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autobiography covers quite a bit of Balkans history. Bazhe witnessed
the collapse of Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia and eventually fled
the country.
Bazhe's life
was troubled from the start. His biological mother was a 15-year-old
who had been raped by a Yugoslav government official. Her family
refused to accept that she was raped, so infant Bazhe was placed
in an orphanage. Another government official and his wife adopted
him. Bazhe's adoptive parents seemed concerned mostly by social
status. His father was both physically and sexually abusive, while
his mother - so concerned about appearances - was unwittingly
emotionally abusive.
“Damages”
shows how people who grow up in oppressed societies are dehumanized.
In the old Yugoslavia, and after its fall, women were brutalized.
Homosexuality was not tolerated. Bazhe discovered his homosexuality
at a fairly young age. His first love, Rambo, betrayed him and
ultimately caused him to be kicked out of the university/military
academy where he studied. The fall of the Soviet Union and the
rise of religious fanaticism and fundamentalism led to slaughters
in places like the former Yugoslavia. Extreme paranoia and distress
existed between members of different ethnic groups. Bazhe, in
his nostalgia for his childhood, writes that Americans are cold
- that in the United States people do not enjoy life. But considering
how the “warm-hearted” Slavs slaughtered each other,
and considering the major abuses in his family, perhaps the idea
of what is warm and cold needs to be revisited.
A major theme
of the book, particularly in the early parts, is dishonesty in
Yugoslav society created by past oppression, including that of
Tito. People seemed not to be able to tell each other unpleasant
things, even though hiding the truth and lying merely wasted everyone's
time. Nurse Rodna, though she certainly acted entirely in her
own self-interest, basically cut to the core of all of the deceptions,
and exposed the full truth to those in Bazhe's life. She and Lena
(a friend of Bazhe's mother) appeared to be the most honest Slavs
around. “Damages” gives an excellent look into the
horrific world of the Balkans, and at the end readers are more
than happy to escape with Bazhe to America. Bazhe's Web site is
at www.bazhe.com.
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