‘Ask Ljuba if she wants to marry me, to come here, come with me, she’s poor, I’m poor.’ We didn’t have anything, poor to the end. So they came, he asked for me and now I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to do and that’s it. My father was a drunk, he will kill me, he will kill both of us and everyone. And I, a month passes or so, he asks them again, ‘Does she wants, how are we going about this, is she coming with me? We have nothing, I am poor, she is poor. We have nothing!’ And that was that. So that’s it, I made my decision, my grandmother says, ‘You better go, rather than enduring more beatings from your father, you better go! May God help you. He will have enough to feed you, it will be like that.’ And that’s what happened, so I listened to my grandmother. She was so good to me, she felt so sorry for me. So I sent him a message, through those that he sent for me. I sent him words, ‘I am coming to you.’
Ljubica Karamatić was born on August 14, 1934 in Janjevo. Ljubica married before turning twenty, and soon after became a mother of seven children. Because her husband was working in Skopje, North Macedonia, she took charge of the family business. She had a workshop at home where the entire family reworked metal. Although today her family is in Zagreb, Ljubica still lives in Janjevo because her two sons are buried at the cemetery in Janjevo.