Sunday 22nd. The Last One.

It's Sunday. I made myself awake at 6:30 AM and got ready for another regular trip to the work I'm not proud of doing, but still doing to provide some sort of sustainability for my livelihood? I find it important to be fed and have a roof above my head. And it's winter. Sleeping under the big blue sky is considered rather tragic than romantic at this period of the year. 

I take the first train from Nijmegen in direction to Roermond at 7:38 AM as usual, and expect my 15 minute ride also to go as usual. While I'm still in my sleeping mode I'm listening to cheerful and energizing music tracks and getting emotionally ready for my daily 10 km cycling activity to work. I think about the weather and whether the wind today blows with me or against me, as it greatly determines the longevity of my daily cycling trip to work. It also determines the level of my annoyance that greatly depends on whether the wind holds extras with it in form of rain or snow.

The Cellist Playing Hope

'An insight into a devastating reality of the war' or 'The hopeless, frightened and emotionally ruined in Sarajevo' could be just a few of the many phrases used for describing the plot of Steven Galloway's 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' (2008). The story evolves around the daily lives and thoughts of three characters during the recent Balkan war (the siege of Sarajevo particularly that took place from 5th April 1992 till 29th February 1996): a lady-sniper named Arrow, a young defender of the city, and two civilians, Kenan and Dragan, a former financial director and a bakery employee. Although there is around 20 years age difference between the two men, the reader can easily realize that it does not play any difference in experiencing the fear of being shot, being exposed as a target for a bullet every time crossing an intersection just to get to the other side of the river for whichever purposes, being tired, aging in no-time and asking existential questions to themselves such as how painful is to die and how does it feel when you're shot, and why some people die and some don't. It somewhat creates flashbacks to E.M. Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front' (1929) and makes you angry about how somebody in power has decided for the whole nation to suffer, obviously against their will. And there is the Cellist, also an ordinary man whose dreams and Sarajevo like it was before the war were also broken down like everyone else's. The Cellist plays. He plays hope. A hope for a change after witnessing one of the many daily realities of wartime Sarajevo, an event that took lives of 22 people on an ordinary wartime morning standing in a cue to get some bread... 'It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded...'