When I think back to the early 1990s, I was in high school and worried about boys and where I should apply to college. Being a teenager, I, like so many other teens, would melodramatically label our lives as "hellish" since we were going through that typical adolescent rebellion and complaining about too much homework. Add to that the acne and one can see what a "nightmare" it all was.
Yet upon reading Savo Heleta's memoir, Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia, one can see how silly such labels as "hellish" and "nightmare" are by comparison. Set in 1992 to '94, Heleta addresses those years where he lived in a Muslim occupied part of Bosnia as a young boy. As life outside began to grow more dangerous, he and his parents, along with his younger sister, are forced into hiding. There he talks about living in isolation, without food or immediate comfort, and the attitudes needed for one desperate to survive.
The story is told in a very straightforward, matter-of-fact approach. The narrative moves quickly, yet the pages aren't filled with rhapsodizing, poetic prose, but is spare in its manner, and the dialogue serves more as an exchange of information rather than the development of character quirks. Yet, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, since the book does provide readers with a first hand account of what went on during those times, and certainly for that purpose, the book succeeds.
Because those years are not that long ago, most of us have a vivid memory of what those times were like. I recall hearing about the struggles going on in Bosnia, but to me then, it was more of an abstraction, since I was too busy with my own adolescence to really take it all in. Now, after reading this, I clearly was in my own little American bubble, as we often are.
Heleta speaks about the Muslims he grew up around who suddenly began viewing him and his family as "the enemy," in addition to a simple thing like obtaining drinking water from a well, which would turn into running from sniper fire. Even the food packages that were dropped from the sky: Heleta discusses one scene where he was told that one of the large bags had fallen onto a family and killed them - causing their blood to be mixed with the flour.
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