Hana, a Bosnian refugee, dresses in frumpy clothes and stays out of the way as an employee at a library in Minnesota. And then, one day, a detective comes in to ask her about her friend, Amina. She is dead. Her grandson, a seven year old orphan, now has no family. And Hana fears the worst. She was once Nura, a young girl living up on a mountain in a small home housing her mother, father, little brother and her. Nearby was her uncle’s house. They were not observant, but Nura and her family ethnic Muslims and when the troubles begin, those who were her friends viciously turn on them. This is a story that vividly brings to life the period when there was a violent armed conflict that turned into a partly successful attempt at ethnic cleansing by Serbs against the Muslim and Croat population in Bosnia. This is such a simplistic statement. Even the Wikipedia article on this period of war is almost unintelligible in trying to understand what happened. It was on the news. It was a horror show. And yet it was and remains politically confusing to me. The part about the different ethnic groups I followed. Why it happened is an intricate story I need to learn about in more detail.
Allen Eskens, whose writing I admired takes on and personalizes this “conflict” by sharing Hana/Nura’s traumatizing, violent and life-changing experiences as a teenaged girl forced to leave her home and make her way into the center of the hellish war overtaking her country. All of this is by way of her memories that flood in with Amina’s death. Why did Amina die clutching a blue marble, the stone in a necklace she always wore? What is Amina’s history with Hana? What does the man Amina was dating know? How much has the detective figured out. Who has come to disrupt Nura’s and Amina’s lives?
This vivid and beautifully written book makes you root for violence at more than one turn. To throw your fist in the air and say, “Yes!” get this guy. Hurt him! An acquaintance of mine had to flee Bosnia with her young daughter. She was Christian, married to an ethnically Muslim man who eventually reunited with her. She stayed in refuge camps in Croatia, raising her young dhild for some time before making her way to the US. I know very tiny pieces of her story that made this very personal vision of another woman’s story make some sense. So, it isn’t pretty and yet it is inspiring and just as beautifully written as I would expect expect of Eskens. Nura did what she had to do to live and when faced with danger in her Minnesota town, she’s summons up everything it takes to do what is necessary again.
I thank Eskens for writing about this important and inadequately addressed period in history with tremendous compassion but with his eyes wide open. This story, past and present, is mind-bending at times and Eskens pulls it off with sensitivity, yet spares us nothing. Well done!
They Called me Bookworm 