“Luka, the river port where I liked to play, had been turned into a concentration camp. So Muslim and Catholic prisoners were what Obren was guarding now. And Partizan Sports Hall became a slaughterhouse for Bosniak and Croat boys and men. On the wooden floor where I’d kicked and somersaulted, my people were being gunned down by Pero and his comrades their bodies left on the ground in pools of blood. In the gym’s bathroom, where I showered, Serbs were slashing necks and blowing heads apart. The dead were stored on the outdoor basketball courts where I shot hoops, until frozen meat trucks came to take the rotting flesh away. If we’d gone to the gym as usual, we would have been murdered and loaded onto a truck” (Trebincevic and Shapiro 117-118) that part is quite of a shock because the narrator's childhood place where he took karate classes and won his brown belt has turned into hell. His karate coach "Pero" has turn into an enemy because he's on the Serbian side. The consertration camp that the narrator describes, it kind of remind me of the holocaust when the nazis send the Jews to a consentration camp and tortured them deadly.
I feel its really tragic and unforgettable moment. Also it's reminds me the book "Parallel Journey" by Ayer which has same history of Holocaust and their concentration camp where jewish were killed almost same way.
ReplyDeleteThis part is a really sad realization moment for Kenan because he is noticing people and places from his childhood are becoming and have turned into a horrific part of this war, for example he says Partizan Hall turned into a slaughterhouse. His world and childhood has just turned upside down.
ReplyDeleteIf we were to put ourselves in his shoes, how would we be able to cope with it? Our childhood belongings and home just gone and being forced to move somewhere else. Having to always hide and be scared, sort of like on the run. I know personally, i would have an extremely tough time with it. I dont think i would have the motivation to write a book about all the horrors i suffered through.
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