|
Alexandra Cavelius
Leila. Ein bosnisches Mädchen
(Leila: The Story of a Bosnian Girl)
Ullstein Berlin, 2000, 239 pp. 'For other people the war has ended. For us it has only just begun'. So begins this story of a young Bosnian girl living in the multi-ethnic society of a small town near Sarajevo during the war in Yugoslavia and charting its course and hers through the horrors of ethnic cleansing to the forthcoming trials in the Hague. We witness dislocation, the brutality of organised rape camps, and other traumatic happenings experienced by Leila including the birth of her child. Balancing the grief are comradeship, alliance, and love in unexpected contexts and from unexpected sources. Yet responding to these, it transpires, is in many ways as difficult as dealing with terror; and even with the special therapy offered by a local clinic this problem remains unresolved when the narrative ends. Also to be faced are the tyrannies of unemployment and financial need, as brutally divisive at times as the war itself. Leila's responses are influenced by her love for two men. Ratko, a Serbian cook, is the father of her son. He befriends her during the war, supports her as far as possible, marries her and probably loves her. Ibrahim, a Muslim like Leila herself, works rather casually as a meteorologist and less casually as a gambler. He too befriends and protects her, attracts and repels her, and shares with her the same cultural and ethnic conflicts. Supplementing her narrative are extracts from her mother's diary, with their brief and shrewdly grim judgements, giving this book an additional layer of interest and authenticity. (Her mother could only recognise her by a childhood scar when Leila returned after two years of brutal rape and torture.)
One of Leila's own concluding comments sticks hauntingly in the mind: 'We can't live in his country or in mine. We'd have to go away, far away. We've no future in this place'. This is a vivid and articulate account of some unspeakable happenings, and an achievement in its field.
|
