TheDaak review

Book: Piece of War: Narratives of Resilience and Hope by Meha Dixit Sage, 2020, ISBN:978-93-5388-506-9, Rs. 450

by Jagriti Pandit

“War is a snake that bites us with our own teeth. Its poison flowed through all the rivers of our soul. We no longer ventured outside during the day, and at night we no longer dreamed. Dreams are the eyes of life and we were blind.”¹

This book is a marvelous work on pieces of war’ which humans carry from the war-torn areas. The author has covered several countries like India, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh et cetera for her study and she has tried to bring out the voices of stakeholders of war like soldiers, doctors apart from focusing on the people who are suffering. It is the result of an extensive ethnographic study yielding heart-wrenching case studies of humans from the most tragic conflict zones. It’s a book that is politically balanced and nuanced since it involves all the facets involved within the conflict zone. It tries to bring out nothing but the ‘truth’, ‘experiences’ and ‘pain’. Living in war zones is like being in exile while at the same time waiting for life to happen. Waiting and exile are intertwined closely.  They involve human experiences of devastation, separation, anticipation and expectations.

Waiting and war can be connected not only in terms of bringing peace or waiting for the war to get over, but there is waiting for the war to happen. ‘Waiting for war’ is also inbuilt into human nature. Since time immemorial, we have prepared for war. Some kings and queens waged war, invaders and rulers who destroyed cities and villages and converted them into ruins in ancient and medieval times. At the same time, modern times have witnessed deadly world wars and ongoing regional conflicts. Waiting for war is a period where there may be efforts to prevent war through diplomacy, building up conflicts and tensions and the groups or states preparing for the battlefield with mobilization and army at each side. When waiting for war eventually leads to war, it converts into waiting during wartime or waiting in the warzone. This includes both civilians and the army waiting for their respective victory and trauma to end simultaneously. An extended period of waiting for the war to end; involving anxiety, depression and anticipation is felt by both soldiers and civilians. Waiting is done by the army for orders, reinforcements, supplies, attack or as they long for home, sleep or death in peace while civilians wait for their sons and fathers to return from war, for food and other basic necessities.

Waiting and exile connect us to the idea of perseverance and hope. Those suffering while waiting in war and exile have to have these virtues of patience, strong determination to live, courage, hope, persistence and perseverance in a difficult situation  as they are deemed to  face dangerous, uncertain circumstances. As the author states, “finding hope amid turmoil may well be akin to spotting a fresh leaf on a barren tree or sudden rain in blazing sun”(p251). 

War connects to waiting and exile simultaneously, but it also highlights a chunk of the population already in exile even before the war or conflict emerged in their area. They  are in a state of  exile forever, whether it’s war or no war. The book highlights the issue of differently abled people who are already in exile. They are undesired, unloved and uncared for. As the author mentions in her book, interviewing one of the people working in a center for special children when asked about the impact of war and unrest on the children one of the respondent said that  “Mostly the behaviour of children changes during the unrest”(p206) and that “some boys become more aggressive after they return from protests.”(p207) This pushes them further, for they are perceived to and in some cases also do become more hostile and violent and indulge in self-harm. The families then send them to centers that deal with special children and people. 

Similarly, women also face exile in  these situations. Women abducted, raped or deployed as soldiers or servants by the insurgents and army, face exile. Society and family disapprove of them, and they wait in vain for their acceptance, and in that, they accept exile. Patriarchal norms and orthodox gender roles are reinforced and strengthened in conflict zones. The author writes that even in conflict zones, men have a right to roam around and venture onto streets while women are confined at homes and ruled by men inside and outside the household. Here, the girls and women are waiting for their voices to be heard and waiting to walk on the streets freely and feel safe and secure. For men, war could also mean freedom in chaos with no authority, but for women, the scenario remains the same; in fact, it becomes brutal. The author mentions from April Carter’s writing that ‘women’s primary roles in war are as mothers, wives and girlfriends waiting for their soldiers to return and caring for the wounded’.²

In my understanding, the significant reflecting point of the book is that it highlights people’s wait to move towards this abnormal situation. This is implied in one of Dixit’s interviews with one of the respondents from Lebanon, who says that “she would prefer to go back to the wartime”, and not only her but many respondents from the conflict zones more or less spoke the same thing. For them, being in the war, living in war, and witnessing war is normal. Especially those growing up with war and war times see ‘normalcy’ in war and violence, since they have not seen anything other than war, chaos, displacement and suffering. When war becomes normal, the peaceful and certain times and lives even when they bring stability, that stability becomes abnormal. Something those constantly at war probably have desired and hoped but could not have. This abnormality for them then starts signifying the alienating waiting time until war comes again. In one sense, and terribly devastating sense they wait for war. War by becoming regular, also becomes familiar. The respondents in the book wait for the stable but abnormal, with war looming sometime in the future, bringing more confusion, corruption and even chaos.The war victims wait for the ‘abnormal’, which to them is peace and stability. Isn’t it sad and equally traumatic to even think that war has become so usual for some that it has alienated them from the idea of peace? According to most of them, moving from everyday normal wartime to abnormal peace led to instability in their lives; the memory of war and the lost ones would continuously haunt them, and hope became questionable.War was the routine for them, and when peace arrived, it brought memories of hostilities that even outlived the humans. Thus, the book truly depicts, through the author’s first-hand experience, the people’s hope and resilience to wait for their exile to end for the abnormal to happen, to wait for their wounds to heal in the process.

Works Cited

Dixit, Meha. 2020. Piece of War: Narratives of Resilience and Hope. Sage Publication.

Notes:

1. Mia Couto, Sleepwalking Land, Trans. David Brookshaw, Translation Year-2006/Portuguese 1992, as cited in Dixit, 2020.
2. April Carter, ‘Should Women Be Soldiers or Pacifists’, in the Women and War Reader, New York University Press, 1998, as cited in Dixit, 2020.

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