CHAPTER EIGHT

THE ART OF WAR

Refugee children’s faces mask horrors needing to be expressed

YUGOSLAVIA, SEPTEMBER 1992 

I followed Catherine’s lead and hoped that I could keep up with her bound-less energy, because truly, the woman never stopped. Without pausing to un-pack, we left the hotel and drove to a refugee camp near Zagreb, where we met the two female Croatian doctors, Dina and Sasha, who would serve as our interpreters. I asked about their medical practice, and they explained that the war had disrupted everything, and they now could earn more money translating for us than they could as physicians. I was astounded! Both of them specialized in obstetrics and gynecology, which I knew would be helpful for the sensitive interviews we needed to conduct.

That first camp, called Resnik, held more than 3,500 refugees in unheated wooden barracks, which had been built to house around five hundred men for summer military training. Dina and Sasha asked questions and learned that these refugees, nearly all women and children, had recently fled from around Banja Luka in northwest Bosnia after Serbian troops shelled their homes and invaded their towns. Weeping and gesturing wildly, they explained that most of the men and older boys had been either captured or killed. Many of those who survived had stayed to fight with a minimally armed Bosnian resistance militia. Even as I write these words, that “most of the men and older boys had been either captured or killed,” I ponder what that means and how accurately that raw statement described the circumstances in this wretched place. Then, as I once again feel rage in my body, I must remember where I found seeds of hope.

Across the barren grounds outside the barracks, I saw children sitting on the bare ground in silence, alone, in pairs, and in trios, some of them back-to-back, but with no apparent awareness of each other; this was a scene I had never witnessed on a school playground. I took shallow breaths in the cold autumn air, as apprehension suddenly gripped me, and I felt ashamed in the face of Catherine’s buoyant spirit. When she suggested that we enter a building to meet the refugee women inside, I said I wanted to stay in the yard with the children. I was not yet ready to face traumatized women. I immediately felt drawn to the children, confident in my strong maternal instincts.

Left alone, I sat down on the ground beside the building, near a string of clotheslines and close to a dozen listless children, who were studying the ground as if it held secrets about why they were here. I watched a boy, who looked to be about eight years old, pick up a clothespin that had fallen to the ground. Clutching it in his left hand, he started slowly tracing in the dirt, first straight lines and then geometric shapes. That gave me an idea. I unzipped my backpack and pulled out a packet of paper and a jumbo box of crayons that I had brought. From a kneeling position, I drew straight lines on a piece of paper with a red crayon.

The boy with the clothespin took a few steps toward me, and soon other children followed, curious to see what I was doing. Some kids approached me from behind and looked over my back. A few others tentatively sat down beside me. I gave each child a piece of paper and two crayons, and they automatically formed a circle in front of me and watched as I drew a simple square house with a triangular roof, then a tree with branches that stretched up and out. That was about the limit of my artistic skills.

Then, a girl about eight years old picked up green and brown crayons and drew a green house. She looked at it for a minute and then added a skinny brown dog with short legs. This seemed to prompt a few others to bend over their papers and begin drawing cars, cows, and stick people on the uneven surface of the ground. At first, they worked slowly, uncertainly, as if doing this only to please me, but it warmed my heart to see the effort they made.

(I had a long history of working with children and art. In the 1970s, most public schools throughout California eliminated their arts programs, because they suffered serious revenue losses due to property tax cuts. Realizing the importance of art, I co-founded a non-profit art organization in Pasadena, which is now called the Armory Center for the Arts. We hired professional artists to teach classes at a program that served thousands of school children, who came on buses from throughout Los Angeles County. While not an artist myself, I knew that art could provide children with an alternative means of expression and enhance their self-esteem.)

Sitting on the bare ground, I picked up a sheet of paper, folded it into an airplane, and sent it gliding over the clotheslines. Art was supposed to be fun, but none of these children laughed. I could hardly imagine what they had experienced. At first they seemed to be locked up, lacking expression and energy. Trauma can do that. So can exhaustion and fear. Their initial lack of response made me feel a bit helpless.

Then a girl with stringy blond pigtails reached for my red crayon and used it to draw flames above the house she had made. I sat back and watched, stunned. Soon a taller boy wearing torn overalls, one who had not yet participated at all, picked up a black crayon and sketched a very good portrait of a bearded man holding a big gun. Trying not to show the shock that I felt, I handed out more paper and emptied the entire box of crayons. The image of a gun seemed to have motivated several children to add details to their drawings, images that I found to be appalling, scenes of violence that these children no doubt had witnessed.

Some of the pictures demonstrated real talent, and they also provided primitive but graphic imagery about the “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnia. My first instinct was to keep a few drawings for our report, but I realized that everything had been taken from these children. They had lost their homes, all their possessions, and even members of their families. In truth, they had lost their childhoods. So instead, I took photographs of their drawings. Then I had them write their names under their pictures, so they would have something colorful to keep in this dull and dismal place. After that, I folded another paper airplane, and soon they all were eager to learn how to make and fly planes.

I ran out of typing paper at that first camp, but I gained a lot of confidence and learned to trust my life lessons. My mother had taught more through example than words, but some of her advice came to me that day under the clotheslines: “Use what you have, dear. Do what you can.” It occurred to me that I had followed both pieces of advice that day rather successfully. I felt my heart expanding as the children warmed to my presence.