Musing on Pre-Bosnia

I am reading this book called "S."  It is about a camp in Bosnia in 1992.  S is bussed from a mountain village to this camp and eventually ends up in the "women's room."  The book is very similar to the holocaust's "House of Dolls," written or signed using someone's tattoo number.  Like a dehumanized number, all characters in this book have no name and are referred to simply by a letter of the alephabet.  "S" acknowledges immediately it is a "novel."  "House of Dolls" is less clear - but is classified by Yad Vashem as fiction. 

The question of "fiction" or "nonfiction" seems strange when you look at this type of story.  The essence of both books is this notion that survival requires an "othering" of oneself or a spirtual divorce from body: a fictional experience.  That surviving requires one to lie to themselves - to create a fictional character to whom war happens, who can absorb the horror and tragedy. 

In "S" there is a scene in which S finds make-up and paints herself in a seemingly "whorish" way: with red lipstick and "seductive eyes."  While the other girls are aghast that she would embrace her whore-status, S finds it liberating.  She is "disguising" herself.  "When she realized that the make-up enabled her to don a mask, she discovered that it was a way to gain power. . . . perhaps [she could] deprive them of the chance to humiliate her." 

Could this even be written as non-fiction?  If one lies to oneself, does not one lie to the reader - which is the essence of fiction?  And when we deal with this historical texts, in which one's perspective, and hence perception, is the source of the story - are not all such stories "fiction."  Maybe we need a new word - maybe "fiction" and "nonfiction" are too polarizing and too black and white.  Maybe all of historical narratives belongs in this other amorphous category.  Where we are skeptical of the actual facts because we recognize that historical facts are not facts but are observations or experiences necessarily seen through the lens of biased perspective. 

I am not commenting on the importance of historical narratives (which I take for granted as the only source of history) but on how we value human experience.  Why shouldn't there be value on how people "experience" history - not simply the "facts" (he went to A, then traveled by boat to C).  That it is the human experience of history - how we suffer or enjoy history that is important - not the mere occurance of it.  That history should be a messy, emotional experience - not a text of facts to be memorized.  That history is a human experience (though there can the history of the evolution of a bacteria that is science based).  That it is entirely a social science - that how we percieve history, how we feel about it, that is what is important.

My point in this diatribe, from which I strayed hugely, is that in reading this book "s" with the knowledge that I will be in Bosnia in three weeks makes reading it a wholly different experience.  Even if it is "fiction" how can I not look at women who are now my age, and thus 18 at the time of the war, and wonder.  How can I look at the men and not wonder - why did you get to survive?

What should be my "relationship" to people when we are in Bosnia?  I'm glad I'm not going to Serbia.  I couldn't even contemplate that.  But aren't I guilty too?  I was 22 when "S" was in the "women's room."  Where was I?  (I was backpacking in Europe and understood very little of what was happening - but was keenly aware something big was happening.) 

I read this book and go on this trip and remember that my teenagers can't be bothered to read their history books because it is "irrelevant" to them.  That "relevance" is a buzz word in education - that we have to justify teaching history.  When did humanity become so disconnected from one another? 

Am I responsible for what is happening in Sudan?  Bosnia?  And does my status as a Jew, who should "know" (intuitively, viscerally) empathy  here in ethnic cleansing, create for me a higher burden of responsibility? 

And then if I am responsible, what does that look like?  I must know?  I cannot be ignorant.  I must act? I must not not act.  When I do know, is my responsiblity greater?  I knew and did nothing.  Or is not knowing, because maybe if everybody knew it wouldn't happen??, worse?

Sorry.  Ranting.  For me.