Balkan son

THE BOSNIA LIST
A Memoir of War, Exile, and Return
Kenan Trebincevic and Susan Shapiro
Penguin Books; 320 pages; $16

Between 1992 and 1995, a war savaged the country that was once known as Yugoslavia. Violence and destruction ripped through the fabric of the society, tearing apart families, eliminating villages and laying waste to the innocence of children.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia estimates that 104,732 people died during the conflict, with many more forced to flee the country. Some eventually returned, but others were perpetually haunted by an Odyssean yearning for their homeland. One of those exiled was Kenan Trebincevic. He was 11 years old when his life changed forever.

His home, Brcko, a northern Bosnian town, was one of the most dangerous places in the country. Overrun early by Serb and paramilitary forces, it became an important corridor that linked two pieces of Serb-held territory. By the end of the war, it was a skeleton: the picked-over remains of a once proud and ethnically diverse community.

"Where we lived was the most religiously mixed," Mr Trebincevic writes in his memoir, The Bosnia List: "32 percent Christian Serbs; 17 percent Croats, who practiced Roman Catholicism; and 45 percent Muslim, like us." His only consciousness of being Muslim was that his secular family "had Ramadan and no Santa Claus".

All that fraternity and brotherhood, preached during the Tito years, crumbles when the war starts. Mr Trebincevic's soccer pals, most of them Serbian, turn on him. His beloved karate teacher - his former hero - tries to kill him. He is forced to watch as his parents are humiliated by their neighbours.

His family becomes the last Muslim family in their apartment block, as well as in town. But the trials do not end there. In 1992, his father and older brother are taken to a concentration camp.

This book is a primer to a war as horrific as any in the 20th century. But it is also the details that make The Bosnia List, which Mr Trebincevic wrote with the journalist Susan Shapiro, acutely painful to read. Through a child's eyes, he witnesses his world slipping away, and he is brutally aware of what it is that he is losing: normality.

"The first sacrifice of war was her flowers," he writes of his mother. "We kept our shades closed to avoid being sprayed with bullets. Without sunlight, her cactus and hibiscus withered."

He is forced to grow up fast. After his father and brother return, he must go out scavenging for food while they cower inside. On one occasion, a woman grabs the red peppers out of his hand, saying they weren't for Muslims. "Although I was only 11," he writes, "letting my family down made me feel like a failure."

He watches as Serbs come and loot their possessions: a chandelier his father loved; a rug his mother treasured. Wedding presents and memories are carted away while the family is forced to make coffee for their robbers. On his 12th birthday, he "had no friends, no party, no cake," he recalls. "When Mom wished me happy birthday, I said: 'Who cares? The dead Muslims are better off than we are.' "

But Mr Trebincevic survives. He is not murdered with mortars while building a snowman, the way children in Sarajevo were. He does not end up in a mass grave like the 8,000 men and boys of Srebrenica.

The family finally - with the help of sympathetic Serb neighbours - crosses the border after several attempts. But they leave Bosnia with nothing. Left behind are their apartment, their baby photographs and their status. His father goes on to work at a fast-food restaurant in Connecticut. His mother watches news of the Dayton Accords, which ended the war in 1995, on CNN, baffled at the English version of what is happening to her country.

Even remembering old acquaintances back home doesn't provide Mr Trebincevic with much solace. "All I could think was: Look what they'd taken away."

Two decades later, his mother dead, Mr Trebincevic - who is now a physical therapist in Queens - makes the journey back to Brcko with his brother and their ailing, gentle father. On his arm is a tattoo of a medieval Bosnian flag, and in his pocket is a list of what he wants to do when they get there, which includes the names of those who betrayed the family. He plans to urinate on the grave of his karate teacher; he even thinks about how much water he will need to drink.

The stillborn rage he feels abates only when he realises there were, in fact, kindly Serbs, who helped his family survive - ordinary people who showed "flickers of goodness."

Mr Trebincevic eventually forgives, but there are still deep scars. Bosnia, while no longer at war, remains ethnically divided - more so than before the war started. It is collectively traumatised by the murderous events that racked the country. "They murdered people in this hotel," his brother remarks at one point. "I'd never stay in such a ghost-infested hellhole."

Mr Trebincevic dedicates this book to his mother, Adisa, who died in exile in 2007. She never saw Brcko after they left. At the height of the war, when the family was starving, trapped and desperate, this generous woman taught her little boy not to hate, to be resilient and to maintain his dignity. The Bosnia List, which is the story of her family's survival, is her son's final gift to her.

©2014 The New York Times News Service