One day in 1990, Ragip Xhaka and his wife stepped off a bus in Basel, Switzerland.
As he set foot on Swiss turf, he will never forget how he felt.
“We were no longer afraid,” he said of the end of his ordeal.
Tensions were high in Kosovo.
Ragip, from the capital Pristina, had spent the last three years in prison before being suddenly freed into a rapidly deteriorating political situation in what was left of the former Yugoslavia.
On his release, his only thought was to grab his wife, Eli, and escape the country for somewhere safe.
“We felt freedom. We felt that there was a future.”
Ragip and Eli’s three-day bus journey to Switzerland found them a new home, and it was where their children would be born.
They never could have imagined that, 26 years on, that two of their offspring would meet on one of international football’s biggest stages.
They certainly wouldn’t have foreseen a repeat, months later, in what is now the pinnacle of club football.
“It’s difficult. You can play against friends, we’ve all done that,” Basel captain Matias Delgado tells Mirror Sport of Tuesday’s meeting between his teammate, Taulant Xhaka, and his brother, Arsenal midfielder Granit.
“But playing against your brother? For me it would just be too difficult.
“I don’t think I could do it.”
GranIt and Taulant Xhaka have already done it.
When Switzerland and Albania met at the Euros this summer, the two brothers faced off for the first time.
It was hard, they said, not because they were brothers but because they were also best friends.
As fate would have it, they are already set to meet again and older brother Taulant is being backed by his club skipper to help upset the odds at the Emirates on Wednesday night.
“Taulant’s a great guy, he is very happy and is one of the best characters in the team. he’s always got a good sense of humour, you can rely on him and he’s a great attitude," said Delgado.
“He’s the best midfielder in the Swiss league for me and I think he’s very complete.”
Arsenal believe that in £25million brother Granit they have the same - an all-round star who can become one of the Premier League’s best.
The Gunners are favourites for the match, and prohibitively so, but Delgado has experience of being an underdog against English sides.
And he has experience of shocking them too.
“I think everything is possible because we are in great shape at the moment,” he says — somewhat understating things given their league record reads: P9 W9 D0 L0.
“Even the top teams in the Champions League have found out that you can’t underestimate anyone in this competition and everyone can cause surprises. We know that we’re well prepared, and we’ll do everything we can to get a result.
“Just like when we played Liverpool in 2014 , we’re not favourites for this one but we’re quietly confident in the things that we do and we knocked them out then.
“We won in London against Chelsea three years ago too and it was the same. They even went ahead but they switched off a bit and we always keep going. We came back and we won.”
Now 33 years old and one of the senior players after returning to Basel for a second spell, Delgado’s experience of those victories will be key if the Swiss side are to have a chance.
And while the Argentine playmaker is renowned for coming up big in crucial moments, he insists that his team’s strength is in the collective, not individuals.
“We have a really good structure and are well organised.
“I think that our team, with its midfield structure and solid back line, are confident we can keep teams out. We are a team that collectively functions well but we have individuals that can make a difference too.”