Reading 'The Camino' and some memories and thoughts on that war

Finally some time to shred away some books again. After in the summer reading 'All the blue in the sky' by Melissa de Costa recommended to me by a friend, she also recommended reading 'The Camino' by Anya Niewierra. As I literally had eaten through the other book because it took me juat a couple of days to read it, I expected a bit of the same on this one. This one took me even a lot more because of the sad part of history in there.

The plot of the story is about this lady called Lotte (typical Dutch name actually) and she is about the pelgrims voyage through France (when you continue it ends in Spain in Santiago de Compostela) to get more understanding on why her husband killed himself a year earlier on that same route. And ofcourse..stuff happens during this trip.

Warning: there might be some spoilers ahead but also some of my random thoughts on the situation around the war where this story also has some roots.

Goodreads.com

Now the heart of the story lies back in the memories of the foundation of one of the main characters which is in Bosnia which at that time still was Joegoslavia before and during the war.

Lotte finds out more and more about the past there and meanwhile she is dealing with her grief. I like the writing style of this book, as it is almost as if you are having a conversation. No fancy words, no trying to be prententious, there is a story be told and the writer sucks you right in.

In between there are letters from other main characters so the unfolding plot lets you wait until the end for understanding what is going on.

Why the book grasped me?

Well this has eveything to do with the stories from the war in Joegoslavia. Some of the things about the war are quit explicitly written and they make you think about it again. Especially in a time like this where propaganda feels all around again, eve though there are more sorts of media these days ...tension is here, just like it was there at that particular moment.

When this war was going I was juat a kid. Ofcourse this was in the news on the daily back then but in that you dont really understand what that meant.
Ofcourse the role of the Dutch 'Bluehelmets' was not sweet at all and that is why the history kept coming back of rhe years in the Netherlands.

Some years after the war I was in Kroatia and decided to visit the city Bihac in Bosnia just over the border. Bihac is also a town in 'The Camino' where a part of the story was told, that is why it got me thinking about it again.

Driving towards there was such an eerie road where you could feel all kinds of stuff had happened there. Entering the city you could see all new and shiny mosques and all shotten churches with the bullet holes still in the walls. The contrast was huge.

Later on the day I was in a bar and a girl about my age at the time was looking at me all the time. Then she looked at the Dutch license plate on the car and again looked back at me. After a while of staring at a certain point she walked by super angry and hissed at me 'you have no idea how your childhood has been different than mine.

I was stunned and shocked at the same time. I took me a while to realise what she meant. But after a while it became clear to me that the teribble history of the war and the Dutch sucky involvement must have had something to do with this. And she was right most likely... While I was doing stupid things in highschool she most likely had the daily fear for her life and she might have lost a lot around her. This was the first time that I could recall that I was judged on my background even though I wasn't able to do anything about it.

I thought about that moment for a long time and it also went away again over the years. Until this book. Where the book highlights how the ethnic groups in Bosnia, Serbia and Kroatia who all grew up together 'all of a sudden' started fighting and where background took a role regardless of how good you used to get along. It was an eye opener again on what people are capable of when the setting sucks. For me this was just a minute, for the people who lived through this war this was multiple years of horror.

So yeah...the book grasped me. And it wasn't about the book. It was the message that the book was telling. Go read it, there is a lot of wisdom in there.