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A review by serendipitysbooks
The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, Laura L. Sullivan
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.25
The Cat I Never Named is a memoir detailing some of Amra’s experiences during the Bosnian war/genocide of the early 1990s. We first meet her as a sixteen year old excited about new volleyball shoes, a seven tiered birthday cake and a planned sleepover. But the sleepover falls apart when her friends are unable to stay. Amra realises it is because she is Muslim. Almost overnight her life changes. Muslim refugees begin to stream in to Bihac from elsewhere. Then all the Serbians flee the town and its bombardment begins. Gunfire and bombings become commonplace, food scarce as the siege drags on. We see Amra’s resentment of Serbian friends and neighbours who fled but didn’t warn them of the danger, and at the UN for doing nothing to protect them. Amra shares her experiences of being caught in bomblasts, of seeing people killed, of fleeing her home and sheltering in the overcrowded basement of a relative, of watching her father’s health decline as a result of his frontline duties, of fearing ending up in a rape camp. Yet this is not an unrelentingly grim story. The reader also shares Amra experience of first love and sees her doggedly pursue her education. And then there is the loving bond that she develops with Maci (that’s cat in Bosnian), a stray who follows her home one day and refuses to leave. The love, joy, comfort and companionship Maci provided to Amra and her family was heartwarming. And I haven’t even mentioned Maci’s role as a guardian angel.
In an age rife with political, social and cultural divisions, with othering, this book is a powerful cautionary tale. War, especially when caused by ethnic and religious hatred, is never an easy topic to read about. But because we view it through the eyes of positive teen who we know survived, and because of the bond between her and Maci, the horror and carnage never became overpowering. Rather this memoir simultaneously highlights the horrors of living in a city under siege, and the ways in which life can and does continue.
In an age rife with political, social and cultural divisions, with othering, this book is a powerful cautionary tale. War, especially when caused by ethnic and religious hatred, is never an easy topic to read about. But because we view it through the eyes of positive teen who we know survived, and because of the bond between her and Maci, the horror and carnage never became overpowering. Rather this memoir simultaneously highlights the horrors of living in a city under siege, and the ways in which life can and does continue.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Genocide