War and Humanity in "Sarajevo"

War is hell. We've heard it a million times, and we've seen in on the page or on the movie screen lots of different ways. In Steven Galloway's novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo, three people try in their own ways to survive the seige of Sarajevo. A fourth character, the cellist of the title, is based on a real person who played his cello once a day for 22 consecutive days during the seige to commemorate the deaths of 22 people who died in a bombing as they waited in line for bread.

The three main characters intersect in different ways with his fictionalized performances. While the Sarajevo of the seige was hell for the civilians trapped in the crossfire between the factions trying to take control, the civilians were still longing for the city they knew before the war.

Galloway's fiction is poetic; the images, while heartbreaking, are clear, simple and effective. But he shows us more than the war of guns and bombs. He shows us the war for humanity, the war for hearts and minds.

The Neland Women's Book Club settled in Pat's gracious living room to dig into this book. Tonight I was the not-so-fearless leader, and we had great attendance! This is good, because then I know everyone will talk a lot, and it won't depend on me.

But this book is easy to talk about anyway. The writing is gorgeous in spite of--and because of--the subject. Each of the characters is struggling, not just to survive physically, but to keep their humanity intact. The author works out, through events and thoughts and actions and conversations, who each character was, is and wants to be. What the city was, is and could be. What human beings are meant to be.

Sarajevo was a beautiful, historic, cultivated, and proudly multicultural city. In 1984 (sorry ladies, I had that wrong, it wasn't 1988), the Winter Olympics took center stage. Then, in 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence. Serbians were concerned that they would be marginalized, and one day Serb militants in the hills fired on demonstrators and the city came under seige. Snipers hid in the hills and picked off whoever they could. Bombs damaged or destroyed much of the city. It wasn't until 1996 that the United Nations finally got involved and helped bring an end to the seige. In the meantime, civilians were stuck, left to survive as best they could.

The characters in the book each want to be able to recover the life they had before the war, and they are each afraid that the criminals, the soldiers, the black marketeers might win. If they win, what will it mean for the beloved city? "If a city is made anew by men of questionable character, what will it be?" There are moments when each character remembers the astonishing beauty of their ordinary pre-war lives. The music of the cellist brings it back to them.

One character, Dragan, reflects on the fact that "every day the Sarajevo he thinks he remembers slips away from him a little at a time, like water cupped in the palms of his hands, and when it's gone he wonders what will be left."

Arrow, a young woman who has become a sniper for the city's defenders, realizes that she has moved from hating the actions of the "men in the hills" to hating the men themselves, and that this would be the defeat of the Sarajevo that she loves, as well as the defeat of her own soul.

This seige happened in our lifetimes. Most of us were well into adulthood while it was going on. Yet none of us had much recollection of the events or the reasons for what happened. In one interview with Galloway, the interviewer mentions that there is little English-language literature about Sarajevo. The author says "There were some people outraged, but most people thought of it as just tribal, too complicated, and just washed their hands of it as a result." He went on to say "One of the things that really bugs me lately is that in lots of 'books of the year' lists that are out [for 2008, when the book was published]...they put The Cellist of Sarajevo in historical fiction, while there are plenty of books listed in the contemporary fiction sections that take place in the eighties! How is it that a mere ten years ago becomes 'historical'?"

While this book opened our eyes to what happened in Sarajevo, it also explores what happens in any war, when neighbors turn on neighbors and anger turns into hatred and murder. We like to think that can't happen in a "melting pot" like the United States, but we wonder if it is possible that there are factions within Grand Rapids with that sort of division. Recently, a play called "Lines" in a local theater explored "the experience of race" in this city. Someone in our group rightly pointed out that we really have no idea how our own little society is perceived by others.

Then it was time to eat, of course. Food is always an important part of any Neland gathering. Just ask the Fun Committee. Yes, we really have a Fun Committee. We are Christian Reformed; we like things to be planned in advance, and we need to know when it is time to have fun, so we must have committees for these things. That way we can be sure there will be good food available at any event. It's how we do things, and we like it that way.

Thanks for another good night, ladies!

Navigating "The Social Network"

Yes, I know this is supposed to be a book blog. However, I've been reading book club books, and I don't want to report on them until after those book clubs meet! I'm also one third of the way through The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman, so hopefully I'll be able to tell you a bit about that one soon, too.

In the meantime, I'll tell you about The Social Network. This is the movie about Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook. Facebook has become an important part of my daily communications, so how could I pass up this one?

The Social Network is basically about a brilliant programmer who put together his coding skills, some other people's ideas, with some of his own masterful touches to come up with a social networking site that has become commonplace worldwide. The site is, theoretically, intended to bring people together. I'll say in my experience that this has been true sometimes. It's been a good way to get to know a little more about people who have just joined my church, for example. Yet we have all seen how internet activity can also bring people low through bullying or hateful words and deeds.

Facebook, and similar sites, have also changed the definition of "friend." Yes, Facebook has turned the word into a verb, as in "He friended me on Facebook." But if you are judging your success in relationships by the number of friends you have on the site, then your definition of friend may be lacking. In this movie, the people who call each other "friend" are usually friends on the most superficial levels--hookups, roommates, business partners. Each assumes that they know the other person and what that person is capable of. The movie points out that you can know someone's skills, relationship status, interests, and work history without ever really knowing the character of the person.

Zuckerberg, as portrayed, could possibly have Aspergers or something similar, and what he has in technical knowledge, he lacks in ability to follow social cues. I have no idea how accurate this portrayal is, so I go forward on the basis of a character, not the real guy. Thus, the Zuckerberg character who creates a new way to friend people has few friends of his own. He's a would-be social climber with no social prospects.

One small detail, which I can only assume to be a well-used product placement, gave a good clue to the character's wishes. When he is a lowly, broke Harvard student, his wealthy friend and roommate Eduardo is frequently shown wearing a North Face jacket. Later in the movie, when Facebook has exploded and the investors are lining up at the door, Zuckerberg is still alone, but he's wearing his own North Face jacket. It's as if he has begun to acquire the trappings of the social circle he wants to penetrate, but is still unable to be a part of it.

The divisions between people are enhanced throughout the movie. Characters don't go all the way into a room or a building, and when they do they aren't seated with the group or they get up and walk away. They are shown alone, looking longingly at groups of people. Often they are looking through glass walls.

Romantic relationships in the film are the opposite of intimate, based on superficial sexuality or self-centered egotism. The party-hungry lifestyle of just about every character in the movie made me want to go home and lock my children in their rooms until they are 30 (and I wouldn't let them see this movie). No one seemed all that admirable. Even the intelligence failed miserably as each one of them made stupid mistakes at some point in time.

I'm not sure what this movie is saying about society in general, other than to point out dramatically that what passes for a social network can often be no more than a spider's web in which you turn out to be the ensnared fly.

By the way, did I say that I liked this movie? I did. I couldn't quite imagine how the story would translate into a movie, but it does. Justin Timberlake plays a sleazy Sean Parker very well, and I can't help but like the awkward character of Zuckerberg as played by Jesse Eisenberg. While I don't admire any of them, it's hard to hate any of them either. Except Sean Parker. Sorry Justin.

Get Out There and "Get Low"

Novels hold many attractions for me, including a good story and great characters. The same is true for movies--I love to lose myself in a good movie, and going out afterward to discuss it with our movie group makes the experience even better. My husband and I have been in an ever-changing movie group, organized through our church, for the last ten years. We've seen some great movies and some real turkeys, but almost any movie is improved by good food and friends.

Our movie choices are determined not only by intense research and lots of email back and forth, but first and foremost by which ones are at the cheap theater. And they have to be showing early enough that we have time to go out afterward and get some of our harder-working members to bed on time.

Recently our group went to see Get Low, a quiet, powerful movie about forgiveness and redemption that came out last year but just made its way to Grand Rapids this fall. Robert Duvall stars as Felix Bush, a hermit who decides he wants to plan his funeral. To occur while he is still living.

The movie is based on a true life story. Felix "Bush" Breazeale lived in Tennessee, and on June 26, 1938 he held his own funeral, with 8,000-12,000 people in attendance. The event attracted curious visitors from all over the country, and it turned Felix into a celebrity for a time. He apparently lived five years past his funeral.

The Felix Bush of the film is a man who has been living with a secret for 40 years, and he feels it is time to "get low"--time to make peace with his past. Robert Duvall plays the lead role--gruff, loner Felix--with understated power, and he has a great supporting cast. Bill Murray is wonderful, funny as ever, as the undertaker who is afraid he will go out of business due to a lamentable lack of deaths in town. He's a salesman and possibly a con man, and he's developing a worrying sense of compassion. His charmingly upstanding assistant is Buddy (Lucas Black), a young man with a wife and a baby, who struggles to balance his need to make a living with his concern about taking advantage of a sad, lonely old man. A graceful Sissy Spacek plays Mattie, a woman from Felix's early life.

The town has developed plenty of stories, true and otherwise, over the years of Felix' self-imposed exile. They are all curious about him and this funeral for their own reasons.

Bill Cobbs is outstanding as Charlie Jackson, a preacher in another town. Felix confided in Charlie years ago, but ignored Charlie's wise counsel. Now Felix wants Charlie to speak at the funeral party.

This movie has a lot to say about the need to confess and be forgiven. Felix would much rather punish himself and earn his own redemption, but it's just not working out for him. When he questions Charlie about his wish to do things his own way, Charlie informs him that "free will is not what it's cracked up to be."

Ponderous and beautiful, the film has more to offer than a great cast. A witty, warm script, gorgeous use of light, and a fittingly lovely soundtrack (including "Lay My Burden Down" by Alison Krauss) add to the power of the story. There are slow moments, but they give you space to consider. It may be time for you, too, to Get Low.

Cross Cultural Non-Communication

The latest Fab 5 meeting began with a trip report. One of us had gone to her hometown of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and she regaled us with tales of mysterious Wisconsin food staples such as cheese curds and visits to exotic places like Goesse’s, the Meat Market and Clem’s Wagon Wheel. She also got a tour of the Kohler factory, a tour guided by one Elmer VanderWeele, brother to the famous Calvin College English professor, Steve.

While this may seem like a strange way to start a book discussion, it was oddly fitting. This month’s book was The Thing around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie is a Nigerian author who now divides her time between the United States and Nigeria. The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of short stories, and each one reveals some level of homesickness for what was and for what should be. Adichie does an excellent job of illuminating the tension of living somewhere between two cultures.

Sonya pointed out that, while Adichie is a good writer, the stories often end too abruptly. You’re left feeling as though the story isn’t finished, just ended. Also, she noted that the men in the stories do not come off well, particularly the Nigerian men. I agree, but it seems as though each story explores the way one person is silenced or repressed, someone who needs to speak (or face) the truth. Some of these characters are a woman in an arranged marriage, a young man who is beginning to see what corruption of justice leads to, and a girl who has played a hand in her brother's death. Some struggle with their sexuality. All of her narrators or main characters are women, and in Nigeria like many societies, men have power and so are the most likely candidates to oppress. So it is partly the themes of the book that lead to negative images of men.

Sonya did enjoy some of Adichie's insights, including a story where a Nigerian woman is a nanny for a young boy in America. She observes that "American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Amercians time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think they had the right to protect their child from disappointment and want and failure." She also skewers the food culture of this country, when a young woman in a newly arrange marriage accompanies her husband to an American mall. "We ate the pizza sitting at a small round table in what he called a 'food court.' A sea of people sitting around circular tables, hunched over paper plates of greasy food...There was something humiliatingly public, something lacking in dignity, about this place, this open space of too many tables and too much food."

Made us wonder what she'd think of the former tradition at the denominational building where all of us work. Once a week, someone get a bunch of donuts and set them up in the breakroom for anyone who wanted to pay 50 cents. What a great idea. Extra calories for a bunch of us who already spend too much time sitting at desks , with the added bonus that when someone “forgot” to pay the denomination could foot the bill for the demise of the health that they pay to care for. Hmm. I think we know why that one fizzled out. But back to the book.

Adichie examines the strange brew that has come to be the culture of Nigeria—corruption, inequity, oppression—due to many factors such as colonialism, tribalism and religious differences. In my favorite story of the book, a Hausa Muslim woman and a young Igbo woman who'd been raised Catholic hide together in an abandoned storefront as a riot goes on in the market. The very human contact that these two women have as they wait for a safe exit belies the angry mob outside the door, and it gives a glimpse into the complicated nature of such disputes. All of these difficulties have formed a society where the only way to get what you need from the government, the police, the bank, or the merchant is to have some power. And power is abused wherever it is found, not just in Nigeria and not just in Africa.

The even stranger brew comes when you throw in Western society. Take a Nigerian woman and plant her in a home that her husband has prepared in the United States. She must somehow navigate her own culture shock, the man she married who may not be who she thought, the expectations of neighbors, and a bond with a home country that slowly becomes less her own. Where does she belong? Who does she belong with?

Beyond the societal issues, Adichie takes a close look at bonds between parent and child, husband and wife, brother and sister. She is a keen observer of human nature and the way we relate to each other. It’s hard to imagine the matriarchal grandmother in the book who puts all of her hopes and dreams into one grandson, belittling the rest. Especially after hearing Barbara detail a day spent with her grandchild—watching out the window for trucks, playing with toys, watching the little one sleep in her bed. When does power enter a relationship, and when does it begin to change it? Barbara's obvious infatuation with her grandchild makes the tension that can come in a family seem impossible.

We topped off our meaty discussion with some meat pies, hummus and flatbread. I would have loved to make some Nigerian food like jollof rice or pounded yam with egusi soup, but that's a lot of work, and as much as I love these ladies, I don’t love them enough for that right now. So we settled for another food that I ate in Nigeria, since it is a country rife with excellent Lebanese food due to all the Lebanese expats there.

And if you want to hear me wax nostalgic for Nigeria, where I spent exactly one out of my 41 and 23/24 years, just ask me. One kind of character that shows up on much of what I've read of Adichie's work is the American or Brit who is overly fascinated with African culture, or who seems to claim it as their own, even after a short experience there. I try hard not to take that personally.

While the rest of my book club now thinks Nigeria doesn’t sound so great, reading these stories oddly makes me want to jump on the next plane. Readers had the same mixed reaction when the Neland Women read one of my favorite books, also by Adichie, called Purple Hibiscus. I’ve decided that Adichie can describe the smells and sounds so well that if you’ve been there, it brings back all of the good things, even though she doesn’t always tell about the good things.

And the good things are not always so easy to explain—even describing them might leave others thinking they don’t sound so good. When I worked for Christian Reformed World Missions, our communications director shared with me two and fast rules about video presentations. First, none should end with a shot of a sunset--cliche, cliche, cliche. Second, no missionary should title their video presentation "Land of Contrasts," because that can be said about any country. But you can understand the impulse. Whenever you visit a new country, you are struck by the contrasts you wouldn't notice in your own. And Adichie's book seems intent on introducing us to the contrasts within both Nigeria and America and between the two of them.