Then They Started Shooting

Book excerpt: “Remarkable insight and sensitivity . . . deepen[s] our understanding of human resilience and how people rebuild their lives from tragic circumstances.” —KENNETH ROTH, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch “The stories in this book are eloquently and poignantly recounted, and offer a vital, complex portrait of what the long road to peace looks like.” —DINAW MENGESTU, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air “Profound . . . Rarely do we get the opportunity to delve into the thoughts of the young caught up in such a tragedy—and meet them not just once in their lives but again years later.” —TIM JUDAH, Europe correspondent for Bloomberg World View, Balkans correspondent for The Economist, and author of The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia Imagine you are nine years old. Your best friend’s father is arrested, half your classmates disappear from school, and someone burns down the house across the road. Imagine you are ten years old and have to cross a snow-covered mountain range at night in order to escape the soldiers who are trying to kill you. How would you deal with these memories five, ten, or twenty years later once you are an adult? Jones, a relief worker and child psychiatrist, interviewed over forty Serb and Muslim children who came of age during the Bosnian War and now returns, twenty years after the war began, to discover the adults they have become. A must-read for anyone interested in human rights, children’s issues, and the psychological fallout from war, this engaging book addresses the continuing debate about PTSD, the roots of ethnic identity and nationalism, the sources of global conflict, the best paths toward peacemaking and reconciliation, and the resilience of the human spirit. Lynne Jones was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her work in child psychiatry in conflict-affected areas of Central Europe and has established and directed mental health programs in areas of conflict and natural disaster throughout Latin America, the Balkans, East and West Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Her field diaries have been published in O, The Oprah Magazine and London Review of Books, and her audio diaries have been broadcast on the BBC World Service.