The Killing Days [Hardcover]

Kemal Pervanic comes from a small village called Kevljani, in the Prijedor district of north-western Bosnia. He speaks of the community he lived among. 'It's true we had different religious beliefs, different customs, but we had may more things in common that kept us together than differences that would keep us apart. "Ancient hatreds", so often served up to the public in the West as "the real reason" for this "primitive Balkan slaughter" never existed.'

1n 1992 twenty-four-year-old Kemal, his brother, and most of the rest of his neighbours surrendered to the Chetnik forces attacking their village. He and his brother then endured seven months in the notorious Omarska and the less-known Manjaca camps.

He is very clear that he survived in order to bear witness of the crimes carried out in the camps. 'There's point when every conflict comes to an end ... and somebody always survives. Every conflict has its survivors who live to tell their story, and I will survive this one.'

His book stands in the tradition of Primo Levi's, who wrote of the Holocaust survivors: 'only they, by their unique experience, are immersed in the truth.'

Kemal describes the unspeakable atrocities performed on a daily basis. He tells of the terror of living each day without knowing whether it will be your last, of keeping your head down in case you catch a guard's eye, of seeing men called out who never return, of hearing their tortured screams, and the shots that kill them.

He tells the story of brave Azur Jakupovic, who with a group of mates, armed himself to fight against the Chetnik advance, but was discovered and taken to Omarska. Kemal tells how 'Azur was tortured day after day and night after night. Each time the Chetniks made sure that some life remained in him for the following day.' The torturers stuck rusty wires into a leg wound. 'His screams reverberated throughout the camp. He sounded like a trapped, wounded animal that could not die.' He was eventually beaten to death, but Kemal tells us on his last day: 'What the Chetniks carried out in a blanket was not Azur any more. He was alive - but he had one eye. That eye was still shining with defiance against those who were seeking to annihilate us simply for who we were. He still found enough strength to spit at them.'

Kemal tells us how outside visitors came to the camp, to enjoy themselves selecting a target from the helpless prisoners. On 17 June after some of these sadists arrived: 'terrible screams penetrated the walls of our room ... the screams were mixed with laughter: obviously somebody was being tortured.' They later discovered that a young boy from Kemal's village had been forced to bite off another prisoner's testicles.

Kemal and his brother, unlike some others, managed to keep their humanity alive. They looked after others as best as they could, sharing what little food, cigarettes, and floorspace they had in the overcrowded rooms of the mining complex which was Omarska. And they never betrayed anybody - despite the fear, the beatings, and the interrogations under unbearable pressure. Even when he could have given names so that no-one else could have found out, Kemal refused - but he refuses to despise those who cracked under the pressure.

Above all, he names the names of the war criminals - his former neighbours, schoolmates, local café owners, etc etc. He names them, he tells us where they were born, and what their occupations were. They were the frightened, backward, brutal elements unleashed by Serbian nationalism and the western governments' complicity with it. Like Arkan's laughably named 'Tigers', their ferocity increased in proportion with the helplessness of their victims. The arms embargo imposed by the western governments gave them the helpless to feed on.

In bearing witness Kemal confounds all those who will him and us to forget what happened - to Azur Jakupovic 'an ordinary bloke' and the hundreds of thousands of others who suffered along with him during the Bosnian war. Kemal is 'immersed in the truth' and his unflinching testimony cuts through the lies and justifications of all those who want to cover up what happened.

Those who carried out the torture and slaughter want their crimes to be passed over - like the apartheid murderers who appealed to the South African 'Peace and Reconciliation Commission' (which colluded in the lies and cover-up by magnanimously forgiving the apartheid mass murderers, and telling its victims they could only have a pittance in compensation).

The leaders of the imperialist nations want victims of Bosnian war crimes to forget. They imposed the arms embargo on Bosnia, crippling their defence against the heavily armed Bosnian Serb and Serb armies - in the name of profit.

There are perhaps, millions of ordinary people, helpless in the face of unspeakable horrors it seems impossible to prevent, who feel they can only survive by turning their faces away.

But in telling his story, Kemal, like the relatives of those who died at Srebrenica, and hundreds of thousands of 'ordinary' Bosnians are saying to the world: 'This happened. These people did it. You cannot cover it up. How can you help us find justice?'

To read this book is painful and difficult, but it MUST be read.

Set in Omarska and Manjaca, a distant countryside area of north-western Bosnia, where the Serb-run concentration camps were set up for mainly Muslims and some Croats, is a true story told by Kemal himself, who was taken away from his home and detained in the camp in early 1992.

Without pretensions and carefully avoiding unconvincing, over-hyped theme, Kemal is smoothly and perceptively constructing his appalling experience of a civilian detainee raising many so far disputed yet unexplained issues: 'Does this world go towards imminent disaster ending in its mass fatality; or will we be able and sufficiently strong to save us from ourselves and to save the mankind from complete disorder inflicted by humans themselves.'

The book causes deep sadness and simpathy at times, while at others it is immensely amusing.

As for characterisation, the author is extremely successful in forging the different identities of the detainees and camp guards, as well as introducing some delightful cameo characters such as the brilliant and outstanding figure of his brother Kasim, also a detainee.

In spite of over-exploited theme of the book, one literally cannot put it down.

I recommend this book as a magnificent achievement from this new young writer who is equally at ease writing formally structured English and fluent native Bosnian dialect.

Rating: 10/5