by Miljenko Jergović
“Gently stroke your books, dear stranger, and remember they are dust.”
I picked out this book at Half Price Books because I liked how the shape was square, the title name, and the cover design. I would come to learn that the cover is a painting by Paul Klee, a surrealist painter of the 20th century, and one of my favorite painters. At least that is what the inside of the cover says. I actually can’t find Paul Klee’s original work which is featured on the English printing of the book.
I find the use of Paul Klee’s obscure art piece to be a fitting introduction to the book. Take a closer look at the cover. What even is that? A tree? A plume of smoke? To this day I can’t tell. And every day I picked up this book to read, I stared at the cover for a few seconds attempting to wrap my eyes and head around it. Once my mind still couldn’t wrap my head around it, I proceeded to tackle the 29 short stories that the book contains.
Set in the backdrop of the Bosnian War, and originally translated from Croatian, these stories compile some of the most oxymoronic depictions of life in the Balkans. Many of the stories are heartfelt and simply beautiful, but all of them have an impending conflict looming in the backdrop.
In the story A Diagnosis, Salih is forced to watch his wife and daughters cut up by an electric saw (thankfully yet intentionally however, Jergović spares the reader any more detail of the event). He is imprisoned, released, put in a refugee camp, banned, and imprisoned again in the Czech Republic. Instead of sending him back to Bosnia and Herzegovina (doing so would have contravened the International Declaration of Human Rights), they dispatched him to a psychiatric hospital. There, he was treated kindly and well.
But the only thing he was inclined to do was sit in his armchair, blanklessly watch TV, and eat grapes. Eventually, Salih took up drawing. But his drawings were no more complex or appealing than a child’s. The doctors, prying, asked what he would do if he caught his wife and daughters murdered. To which he replied that no such thing would be likely to happen. When further explained that it didn’t matter the odds, Salih replied:
‘I would kill them,’ adding, ‘or I would give them a pen and paper and tell them, as you tell me, to DRAW.’
Many of the stories from Sarajevo Marlboro end in this chilling, unsatisfying way. There are hardly any protagonists that make it through the few pages they are written unscathed or unscarred. This includes the readers as well, it definitely included me. But getting through the anthology’s entirety wasn’t a chore, nor was it depressing. It was, however, eye-opening and humbling. So many beautiful stories in this book aren’t tainted by the backdrop of the dark history that surrounds them, they are instead accentuated by it. It leaves me realizing that, as a very privileged and sheltered American, I know nothing about war. I know nothing about sacrifice. And I know nothing about the true horrors that exist in this world. Miljenko Jergović certainly does.
I give Sarajevo Marlboro five out of five stars.