An Irish Setter Helps Aleksandar Hemon Get Through the Bosnian War “The last time we went up to the mountains was to mark the arrival of 1992—we didn’t know then that the week we spent together would amount to a farewell party to our common Sarajevo life. Apart from my sister and me and our friends—10 humans in total—there were also three dogs: Mek, Don, and our friend Guša’s Laki, an energetic dog of indeterminate breed (Guša called him a cocktail spaniel). In the restricted space of a smallish mountain cabin, the humans would trip over the dogs, while they’d often get into their canine arguments and would have to be pulled apart. One night, playing cards into the wee hours, Guša and I got into a chest-thumping argument, which made the dogs crazy—there was enough barking and screaming to blow the roof off, but I recall that moment with warmth, for all the intense intimacy of our shared previous life was in it. “A couple of weeks later, I departed for the United States, never to return to our mountain cabin.”

An Irish Setter Helps Aleksandar Hemon Get Through the Bosnian War

“The last time we went up to the mountains was to mark the arrival of 1992—we didn’t know then that the week we spent together would amount to a farewell party to our common Sarajevo life. Apart from my sister and me and our friends—10 humans in total—there were also three dogs: Mek, Don, and our friend Guša’s Laki, an energetic dog of indeterminate breed (Guša called him a cocktail spaniel). In the restricted space of a smallish mountain cabin, the humans would trip over the dogs, while they’d often get into their canine arguments and would have to be pulled apart. One night, playing cards into the wee hours, Guša and I got into a chest-thumping argument, which made the dogs crazy—there was enough barking and screaming to blow the roof off, but I recall that moment with warmth, for all the intense intimacy of our shared previous life was in it.

“A couple of weeks later, I departed for the United States, never to return to our mountain cabin.”

  1. victusinveritas reblogged this from fsgbooks and added:
    Slate/Granta by Aleksandar Hemon on…you guessed it,...Irish Setter, and how it helped
  2. fsgbooks posted this