Devasting is the first word that comes to mind. The story of the Bosnian War is a bit complicated (like most wars) but here is a radically condensed summary: Yugoslavia was made up of mostly Croatians, Serbians, and Muslims. And after WWII, the then president Josip Broz, commonly known as Tito, looked to down play ethnic nationalism and have each group live side by side peacefully. Then Tito died and Serbian nationalism took hold through the new Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, who became the president of the Yugoslavian Federation. Intimidated and scared by Slobodan's renewed Serbian nationalism (leftover from post WWII atrocites perpetrated on the Serbs), Crotia and Slovenia declared independence, leaving Bosnia to stand alone against the now hostile Serbia. So...war descends upon Bosnia, though "war" isn't really the right term because that implies two, more or less equal, sides fighting it out but really it was essentially ethnic cleansing of the heavily underarmed Muslims by the Serbs. Now, remember, Serbs and Muslims had lived peacefully side by side. They were each others friends, neighbors. But much of the Serb population had fled during this time, leaving mostly Bosniaks (Muslims) in Gorazade. So when the fighting began, it was the Bosniaks old friends and neighbors who came for them. Again, this information is skeletal. This is by no means a complete picture.
But that's where Sacco comes in. Through his reporting and interviews in Gorazde (one of the designated "safe areas" by the UN, whose power is largely portrayed as a joke throughout the book), all of the war's nuances begin to emerge. And all of the war's tragedies. Make no mistake, this is a bloody, gruesome, unflinching, compelling account of what was happening in Gorazade and Bosnia. The mass murders, mass graves. The snipers. The constant artillery fire. The understaffed, ill-equipped hospital, over run with grotesque injuries, with little more than brandy to dull the pain. Doctors amputating legs with kitchen knives. Dead children. Legless children. Rape. Houses looted and burned. Civilians drenched in gasoline, left to burn alive.
The vignette that haunted me the most was one from Visegrad, a small town just north of Gorazade. A man retells the horrors he witnessed from his window, as he watched Serbs load his neighbors in the back of a truck, take them to a near by bridge and proceeded to slit their throats, one by one, tossing their bodies into the waiting river below. All night, he could hear the continuous splash of bodies hitting water. Men, women, children. No one was spared. In the course of three days, he estimated he saw 200-300 people murdered on that bridge.
The art work is stark. Black and white. Shimmering, harsh, almost nightmaric. Sacco's style renders the Bosnian landscape and its people beautifully. I travelled down through parts of Eastern Europe in 2002. Slovakia, Hungary, Crotia, and flew out of Sarajevo. Walked down "Sniper Alley". Stood on the bridge where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. Most buildings were in varying states of war-torn decay. The region was stupidly beautifully at times and ridiculously sad at others. Sacco does a great service to Gorazde and their surrounding neighbors, showing us through the eyes and stories ot its citizens, that even under tragic circumstances, life can still be lived with joy, grace, and hope.
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