Today the debate reignited about
whether we should admit refugees to our country from lands that are currently
torn by violence and strife. Never mind
that there are usually no refugees from lands that are not suffering so badly. We worry overmuch about the security of our
own selves and families without thinking enough about the fact that refugees
have good reason to worry as well. Some
of us believe that our own ethnic or faith group has a monopoly on morality or
the blessing of our God and discount the humanity of others. We fall into the trap of thinking, “I would
never do…” or “they deserve that because…”
I have just read a book that caused me to think very hard about all of
this.
Kenan Trebincevic was 12 years old
in 1993 when his family escaped from Brcko, Bosnia. They first escaped to Austria but eventually
came to the United States as Muslim refugees where they were welcomed to
Connecticut by a Christian pastor and his church. As the years went by, Kenan and his brother
became college-educated American citizens and moved into the mainstream of
American life. However, in the
background was a continuing obsession with all that had happened in the
disintegrating country they had escaped.
 |
The Bosnia List: A Memoir of War, Exile, and Return
Book by Kenan Trebincevic and Susan Shapiro
|
As the book opens, Kenan is thirty
years old and his father, who is elderly and in fragile health, wishes to
return to Bosnia to visit family and friends.
Kenan and his brother have many bad memories and are very reluctant to
do so. However, they love their father
and eventually decide to give him this trip.
As part of Kenan’s preparation he creates a list of things that he wants
to do when he returns to the city of his childhood. This is The Bosnia List.
At first I was put off by the
book. So much of it seemed to be soaked
in hate and mistrust. Kenan’s happy
memories of childhood were overshadowed by the betrayal that was to come. His homeroom teacher attempts to shoot him on
the street. His beloved karate coach
comes to his home and takes his father and brother to a concentration camp. Neighbors steal from the family with
impunity. He slanders Serbs. They slander him and his. Everyone despises Croats. But overall, the story was mesmerizing so I read
on.
The story is arranged in
alternating chapters of events in 1992-93 and the return trip in 2011. You see events through Kenan’s twelve year
old eyes and again as he processes his journey nineteen years later to confront
the past. As he works his way through
his Bosnia list he starts to find each item is a little more complicated than
he thought. The neighbor he wanted to
confront about stealing his mom’s things after they left was safe-keeping them. The cousin he thought had abandoned him
actually felt abandoned herself.
Finally, confronting the ultimate betrayal from Pero, his beloved karate
coach, he hears his brother’s version and has a moment of sudden clarity. As did I.
"Desperate for acclaim he
could never reach, Pero had become drunk, first on alcohol and women, then on
stolen loot, then on the power the war had granted him. I guessed that he kept
reaching for more prestige and money to compensate for the failures and
limitations he couldn't face. But it probably never filled in what was missing
inside him. I bet he wasn't acting out of true political or religious
conviction, but from a psychological conviction to be more than what he felt
himself to be. Trying so hard to be a big man had made him smaller.""I guessed that Pero resented us-and others who were more prosperous-and the war became his excuse to settle personal vendettas. Could resentment turn you into a monster? All you needed was a charismatic leader who blamed your misfortunes on a common enemy-and not your own failure. If you took a man already miserable and handed him a government mandate and a weapon, would he become evil? Would I?"
I have spent days pondering this
question. Would I? Would those that I love? Would my neighbors? Would you?
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