tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49353410653340686102024-03-08T03:08:07.165-08:00Journeys of a Jersey Girla blog about my journeys in Bosnia -- physical, intellectual, and spiritualItinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-41922677528103994252010-01-14T18:35:00.000-08:002010-01-17T19:34:44.087-08:00Historical Revisionism and Ethnic IdentityIn 2007, I served on a panel about Bosnia for a symposium at the College of New Jersey.<br /><br />I discovered that a partial video of the panel is posted online!<br /><br />Check it out <a href="http://uss.intrasun.tcnj.edu/windowsmedia/CCIC_Liberal_learning/Bosnia%20Symposium%204.mov">here</a><br /><br />(if you scroll about halfway into it, I field a question about historical revisionism, nationality, and ethnic identity.)<br /><br />The first person to speak on the panel is my best friend, classmate, and fellow Bosnia travel team member; the last person to speak is our trip organizer.Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-81525882909389898702010-01-12T02:56:00.000-08:002010-01-18T10:39:48.228-08:00Building relationships<meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; 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mso-list-type:hybrid; mso-list-template-ids:979522170 -1321703938 67698691 67698693 67698689 67698691 67698693 67698689 67698691 67698693;} @list l0:level1 {mso-level-start-at:0; mso-level-number-format:bullet; mso-level-text:-; mso-level-tab-stop:.5in; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @list l0:level2 {mso-level-number-format:bullet; mso-level-text:o; mso-level-tab-stop:1.0in; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in; font-family:"Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Courier New";} @list l0:level3 {mso-level-number-format:bullet; mso-level-text:; mso-level-tab-stop:1.5in; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in; font-family:Wingdings;} @list l0:level4 {mso-level-number-format:bullet; mso-level-text:; mso-level-tab-stop:2.0in; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in; font-family:Symbol;} ol {margin-bottom:0in;} ul {margin-bottom:0in;} --> </style><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">this is based on the personal story I told at the ELCA National Youth Gathering in San Antonio in 2006</span>
<br />
<br /></span></span>My times in Bosnia have drastically altered the way I see my actions. I first noticed it concretely in 2005. Our Bosnian trip coordinator, Vjeko was being silly, joking around with</span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" > one of the American team members. (Vjeko, who was known to dance to Madonna in the b</span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >us isles in a piranha-printed speedo and who once woke me b</span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >y tiptoeing into my room and loudly singing "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," could be blessedly silly.) When someone asked him what he was doing, he responded, “he</span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >y!<span style=""> </span>I’m </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S1GjI_Hm-DI/AAAAAAAAAFE/U4IcMB3v5qA/s1600-h/Bosnia+2006+273.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 165px; height: 221px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S1GjI_Hm-DI/AAAAAAAAAFE/U4IcMB3v5qA/s400/Bosnia+2006+273.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427298400735787058" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >building relationships! </span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Isn't that what our trip is all about?"
<br />
<br />Even though it was said</span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" > in a joking context, I realized it was really true. Life is crucially and fundamentally about the relationships we build: with our family and good friends, with our casual friends and acquaintances, with ourselves, and with God.<span style=""> </span>Every action, every conversation, every thing I do is about building a relationship with someone, and, as such, is important. <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">
<br />
<br />left: Vjeko, striking a signature dance move</span><o:p>
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<br /></o:p>One of the benefits of relationship-building is realizing that people are people, no matter where they live.<span style=""> </span>My first enc</span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >ounter in Bosnia is the perfect example.<span style=""> </span>I was staying with an older woman named Fahra and her husband.<span style=""> </span>They spoke no English, and I spoke no Bosnian. It was my first time in a place where I didn’t know the language, and I was a bit worried.<span style=""> </span></span><!--[endif]--><meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>811</o:Words> <o:characters>4627</o:Characters> <o:company>University of Southern California</o:Company> <o:lines>38</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>9</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>5682</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p {mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /><o:p></o:p>It was a brutally hot day, and I was exhausted from traveling.<span style=""> </span>Our bus dropped us off on Antuna Hangija, the street where our host families lived.<span style=""> </span>Fahra picked me up at the bus stop, and we walked back to her apartment.<span style=""> </span>We entered – and saw her husband sitting there on the couch, watching TV in his t-shirt and underwear.</span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Fahra immediately started chastising him, and even though I couldn’t actually understand the words they used, I knew <i style="">exactly </i></span><span style="font-size:100%;">what they were saying to each other.<span style=""> </span>The conversation was obviously along the lines of:
<br /></span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">-- “Get off the couch and get dressed! Company’s here! What do you think you’re doing?”</span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">-- “Ah, it’s too ho</span><span style="font-size:100%;">t!<span style=""> </span>Can’t you see I’m watching the game?”
<br /></span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">They were like so many old married couples</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> I knew in the States.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""> </span></span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">When I left for the airport at the end of my trip, Fahra wouldn’t let me leave without taking food with me for the jo</span><span style="font-size:100%;">urney.<span style=""> </span>I realized Fahra, a Bosnian Muslim living in Sarajevo, shared essentially the same hospitality as my best friend’s Italian Catholic grandma living in North Jersey.</span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">me with Fahra and her granddaughter</span></span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S1GjcR0rhbI/AAAAAAAAAFM/dyIt9cldT0Q/s1600-h/Bosnia+2006+011.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 212px; height: 159px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S1GjcR0rhbI/AAAAAAAAAFM/dyIt9cldT0Q/s400/Bosnia+2006+011.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427298732174181810" border="0" /></a></span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The most important part about my relationship-building in Bosnia is the invaluable one-on-one bonds I’ve made with some of the children in our friendship camps.<span style=""> </span>I will never forget our very first camp my first year.<span style=""> </span>We are in a small town called Čengić Vila outside of Sarajveo.<span style=""> </span>I am giving kids nametags, and helping them tie colored bandanas in their hair or on their wrists.<span style=""> </span>I see a girl with straight brown hair and a pink United Colors of Benetton t-shirt.<span style=""> </span>Her name tag says “Anida.”</span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">At beginning of camp, Anida—who speaks English, like many of the older kids--immediately comes running over to me, asking about someone who had been there the year before.<span style=""> </span>What an effect this person had on her! <span style=""> </span>I tell Anida the girl isn't with us this year, but Anida sees my nametag and her eyes light up. "Hey!" she cries, "our names are the same, except for one letter!" And Anida is my special buddy all day -- I am a "traveler" that session, so I get to go around with the kids from activity to activity, and Anida never leaves my side. </span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">At the end of the day, after our musicians play their closing songs, Anida takes my hands, looks right into my eyes, and says "I will never forget you." I say the same thing back to her, and I know it was true: there is no way, for as long as I live, that I will ever forget Anida </span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I made these same kind connections over and over. My first year I met a girl at the second camp we went to in a town called Visoko.<span style=""> </span>Her name was Ilma, and she gave me the bracelet off her own arm as a gift at the end of the day. I took down her address and wrote a letter to her during the year.<span style=""> </span>The next year, I didn't go to that camp.<span style=""> </span>Our group was split into North and South teams; Visoko was a South team camp, and I was on the North team.<span style=""> </span>I sent a letter to Ilma with a South team member, and Ilma had a letter waiting for me.<span style=""> </span>The same thing happened the next year – one of the team members who went to Visoko told me that when she walked into camp, Ilma came running over asking if I was there.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S1Gj4GMCyMI/AAAAAAAAAFU/7_fMtL6YfoY/s1600-h/Bosnia+2006+259.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 235px; height: 314px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S1Gj4GMCyMI/AAAAAAAAAFU/7_fMtL6YfoY/s400/Bosnia+2006+259.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427299210087286978" border="0" /></a></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The highest and lowest points of my life have been spent in Bosnia, sometimes on the very same day.<span style=""> </span>I want to talk about the high points.<span style=""> </span>In 2005, we were holding camp in a town in Northern Bosnia called Brčko.<span style=""> </span>I had made a really special bond the year before with a girl named Đurđica, perhaps in part because I was the only American who correctly pronounced her name on the first try.<span style=""> </span>I couldn't wait to see her – but as camp was getting ready to start, I didn't see her there, and I was starting to feel really disappointed.</span></p><p style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" > Me with </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Đurđica</span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Our opening was just about to start, when I heard someone shout my name from across the room. I looked up, and Đurđica came running across the room and threw her arms around me. She called an interpreter over, and told me through the interpreter that she had been dropping her younger sister off at camp and wasn't planning on staying herself, but she saw me and just had to come over and see me. She stayed the whole day and we had a great time!
<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I have seen God in Bosnia, with all five of my senses.<span style=""> </span>I have found God in the sunlight: when I was feeling lost or faced with something particularly dark, I literally saw the sun breaking through the clouds.<span style=""> </span>I have seen God in the faces of the kids, the Americans, our interpreters, and people on the street.<span style=""> </span>I have heard God in the imam’s call to prayer, in the ringing of church bells, in the songs we sing with the kids, and even in the bad American pop music that plays in restaurants.<span style=""> </span>I have felt God in the hugs I share, the hands I hold as I dance, the rocks and stones and water I touch.<span style=""> </span>I have smelled God in the flowers, the breeze, and the rain.<span style=""> </span>I have tasted God in the food and brandy that has been so generously shared with me, in the fabulous gelato I buy on the Sarajevo streets.</span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold; font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-weight: bold; font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">And everywhere I look, I have seen faith that can move mountains.</span></p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-weight: bold; font-family: times new roman;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S1GkUTIqzGI/AAAAAAAAAFc/XTBqmYXPPJ0/s1600-h/Bosnia+2006+263.jpg">
<br /></a></span></p> <!--EndFragment--><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S1Gkx5FWZPI/AAAAAAAAAFk/5znCkvJc7f0/s1600-h/Bosnia+2006+203.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 407px; height: 305px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S1Gkx5FWZPI/AAAAAAAAAFk/5znCkvJc7f0/s400/Bosnia+2006+203.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427300203001963762" border="0" /></a>
<br /></span> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >above: the cross at Rama monastary</span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >
<br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in; font-family: times new roman;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style=";font-size:100%;" ><span style=""><span style=""></span></span></span><!--[endif]-->
<br /><!--EndFragment--> </p>Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-19447468928912942352007-12-01T21:00:00.000-08:002010-01-14T03:21:04.368-08:00My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me? A Devotion about Bosnia<span style="font-size:78%;">
<br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">below: graves waiting to be filled with bodies exhumed from mass graves in Srebrenica</span></span></span>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S071YyXS_DI/AAAAAAAAADo/4y5vbCeK_9w/s1600-h/IST+Bosnia+2005+462.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S071YyXS_DI/AAAAAAAAADo/4y5vbCeK_9w/s320/IST+Bosnia+2005+462.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426544407213177906" border="0" /></a>
<br /><name="title" content=""> <name="keywords" content=""> <equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <name="progid" content="Word.Document"> <name="generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <name="originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Alida/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>734</o:Words> <o:characters>4186</o:Characters> <o:company>University of Southern California</o:Company> <o:lines>34</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>8</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>5140</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} h2 {mso-style-link:"Heading 2 Char"; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-outline-level:2; font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} span.Heading2Char {mso-style-name:"Heading 2 Char"; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:"Heading 2"; mso-ansi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; font-weight:bold;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – Psalm 22:1<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><u>Where were you, Lord? </u></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I am standing at the Potočari Memorial Cemetery in Srebrenica, Bosnia, a place where Serb nationalists murdered 8,000 Muslim men and boys during the Bosnian War.<span style=""> </span>In front of me, behind me, all around me stretch row upon row of identical green tombstones.<span style=""> </span>Each one bears a unique name and birth year, but all end with the date 1995.<span style=""> </span>Stone slabs with a seemingly endless list of names carved in them surround me; the same last names appear over and over.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">An older woman named Hatidža in a white veil runs her finger along one of the names.<span style=""> </span>“This is my husband,” she says, through an interpreter.<span style=""> </span>She points to two more names.<span style=""> </span>“And these are my sons.<span style=""> </span>I don’t know what happened to them.<span style=""> </span>They have been missing for eleven years.”<span style=""> </span>She pauses, and I can see the pain in her eyes, a pain like I have never known and cannot even imagine.<span style=""> </span>“The best thing I can hope is that they did not suffer for too long.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S072B1w0lDI/AAAAAAAAAD4/wPJCWH50ZLY/s1600-h/IST+Bosnia+2005+461.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S072B1w0lDI/AAAAAAAAAD4/wPJCWH50ZLY/s320/IST+Bosnia+2005+461.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426545112500180018" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><i style="">Dear Lord . . . how can something like this happen?<span style=""> </span>How can the</i><i style="">re </i><i style="">be such pure evil in the </i><i style="">world?<span style=""> </span>How can my fellow humans, created by You in Your image, act with such unmitigated and irrational hatred?<span style=""> </span>You are all good, all powerful, all knowing -- so how can You let things like this occur?<span style=""> </span>I know life isn’t supposed to be fair, God, but how come Hatidža has lost so much more than oth</i><i style="">ers, especially me?<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I am sitting in the Peace Center in Kozarac, Bosnia, listening to a woman named Emsuda Mujagić speak.<span style=""> </span>She tells us how her town was “ethnically cleansed” during the war, shares how she and her family, along with hundreds of others, were held in a concentration camp in the town of Tronoplje.<span style=""> </span>She survived; many were not so lucky.<span style=""> </span>She shows me a book full of names and some pictures, like a high school yearbook, except that every name in it is that of a missing person.<span style=""> </span>I see an eighty-year-old man, a five-year-old boy, and a girl my age.<span style=""> </span>I am overwhelmed.<span style=""> </span>I stand outside, and I weep.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><span style=""> </span>Where is the justice, Lord?<span style=""> </span>People te</i><i style="">ll me You have a divine plan for everything – how can this be part of it?<span style=""> </span>I know You are always there, even in the darkest times – but sometimes it is so hard to see where. <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">“The light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” – John 1:5</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><u>Where are you, Lord?</u></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-weight: bold;">right: Emsuda with interpreter Vjeko at the war cemetery in Kozarac</span>
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S071mB3HAoI/AAAAAAAAADw/WM_v-Z8K8TQ/s1600-h/IST+Bosnia+2005+164.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S071mB3HAoI/AAAAAAAAADw/WM_v-Z8K8TQ/s320/IST+Bosnia+2005+164.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426544634711442050" border="0" /></a></span>Emsuda tells how she returned to her town to help heal the physical and emotional wounds of her community by opening the Peace Center and founding <i style="">Through Hearts to Peace</i> (Srcem do Mira), a women’s organization that helps widows and refugees and works for peace and understanding among Muslims, Croats, and Serbs.<span style=""> </span>As Emsuda tells her story, she speaks about peace and forgiveness, about letting go of hatred and rising above the cycle of violence and revenge.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">I know we are supposed to forgive others, Lord, but I don’t know how Emsuda does it.<span style=""> </span>I have only just heard her story, and even as an outsider I am consumed with confusion, sorrow, horror, rage.<span style=""> </span>I marvel at the light Emsuda brings in a world that seems too dark.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">And then I see, Lord.<span style=""> </span>I see an answ</i><i style="">er, because I see You.<span style=""> </span>Dear Jesus, you said that when we do unto each other, we do unto You.<span style=""> </span>I see you in Emsuda – in the love she shows her neighbors, I see the unconditional love You have for us; in the way she has brought her community back to life, I see a reflection of your glorious resurrection.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I know that God is in Bosnia now, just as He always has been.<span style=""> </span>The darkness seemed overwhelming, but Light of the World shone through.<span style=""> </span>The darkness may seem to triumph, but ultimately, the light is never defeated.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><b>“There’s a calm upon the water, but down below</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><b style="">Oh, the anxious hearts are beating, will this peace ever hold? . . . <o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><b style="">Still the memories are haunting, will they block the way?<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><b style="">What can bring us all together to start a brand new day?”<o:p></o:p></b></p> <h2><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;">-- Larry Olsen, “May Love Rise Above” </span><o:p></o:p></span></h2> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><u>Where will you be, Lord?</u></i><u><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></u></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What comes next?<span style=""> </span>I think of lyrics from a song written by Larry Olsen of Dakota Road, one of our Bosnia trip musicians.<span style=""> </span>As the years pass and people try to live together once again, the darkness in Bosnia is lifting, and the light is gradually becoming brighter.<span style=""> </span>But the process is painstakingly slow, and the results are uncertain.<span style=""> </span>There is such a long way to go, and I fear that the country will plunge back into darkness.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The only thing I can do is pray:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Dear Lord, thank you for Your unfailing goodness, mercy, and love. <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">I pray especially for the people of Bosnia, that they find the healing and strength they need to live in peace and harmony.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Let me and all of your children see Your presence even when it is hard to find.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Help me to always remember that “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.<span style=""> </span>Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.” (Psalm 46:1-3)<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Let me see Your light in the world, and help me to be a vessel capable of sharing Your light with others.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">In Jesus’ name I pray, <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Amen.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S072ePhClRI/AAAAAAAAAEA/bZpYoN2AD6w/s1600-h/IST+Bosnia+2005+466.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S072ePhClRI/AAAAAAAAAEA/bZpYoN2AD6w/s400/IST+Bosnia+2005+466.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426545600449647890" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> the sun breaking over Srebrenica</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">All pictures copyright the author, July 2005</span>
<br /></p> <!--EndFragment--> </name="originator"></name="generator"></name="progid"></equiv="content-type"></name="keywords"></name="title">Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-79592851369890837702007-11-15T13:38:00.000-08:002010-06-07T07:42:32.571-07:00Reflections on They Would Never Hurt a Fly<span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Reflections on </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in the Hague </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">by</span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Slavenka Drakulic</span><br /><br />Summary from Publisher's Weekly:<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://us.penguingroup.com/static/covers/all/8/2/9780143035428L.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 148px; height: 228px;" src="http://us.penguingroup.com/static/covers/all/8/2/9780143035428L.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">What causes people to participate in genocide? Respected Croatian journalist Drakulic (</span><i style="font-style: italic;">How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed</i><span style="font-style: italic;">) set out to explore the psyches of the people who turned her former country, Yugoslavia, into a killing field in the early 1990s. Observing them on trial for war crimes before the International Tribunal in the Hague, Drakulic depicts the perpetrators, from Radomir Kovac, who raped young girls, to the delusional former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, often from the point of view of the perpetrators themselves. The novelistic imputation of imagined thoughts can be distract</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">ing. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, the snapshots are powerful and horrifying: they include a chilling description of the slaughter at Srebrenica through the eyes of a reluctant Bosnian</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> soldier forced to kill or be killed, and a portrayal of an entire town's complicity in the murder of a Croatian militiaman after he courageously testified before the tribunal. Drakulic's analysis of why people choose evil—fear, opportunism, propaganda, lust for power and identity, historical grievances—offers little that's new, and her conclusion—"if ordinary people committed war crimes, it means that any of us begs the question of why some found the courage to say no. But her focus on the perpetrators and their apparently inexplicable moral choices forces us to face the questions of good and evil these crimes raise.</span></span><br /><br /> I found it fascinating to try to get inside the minds of and understand the thinking of people who committed war crimes. This book challenged me and made me uncomfortable, and also made me worry about the state of Bosnia today. For example, I know that political corruption such as that described in the chapter about the death of Milan Levar, the Croatian war witness, is still rampant all around the former Yugoslavia today. There are still people who do not know and who won’t accept the truth, and even now “the Croatian state is still indecisive, the international community is indifferent, and public opinion remains silent” (37). When the people in power are the same as the perpetrators or are involved in conspiracy about what happened, how can there possibly be any progress?<br /><br /> I also think the book is very important because I couldn’t agree more with Drakulić’s conclusion that we need to stop thinking of war criminals as purely evil non-human monsters lest we fail to acknowledge that we too have the capacity to act in similar ways. It’s a terrifying thought – what does it take to make an ordinary person act in such an extraordinary way? Drakulić wonders if perhaps war can turn people with “criminal personalities” (55) into criminals who can rape and murder. However, there would have to be “thousands upon thousands of men committing such acts,” (56) and Drakulić feels it was more likely that “the war itself turned ordinary men – a driver, a waiter, and a salesman, the three accused were – into criminals because of opportunism, fear, and not least, belief” (56). She states that the either the hundreds of thousands of perpetrators actually believed what they were doing was right, or there is no explanation for the rapes and murders, and I’m not sure which side of the disjunct is scarier.<br /><br /> How do these things happen? As Drakulić asks, “how does our neighbor become our enemy? How do we internalize the enemy, and how long does it take to do so?” (97). She states that at the time of the Srebrenica massacre, the “Serbian propaganda machine, especially television, had been demonizing the enemy—Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians—for almost ten years” (97). This notion of the power of propaganda is especially terrifying to me. There are people in Serbia who genuinely do not realize what happened in Srebrenica because of what their media has told them. How responsible are we for the nationalist attitudes we have been fed by our news stations? Where do we draw the line between thinking independently and total skepticism over everything the media tells us? I typically have a fairly strong faith in the reliability of the media (perhaps because my parents are both radio journalists) that this book made me begin to sincerely doubt.<br /><br /> The ideas that Drakulić presents in the chapter on Slobodan Milošević about recreating history and revising facts to fit a political agenda struck a chord with me, because I’ve seen history being rewritten in Bosnia today. In the summer of 2005, our group attempted to hold a “friendship camp” in Srebrenica for the first time. When we arrived at the school, no children were there, which is far from the norm – we are usually greeted at the bus by a throng of eager faces. We went inside the school building to wait while our trip coordinators spoke with the school director. Hanging on one wall was a large painting of the town with small portraits on either side. The town in the painting had several Orthodox churches but not a single mosque, though the painting was obviously depicting a time long before the war, a time in which the majority of the population was Muslim. One of the portraits hanging next to the Mosque-less painting of the town was of a great Serbian author who revolutionized Serbo-Croatian language. The caption under the painting was printed in Cyrillic and English, not in the Serbo-Croatian in the Latin alphabet. One of the interpreters came over to look at the painting with me, and pointed to the caption and said “That’s wrong. It says ‘He is the greatest author of our nation,’ but he was from Serbia, and our nation is Bosnia.”<br /><br /> For the only time in all of my trips to Bosnia, I felt highly uncomfortable and very out of place. I got a very bizarre vibe from the school, and I stepped outside because I felt so uncomfortable. I approached another of my team members about it, an adult woman named Donna, and asked her if she felt the same way. She agreed with me, and said that it was because we were seeing history being rewritten before our eyes. (The school director claimed to have been confused over the date and apologized for his “mistake,” but I have a strong suspicion that his mistake was intentional, and that he did not want us--and our Muslim interpreters--there. The next year, there was a new director at the school in Srebrenica and we held a successful camp there, though there was only one Muslim boy in attendance.)<br /><br /> I scared myself reading the chapter about Dražen Erdemović, because though I hope that I would rather die than shoot innocent civilians, I really can’t say whether I would be willing to give up my life in such a situation. Over the summer I had a dream that scared me in a similar way. I was in the middle of intense preparation for my part of NJ Synod’s display about the Bosnian War at the ELCA National Youth Gathering. I was responsible for information about Emsuda Mugajić and concentration camps and for coordinating workshops about our Bosnian interpreters’ war stories and a war simulation game.<br /><br /> I don’t remember all of the details, but I dreamed I was in my old high school, and a friend ran up to me and told me I had to go outside to the field. There were masked men with guns outside, and they had lined all the students up and were screaming at us, telling us to get down on the ground and cover our heads. I felt absolutely terrified as I took my place in line with the other students. A man started walking down the line of students, poking random students with the butt of his gun and yelling, “YOU! GET UP AND COME WITH ME!” I knew that the students he picked were going to be taken to a wall and shot by a firing squad, with no chance of escape. As he walked down the line, I could only think one thing – don’t pick me, don’t pick me, Dear God, please let him pick anyone but me.<br /><br /> The man tapped me with his gun, shouted a number, and dragged me to my feet. I felt panicked and I couldn’t breathe. All I could think was “this cannot be happening, not to me – I have so much potential, so much before me, I haven’t lived my life yet . . . I still need to go to graduate school and become a philosophy professor, I can’t die now!” I woke up, and I was very upset, not by the dream itself but by my reaction in the dream. I was terrified of death, and I would have done anything to avoid it – to the point of wishing that the guard would take someone else, would just take anyone but me. I also, for the first time, stopped to try to imagine what it would really be like to be in an ethnic cleansing situation, and I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I didn’t like the way I responded in the dream at all, and though I know it was a dream, it made me wonder how I would respond in a similar real life situation.<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-52607568961564425212007-11-10T11:25:00.000-08:002010-01-16T13:53:58.921-08:00The Shadow<p> <span style="font-style: italic;">This is a short story I wrote in the fall of 2007.</span><br /></p><p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >There was so much noise in the hot, smoky room, people singing and cheering and laughing and cursing. I was dizzy and my head felt heavy from so many shots of <i>slivovic</i>. Dragan stumbled over to me, his face red and glistening with sweat. </span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“Hey, Miro!” he slurred, pouring me more <i>rakija.</i> “You’re a good man, you know that? You came to our unit three months ago and you were a simple farmer boy from some backward little village . . . and all you knew how to do was plough fields . . . and feed cows . . . and milk chickens.” He slung an arm around me and leaned his face in closer. “And <i>now</i>, now you are a man! You’re a soldier like the rest of us!” He raised his glass and shouted, “Here’s to you, you crazy peasant son of a bitch!”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“<i>Živjeli! </i> Cheers!” I clinked my glass with Dragan’s and downed the fiery brandy. The room span around me, I put a hand against the wall to steady myself. I felt myself slide against the wall, and I realized I was sitting on the dirty floor. I closed my eyes and started to think of home, and of the girl. Soon, I was lost in the world of my own thoughts. </span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><i>There was an old widow who lived in my town and told the villagers’ fortunes in exchange for knick-knacks and food. Everyone knew her only as Mother Sofija, and all the village kids were afraid of her, because they heard stories that she liked to steal bad children and eat them for breakfast. Mothers would cluck their tongues as she passed and shake their heads in disapproval. My own mother would cross herself and tell me “Miro, look away before she gives you the evil eye! That woman practices the Devil’s art!” </i></span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><i>But I had always been the bravest of the boys my age, and I was not afraid of anything. I was famous for taking any dare offered to me, from leaping off the roof of the barn to slipping a live frog in the church collection plate and risking Father Pero’s wrath. So when Branko dared me to go to Mother Sofija and have her tell my fortune, I couldn’t refuse. It happened eight years ago in 1985 when I was only fourteen, but I can still see it perfectly in my mind. </i></span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><i>It was summer, and I found Mother Sofija sitting on the bench at the edge of the town square where she liked to rest in the warm months. I opened my mouth to speak, and she put a wrinkled finger to her lips. </i></span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><i>“Shh, child, don’t talk. What did you bring me?”</i></span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><i>Looking around to make sure no one was watching me, I handed her a basket of fresh eggs from our farm. She accepted it wordlessly, and grabbed my hand. She started humming to herself and tracing the lines in my palm, analyzing every dirt-caked finger.</i></span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><i>“Oh child, this is very special, very special, yes. I see your destiny is not yours alone. The thread of your life is tangled with another’s, all wrapped up and tangled, yes. She will change your life, this woman you are destined to meet. I do not see where your destiny goes, no, it is not easy, but when you meet her, she will possess your thoughts and your days for the rest of your life. She will decide who you are and how your life plays out, yes, she will.”</i></span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I was shaken out of my daydream and back to the present when I heard a crash and a shout next to me. I cracked an eye open and saw broken glass and spilled liquid on the ground. It didn’t matter, there was more where that came from. The commander had given us a special treat tonight. I felt my head slump over, and I drifted off to sleep. </span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><i>I am dreaming. I am in my hometown again, in the big hilly field behind old man Ivanović’s farm. The air is clean and crisp and fresh; everything is quiet, and the world is at peace. The sun glares into my eyes, and I squint into the brilliant light. I see a person standing at the top of a hill. The figure is shadowed, but I knew it has to be the girl. I start running towards her. </i></span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><i>“Hello!” I call. “You, there, wait!” </i></span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" ><i>The woman stops. I catch up to her, and she turns to face me. She has light brown hair that falls to her waist, and she looks at me with piercing blue eyes. There is a dark brown beauty mark on her cheek. She is dressed in a simple blouse and skirt, and she is beautiful. I have seen her in recurring dreams ever since my encounter with the old widow, and whenever I dream of her I know she is the destiny Mother Sofija saw for me. Something about her haunts me, captivates me, makes me dream about her even during my waking hours, though in my dreams I am never able to speak to her or learn anything about her. </i></span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I was jolted awake by a smack on the back of my head. I woke with a start, panicked and disoriented with an ache in my head and tightness in my throat. The electric lights in the room felt like they were burning me. Someone shook me.</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“Miro, you slug, get up! Party time is over, we have orders to go outside!”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I used the wall to steady myself and stand up. Everyone in the room was adjusting their uniforms and making their weapons ready. It was still dark outside.</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“What are we doing?” </span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“Shut up and get ready, farmer,” Dragan replied. “We have some refugee scum we need to move.”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I followed the rest of my unit outside into the chilly night air, unusually cold for summer. I guessed from the sky that it was probably about four in the morning. My feet felt unsteady and my mind was hazy, and I knew I was still drunk from the night before. We lined up in very sloppy attention outside the abandoned school building we were using as our temporary barracks, and our commander paced up and down in front of us.</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“Alright, boys!” he shouted. “I hate to break up your party, but we’ve got some trash we need to get rid of. A bus full of refugees from the local village is having engine trouble, and we need to make sure the filthy Muslim bastards all get onto the other bus so they can be relocated and be out of our town.”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >An overly zealous member of our unit saluted and shouted “Sir, yes sir!”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >The commander started laughing, a rich, hearty laugh. “That’s right my boy, you show the others how excited they should be.”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >The commander kept talking, but I was tired and distracted, and I couldn’t focus on what he was saying even if I tried. I started thinking about what it would be like when I was done with my service in the army, how proud my mother would be, and how I would be a war hero in my town. <i> That Miro always was the bravest</i>, they would say, and even the grandmothers would be proud of my honor and courage and service to our people.</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I realized that two buses had pulled up in front of the barracks. The door of the first bus opened, and a line of people filed out of it. I saw only shadows; it was too dark to see any of their faces or features. A few of my fellow soldiers lined the refugees up in a row in front of the other bus, prodding them with the butts of their guns. I saw the people start to board the bus, watched them through some kind of fog as if they were a dream or I was seeing them in slow motion. I was hungry, and I started thinking about the stew my Aunt Mirjana makes at holidays, how it tastes so spicy and delicious, and the warm crusty bread that goes with it, and the sweet pastries we have for dessert . . . .</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“Petrović!” The commander shouted. “Miro! Are you listening to me? Look at me, boy!”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I was startled out of my daydream. “Yes, sir!” I yelled, worried because I hadn’t been paying attention. “I’m listening, sir! Ready to follow orders, sir!”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >The commander laughed again. “Alright, you drunken smart-ass, let’s see how tough you can be.”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I noticed that all of the refugees were on the bus already, except one. The commander grabbed hold of the figure, dragged it away from the bus towards the middle of the field. </span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“Okay, Petrović,” the commander said. “This here God-damn Turk spreads lies about us, tries to write to the newspapers and stand up on the street corners and say that Serbia has no right to what we know is ours . . . my superiors have warned me about this Muslim son of a bitch, and said it’s in our best interest not to have people spreading lies about us. You know what you should do.”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“Sir?”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“Kill the Turk.”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >It was like I had floated outside of my body and was seeing myself as another person. I was the bravest. I had never turned down a dare, never in my life, and this was more than a dare, it was an order. I had to. I was tough, I could do this, I was a soldier, I had to follow orders, and it didn’t matter anyway, I was just shooting at a shadow, there was no face, there was no person, this was just another refugee like so many others, but more than that, even, this person was dangerous, was a liar, was a traitor, had to be gotten rid of, in our best interest, and even so, it was just a shadow, nothing else, it didn’t matter, I had no choice, I was a real man now, a soldier, a city boy, an adult, I was tough, and fierce, and it’s just a shadow . . . . </span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >I aimed my gun and curled my finger around the trigger. I don’t remember what happened in the next few seconds, but I heard a high-pitched scream and a thud. I realized my eyes were shut and I was breathing heavily.</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >When I opened my eyes, the Commander was laughing again, that same hearty laugh. “God, you can take the boy out of the farm but you can’t take the farmer out of the boy, look at your face! He’s a good shot, though, a damn good shot, you got the sucker right in the chest. It’s cold, boys, we’ll deal with the body later. Nice work, gentlemen, nice work!”</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >The Commander and the other soldiers were starting to go inside. Slowly, I walked over to the body that was lying on the ground. I started to panic, couldn’t catch my breath. The body on the ground wasn’t a shadow, wasn’t a figure, it was a person, a human being, an actual person with family and friends, a person who used to breathe and think and feel. I walked over and stood above the body in the darkness, suddenly feeling sober and acutely aware of my surroundings. I knelt on the ground and leaned in to look at the face of the person I had shot.</span></p> <p> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >She had light brown hair and piercing blue eyes and a beauty mark on her cheek.</span></p><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-811920465195705492007-10-17T17:00:00.000-07:002010-01-14T18:34:29.558-08:00Picture Me an Enemy
<br /> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Alida/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_filelist.xml"> <link rel="Edit-Time-Data" href="file://localhost/Users/Alida/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_editdata.mso"> <!--[if !mso]> <style> v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>1265</o:Words> <o:characters>5823</o:Characters> <o:company>University of Southern California</o:Company> <o:lines>103</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>15</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>8861</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Geneva; panose-1:2 11 5 3 3 4 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} p {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Times; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Times; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><b style=""><i style=""><span style="color:black;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Reflections on the film “Picture Me an Enemy” </span></span></i></b> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><i style=""><span style="color:black;"><a href="http://www.visavisproductions.com/"><span style="color:black;">http://www.visavisproductions.com/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">Film synopsis (from the above website): <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: center;" align="center"><i style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;color:black;" >When the war started, we thought it was simply impossible.
<br />What, am I supposed to expect my first neighbor to come and kill me?
<br />Oh, come on it's not possible! But it is very possible and it happened.
<br /></span></i><span style=";font-family:Arial;color:black;" >Tahija Vikalo (1998)</span><span style="color:black;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <table class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 682px; height: 238px;" border="0" cellpadding="0"> <tbody><tr style="height: 205pt;"> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; width: 73%; height: 205pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" valign="top" width="73%"> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;" >In 1991, war broke out in the former Yugoslavia. The ensuing conflicts left up to a quarter of a million people dead or missing in the region and made refugees of more than half of th</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;" >e national population of Bosnia & Herzegovina. And despite </span><span style=";font-family:Arial;" >wide international attention, understanding of these conflicts is still vague and detached.
<br />
<br />Told through the intimate stories of Natasa, a Serbo-Croat from Croatia, and Tahija, a Bosniak (a Bosnian Muslim), <strong><span style="font-family:Arial;">Picture Me an Enemy</span></strong> puts a human face on these distant conflicts. Although pictured to one another, and to the world, as longtime enemies, Natasa and Tahija speak a common truth about how those in power used religion, ethnicity and nationality to construct the "enemy" during the conflicts. It is a moving portrait of two young women who reach beyond their national identities to address universal qu</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;" >estions of conflict, peace and forgiveness with sensitivity and unexpected humor.
<br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<br /></p><p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Geneva;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.visavisproductions.com/facesof.html">
<br /> Tahija Vikalo</a></span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;" > was just beginning college when the war erupted in Bosnia & Herzegovina. She lived through the worst of the war in Sarajevo, running past snipers on her way home from w</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;" >ork. In the summer of 1998, the </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Geneva;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"><b><strong><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"><b><strong><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;">Picture Me an Enemy</span></strong></b></span></strong></b></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;" > crew traveled with Tahija back to her home in Sarajevo. Tracing Tahija's footsteps through the past and into the present, we gain a unique view of Bosnian life and culture as well as the horror she went through. Tahija's introduction to Bosnia challenges stereotypes about her country and the Muslim religion. And her firsthand experience of war is a window into the brutality and sufferin</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;" >g that results from such conflicts.</span>
<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; width: 27%; height: 205pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" width="27%"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;" align="center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.visavisproductions.com/images/sarajevo2sm1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 158px;" src="http://www.visavisproductions.com/images/sarajevo2sm1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>
<br /><span style=";font-family:Times;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style="display: none;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style="font-family:Geneva;font-size:100%;"><img src="http://www.visavisproductions.com/images/tahijaparl2.jpg" alt="Tahija Vikalo" width="150" height="115" /></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="display: none;color:black;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <table class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 100%;" border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0"> <tbody><tr style="height: 2.25in;"> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; width: 77%; height: 2.25in;" width="77%"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;color:black;" ><a href="http://www.visavisproductions.com/facesof.html"><span style="color:black;">
<br />Natasa Borcanin</span></a>, originally from Osijek, Croatia, was a high school student when war erupted in Croatia. In formal interviews and intimate settings, Natasa discusses her experience of war breaking out in her country and then what it was like to watch these conflicts unfold on television from the US where she was an exchange student. As a Croat with mixed ethnicity (her father is Serbian and her mother is Croatian), Natasa represents the innate complexity of these wars. She and her family suffered as victims of discrimination in her Croatian hometown and yet for Natasa, the war was "not a war of our generation...we never knew of these hatreds between ethnic groups." Natasa provides a unique perspective on the complexities of personal identity and the danger of assigning people to rigid ethnic groups.</span><span style=";font-family:Times;color:black;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; width: 23%; height: 2.25in;" width="23%"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Geneva;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:85%;color:#ffffcc;"><span style="font-family:Geneva;font-size:100%;"><img src="http://www.visavisproductions.com/images/natatreesm.jpg" width="175" height="117" /></span></span></span>
<br /><span style=";font-family:Times;color:black;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;color:black;" >
<br />With candid and revealing perspectives rarely seen on the evening news, Tahija and Natasa provide new insights into these, often-misunderstood, conflicts. And although the documentary focuses on the conflicts of the former Yugoslavia, the themes raised within, reach far beyond the borders of any one country. </span><span style="color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <table class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 100%;" border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0"> <tbody><tr style="height: 174pt;"> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; width: 26%; height: 174pt;" width="26%"> <p class="MsoNormal"><img src="http://www.visavisproductions.com/images/sufiintsm.jpg" alt="Sufi Interview" width="170" height="96" />
<br /><span style=";font-family:Times;color:black;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; width: 74%; height: 174pt;" width="74%"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;color:black;" >Shot in Philadelphia and the former Yugoslavia, <strong><span style="font-family:Arial;">Picture Me an Enemy</span></strong> inter-cuts archival news footage and abstract Super 8 vignettes with the post-war reflections of Tahija and Natasa in a style that is both engaging and sincere. This is supplemented with archival footage from the war and a wealth of images of the people and places of the former Yugoslavia. Award-winning editor Barbara Burst combines these elements in an engaging and sincere way. Blending sounds from East, West, folk and pop, the film's soundtrack features the music of diaSonic, an international act recently featured on MTV and Fox Television. The musicians, Milan Kovacev and Damir Prcic, who, like Tahija and Natasa, come from opposing sides of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, find a common ground through music by combining classical, hip hop and electronic dance music with folk songs from Serbia and Bosnia.</span><span style=";font-family:Times;color:black;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="display: none;color:black;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <table class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 100%;" border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0"> <tbody><tr style="height: 103pt;"> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; height: 103pt;"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;color:black;" >This documentary is especially unique because of the visibly sincere friendship developed over six years between the vis à vis productions crew and Tahija & Natasa. As they share their experiences, the viewer is introduced to the images, humor, culture and life of the former Yugoslavia in an up close and intimate way. </span><span style=";font-family:Times;color:black;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; width: 21%; height: 103pt;" width="21%"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family:Geneva;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;color:#ffffcc;"><img src="http://www.visavisproductions.com/images/dancing.jpg" alt="Dancing" align="middle" width="150" height="90" /></span></span>
<br /><span style=";font-family:Times;color:black;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="height: 79pt;"> <td colspan="2" style="padding: 0.75pt; height: 79pt;"> <p style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;color:black;" >The target audience for <strong><span style="font-family:Arial;">Picture Me an Enemy</span></strong> is people who care little about issues of war and conflict, and would rarely ever sit down to watch a "war documentary." Although told through the voices of two women from the former Yugoslavia, the themes raised throughout <strong><span style="font-family:Arial;">Picture Me an Enemy</span></strong> reach far beyond the borders of any one country. At its core, this is a story of two women who have the same fears, hopes and dreams as women anywhere. </span><span style="color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color:black;">This film was screened as part of a Bosnia symposium at my college, and was also part of the curriculum for a freshman course on the Bosnian war for which I was a TA. I thought this was an excellent film that exemplified the complicated, category-defying classification of ethnic groups in Bosnia.<span style=""> </span>After traveling to Bosnia four times and contemplating the complex role ethnicity played in the war, the only thing I am completely sure of is that nothing is certain.<span style=""> </span>The Bosnian conflict is so difficult, so intriguing, and so important because it was not a clear-cut matter of black and white/good guys vs. bad guys.<span style=""> </span>Rather, it seems that every side is a shade of gray, and I can’t unqualifiedly label any one group as the “good guys.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color:black;">Moreover, it seems that each person you ask lays the blame for what happened elsewhere.<span style=""> </span>For example, when I was in Mostar in 2004, our Bosnian Muslim trip hostess told us that during the war, the Croats and Muslims of Mostar had banded together against the Serb aggressors.<span style=""> </span>When the Serbs were no longer a threat, she said, the Croats turned on the Muslims with no reason and started shooting at them.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color:black;">That summer, I was speaking to an American man who does mission work in Bosnia through a Catholic relief organization and works primarily with Bosnian Croats.<span style=""> </span>When I mentioned Mostar, he told me that he had heard how the Croats and Muslims banded together against the Serbs until the Muslims irrationally turned on the Croats and started shooting.<span style=""> </span>It’s hard to know what the truth of the matter actually is.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color:black;">The thing that struck me most about the video was when Tahija commented that people are always saying to her “No!<span style=""> </span>You’re Muslim?<span style=""> </span>You can’t be Muslim!”<span style=""> </span>Most of the interpreters we work with in Bosnia are Muslim, and I have to admit that before I met them, the concept of a blonde, liberal European Muslim girl who speaks English, wants to live in America, dresses like me, and knows more about American pop culture than I do was a little startling.<span style=""> </span>Many Americans tend to at best see all Muslims as Middle-Eastern/Arab and traditional, and at worst see all Muslims as terrorists or Islamist extremists.<span style=""> </span>In the girl in the video, I not only saw my friends from Sarajevo, I saw my girlfriends in New Jersey.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color:black;">A film like this makes it apparent that there were ordinary people on every side, girls my age who dress like me and think like me and aren’t irrational or full of hate.<span style=""> </span>Most of the people swept up by the conflict were simply ordinary people.<span style=""> </span>It must be very hard for Bosnians like the two girls in the video not to fall into the trap of thinking of each other in such unambiguous right and wrong/good and evil terms.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-62858110885827512142007-10-14T18:58:00.000-07:002010-01-14T19:04:15.914-08:00Reflections on Pretty Birds by Scott Simon<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.mostlyfiction.com/images/cover_L-O/prettybirds.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 191px; height: 288px;" src="http://www.mostlyfiction.com/images/cover_L-O/prettybirds.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Reflections on</span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> Pretty Birds</span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> by Scott Simon<br />Random House, 2005<br /></span><br />a good review of the book can be found here:<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">http://www.mostlyfiction.com/world/simon.htm</span><br /><br /><em> "There is no greater sorrow on earth than the loss of one's native land." -- Euripides</em><br /><br />I first read this book over the summer of 2007 (I actually finished it while I was in Bosnia), and I absolutely loved it. Not only is it a powerful, fascinating story with compelling characters, but it also provides an interesting and accurate snapshot of what life was like in besieged Sarajevo. Sarajevo is a city I love and feel very close to, and I could visualize many of the places and people with whom Irena interacted.<br /><br />What I liked best about the book was how it shattered my preconceived notions. To begin, I was startled when I first heard that the book was about a sniper who was a Muslim female – I had assumed that the snipers involved in the siege of Sarajevo were male and Serb, paramilitary units or members of the JNA. I didn’t think about the possibility of snipers on the other side, and if I had, I would have assumed they were soldiers in the Bosnian army and probably male. Irena challenged my concept of gender roles. Given that Slavenka Drakulić consistently affirms that Bosnia is a very patriarchal society, I thought it especially interesting that, according to Scott Simon, it was not uncommon to use girls as snipers. Though Irena is much tougher and sharper than I am, I can relate to her as a young woman, and I can see aspects of my girlfriends in her.<br /><br />It was fascinating to find myself empathizing with the sniper rather than with the victim. When the novel opened, I was horrified to read about the blasé, casual way Irena went about shooting people as if it were any ordinary part-time job. I recoiled from the way she systematically decided how to line up her target, and justified shooting at the lemon stand because the people there could afford the luxury of buying lemons.<br /><br />As I read the novel, however, I grew to understand Irena, to sympathize and even empathize with her, to understand her actions and realize why she chose to fight back. As I came to care about Irena, I came to realize how important survival was for her, and how becoming a sniper was her way of surviving. It’s very difficult for me to imagine myself in the shoes of someone who deliberately picks a human target to kill, but I was almost able to do so through the character of Irena.<br /><br />I was very intrigued by the Knight, the Bosnian Serb radio propagandist who reads the “news” every day and spouts threats and racial epithets against the Muslims. If besieged Sarajevans want to hear music or get any sort of updates, they have to listen to the Knight and are forced to hear him mock and threaten them. First, I wonder about the accuracy of Simon’s description of the Knight. I know propaganda was a major political weapon during the Bosnian war, but Pretty Birds is the first source in which I’ve found a description of propaganda being played systematically over the speaker systems in Sarajevo. I’ve heard that Simon’s novel is well researched, accurate, and largely based on personal experience, so I assume the Knight is in some way based on a real person.<br /><br />It makes me question how people responded to the Knight’s talk. Irena ignores his blather for the most part, though she grumbles that she has to listen to so much nonsense before getting to the music. Were they all able to ignore the Knight as successfully as Irena was? When someone says something offensive about you, a natural instinct is to become angry with the speaker and fight back against the accusations. But what if you are hearing the talk every day and there is no way to fight it? Do you start to believe that the negative things said about you are true? What does this do to your sense of humanity and of self-worth?<br /><br />Furthermore, how did Serbs living in Sarajevo respond to the negative propaganda about the Muslims? In such a cosmopolitan and ethnically mixed city, it was unlikely that there were Serbs who knew no Muslims and could be genuinely deluded because of ignorance. Did non-Muslims believe what the Knight said? I think it’s hard to know, because it’s very conceivable that even the best-intentioned people may fall for propaganda because they don’t realize what it is. Such considerations make me very careful of the news I read and see, for I realize that I tend not to question what my usual sources (CNN and the BBC) tell me. I hope that I would be reasonable enough to realize if the media is presenting me with something inaccurate or deliberately misleading, but for all I know, I’ve been exposed to propaganda before and not even recognized it.<br /><br />Another aspect I found interesting was Mrs. Zarić’s reaction to her daughter’s rape by the soldiers who forced them out of their home in Grbavica. She is furious, and rightly so. She wishes to respond to violence with violence, and wants revenge for the wrongs committed against her and her family. Mrs. Zarić does not consider for even one moment forgiveness or reconciliation of any kind, and I fully understand her action. Throughout Pretty Birds, I found myself trying to put myself in the characters’ places and wondering what I would do in their situations. If I had a daughter who was raped, how would I respond? How could I feel anything but anger, anger that I would pass on to my children and use to perpetuate the cycle of violence?<br /><br />Simon makes extensive use of animals as literal innocent victims of war: the animals in the Sarajevo zoo starve to death, the dogs at Dr. Pekar’s clinic are dying, Pretty Bird is starving and the Zarić family is forced to let her go. At the same time, the animals can be seen as a metaphor for all of war’s innocent victims. Just as with people, some animals die, some (such as Pretty Bird) survive but are forced to relocate, and none has committed any crime or in any way deserves to be persecuted. On a somewhat ironic level, this can be read as a literary convention used to make people sympathize with and feel emotionally connected to the citizens of Sarajevo. For some reason, humans sometimes sympathize more with animal than with human victims, perhaps because we believe that animals are incapable of acting rationally and thus incapable of evil and never deserving of punishment or hurt. People can watch a disaster movie where a city is leveled and thousands of people die, but the family dog has to survive or moviegoers will be very upset. Pretty Birds may, to some extent, be playing on the same idea.Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-30815484503757470642007-09-14T16:11:00.000-07:002010-01-15T13:36:37.517-08:00Review of S. by Slavenka Drakulic<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i43.tower.com/images/ss100532204/s-slavenka-drakulic-paperback-cover-art.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 80px; height: 121px;" src="http://i43.tower.com/images/ss100532204/s-slavenka-drakulic-paperback-cover-art.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Alida/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>714</o:Words> <o:characters>3288</o:Characters> <o:company>University of Southern California</o:Company> <o:lines>58</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>8</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>5003</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">if you have not read the novel, spoiler alert!</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
<br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">if you would like to follow these reflections without having read the book, please see this <a href="http://www.salon.com/books/review/2000/02/08/drakulic/index.html">review</a> from Salon Magazine</i><b style=""><i style="">
<br /></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b style=""><i style="">Reflections on <u>S. A Novel about the Balkans</u> by Slavenka Drakulić<o:p></o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">I’ve been trying to process some of the difficult or disturbing issues about the war in Bosnia for four years now.<span style=""> </span>I’ve heard first-hand accounts of atrocities, put my fingers in bullet holes in Vojkoviči, Mostar, and Sarajevo, seen the war cemeteries in Srebrenica and Potočari, visited the site of the concentration camp at Tronoplje, and walked through part of the siege tunnel in Sarajevo.<span style=""> </span>I have read about and seen some upsetting things, but I was starting to think that books about the war in Bosnia didn’t really affect me on a gut level anymore.<span style=""> </span>I got through the first part of S. with no real problems – it was distressing to read about people being displaced, raped, and tortured, but I wasn’t connecting with the reading in a significant emotional way.<span style=""> </span>I started to worry that perhaps I was becoming “hardened” to atrocities, that horrendous things didn’t seem so bad to me anymore because I had heard so much about them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">I was wrong.<span style=""> </span>Two incidences in the novel – the description of how a father is forced to rape his son before both are shot, and the suicide note E. leaves about how she unsuccessfully tries to save her daughter from being raped and killed – really shook me.<span style=""> </span>I literally had to stop reading because I felt physically ill.<span style=""> </span>If merely reading a fictionalized account of such horrible acts affects me so deeply, I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to actually witness or live through them.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">This book raised interesting issues about gender roles, especially because rape is a uniquely gender-based crime in that the perpetrators must be (with very few exceptions) men.<span style=""> </span>Drakulić affirms that Bosnian society (especially in rural areas) is very patriarchal, and that women of any sort are treated as secondary or somehow sub-human.<span style=""> </span>The goal of ethnic cleansing is to dehumanize the minority, to make the “other” inferior.<span style=""> </span>Patriarchy can turn women into objects, and perpetrators of ethnic cleansing aim to turn minorities into objects.<span style=""> </span>The Muslim, Croat, or mixed-ethnicity women who underwent ethnic cleansing in concentration camps, then, were sub-human on two levels because they had their humanity doubly removed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">S.’s relationship with the Captain also raised a major gender issue.<span style=""> </span>The Captain and S. connect on some intellectual or emotional level, and their relationship signifies a grasp at some kind of normalcy for both of them.<span style=""> </span>Yet the relationship is not one of mutual consent, in spite of having the semblance of one.<span style=""> </span>S. does not have a choice – she has to sleep with the Captain, has to let him rape her.<span style=""> </span>Though she realizes that her position as the Captain’s mistress is the best she can have in her situation because it makes her off-limits to the other men, she is not in a position she likes or would want.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">Being in this position, however, allows S. to have a kind of power over the Captain, a power derived from her female sexuality.<span style=""> </span>S. tries to gain some control over her own body by playing at seducing the Captain, by dressing up for him and going through the charade of seduction.<span style=""> </span>If she is the seducer, she at least holds the semblance of power and control.<span style=""> </span>It seems that one tool a woman always has at her disposal against heterosexual men is her sexuality.<span style=""> </span>Her possessions may be taken from her and her body used without her permission, but she always holds the capacity to elicit sexual desire in men.<span style=""> </span>It seems a woman’s sexuality can be both her biggest downfall and her greatest weapon; her sexuality makes men treat her as an object yet allows her to hold a kind of irremovable power over them.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">S. is “troubled by the thought that all the while the ‘women’s room’ existed, so did this world, with its regularly flying planes and smiling flight attendants” (167).<span style=""> </span>I share S.’s distress over how the rest of the world functions normally while her world falls to pieces.<span style=""> </span>What distresses me most is the realization that I’m on the opposite side of things.<span style=""> </span>Areas all over the world are falling to pieces right now, and I am doing nothing about it because I am content to exist in my world of flight attendants and regularly flying planes.</p> <!--EndFragment--> <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-62734108646845308082006-12-20T19:04:00.000-08:002010-01-14T22:03:09.587-08:00Reflections on "Return to Kozarac"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S0_d_9woV8I/AAAAAAAAAEk/4vVi097Xg7U/s1600-h/EmsudaMujagic.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S0_d_9woV8I/AAAAAAAAAEk/4vVi097Xg7U/s400/EmsudaMujagic.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426800166984767426" border="0" /></a>
<br /><meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>924</o:Words> <o:characters>5272</o:Characters> <o:company>University of Southern California</o:Company> <o:lines>43</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>10</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>6474</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--><b style=""><i style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Reflections on “Return to Kozarac,” a film by Paula Goldman, 2000
<br /></span></i></b><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">the introductory text at the beginning of the film: </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-style: italic;" rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/Alida/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0/clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>171</o:Words> <o:characters>978</o:Characters> <o:company>University of Southern California</o:Company> <o:lines>8</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>1201</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:SimSun; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:ËÎÌå; mso-font-charset:134; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 135135232 16 0 262144 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:ZH-CN;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;">On May 24, 1992, the residents of this mostly Muslim town awoke to find their houses surrounded by Serbian tanks. The night before, Serb residents had fled the town, knowing what would happen. Serbian soldiers used loudspeakers to tell Muslims they would be safe if they came out of their basements and surrendered. It was a trick. When M</span><span style="font-style: italic;">uslims emerged from th</span><span style="font-style: italic;">eir homes, intense shelling ensued, and the streets filled with blood. The town was then burned to the ground. With more than 2,500 dead, survivors were taken to concentration camps in nearby villages. Here, many were beaten and tortured, and more were killed. Finally, after months of detention, survivors were released from the concentration camps. But with no homes left, and their country at war, there was no safe place to go. As refugees, many fled to Croatia, or were forced to take residence in displacement camps.</span><b style="font-style: italic;"><span style=""> </span></b><span style="font-style: italic;">Today, [eight years later], those who survived the et</span><span style="font-style: italic;">hnic cleansing of Kozarac are moving back home.</span><span style=""><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->
<br /><b style=""><i style=""><o:p></o:p></i></b> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">Emsuda Mugajić is my hero.<span style=""> </span>She is the strongest, most faithful woman I have ever met, and her story has had a huge impact on my life and my way of thinking.<span style=""> </span>In the summer of 2004, (my second trip to Bosnia), we went to Kozarac for the first time and stayed with Emsuda at her Peace Center.<span style=""> </span>She told us her story, told us about what had happened in her town during the war: how thousands of Muslims were murdered and thousands more displaced, how she herself survived a concentration camp and lost family members, how she became a refugee and finally returned to her hometown to start healing and rebuilding.<span style=""> </span>She showed us a book more than twice the size of my high school yearbook with the name and picture of every missing or murdered man, woman, and child.<span style=""> </span>When Emsuda had finished speaking, I sat with one of our interpreters as she thumbed through the book reading the names and dates that I couldn’t understand, pointing to pictures and saying “look, a five-year-old boy” or “that is an eighty-year old woman . . . how could they do this to such people?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">I felt completely overwhelmed.<span style=""> </span>I stood outside and wept, cried as I have never cried before.<span style=""> </span>I cry easily, in spite of myself and sometimes over very inconsequential things.<span style=""> </span>This was completely different – this was the most raw, most real, most intense emotion I had ever felt.<span style=""> </span>I felt anger, I felt horror, and I felt unspeakable sorrow at the suffering and pain Emsuda, the other people of Kozarac, and the entire population of Bosnia had undergone.<span style=""> </span>It was the single moment I can point to that changed my life.<span style=""> </span>It completely transformed my outlook and approach to the world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">The next afternoon after our friendship camp, Emsuda took us to the actual building (a school before the war and now again used as a school) that had been the concentration camp where she and her family had been held.<span style=""> </span>We went on a “tour” around the outside of the building.<span style=""> </span>She pointed to the window of a room where her entire family had been held, pointed to the windows of a gym where men were taken to be killed.<span style=""> </span>Emsuda told us how refrigerated trucks would line up outside of the camp in the evening, how people would be taken away during the night, and how the trucks and people would be gone the next morning.<span style=""> </span>Pointing across the street, she showed us where the house had stood where women and young girls were taken to be systematically and repeatedly raped and tortured, most likely in a “woman’s room” similar to that in <i style="">S.</i>.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S0_eugBtuJI/AAAAAAAAAE0/yHXiuOSXviE/s1600-h/concentration+camp.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 203px; height: 152px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S0_eugBtuJI/AAAAAAAAAE0/yHXiuOSXviE/s400/concentration+camp.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426800966457211026" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">inmates at Trnopolje camp</span>
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">She shared her personal stories, told us how the women had banded together, stood up to the soldiers, and managed to save the lives of two children, though they realized they wouldn’t be able to save the next ones.<span style=""> </span>She told us how starving people shared their only bread and water, how people banded together and did anything they could to help each other through inhuman circumstances.<span style="">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">I saw in person the cross monument that Republika Srpska officials put up in front of Tronoplje as a tribute to the Serb soldiers who defended the region, the same soldiers who raped and tortured Muslims in the concentration camp.<span style=""> </span>I felt powerful revulsion when I saw the monument and heard the story behind it.<span style=""> </span>For the first and only time in my life, a symbol of the religion I practice completely disgusted me.<span style=""> </span>I was ashamed that people who supposedly share a common Christian faith with me used an aspect of that faith in such a repulsive and offensive way.<span style=""> </span>When speaking about it, a Serb woman in the video says, “fuck their cross.”<span style=""> </span>Startling as her statement is, I agree.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S0_daWexkrI/AAAAAAAAAEc/8FqwZfxovjI/s1600-h/cross.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 243px; height: 182px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S0_daWexkrI/AAAAAAAAAEc/8FqwZfxovjI/s400/cross.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426799520785732274" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">the cross memorial outside of Trnopolje</span>
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">I marveled at Emsuda’s unfailing strength, unflinching hope, unwavering faith, and incredible ability to forgive and move forward in a positive direction.<span style=""> </span>I was most amazed at her ability to let go of her anger.<span style=""> </span>I had heard this story as an outsider, and I was outraged.<span style=""> </span>She had lived the story, and managed to take a holy, faithful path and move beyond blind hatred and the desire for revenge.<span style=""> </span>Emsuda refused to be a victim; rather, she wanted to empower herself and others and share her story with the world.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">After watching <i style="">Return to Kozarac</i>,<i style=""> </i>I was also inspired by the response of Emsuda’s prison guard, who helped her escape in spite of contradictory orders.<span style=""> </span>He stuck to his convictions, and did not let the madness of war overcome his better judgment.<span style=""> </span>I think it’s very telling how he states that no one could have forced him to commit war crimes.<span style=""> </span>On one hand, it gives me hope that there are people of integrity who refuse to be manipulated and act in uncharacteristically malicious ways.<span style=""> </span>On the other, it distresses me to realize that, at least according to this guard, the people who did commit war crimes did so voluntarily.<span style=""> </span>The guard’s comments tie in with the questions of culpability for war crimes discussed in <i style="">They Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly</i> by Slavenka Drakulic.
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">After my experiences with Emsuda, what happened to the Muslim population a decade ago in a small town in a country that I couldn’t have located on a map two years earlier became real and important to me.<span style=""> </span>I had read about the facts and figures of the war, and they affected me to some extent.<span style=""> </span>But reading about something or hearing about something in the third person is nothing compared to hearing a personal testimony.<span style=""> </span>For the first time, I realized that genocide and concentration camps are not things that were left behind in World War II.<span style=""> </span>When as a child I learned about genocide in Nazi Germany, I was baffled as to how such tragedies could have occurred.<span style=""> </span>On some level, I assumed that the Holocaust couldn’t have happened in today’s world, not when conscientious people like me are there to stop such things from happening.<span style=""> </span>It didn’t click that the same thing happened eleven years ago in Bosnia and is happening in Darfur as I write this.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">My experiences with Emsuda changed the way I look at the world.<span style=""> </span>I basically spent an entire year processing what she had said and what I had seen in Kozarac before our group returned to Kozarac in 2005.<span style=""> </span>We went to Kozarac again in 2006, so I’ve heard Emsuda tell her story twice since the first time I heard it.<span style=""> </span>Since I’ve gotten over my initial emotional reaction, I’ve started to see the whole picture – to see the positive that came out of the negative, to start to try to analyze the causes and effects of the situation – a process of analysis I hope to continue.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S0_eNHEX-uI/AAAAAAAAAEs/8NRXsSq9IHw/s1600-h/Emsuda+Light+sign.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 307px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S0_eNHEX-uI/AAAAAAAAAEs/8NRXsSq9IHw/s400/Emsuda+Light+sign.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426800392821799650" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;">
<br /></p> <!--EndFragment--> Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935341065334068610.post-66849962108293087742006-07-18T15:42:00.000-07:002010-01-14T03:51:54.345-08:00Building Bridges and Crossing Borders(this is an excerpt of an article I wrote for my church newsletter after returning from my final trip to Bosnia)<br /><br />According to Alihodja, a character in Ivo Andric’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Bridge on the Drina</span>, there is a Muslim legend that God created the world out of a soft material. Satan, in a jealous rage, raked his fingers over the earth to create valleys in order to make life difficult for the humans trapped on either side. In response, God sent angels to spread their wings over the valleys, thus giving humans the gift of bridges.<br /><br />I recently returned from my fourth consecutive “servant trip” to run friendship camps in Bosnia with the NJ Synod. The camps were a huge success, and we served over 2,500 children! Our theme this year was “Building Bridges, Journeying Together,” and what I think makes this trip so incredible is the way we try to conquer the valleys of hate and misunderstanding between people by building bridges of friendship, love, and respect.<br /><br />The goal of our trip is healing and reconciliation from the civil wars that wracked the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Even though the war officially ended in 1996, the ridges left in the bullet-scarred countryside and in the wounded hearts of the people are very deep. We try to help rebuild bridges and strengthen relationships between the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), Bosnian Serbs, and Bosnian Croats.<br /><br />You can see it happening, slowly but surely: when Muslim and Serb children who are in a segregated school play together at our camps, or when children who draw nationalistic Serb artwork bond with our Muslim interpreters. A bridge is built when, for example, our fourteen-year-old Serb interpreter Petar goes over to Emsuda, the Muslim w<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S08DsUzF0cI/AAAAAAAAAEI/XYkQ5OYQT7E/s1600-h/Bosnia+2006+238.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 298px; height: 224px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S08DsUzF0cI/AAAAAAAAAEI/XYkQ5OYQT7E/s400/Bosnia+2006+238.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426560136036864450" border="0" /></a>oman who is sharing with us her story of surviving a Serb concentration camp, and gives her a hug and commends her for her courage.<br /><br />We try to build bridges as well between our team of Americans and the Bosnian children and adults we serve and are served by. You can see it when the children make “shrinky-dink” medallions as gifts for ELCA High School Youth Gathering participants that have messages like “I love America” or “Bosnia + America = friends.”<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-weight: bold;">above: me with Vladana, in Brcko</span><br />I see it personally in the special connections I build with the kids at the camps, like the 12-year-old girl named Vladana who gave me her “hug pillow” as a special gift this year, or the young boy named Pero who wrote me a thank you note in broken English at the end of camp. The great thing about returning is strengthening standing relationships, like my bond with the now fifteen-year-old girl named Ilma who I have been exchanging letters with every year since 2003, or the girl named Durđica who I bonded with in 2004 (because I was one of the few Americans who could pronounce her name) and have gotten to see two more times since then.<br /><br />As always, words cannot adequately describe how amazing this trip was. It was eye-opening, life-changing, and uplifting. Like in the Muslim legend, this bridge-building truly is a gift from God. The best part about the trip this year, however, was that it didn’t have to end when I got back to the United States. New Jersey Synod, on a grant from Thrivent Financial, took a group of eighteen Americans and five of our Bosnian Muslim interpreters and friends (one of whom, Jasmin, is staying with my family) to the National Youth Gathering in San Antonio, Texas. For both weeks of the Gathering, we ran educational and interactive workshops and exhibits about Bosnia, the war that happened there, and NJ Synod’s responses to it. We wanted to educate young people, let them know that this sort of thing happened in Bosnia and is currently happening around the globe, and that there is something they can actually do about it.<br /><br />The Gathering theme was “Cruzando: Journey with Jesus.” Cruzando is a Spanish word that literally means “crossing,” and the Gathering focused on expanding our horizons and crossing the literal and figurative borders we have in our lives, which fit in perfectly with our friendship camp theme of building bridges. In order to cross borders of apathy and ignorance, you have to build bridges of education and enthusiasm, and this is exactly what the American Lutherans and Bosnian Muslims on our team did with each other and tried to do with the Gathering participants.<br /><br />The Gathering was a fantastic experience for all of us—we really got a lot out of it, and I think we contributed a lot to it as well, as we offered participants a very different experience than many of the other workshops and activities. For example, one of our workshops was the “Terrible Great Game,” a war simulation that gave people a small taste of what it is like to survive an ethnic cleansing. It was especially valuable that our Bosnian friends came with us to share their stories and experiences about the war with the teens at the Gathering—it’s one thing to read about a story, but to hear it first-hand is just so much more powerful.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S08EtTX6dKI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/y44oJzWGXyI/s1600-h/beth%27s+san+antonio+pics+025.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xq6xU6DdUI/S08EtTX6dKI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/y44oJzWGXyI/s400/beth%27s+san+antonio+pics+025.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426561252345935010" border="0" /></a><br /><br />We probably communicated directly with about 6,000 people at the Gathering through our booth and workshops, and I hope we helped some of them to cross borders and to look at the world in a new way. The first time I went to Bosnia, I crossed from my sheltered suburban world to a realization that there is more out there, and that though much of it is real, dark, scary, and different, it is beautiful. I think our team helped some of the youth we interacted with take a step closer to or come to a similar realization. <br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">above: a s</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">ign at our booth in San Antonio</span></span></span>Itinerant Interlocutorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869276760303926094noreply@blogger.com0