Aida was born on November 15, 1990 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to a middle-class Bosniak family of intellectuals and liberals. Her mother, Sanija, was a lawyer (specializing in civil law) and her father, Ahmet, was a mechanical engineer. She and her mother fled Bosnia and Herzegovina when Aida was only 2 years old because of war and genocide. Aida is an only child.

Her father was shot in his left ankle by a Serbian Chetnik sniper, and he developed permanent osteomyelitis, a bone infection, as a result of his injuries. The hospital was bombed every waking second and Aida's father saw charred bodies that were pitch black from severe burn wounds. Gas exploded during bombing and innocent people suffered because of that. There were echoes of moaning from severe pain of people half-alive due to burn wounds. He saw the British-Iranian journalist Christiane Amanpour in the hospital because she was reporting in Sarajevo at the time.

He has had multiple and painstaking surgeries on his leg since the shooting. At one point, Aida's family was forced to put her in a bulletproof vest. Her father arranged, through his military connections (as Bosnian mechanical engineers at the time worked on military projects) for Aida and her mother to flee Sarajevo in a convoy full of women and children. The convoy was organized by the Bosnian Red Cross and the Children's Embassy of Sarajevo. Her father was a member of SDA (Party of Democratic Action, Stranka demokratske akcije), and Aida, her mother, and her father were put on a bounty list during the course of the war. If they were found by any member of the Serbian Chetniks, they were supposed to be tortured and killed. Aida and her mother passed through Croatia while fleeing Sarajevo. The convoy was forced to form makeshift roads so that they could safely reach their destination. They lived in the Czech Republic in a refugee camp full of women and children with her aunt and two children. Through her aunt, they managed to get to Paris, France. A French journalist and his photographer wife hosted Aida, her Mom, her aunt, and her two cousins in the 16th arrondoisement in Paris, France. The only reason they were able to leave the camp was because her aunt previously knew the French journalist from having met him during the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and he was a very well connected person.  The French journalist rescued Aida's family from the camp at her aunt's request even though it was ethically right, but legally wrong.

After applying to many countries, Aida and her mom were sent to Malaysia, where she was finally reunited with her father at the age of four. They lived in Malaysia for four years (from 1993 to 1997), after having been accepted on refugee status by the UNHCR. As a little girl, she attended Montessori and that had a profound effect on her. She was told what to do by her teachers, but not how to do it. This encouraged her to be creative and to question methods set forth by the administration. She was also the only Bosnian child in Malaysia to attend a Montessori school. There were over 700 Bosnian refugees that were accepted by the Malay government. By the age of five, she fluently spoke 5 languages: Bosnian, English, Czech, French, and Malay. At the age of seven, Aida and her family received news that they were accepted into the United States. Her father broke down in tears as soon as he heard the news.

Bosnia and Herzegovina did not have an army, and a makeshift army was formed during the war. People had to organize themselves, without weapons or protection, throughout the entire war. They had to guard themselves in buildings.

Aida's mother, Sanija, had some friends and colleagues who experienced sexual violence during the course of the war. While a student at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, Aida wrote a paper detailing the experiences one of her mother's friends received for a Women's Studies course. She also had friends tell her about how Serbian Chetnik soldiers held a Bosniak father against his will to be killed and how they forced him to scream out for his son so that his son would feel guilt about leaving his father behind (in order to survive himself) and have the son and father both killed. Sanija had so many of her friends, former classmates, and cousins killed that she lost count and became numb to the entire horrifying experience. Unfortunately, Ahmet, Aida's father, also had similar experiences happen to him and his friends and family.

She and her parents are all survivors of discrimination, nationalism, nativism, racism, tribalism, and abuse. The barbarism of the Serbian Chetniks still haunts Aida and her family to this day.