Written and drawn by Joe Sacco Introduction by Christopher Hitchens Published by Fantagraphics Books
We're awfully damn comfortable where I live.
Every morning, I get up before the alarm goes off at 3:00, I take a shower, get dressed, check my e-mail, and drive an hour to reach the radio station I work at.
I have to be quiet as I get ready for work, because my wife and two young children are still sleeping; their day starts a little later. My wife will get up at 5:00, shower and prepare the kids for their day. My daughter will go to school, my son to the babysitter. At the end of the day, we all reunite and eat dinner together and sometimes, if time allows, we go out to the toy store, the library, the comics shop...
We're awfully damn comfortable. We've got it good. Better than we realize. Better than some people will ever have it again.
Cartoon journalist Joe Sacco's major new work, Safe Area Gorazde, is out now from Fantagraphics Books. It is a work that has made me think of my family, my life, and especially my children. Made me think of what it might be like, instead of reuniting with my wife and kids at the end of each day, to wonder for yet another day if they are alive somewhere, or if my son or daughter is lying face down in a river, or dead in the middle of a bombed out road with their guts hanging out.
In Safe Area Gorazde, Sacco documents the war in Eastern Bosnia in the early and mid 1990s. Entering the area as a journalist, he spent time with many of the people whose lives were destroyed by the war, and he relates many, many of their stories in gruesome detail.
It's gruesome, of course, because that's what war is. Especially a war so grounded in hatred and senselessness as this one. Perhaps, upon reflection, all war is like that...I hope I never find out. I hope my kids never find out. The Bosnian conflict Sacco relates begins because of near-ancient resentments, and is nurtured by broken promises and the utter depravity of the worst in human nature given free rein.
Sacco is no stranger to this sort of journalism. He previously documented the troubles in the Middle East in Palestine, and has had many short pieces appear in magazines such as Details, many of which have been printed in the Fantagraphics volume War Junkie. Sacco inserts himself into this story by documenting his meetings and interviews with the victims of the Bosnian war, and in revealing his thoughts and reactions to the people he allows the readers a frame of reference that unfolds slowly, but ultimately is extraordinary in its power.
Sacco introduces us to many, many different types of people, all affected by war. Angry victims, hopeful victims, the doctors and nurses that tried against all hope to patch together people likely doomed to die anyway.
It is a complicated war that Sacco tries to explain, and over here, in our comfort, even the most careful reader may lose track of the combatants and their complex (although ultimately, nearly absurd if not stupid) motivations. The details almost don't matter, though--because Sacco concentrates on their results and ramifications. Human misery. The destruction of hope.
The brutality is, over the course of 227 pages, literally numbing. And just as I began to become numb to it all, Sacco delivers a skillful punch that once again reminded me these were human lives, human beings, not at all different from me, or my wife, or my kids--this could happen here. Perhaps it's something of a wonder and a miracle that it hasn't happened here. Yet.
I don't want to dismiss the power of the many stories Sacco relates. Every one is important, and every one has the ring of truth to it. I don't think Sacco has done much to fictionalize his account of these events. But it's a comic book, so the suspension of disbelief almost works in reverse. It's a struggle to relate the ink on paper to actual suffering, but Sacco carries across the stories of the people he met with truth and depth. It's obvious he was touched by these people.
But it's also obvious that he was numbed by all the horror. How could you not be? He came to the war from America, and had the freedom to leave any time he chose to. He actually managed to have some laughs with these folks, to drink and sing and watch movies on the VCR when they had electricity...but all the horror, all the pain--I think he was numb to it after a while.
Because late in the story, an angry man confronts Sacco, a man only referred to as "F." "F," in broken English, verbally assaults Sacco's motivations and intentions, and forces the journalist to confront himself in a way I'd imagine most journalists would prefer not to. Suddenly Sacco "wanted to put a hundred thousand miles between (himself) and Bosnia." But he couldn't. He was right there, but why? He was in a war zone, but was he victimized by the war? Was he not, after all, profiting from its very existence? The implications are not lost on Sacco, who left the confrontation with "F." to find a place to throw up.
Sacco is not to be excoriated for his life's work, despite "F's" understandable rage. He has, after all, created an immensely readable journal of many of the war's victims, people whose individual stories might otherwise never have been told. Sacco achieves a real balance between telling the stories of the war's victims and telling of his own experiences documenting the war's impact.
The balance is maintained in the section "Silly Girls Part III." Sacco's final illustration in this section demonstrates with grace and eloquence his ultimate understanding of the gulf between himself, a privileged outsider, and the victims of the war, who aren't going anywhere. He is with them, they are together, but he is not truly among them. I'm left with the feeling that Sacco knows he can't do much to help, other than tell their stories, and he is uncomfortable with that reality.
I think making the reader uncomfortable is an admirable goal of this work. Making someone take the time out of their day to consider what living a life during wartime is like. Whether it will prevent war in the future is questionable, but perhaps some of the people reading it will be moved to act in the future. Perhaps someone reading this story will someday be in a position to make a decision that could prevent this kind of senseless, relentless brutality.
Even if that best-case scenario doesn't come to pass, though, Sacco has achieved an admirable result. I know, after reading this, I will hug my kids a little tighter when we are reunited at the end of the day. I will, perhaps, be a little more grateful the next time I embrace my wife, and perhaps I will linger a little longer before letting her go.
Because we're awfully damn comfortable where I live, and after reading Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco, I'm a little more grateful for that.
