When in 2008 Zilha Seta handed over copies of her soup kitchen’s registration papers to the Bosnian-born Canadian who explained to her he wants to include her kitchen in his will, she did not think much of it.

She ran Sarajevo’s Old Town kitchen even during the 1992-95 siege and since then received many small donations from good people.

Years later the news hit her.

Her soup kitchen is one of the three recipients of what Agan Hodzic had left behind when he died.

“It is true,” Seta, locally known as Aunt Zilha, told N1. “The one million Bosnian Mark reward was divided into three parts. Our 270.000 Bosnian Marks is already on our account,” she said.

Hodzic had put the will together seven years before he died in 2015 but the money could not be distributed right away.

“His relatives disputed his will and challenged it at the court but the ruling from December 29, ordered that everything has to be done the way he wanted,” Aunt Zilha said.

“His condition was that the money can only be used for food, while we had the obligation to publish his wish in newspapers in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Canada,” she added.

Hodzic visited Bosnia frequently and would often make little donations to the “Stari Grad” kitchen, drink coffee with the staff or just simply sit in the corner and watch them cook for the poor, Aunt Zilha remembers.

The rest of the money has also been transfered to the accounts of the other two recipients – the “Merhamet” soup kitchen and Bosnia’s Federation Red Cross.

But who was the generous Agan Hodzic?

Born in the village of Kovanj near the eastern Bosnian town of Rogatica in 1930, Hodžić was 20 when he left for Canada, searching for a better life, his nephew, Enver Ahmetasevic, told N1.

“He worked as a lumberjack in Canada. Then he opened up a small restaurant, became the owner of two motels in Florida, and then began buying old houses, fixing them up and selling them. This is how he saved a certain amount of money which may not be that much in America, but is significant for our standards,” Ahmetasevic told N1, adding that his uncle could serve as an example for others.

“When he saw how people in Bosnia and Herzegovina live, how many hungry and powerless people there are, to what extent they are unemployed, while they have to eat, his motive became above all to feed the hungry,” he added.

The donation has already produced results. “We have already provided enough milk for a year, we increased our rations of meat, oil, sugar and coffee,” Aunt Zilha said.

But she also came up with an idea that was not mentioned in Hodzic’s will but doesn’t violate it. The staff of her soup kitchen has put together food packages and will send them to the villages in the area where Hodzic was born.

“Three vans carrying 300 packages will head to the area where he was born,” Aunt Zilha said. “For the residents there to remember him and to pray for him.”