A recurring theme in my ASTU class is the importance of the perspective of others. Considering the choices of readings and discussion topics in this course, there is a clear emphasis on learning about how people view events. Personally, I am a big fan of discovering the viewpoints of the individual, because they tell a whole different story than the ones history books tell us. This is why I am enjoying reading about the narratives of others in “Safe Area Gozarde”, a graphic narrative on the Bosnian War, and discussing the infamous “War on Terror”, a campaign that affects me deeply as an Arab, with my classmates.
“Safe Area Gozarde” is a graphic narrative or a journalistic comic book, written by Joe Sacco that describes the Bosnian War and the author’s experience in Gozarde. Sacco delivers to us his conversations he had with Bosniak civilians trapped in the area. These talks show us the views, trauma, stories, and tragedies of multiple interviewees about the Bosnian War that history books cannot compare to. I believe that this type of individual focused storytelling about major events truly give the essence, emotion, and reality to what the world can be like. It is easy to read an excerpt from a history book on World War 2 and to learn about the death tolls, but to plunge into the dark and traumatic experiences of a single person can really hit you hard. This is the exact reason why I found Joe Sacco’s work to be an eye opener to how cruel the world can be through his delivery of another human’s life—a life no different than mine, but one altered by a war.
The topic of the “War on Terror” was one brought up today, a conversation that most people usually would not want to have casually. However, I do not regret having this discussion, because my classmates along with myself were able to speak out on how events like the September 11th terrorist attacks and Charlie Hebdo attacks meant to us as both as human beings and as citizens of different nations. It was interesting to hear about how because we were a younger generation that could only vaguely remember what happened on September 11th attacks, we found more recent terrorist attacks as more impactful to us. It is definitely resourceful to learn more about the way people view the current “War on Terror”, because I was only able to learn about one way of seeing it since I lived in the Middle East all my life—the place where the war seemed to be concentrated in.
To conclude, I cannot deliver the horrors the Bosnian War and the War on Terror has had justice, but I can say that my ASTU class has allowed me to explore these two topics on a different plane that really does hold the idea of university being a melting pot of various opinions true.