People of the Book

This chapter goes back in time, to the life of a 15-year-old Jewish girl from a poor family living in Sarajevo just before Nazi occupation of Bosnia. Lola lives with her mother who is a laundress and her father who is a financial minister, as well as her younger sister Dora. Lola helps her mother with laundry and frequently sneaks out at night to join a group of young Jews in conversation about politics, culture, and religion. Lola is intrigued by the leader of the group, who is a “pioneer” in Palestine, where he says he is starting a new Jewish state. The political situation in Sarajevo soon becomes more volatile and the Nazis move closer—the leader leaves, and a new leader comes in. Lola stops attending as many meetings. During this period, Lola does laundry for a kind woman named Stela, who is Albanian Muslim and married to Serif, the director of the National Museum.

Suddenly, and without much warning, Germans raid the city and take Bosnia and the surrounding countries. Lola’s father is taken to a labor camp; he eventually has his hamstrings slashed by Nazis and is dumped in a deep pit with other Jewish men. Lola isn’t home during a secondary raid to round up mothers and daughters, and she manages to track down her mother, aunt, and baby sister Dora in the nearby synagogue. Lola manages to escape, but has to leave her family behind—instead she travels to join resistance fighters with Ina, the baby sister of Isak, a member of Lola’s Jewish youth group. The situation is desperate: “Lola winced [...] [she] had seen death in the faces of those she loved” (61).

Lola and Ina find Isak, who is co-leading an odred, or small group of Partisankas, resistance fighters. They nearly starve, with poor resources and few weapons. Eventually, after one year of small acts of resistance against German forces, they are disbanded and sent home. Isak protests: “None of us has a home anymore. Most of our families have been murdered. We, all of us, are outlaws” (73). On their own, Lola walks with Isak and Ina toward free territory, but Ina is sick with a bad cough and fever, and Isak’s foot is so riddled with frostbite he can’t walk anymore. Isak takes Ina and drowns himself in a frozen river, and Lola returns to Sarajevo alone.

In Sarajevo, Lola asks for help at her father’s former workplace and is taken to the home of Stela Kamal and Serif, the National Museum director. She cares for their baby Habib under an assumed name, and she has four months of peace. One day, Serif comes home and calls the women into his study. He reveals he has stolen the precious Haggadah from a Nazi officer named General Faber, who came to loot and destroy it. In order to keep his family safe, Serif decides to send Lola to a family in Italy that will care for her. Serif, Lola, Stela, and Habib make a trip to a family home in the mountains to store the Haggadah in a small family library: “They found it a narrow place on a high shelf, pressed between volumes of Islamic law. The last place anyone would think of looking” (89). The butterfly wing, which nestled into the Haggadah’s pages, was the property of a budding entomologist who lived on site. Finally, Lola leaves for Italy, terrified to leave the Kamal family, who saved her life.