Luan Starova

My Father's Books by Luan Starova is the first book in my exploration of Southern Europe this year. Starova was born in Albania but fled with his family to Macedonia when he was three years old. The book covers the lives of his parents, the tale beginning around the 1920s when his father travels to Constantinople to work with Ataturk and to study Sharia law. Starova's father was a polyglot translator with a great love of books. The family frequently were refugees, forced to move, but somehow his books always survived the move with them. Perhaps one of the most telling and amazing sections in the book told of his mother's habit of buying or trading for flags from every army she had a chance to. Even when they had very little food, she would still trade for a flag. Why? Because when one army invaded, she would fly their nation's flag from the top of the house. Then when that army was being routed, she would fly the flag belonging to the next army's nation. This protected her house and family from being raided.

I own an album called "Balkans without Borders" that was a fundraiser for Doctors without Borders. Reading this book brings new meaning to that title. Starova's family dealt with so many changing borders and changing rulers that it felt as though his family had become generalists. They were from the Balkans, not a specific country in the Balkans. They were Muslim. They were also Christian. Or the better term would be to say they were a holy family, having copies of the Koran, the Bible and the Torah all under their roof. They quietly followed their own way, while outwardly adapting to whatever government's pressures were around them.

As for the writing of the book, its flaw is also its charm. It is a bunch of stand-alone essays, almost prose poems, that are organized with some sort of logic, but it certainly isn't chronological logic. Some of the pieces are stunningly beautiful, whereas some of the pieces feel like repeats of other pieces in the book. I'm torn between advising one to read it all at once to get the subtle picture of what the region was like, or to read it over a period of years to savor more the poetry of it, and the intense connections between the physical books with the personality of his father.

So, on to our discussion of human rights. Education was the right most exercised in the book. Even through the political unrest of the region, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Stalin, the fall of Stalin etc., his father lives a very intellectual life and for much of the time is employed by the Macedonian Institute of National History. The children are educated, and go off to various universities once they are grown. As for violations, I'll pick Article 28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized. Meaning in this case, a human being has a right to rule by a stable government. Easier said than done.

And as an aside, Starova's comments on the Janissaries - the military of the Ottoman Empire made up of Christian boys taken in battle and forced to convert to Islam - is helping me make sense out of what is happening in present day Syria, North Africa etc. The areas where most of the refugees flooding Europe are coming from were parts of the old Ottoman Empire, which didn't fall that long ago. Not really. I don't know much, but lightbulbs are starting to go on.… (mais)

Con la llegada del comunismo a las republicas balcánicas de Yugoslavia, se procedió a crear un clase obrera. Para ello se ordenó a los campesinos que fueran a las ciudades para crear infraestructuras, fabricas, etc... y formar dicha clase obrera. Pero lod campesinos, se llevaron sus cabras a las ciudades. El hambre causaba estragos, y las cabras con su leche, conseguia paliarle en parte. Pero como el pais no avanzaba hacia la industrialización, los cargos políticos, dedujeron que se debia a un enemigo de clase...las cabras. Enemigo de clase que debia de ser exterminado.
El autor narra esta historia a través del encuentro de una familia de emigrantes, con el jefe de los cabreros, y las autoridades políticas. A mi entender se hace un poco pesadillo… (mais)