The Fragility of Life

 

I don't usually pick up books on Syria because I think they would depress me unnecessarily and I'm depressed enough as it is. Happy thoughts, I say, happy thoughts... As I wake up and find my body stiffening and limp through the first few hours of the day because my ankles hurt or my knees hurt or my calf muscles are bunched up. 

And then, there's the kitten I'm fostering, a tiny, wee little thing who was abandoned near the guardhouse, who is scared and alone and who cries often and requires a lot of energy and attention. Ever since she came along I've thrown my schedule out the window... 

But that's neither here nor there. In one of my periodic tours of BookXcess, I picked up this book and read the back cover and was instantly sold. Not only to buy the book, but to read it fairly soon after. 

War means endless waiting, endless boredom. There is no electricity, so no television. You can't read. You can't see friends. You grow depressed but there is no treatment for it and it makes no sense to complain -- As for your old world, it disappears, like the smoke from a cigarette you can no longer afford to buy. Where are your closest friends? Some have left, others are dead... War is empty shell casings on the street, smoke from bombs rising up in mushroom clouds, and learning to determine which thud means what kind of bomb. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don't. War is the destruction, the skeleton and the bare bones of someone else's life.

The book is filled with everyday details of what life has become for someone living in a war zone, most of them unaware who is fighting and who is right or wrong and all of them longing for this unusual state of activity to be over so they can rebuild their lives. 

There's not enough bread. Women who are raped use euphemisms to describe the act and then don't tell anybody about it because the violation makes them unclean and unmarriageable.

Di Giovanni takes you from place to place to have a look on the ground. Horrors are interspersed with very human stories of eking out an existence. 

If you feel hard done by because of the pandemic or MCO, if you're struggling to survive... I recommend you read this book. 

And then, count your blessings.