sons and friends. They stayed like that for nearly 20 years, until the family returned and reburied their dead, surrounded by a beautiful memorial garden paid for by Vedad. Across the narrow lane from his grandfather's old farm, he built a peaceful pavilion, white with a green roof and a marble monument, for everyone they lost during the war.

Zerina flips pages.

She stops on a photograph of Gerovi. Vedo built a memorial there too, and a chapel for former residents to use when they return once a year to remember the dead. The stone marker lists the names of all those who died, including the 21 Ibisevics. Zerina moves on to another picture, then another.

Much of their life together is documented in the albums, but they remain more defined by what isn't there, by a hole. Both Zerina and Vedo have only two or three pictures of themselves as children. The rest burned, or vanished during the frantic journey to safety. Zerina looks at 2-year-old Ismail, who is watching a video on an iPad. Every moment of his childhood has been filmed and saved.

"He'll never miss out," she says.

TWO OF THE photographs mean more than the rest.

Together they decode the chaotic emotions, the intersecting lines of hope and despair that have marked both their exile and their dream of returning home. One shows Saban Ibisevic holding his grandson, and the other shows Vedad's parents in the moments after he scored his famous goal. The photographs, at their core, are of the same thing.

The first picture was taken during Ismail's first trip to Gerovi.

Vedo drove the car, and his father rode in the passenger seat. Zerina held Ismail in the back. Vedo and Saban told stories, happy ones, about making this mountain ride in Saban's old Fiat 750, which barely had enough power to reach the top, winding out the engine, looking for a few more revolutions of speed. A combination of good memories and the promise of a return home changed something in Saban. His excitement grew with each turn, and as they neared the final curve before the entrance to Gerovi, Vedad saw a powerful look in his father's eyes. He turned to his wife and asked her to hand Ismail to his granddad.

They entered the town like that. Zerina took out her camera and caught Saban smiling, with his grandson in his arms, looking redeemed. Vedo stopped the car, and Saban rolled down the window, still holding Ismail. A relative came out to greet them.

Saban swelled with pride.

"I brought my son and his son to our village," he announced.

The second photograph caught Vedad's parents a few moments after he scored the goal that would send Bosnia to the World Cup. Saban leans on Mirsada, his arms wrapped around her shoulders. She gently touches his arms and their faces are full of wonder. They seem spent, holding each other up, as if their son had briefly taken away all the toxic memories they'd carried for 20 years. For Saban Ibisevic, taking his grandson back to Gerovi and watching his son score a goal both felt like going home. Vedad has spent money and time trying to put a shattered world back together, and now he knows that the closest he's ever come to undoing the damage of the past was when that ball hit the back of the net.

MILLIONS OF BOSNIANS feel the same way.

The team left the stadium in Lithuania after Vedad's game-winning goal, bound for the airport. As the flight attendants tried to calm the full-throttle party, the pilots headed to Sarajevo. Vedad and his teammates sang the whole flight. When they landed, tens of thousands of their fellow citizens lined the road from the airport to town.

The airport remains a symbol of the city's survival.

For years, Serb artillery batteries and snipers ringed the hills around Sarajevo, lobbing howitzer rounds into apartment blocks, picking off civilians with high-powered scopes. It became the longest siege in the 20th century, and the people survived without power, or meat, or fruit. Fourteen thousand, three hundred and seventy-three people died, many while going to the local brewery's wells to get water. The only part of the city the U.N. controlled was the airport, although its control of the airport seemed like an illusion on many days. Serb snipers shot anyone who tried to run across it and sometimes shelled the runway to prevent international aid flights from resupplying the city. For a short time in 1994, the city even ran out of flour and starved until the cargo planes could land again.

Sarajevo endured.

Before the war, it was an educated city known for its cafés and bars, but when the shells began to fall, its citizens had to literally claw their way to safety. They dug a tunnel 867 yards long, beneath the runway, starting in a house on one side and ending in a garage on the other. This is how people brought in supplies. Water ran down the tunnel's muddy sides. Ambulances waited at both ends; the low beams gashed nearly everyone's heads. Zerina Ibisevic walked through that tunnel with her family as a small child. Her mother hunched over. Zerina stood upright.

As the team emerged from passport control, fans kissed the players. Many wept. A crying man explained his tears to Vedad.

"I made this tunnel with my own hands," he said.

An open bus rumbled toward the shell-pocked center of town. Vedad couldn't believe the size and energy of the crowd. Players looked into the black night, searching for familiar faces. From the shadows, fans ran from their homes to cheer the passing convoy. On the phone, Vedo asked Zerina if she wanted to join him and the team. She didn't. She had stayed in Sarajevo during the war. Her father was killed, and she doesn't remember him at all. That night, she wanted to celebrate with her friends from high school, all survivors of the siege. Later, Zerina's group joined everyone else at the Eternal Flame, which flickers at the end of Maršala Tita Street, a monument to those killed during World War II. She looked up to find Vedo as the team stepped out onto the balcony. He looked down and searched for his wife's mop of red hair.

"You are the country's pride!" the crowd chanted.

People who wanted a united Bosnia cheered them. But Croat and Serb nationalists did not. News footage showed empty bars in the mostly Serb city of Banja Luka, and in the streets of the still segregated Mostar, Croat hooligans stoned celebrating Muslim fans. The team's success, and Vedad's goal, exposed deep divisions that remain decades after the shooting stopped. The Bosnia he longs for, the one he remembers before the war, died 20 years ago. His new country is a place he frequently doesn't understand, and his team is a reminder of everything that has been lost.

The players are Serbs, Croats and Muslims, and they have found a way to do what the rest of the country cannot seem to do: be like they were before the war tore them apart. They work together. "I love my team," Vedad says, his voice low. "I love my teammates. Just the fact that we get along perfectly. We have no problems with each other. We have all kinds of different people on the team and everyone gets along. I love that fact. It's a proof for the country that it could work."

His wife says he keeps his rage inside, and he does -- most of the time. It comes roaring out when he watches the news from Bosnia and hears the political rhetoric, from all sides, continuing to divide. His anger isn't at the citizens but at the politicians -- Muslims, Croats and Serbs -- who maintain power by keeping Bosnia divided.

"When the war started," he says, "people just went crazy and started believing this bullshit. And in the end, none of it was true. They were left with nothing, with broken dreams and broken lives. From all sides, you know? That's what politics does. That's unbelievable. Nobody has that right -- excuse me for saying this -- to fuck up that many lives."

SUNDAY AFTERNOON ARRIVES, another game in a lifetime of them, no more or less important than any other time he steps onto a field, which is to say: It is the most important thing in the world. A cold February rain turns to sleet. Zerina leads Ismail up the stairs toward their seats, holding his hand. All the stadium people smile at Vedad's little boy. They find Section 5, going about halfway up. She whispers in Ismail's ear and points down to the field. He watches intently. A circus winds up around him, fans singing and banging on drums.

Ismail grabs the rail next to his seat. Zerina cleans his fingers.

On the field, his dad struggles.

Ismail stands up, bobbing his head. His mom scrubs his face with a tissue, and he looks around at the bright colors. Down on the field, Vedad starts a run toward the goal. Nothing goes right. A teammate unleashes a shot and Vedad intercepts it, trying to make a play. Replays reveal the shot might have found the net without him. The visiting team scores two quick goals and the crowd whistles, furious. As halftime begins, Zerina leads Ismail back toward the elevator. It's too cold for a little boy. They'll watch the second half from the family lounge, where children his age play together, ignoring the work of their fathers on televisions around the room.

Ismail finds a pair of safety scissors. Zerina keeps one eye on her son and the other on the television in the corner.

"I'm very nervous," she says.

A commotion in the game gets everyone's attention.

There's a scrum of angry Stuttgart players, then a close-up shot of Vedad screaming, then a replay of him throwing an elbow to the face of an opponent, at least 20 yards behind the action. The official raises a red card.

"Vedo!" Zerina screams at the screen. She gasps and whispers to herself, "Oh my god. Oh my god."

Tomorrow, league officials will review the play and suspend him for five games, the second time he's been punished for rough play. Nobody knows that yet, but she is sure the game will be taken away from him. She brings up the past all on her own. They survived ethnic cleansing, so they can manage a suspension.

"In the war," she says, "it was a disaster. We can handle it."

Obstacles comfort Vedad. Any time things go too well, he looks into the shadows, afraid that something bad will come to ruin his success. He is most himself when challenged. "He knows how to deal with those difficult situations," Zerina says, sounding proud. "He knows he's had so many hard times."

A few hours after the game, sitting in the driver's seat of his idling car, Vedad smiles and makes a joke, his voice soft and calm. Had a week of answering questions broken the delicate defenses holding back his anger? How could someone talk about all of these things and not relive them? He promises his swinging elbow had nothing to do with so many memories being pulled to the surface. Later, on the dark, slick streets, headlights pooling in the puddles, he thinks about the hours ahead.

"The night is long, man," he says.

THERE ARE LIMITS. The day Ismail was born, for instance, Vedad thought about his grandmother and the Serbs who'd killed three of her children. Genocide makes a new father look at his son for the first time and imagine someone murdering his child. Some broken things cannot be put right again. Memorials don't bring back dead relatives. His uncle's returning to Pijuke didn't repair the houses of his murdered neighbors. Vedad missed his 10-year reunion with his friends in Tuzla.

But right now, a reservation for a block of rooms waits at a São Paulo hotel. The whole Ibisevic family is going to the World Cup, all of them, even Saban -- who wanted at first to watch the games from Bosnia. He feels uneasy with new places, still dealing with the trauma of those forced moves. Vedad insisted, so Saban will be there, with his toddling grandson by his side. The trip is special for the boy. Ismail is at the age when the basis of memory is being formed. Years from now, the sounds of a soccer match will make him warm and happy inside, for reasons he might not even understand.