Snow is one of the songs Kate and I performed earlier this month. We weren't planning to perform the song, but one of the audience members requested it. I wrote this song (literally dreamt this song with a full CSI episode, which NEVER happens) when I was in the middle of a research paper for a psychology class on Personality Disorders. I had completely enmeshed myself in anything related to The Bosnian War that stretched from 1992 and 1995. I'd read articles and books and watched In the Land of Blood and Honey, No Man's Land, Warchild and other tragically stunning movies I've lost the names of.
I couldn't get past the rape camps and what life would be like for a survivor. I kept thinking about the children that must have been conceived during those atrocities. I couldn't get past the idea of families being torn apart and categorized according to whether or not they could be useful or were a threat.
My dream starred a little boy with large, haunted brown eyes. He'd seen what happened to men and women in this war and he wanted to save sweet, innocent little girls like his sister from being dragged away by soldiers. Unfortunately, he saved them by killing them.
And I know the dream was all about my inner turmoil around whether I could survive the conditions these girls and women lived under. It's been 25 years. Earlier this year, this came out: Bosnian War rape survivors speak of their suffering 25 years on. Please read their words.
As a reminder, here's a snippet of what wikipedia has to say: Following Bosnia and Herzegovina's declaration of independence (which gained international recognition), the Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadžić, [Slobodan Praljak,] and supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People's Army(JNA), mobilized their forces inside Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to secure ethnic Serb territory, then war soon spread across the country, accompanied by ethnic cleansing.