The Cat I Never Named by Amra Sabic
The Cat I Never Named by Amra Sabic is a
memoir about the Bosnian War, 1992-1995. Amra was sixteen when the war started.
Her Muslim town of Bihać was placed under siege. Family, education, and her cat
helped her survive. A young-adult story of courage and humanity. Five stars.
Amra is a Bosniak, a Bosnian Muslim. “[The Serbs] hate us, they think we are subhuman. Months ago, their leader, Radovan Karadžić, already threatened we would be eradicated.” However, in Amra city, Bihać, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims had been friends. Amra's best friend was Olivera, a Serb. One day, for no obvious reason, Olivera stopped talking to Amra. Next, all the Serbs evacuated Bihać. Soon, bombs and rockets rained down on the city. That is how the war started.
Later, a list was found naming all the Muslims. The men would be killed, and the women would be taken to rape camps. Fortunately, the city defended itself. What could have been a genocide became a siege.
The Serbs fight for land, for ideology. We fight for our lives. They are careful and want to survive this war. We know if they take our city, we are dead, so we fight with everything we have—with guns we take from them. With our hands. With our teeth if we have to. They fight to win. We fight to the death. So they trap us here, bombing us, demoralizing us. Starving us. Now both sides have hunkered down for a long standoff. My little cat is the only thing that ever brings light to my eyes. Every day Maci stays near me, curled up patiently at my side, waiting for me to take an interest in life again.
This is a YA book written to show that Muslims are not terrorists, the importance of education, and the horrors of hatred.
There are so many parallels between my experience of surviving the war in Bosnia and what many are going through right now, in the United States and all over the world. [2020]
Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cats Press books and book recommendations.
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