The Cellist of Sarajevo

The Cellist of Sarajevo, the novel is inspired by true events that occurred during the siege of Sarajevo in the nineties. The story starts with the cellist, who is considered as “the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra”; he is playing Albinoin’s Adagio next to a spot where people are waiting in a queue for buying bread in the market. All of sudden, twenty-two people are killed in a flash by a mortar attack. The cellist decided to play twenty-two days for each of them, honoring their memory.

Throughout those twenty-two days, there are different stories from four main characters: Arrow, Dragan, Kenan and the Cellist about what is happening in the city which is being besieged by the enemies on the hill.

Arrow is a young sniper, who is assigned to protect the cellist throughout those twenty-two days. She is a person with a good sense of justice.  Although it was not her dead father’s will, neither hers, “It’s just something you do because life is a series of tiny, unavoidable decisions”. She does her job for the sake of protecting the innocent people and her city. She finishes her assignment pretty well at end.

Dragan, a 64-year-old man, works in a bakery, gets bread for his relatives. Before the war, to protect his family, he sent his wife and son to Italy, and he chose to stay in the city even though he is afraid of death. During the story, he has interaction with Emina, his wife’s friend, who is on her way to deliver medication; unfortunately, she gets injured in the middle of the way, and Dragan does not help her. She is taken away for medical care. However, at end, Dragan takes away a dead body from the scene of the camera, which will probably be published in front of the whole world. He is trying to protect the social image of his city, and the honor of a dead person.

Kenan, a middle-aged father of three kids, is risking his life for getting the water for his family during the war, which is considered one of the basic needs of life. Also, he tries hard to be generous and kind-hearted to his unkind neighbor Mrs.Ristovki, who gives Kenan some water bottles which are not easy to carry. Anyway, Kenan keeps his promise, showing a strong sense of responsibility.

Despite of separate description as small vignettes of four characters, the novel is well-organized in great detail. Nevertheless, there is a connection among them. No wonder, it is the cellist, which is also emphasized from the title of the novel. The story draws Kenan and Dragan into the orbit of cello music.

At very end of the chapter, Kenan has an encounter with the cellist, which changes his mind about the cellist and his music. At beginning, he doesn’t understand why the cellist plays every day on the same spot; he thinks “it was a foolish gesture, a pointless exercise in futility”. Then after he listens to the cellist’s play, he starts to “feels himself relax as the music seeps into him”, observing that “the cellist’s hair smoothes itself out, his beard disappears. A dirty tuxedo becomes clean, shoes polished bright as mirrors”. Everything around him turns into another way, clean, bright and organized. Even the building behind the cellist “repairs itself, and windows reassemble, clarify, and sparkle as the sun reflects off glass”. Kenan feels his city “heals itself around him”, with the cellist’s music continuing, he even sees his lovely family again with whom he walks, holding hands with joy, love, and hope.

 And the brave sniper Arrow is protecting the cellist throughout every single day of these twenty-two days. “She stays where she is. At four o’clock the cellist comes out and her finger tightens around the trigger”, in spite that she realized the feeling of hatred that grows into her gradually without notice, which she doesn’t like any part of it. For her, “The Sarajevo she fought for was one where you didn’t have to hate a person because of what they were”.

Music has a magnificent effect on this specific situation. It relieves the tension of the war. While listening to the music, people may start to think about the bright side, seize the positive part of life, and get more mental support and strength.

The city is being besieged, and there are shells, mortar-attacks everywhere in the city, especially in the intersections. Under this utterly different living condition, people’s life style has dramatically changed. There are no safe streets for a normal walk, no easy access for the water, no stable electricity supply, no working, no school…just for buying a piece of bread, for crossing the streets, for getting a bottle of water, you could lose  your life. There is no dignity in being a normal human being; you can be considered “a guinea pig” for reassurance of other’s life.

To a certain point, the nature of humanity can be revealed thoroughly, like fear of death: when Emina gets shot in the middle of the street, Dragan wants to help her, “but his feet don’t move, around him everyone is alive with frenzied energy, but he hasn’t stirred an inch”. He can’t move “because he is afraid”, “he isn’t built for war. He doesn’t want to be built for war”; like selfishness: businessmen make profit during the war, they increase incredibly the price for food in the market when normal people don’t have income anymore, life become harder not only because of the war, but also because of these greedy and selfish people make the situation even more difficult; and like responsibility: Kenan, at beginning, left Mrs.Ristovki’s bottles in the middle of way, at end, he find his way back to get those bottles, although they are hard to carry. To Kenan, “a promise is a promise”, he tries his best to keep his word at risk of losing his life. Moreover, there are generosity, cowardice; sense of justice; and bravery.

Through the well-developed narration of each story, we can understand more about war, about life, and about human nature. It shows us a vivid scene of every aspect. No doubt, it shows lots of valuable qualities of human beings. Nonetheless, a big event like a war can change the person in some way, both negative and positive. It can make people cherish more about what they used to have, which even seemed so simple and insignificant. 

Austin & Vegetarianism

Sadie Smiles, 23-year-old graduate student in University of Texas at Austin, is originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania and has been in Austin for about one year. She has been a vegetarian for more than ten years.

 

“Austin is a great city to experience both traditional American culture and newer and more diversified elements of society.”

Austin, the capital of Texas, is soaring in its development both economically and culturally. It is one of the biggest cities in the United States. Compared to other big cities, Austin has most of the common features of being a big city; nonetheless, there is something unique in it.

Like Sadie mentioned, “Austin has to do a lot with sort of hip, urban, new-age, sort of like everybody wants to be healthy. I think Austin is sort of like this cool, modern, and healthy city. ”

Apart from those modern terms she applied to describe the city, she mentioned couple of times of “healthy.” No wonder, being a faithful vegetarian, she should be paying more attention to this aspect than other people might. In her words, Austin is a “healthy city.” It stimulates my thoughts, how come?

 

“I think the food here is awesome. Since I’m a vegan, it’s like really refreshing to be in a city where there are a lot of vegan options.”

Considering the aspect of food, although it is well-known that Texas is famous for its barbecue; Austin, being the capital of the state, has wide-open arms and shows hospitality and more tolerance to the people who come here, who stay here, and who decide to live here.  Though it might seem inconsequential, Austin has provided more options to vegetarians.

As Sadie remarked, “Although some may argue that eating animals is natural, I think, the way we raise animals for food is unhealthy. Since we get most our meat from factory farms, the food industry is way more industrial than ever intended.”

Many other vegetarians propose that, to besiege and raise a large scale of animal in farms or factories, is immoral. Humans are at a higher level of the food chain, which is the reason that we recognize that it is part of nature to eat less intelligent animals. But the way we treat animals has changed. Before, our ancestors were using arrowheads, knives and tools that were invented, to hunt animals in order to get the meat. But look at present, people force animals into cages or farms, give them hormones or other chemicals in order to make them grow faster and bigger. The business drive leads this to happen which is not part of nature at all.

Like what Sadie mentioned, “I think that our growing population has led to bigger and more problematic methods of mass farming, and people are turning to vegetarianism as a way to combat this.”

There are actually significant vegetarian residents in Austin corresponding to the statistic I found from the US national Public Policy Polling Survey 2013. Austin ranks the top 10 vegetarian cities in the United States and the whole percentage in the country for vegetarian is thirteen. It is a big number with no doubts.

 “Americans face large increase of obesity and heart related issues and eliminating meat from a diet is a good step to improve your health.”

Certainly we have not found any strict proofs yet to demonstrate that lots of crucial diseases have a direct link to the consumption of meat. However, the scientists confirm that meat definitely contains more fat than vegetables, especially saturated fat, which the human body does not need too much for daily intake. And the cholesterol is only found in animal products. Apparently, those facts can increase the risk of developing these diseases: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, kidney stone, arthritis etc.

“The more meat we raise for food, the faster we deplete a lot of natural resources. We also use a lot of unhealthy gas when we transport large quantities of meat across the country.”

It seems to me, Sadie got enthusiastic explaining to me her point of view on vegetarian topic. To be a listener, I can absolutely feel her strong emotions towards this.

Nowadays, when we are talking about the environment issue, we talk about the climate change, the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide. But she put forward to a new perspective of this topic, which I feel very excited about.

 “Being in Texas, Austin is lucky to have access to a lot of local farms. Grocers are able to get organic food without traveling far; therefore the amount of healthy vegetarian food in Austin is plentiful. The culture of Austin makes these organic options popular, so it has become a city that welcomes vegetarians.”

 

A Story for Halloween...

As usual the little girl was lying on the bed at 10:00 o’clock, tossing and turning, feeling too uneasy to fall asleep. Facing her head, there was a huge window in front of her little pink bed.

 

The window laid open, although she was sure that she closed the window before she went to bed. Capped with an unusual darkness, the lights of the street was gone, as if someone had forgotten to switch up. Nevertheless, the moon was bright enough to provide light for her to see through the window. She was stunned that there was something besides the window holding still but she could not tell what was. It looked nothing like things she had seen before.

 

Inside her body there was a voice that tried to cry for help but she realized she had no voice; and it tried to scream that she felt she had gone mute. The thing leaned against the window was gone. As the girl almost fell asleep, there was an uncomfortable sound sweeping through the window right into her bed. Shivering from the unsecure sense, the little girl crawled to the bottom of her bed, as if waiting for it, from which the sound was coming.

As the strange sound came closer and closer, her feeling of fear turned stronger and stronger. Her eyes were wide-open extremely, and she couldn’t find a way to relax them. All of the sudden, a shadow with long tail whipped the window like the wind tenderly and rapidly. The little girl came out from the bottom of the bed bravely, approaching the direction to where it went. Now she understood, it was only the cute white cat from her lovely neighbor.

Finally, with no further disturbance, the little girl fell asleep soundly……