The Siege of Sarajevo, which lasted for four years between 1992 and 1996, was fought between the Bosnian Serbs who had occupied the hills surrounding Sarajevo and the largely Muslim local population. One of the bloodiest periods in recent memory, it resulted in the death of more than 10,000 people.
Not long after the siege began in 1992, 22 people were killed by a mortar shell as they queued outside a bakery in central Sarajevo. Deeply perturbed by this random act of violence, Vedran Smilovic, a cellist with the Sarajevo Opera, played a composition by Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni for 22 consecutive days to honour the memory of the dead.
In The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway uses the story of Smilovic to construct a moving portrayal of the survival of the human spirit in times of conflict. Smilovic’s gesture ties the different strands of the book, involving three people who come to recognise both the futility of war and the insidious ways in which it threatens our shared humanity.
We are first introduced to Arrow, a female sniper who works as an undercover operator for the resistance being mounted by the local army. Arrow’s father died a soldier, but was against Arrow’s involvement in the military. It is this realisation that weighs on Arrow’s every move, as she is assigned to guard the cellist’s life against enemy fire. What starts as doubt about the use of force turns into a certainty that violence is no way to eliminate the “other.”
Then there is Kenan, who, like others, lives the life of a fugitive. Every few days he undertakes a journey across town to a brewery to collect fresh water supplies for his family and his neighbour, Mrs Ristovski. The third story is of Dragan, who lives with his sister and her husband. His wife and son were sent away to safety when the war started, and he walks every other day to get free food at the bakery he works at.
Through the perilous journeys that Kenan and Dragan undertake across the strife-torn city, Galloway gifts us valuable insights into how compassion can blossom, unexpectedly, during mindless atrocities. The Cellist of Sarajevo is an accomplished, important work.
Ethnic conflict is also the subject of Uwem Akpan’s debut collection of short stories, Say You’re One of Them. Set in different African nations — Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya and so on — each of the stories is narrated from the point of view of a child caught up in the midst of conflict. Whether it’s the pain of living on the street or fighting religious persecution or having one’s faith challenged, the children in these tales show grit, perseverance and courage.
More From This Section
A Jesuit priest, Akpan grew up in Nigeria and attended Catholic institutions in the US before earning an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. He has a real gift for bringing the day-to-day lives of the downtrodden of Africa to life. In “An Ex-Mas Feast,” first published in The New Yorker, a family survives on the roadside in Nairobi on the earnings of their teenage daughter, who sells herself to tourists. The story is narrated by the girl’s brother, whose education is to be financed by his sister’s earnings. The family dynamics, the vicious cycle of poverty in urban Africa and the boy’s guilt at making his life at the cost of his sister’s are portrayed with nuanced clarity.
Akpan has a sound ear for dialogue, and his use of the local dialect lends authenticity to the stories, even if it takes effort to absorb their full meaning. In “Fattening the Gabon,” a brother and sister are being set up to be sold into slavery by their uncle. The depravity of the network that perpetuates this inhuman act contrasts with the shock of its realisation by the boy.
While all the stories are deeply affecting, “Luxurious Hearses” — about a Nigerian boy who must hide his Muslim roots on a bus loaded with Christians — offers the most poignant and ironic insights into the futility of religious violence. This is also the theme of “My Parents’ Bedroom,” in which a young girl must protect herself and her brother from the mere fact that they are the children of a Tutsi mother and Hutu father.
Say You’re One of Them explores love and filial bonding against the backdrop of genocide, poverty and slavery. The shameful thing is these stories could be happening to real children, whose childhood is being lost to their fight to survive.
THE CELLIST OF SARAJEVO
Steven Galloway
Riverhead
256 pages; $21.95
SAY YOU’RE ONE OF THEM
Uwem Akpan
Little, Brown and Co 384 pages; $23.99