The musings of a devourer of the written word, on anything and everything under the sun.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The Cellist of Sarajevo
During the Siege of Sarajevo in the early ‘90s, Vedran Smajlović, a cellist with the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra, climbed into the bombed out shell of a shop where 22 people died while queuing for bread, and played Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor for the same number of days. Dressed in his trusty performance tuxedo, carrying his cello and bow in one hand, and a stool in the other, he played this melancholic piece of music as bullets whizzed about him, the senselessness of war going on.
This singular act of Smajlović caught the attention of many around the world, among them Canadian author Steven Galloway. And from it, we see the birth of The Cellist of Sarajevo, Galloway’s 3rd novel.
Told from the perspective and experience of four individuals, with the Cellist being one of them, Galloway craftily reminds us that any persons living in a city where targets have no names is risking his or her life, just by being there.
Take Dragan, a man in his sixties, who has to venture out once a day to his former workplace – a bread factory, just so that he has his one meal a day. Every corner is a life-and-death decision that has to be made: to cross or not to cross. And if he were to turn back, he would then have to face the agony of hunger.
Then there’s Kenan, a young family man, who also has to venture out once every few days to draw clean water from the underground springs at the abandon brewery, just by the enemy lines. His return journeys are always the worst as he trudges along bridges with his containers of water, while in his mind, he wonders what would happen if indeed he is hit.
And finally there’s Arrow, a young-female-university-student-turned-assassin, serving the rebel forces protecting the city, by taking out the snipers from the hills. But she has a new assignment, which is to protect the cellist as he plays on from the same people who used to hunt and kill. Simply because the cellist has become a symbol of rebellion and resistance.
While these 3 individuals are as different as they come, they do share a common thread: their constant fight to ignore the present by disassociating themselves from their past. One would think that in times of sheer adversity, each person would draw on the strength of their neighbours. Yet, they have chosen the opposite, opting to live in isolation.
Dragan keeps his head down as he does his daily walk, hoping that a familiar face coming down the opposite way would pass him by without a word, all the while looking out for sprawled lifeless bodies, using them as a barometer on how safe it would be to cross.
Kenan does not enquire of other friends each time he meets anyone, just in case he has to hear that they had fallen victim to the snipers. And each time he starts out on his journey, he has an internal debate on whether his kindness towards his elderly neighbour, by helping her fetch water, would some day slow him down and get him killed.
As for Arrow, she didn’t used to be known as Arrow. She was given a beautiful and meaningful name, setting the stage for the privileged life that she was to live. Yet, in the present, she is simply known as Arrow – a weapon of destruction, creating a persona separating who she truly was so that the person who fights and kills today could someday be put away when the madness fades away.
As each voice takes its turn to tell their tale, the reader will find that the Cellist and his daily playing go beyond the mere act of remembering the dead. The strains of the melody have a unspoken intent. As it flows out of the crater, into the empty and disfigured streets, it is also carrying with it The Cellist’s wish that the Saravejans feel the same hope that the Adagio has come to symbolise for him. For the history of the Adagio says that it was re-created from 4 readable bars of a burnt out music score. And so, life and peace too can be rebuilt and be restored.
And the Cellist does accomplish this hidden objective for we see each person slowly questioning their existence, their current motivations, trying to keep the demons of memories at bay.
We see them taking the brief moment to ask: Is there any more goodness left? Or room for the hope of good in this world? And if there is: Can it start with me? And if it can: What can I do?
We see them realising that there will always be two sides to the same coin - flip the word ‘evil’ over and what you get is ‘live’. And that in trying to forget the ravages of a war, that would go down in history as the longest city siege of modern warfare, they have been on the wrong side of the coin.
The Cellist of Sarajevo may be a story of a time gone by, of atrocities that we would unlikely ever be faced with. Where water, electricity, food moves from being a basic item to a luxury item. Where crossing the road is done at your own peril because you can never tell who has their sights on you.
I read somewhere that “You cannot make it as a wondering generality. You must become a meaningful specific.” Perhaps that was what Vedran Smajlović and Steven Galloway were trying to achieve: to give some semblance of meaning to each of the 22 lives lost so they are not a wondering generality in the total casualty of war.
A 2009 finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Cellist of Sarajevo will serve to remind the reader a fact that will withstand all time and situations: that the fire of the human spirit can never truly be gunned-down or extinguished.
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