The World of Stone
Mariusz Kalinowski
photo: Albert Zawada / Agencja Gazeta
Mariusz Kalinowski, juror, reviews Ed Vulliamy’s “The War is Dead, Long Live the War: Bosnia: the Reckoning”, translated by Janusz Ochab
Vulliamy’s story is borne out of the observation that: “Everything that happened in the war has its continuation after the war”.
“Omarska was our Auschwitz”, according to one of the inmates of the Serbian camp. Ed Vulliamy is the custodian of Bosnian remembrance – for over 20 years – making sure it is not erased, and that both parties to the conflict are not equated as complicit and equally sullied.
Accused of betraying the ethics of a reporter when he decided to testify in The Hague against Serb war criminals, Vulliamy says that he wants to remain objective – faithful to facts, rather than maintain a reporter’s neutrality – by standing between the tormentor and victims.
The Bosnian trauma is yet to be reckoned with. As a result of stubborn, renewed denials of genocide, the fiction of “reconciliation” remains a humiliating and tortuous experience for the survivors.
It was a great challenge to find the right tone for their nightmarish stories – with no dilution or hysteria, without overt presentation of brutality, but with attention and sympathy. Vulliamy has succeeded in this regard (The tone has a clear and credible ring, thanks to Janusz Ochab’s translation).
The book poses a number of questions in passing, which are relevant to Poles: opening national wounds so they don’t become encrusted in baseness, our own reckonings, and where “soft” nationalism starts becoming fanatical.
The “world of stone” experienced by survivors (Vuliamy has taken this metaphor from Tadeusz Borowski) – is our world as well – let us have no delusions that we live in a different one.
Mariusz Kalinowski