I'm reading a book, maybe one of the most profound books that I have read in a long time. I keep stopping, to ponder, to think, and as yet I have only read 97 pages of the 272 pages. Already I have torn my folded paper book mark into several shreds, to mark pages along the way. I wonder, should I post compelling and insightful messages on Facebook? Would anyone care to read them, lost between pictures of abused dogs and cute kittens? That's the thing...we should care. This book should be required reading, at least once in our lifetime.
This is not a religious book. It is written by a war correspondent, and if anyone knows anything about war correspondents, they march into battle in the most dangerous areas for a story, and if they are lucky, they get out with their lives. The good ones become seasoned in survival, and thus bring to light what we, in the comfort of our homes, may or may not wish to see on TV or read about.
So why am I reading a book about war? Why should I care? Why do I think anyone should care? I guess there is no single answer. I grew up listening to my dad tell stories of WWII, as bombardier in a B-17 in the 99th Bomb Group, based in Italy. Years later I got to speak to the co-pilot with whom my dad flew. Joe told the the same stories my dad did, but in even more detail! At 92 Joe had an amazing memory. I believe he is still alive, if so, he should be 94 this April. I really should send him a letter.
So that still doesn't give an answer. My dad and I used to watch WWII movies together, stories of good triumphing over evil, all at great peril. I would watch similar movies with my first husband. I was drawn to action adventure movies, even more so if there was truth behind them. Movies like Pearl Harbor and Iwo-Jima. Not that I watch them all the time! Goodness no! One or two a year, maybe. But why this book?
I had seen a movie, "Behind Enemy Lines" and counted it as one of my favorites. I knew it was about the war in the Balkans, and left it at that. But when I met my to-be husband and he began talking about the war, I made the connection, though the movie is about the war in Bosnia, before it filtered down to Kosovo. We did talk about the war a lot, mostly because he was a witness first hand and had lost an uncle, and also because I have willing ears.
So I wanted to know more about this war. I vaguely remembered seeing things on TV in the 1990's, bodies in a ditch, things like that. Maybe like most Americans I said how sad, how awful, it should be stopped, and then went back to whatever it was I had been doing. But now, suddenly, this became history that was personal to me. I wanted to learn more, and so I have.
I started off with some internet searches. I cried. I also searched Google News for updates on Kosovo, and read the news on Shkabaj news with the aid of Google Translate. That was the extent of it for quite some time. Then I heard about a book, "THE FRACTURE ZONE: A Return to the Balkans" by Simon Winchester. So I ordered it. I also ordered another recommendation, "Love Thy Neighbor A STORY OF WAR" by Peter Maass. I got both books used, for 99 cents each.
Love Thy Neighbor is about the war in Bosnia. The Fracture Zone is about a trip through the Balkans in 1999, in fact Simon was at the border of Kosovo and Macedonia the morning of June 12 right when KFOR was mobilizing to enter Kosovo. The Fracture Zone is an oddly amusing history lesson, laced with shocking truths of the modern-day human atrocities that were going on there. You can click on the links and read the reviews. It's just too much to copy and paste into my blog.
Love Thy Neighbor is an entirely different book to read. I don't think it is possible to read it and not do a lot of thinking and soul searching. I have started taking notes in my own words. And more frightening is the insight into human behavior, and the knowledge that this could and might happen again.
What I am learning from this book, is that in Bosnia, Slavic people, all anciently related, living side by side, working together, going to school together, even inter-marrying, are divided in certain ways. Some are Serbs (Orthodox Christians), some are Croats (Roman Catholic), some are Muslims, but Slavic Muslims, who simply converted to Islam under the rule of the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. And they aren't even "good" Muslims by Arabic standards. They will have a drink, they enjoy music, their kids have the same posters on their walls and listen to the same music as their Serb neighbors, and for that matter, American kids, too. These are neighbors, mind you, as in borrowing a cup of flour neighbors.
Now comes some mad-men, diabolical thinkers, just like Hitler. They are Serbs. They look back in history, and see that in the past, they were oppressed by the Turks. Then as children they suffered under the hands of the Croation Ustashe (WWII pro-Nazi movement that Hitler set up to rid the area of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies). So in an inflammatory burst of neo-Nazi Serb patriotism and a lust for a "Greater Serbia", they rally all the Serbs into supporting ethnic cleansing. Of course they didn't call it that. It was called "Bureau for the Removal of Populations and Exchange of Material Goods".
This is all I'm going to write for now. There is a lot to digest. But I worry, here, now, in America, when people raise the battle cry, go home (fill in blank)! Go back to where you came from! This is a (fill in blank) Nation! There is no room for you here! For God's sake why do we have the Statue of Liberty. We are a nation of IMMIGRANTS. Will the day come when a lunatic with a battle cry comes to power and suddenly one morning people wake up and slaughter their peaceful neighbor in the name of some propaganda? Impossible you say? Wake up. It's happened before, it's happening now in Africa, it can happen here.
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