Where the Roses Grow

Nikolina Ivankovic

I C Publishing 

Beschreibung

For many people, war is an abstract concept. It happens on TV, on social media, in bits and fragments that are totally disconnected from the lives that many of us here in North America live. For me, war has been an altogether too real chapter of my life. I wrote this book to take readers on a journey with me, to take them through the chaos and the devastation and the rare moments of beauty that encapsulated my escape from the war in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Picture this: a young woman in her twenties, cowering under rickety stairs, surrounded by smelly shoes and cobwebs, a TV blaring an emergency broadcast somewhere in the house, praying that the shelling and explosions cease as the night starts to fall. She closes her eyes and pictures a different life for herself, a quiet life: cuddled up to someone on a couch, in front of a fireplace, a remote in her hand, watching a TV where she can change the channel at any time. Within this book, readers will see how the advent of a war can sneak up on you with little to no warning. Starting from my peaceful life in Sarajevo, you will follow my trek across four countries, predominantly on foot, occasionally hitchhiking and always relying on the kindness of strangers to only ever stay but a few steps ahead of the frontlines. You will watch my family splinter apart and struggle to come back together, fracturing around me as our nations shifted their borders. But you will also see moments of kindness within the strife. Moments of peace that I've chosen to outline with recipes, since food and cooking represented instances of joy for us. Take note of the recipes, created by my mother, and transcribed from her handwriting via my own translation. There are sixteen recipes in total, each one made possible by the times when we had a home during our plight. While we were on the run, there wasn't time for cooking-there was only a need to survive. But when we had shelter, when we were together, then you could feel the love that arose from the ability to make a meal together.

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