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Technically, I finished listening to The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival in May of last year; I didn’t review it then, however, and so this month I listened to it again.
It blew me away the second time as well.
I’ve probably read more than my share of war memoirs, mostly because WWII fascinates me; Amra Sabic-El-Rayess’ memoir, however, was an entirely different experience for me, because she came to the United States the year I graduated from high school. Our high school experiences overlapped, yet I had no clue what kind of suffering was going on in her world, and it was my own fault. Sarajevo, after all, was in the news; this I know because I avidly followed the 1994 Olympics, where both Katarina Witt and Torvill and Dean skated their free programs as tributes to the city and the people that had hosted them ten years previously. At that point in my life, however, I had little to no interest in politics and little to no awareness of conflicts taking place so far away from my own life. (I was more aware of major happenings in the US–I remember the basic story behind Waco and David Kouresh in 1993, for example–but still.) While I was competing in band festivals and hearing Ace of Bass on the radio, Amra lived in daily fear of bombings. At an age where my test scores consumed my thoughts, she fought the weakness of malnutrition every time she walked to school. And as I completed high school and headed off to college on a full-tuition scholarship, so did she–but without the family, resources and ready support system that met me at BYU. Her courage astounds me.
This memoir is a testament to the ugliness of hatred and what it can lead to; it is also a testament to the power of love and how it protects us. It is an eminently worthwhile read–a powerful read–an IMPORTANT read. It is also a poignant, beautiful, and a compelling one.
Don’t miss it.