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Ines's Reviews > As if I am not there: A novel about the Balkans

As if I am not there by Slavenka Drakulić
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it was amazing

I don’t know why I have read this book at this very time, close to Christmas, it is a devastating book and it is nothing compared to the reality experienced by this woman, which the author will simply call S.
This woman will be deported along with other residents of her village, only to be Bosnian .... This was enough, during the terrible war in the Balkans in 1992, to determine the death of people....
I say immediately, the narration and the events that are reported are strong if not more' than most of the books about holocaust's survivors i have read in the past. I really feel the bowels tightened since I read it, started and finished late at night because I couldn’t quite get away from S’s voice.
Imprisoned together with women and children in a Concentration camp, S. recounts her tragedy as a victim of daily rapes by Serbian soldiers...
Rape and pregnancies, fit just like ethnic cleansing. These women thus become unable to differentiate between the victim and the subjugated; crushed by that power of life and death in the hands of these beasts, who until a few months before were their neighbors, their bakers, electricians ethc... a life in the villages that was once based on sharing and respect, but now devastated by the laws of war.
S., will perhaps, be the only one who will try to see beyond the mechanisms of survival and evil, even if torn apart by these physical sufferings and mental stereotypes in defense of what is indescribable.
S. will come to a real introspection of herself, once she finds out she is pregnant by those orgies of evil and flesh. Not even the luck of being able to be evacuated to Zagreb and then ,herself only, to Stockholm, will change that sense of free fall of heart, and no hope for a new life...
The child is never mentioned initially, if not as a cancer, a disease of war.... but the deep meditation work on herself, and the unscheduled circumstances, such as the carelessness of a nurse who will put her baby on her breast once born ( she wanted to give him in adoption); it will slowly take S. to look at that flesh that is pulsating and living on her chest as a human being. That child...cancer, will then be her salvation and new and positive chance of life despite an unstoppable pain.
( these are real facts, lived and happened to thousands of women in the Balkans, whether Serbs, Bosnians or Croats...I voluntarily left aside real facts of sexual violence described against children)



Io non so perchè ho letto questo libro proprio in questo periodo, a ridosso del Natale, è un libro devastante ed è niente in confronto alla realtà vissuta da questa donna, che l'autrice chiamerà semplicemente S.
Questa donna verrà deportata insieme ad altri abitanti del suo villaggio, unicamente per essere bosniaca con padre musulmano.... bastava questo, durante la tremenda guerra nei balcani del 1992, per determinare la morte delle persone.....
Dico subito, la narrazione e le vicende ivi riportare sono forti se non piu' rispetto alla maggior parte dei libri dei sopravvissuti all' olocausto . Mi sento veramente le viscere strette da quando l' ho letto, iniziato e terminato a tarda notte perchè non riuscivo assolutamente a staccarmi dalla voce di S.
Rinchiusa insieme a donne e bambini in un campo di prigionia, S. racconta la sua tragedia di donna vittima di stupri di gruppo quotidiani da parte dei soldati serbi....
Lo stupro e le relative gravidanze, atte proprio come pulizia etnica. Queste donne diventano quindi incapaci di differenziare la vittima dal soggiogato. Schiacciate da quel potere di vita e morte nelle mani di queste bestie, che sino a pochi mesi prima erano i loro vicini di casa, i loro panettieri, elettricisti etcc....una vita nei villaggi che un tempo era basata sulla condivisione e il rispetto, ma ora devastata dalle leggi della guerra.
S, sarà forse l'unica che cercherà di vedere oltre ai meccanismi di sopravvivenza e di male, anche se dilaniata da queste sofferenze fisiche e stereotipie mentali atti a difesa da ciò che è indescrivibile.
S. arriverà ad una vera introspezione di se stessa, una volta scoperto di essere incinta da quelle orgie di male e carne. Neanche la fortuna di riuscire ad essere tutti evacuati a Zagabria e poi unicamente lei sino a Stoccolma, modificherà quel senso di caduta libera del cuore, di speranza di una vita nuova....
Il bambino non viene mai citato inizialmente, se non come un cancro, una malattia della guerra..... ma il lavoro di riflessione su se stessa, e le circostanze non programmate, come la sbadataggine di una infermiera che le metterà il piccolo sul petto una volta nato; la porteranno pian piano a guardare quella carne pulsante e vivente come un essere umano. Quel bambino...il cancro, sarà poi la sua salvezza e possibilità di vita nonostante un dolore inarrestabile
( questi sono fatti veri, vissuti e accaduti a migliaia di donne nei balcani, che fossero serbe, bosniache o croate......ho volontariamente lasciato da parte fatti veri di violente sessuali descritte nei confronti dei bambini)
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Reading Progress

December 11, 2019 – Shelved
December 11, 2019 – Shelved as: to-read
December 15, 2019 – Started Reading
December 15, 2019 –
page 167
74.55%
December 16, 2019 – Finished Reading

Comments Showing 1-4 of 4 (4 new)

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message 1: by Angela M (new) - added it

Angela M Ines, sounds like this was so difficult to read , but you’ve done a great job in conveying the importance of it . I will read this but at a later time.


Ines Angela M wrote: "Ines, sounds like this was so difficult to read , but you’ve done a great job in conveying the importance of it . I will read this but at a later time."
thank you!!


message 3: by Fionnuala (new)

Fionnuala Oh, thanks for reminding me of this author, Ines. I remember that she wrote Marble Skin and a book about Frida Kahlo both of which I've been meaning to read. I think though that I'll read one of those first because in spite of your very sensitive account of the horrors in this one, I feel I'd find it hard to face them even on the printed page.


Ines Fionnuala wrote: "Oh, thanks for reminding me of this author, Ines. I remember that she wrote Marble Skin and a book about Frida Kahlo both of which I've been meaning to read. I think though that I'll read one of th..."
Yes, i think that i never ever read something so extreme ad violent as this book. i can't believe what i have read, really. 😔 young girls of 11/12 years old.......


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