Book reviews: The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet by Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic and A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
Both of these books are memoirs of survivors of civil wars. The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet takes place in Bosnia, and A Long Way Gone takes place in Sierra Leone.
Jasmina was a 15 year old Muslim girl living away from the capital in the city of Visegrad, which was tolerant and well-integrated while she was growing up. She was very friendly and extroverted, having many Serbian and Muslim friends and a huge family. She later became engaged to and married a boy named Suljo. Her grandparents’ stories about what had happened to Muslims during World War II seemed like the distant past to her.
Things started changing pretty rapidly, and Serbs in Visegrad became openly hostile, including many of her close friends. Jasmina and Suljo decided to go to his grandparents’ house in Sarajevo while they still could. Unfortunately, her mother and many siblings decided to stay in Visegrad. She managed to avoid hand-to-hand fighting with the Chetniks, but as she and Suljo continued to flee when Sarajevo went under siege, they faced many other perils like food and power shortages, bombings, stray gunfire, daunting security checkpoints, lack of medical supplies, etc. She said, “It was different to die because a shell exploded next to you or because a distant sniper picked you out. I was much more afraid of the killing that was happening in Visegrad. It was face-to-face murder. Whole families burned alive.” The U.N provided occasional food relief in the beginning but it became increasingly scarce. They heartlessly sent back refugees that were caught at the border. They also prevented the Muslims from arming themselves and fighting back, essentially sentencing them to death. When Jasmina had her arm blown off and Suljo was killed, an armored UN car rolled by without stopping to help her. As she was recovering in the hospital, having had part of her infected leg removed without anesthesia to prevent the spread of an infection, she was told, “The UN doesn't consider any of you wounded enough for safe passage out of the country. They won’t help you get out.” The Serbs grew more bold in their defiance of the UN.
Describing an escape route near the UN airport, Jasmina relayed, “The goal of the UN, for reasons still unclear to me, was to keep the victims of the siege in Sarajevo. If they caught you crossing their corridor, they searched you for weapons then loaded you into their vehicle and took you back to the city. The worst part of the UN was their policy of shining lights on people. When the Serbs on either side of the corridor saw the illuminated Bosnians try to escape, they shot at them.” The first time Jasmina tried to cross with her mother-in-law, she was caught and sent back. The second time, she made it with the help of others (her legs and one arm made it extremely difficult for her to cross the trenches and barbed wire). Even though the women had made a pact that if one fell behind the others would keep going, they all stopped to help her. She was smuggled across many borders, and eventually Biden helped her become the first Bosnian refugee allowed to seek medical care un the U.S.
Ishmael in A Long Way Gone grew up in a village in the interior of Sierra Leone. As he was growing up, passersby told stories about the war, but it was hard to know what to believe or rely on as the news was not current. He had gone to the nearby village of Mattru Jong with his friends and one brother when his own village was ambushed. It was so sudden and chaotic that families just scattered and went on the run, some never to be reunited again. He made his way back to his village before fleeing back to Mattru Jong, but his family was already gone. When the rebels arrived there too, he immediately fled, because to be caught was to have them carve their initials into you, so if you escaped and refused to fight for them the civilian army would just kill you instantly.
The first half of the book is Ishmael retelling how he and his friends wandered around with no clear direction, trying to reach the coast and sleeping in abandoned villages. Often they were ambushed and had to keep escaping the rebels, and other times villagers attacked them thinking that they were dangerous. Ishmael said, “Being in a group of six boys was not to our advantage... People were terrified of boys out age. Some had heard rumors of young boys being forced by rebels to kill their families and burn their villages. These children now patrolled in special units, killing and maiming civilians.” It was not safe to stay in any occupied villages for more than a few days because sooner or later they would be ambushed as well. During one of these attacks, he was separated from his friends and brother. He eventually joined another group of boys. He was 12. Some of the villages they arrived at welcomed them, while others were afraid and of them and tried to kill them.
Soldiers from the national army eventually found them and brought them back to the village. For a couple of weeks they enjoyed food and safety. But then they were given the ultimatum to join or leave, and the rebels had surrounded the area, so they joined. They were given guns and drugs, and went out and fought “to avenge their families,” they were told. This army wasn't much better than the rebels, also ambushing villages and killing civilians. Ishmael fought for several years. Then one day his lieutenant picked him and several other younger soldiers to go with UNICEF men to the capital. There they began rehabilitation, only they weren't told what was happening, and the UN thought it would be smart to let some of them keep their weapons and then put them in a dorm with rebel children, so fighting broke out and six boys were killed their first day of “rehab.”
Eventually the rehabilitators got a bit better prepared and equipped in dealing with them, and Ishmael was befriended by a nurse named Esther who won him over by buying him a Walkman and letting him listen to it in exchange for talking to her. When he finished detoxing, Ishmael was taken in by an uncle of his that had been located. The center also selected him to give talks about child soldiers for the UN, and he made trip to NYC before returning. But after a period of relative peace, the capital went under siege when the newly elected president was assasinated. Everything Ishmael tried to escape started happening all over again, and many of his friends who had been successfully rehabilitated were forced to fight again. He wound up escaping to Guinea, and the book abruptly ended there.
Both of these books were short but extremely well written. I didn't want them to end because I wanted to find out what happened to Jasmina and Ishmael once they escaped.
