Response #3 Kenan (page 155-216)

Kenan goes to the brewery because it is the only place in the city to get clean water. He risks his life and walks a very long way once every 4 days or so to get the water for his family, and also for his unappreciative, uncooperative widowed neighbor Mrs. Ristovski. While Kenan is at the brewery it is shelled and he witnesses many people die and be injured, while narrowly avoiding death himself. Kenan classifies the citizens at the brewery into 3 categories: those who ran when the shell struck, those who desperately try to save the people who can be saved, and those who stand with their mouths gaping and do nothing. Kenan is part of the third group, but he wishes he were part of the second. He has to leave by a route that is not being shelled so he takes a half destroyed bridge that he can only cross with his water first, and then go back for Mrs. Ristovski’s because she was so stubborn and would not give him bottles with handles. I began thinking as soon as Kenan asks Mrs. Ristovski for her bottles, why does he get her water? She in not ever grateful and she is very rude to him. So why does he do her this favour? Is it because he feels bad for her, or is afraid of what she will do or what she will blame on him if he doesn’t? Maybe Kenan does it purely out of the goodness of his heart and doesn’t care that she is ungrateful. Or perhaps he can’t find it in him to tell her ‘no’. Kenan begins to think about this as he crosses the bridge. Why is she so darn stubborn? There is no reason that she could not find some bottles with handles, he has even offered her his extras. Why does he even bother getting her water? She is the most unappreciative person in the world. He made her a promise to help her at the beginning of the war but so what? She has never helped him, never been kind, welcoming, or even thankful to him. Kenan is tired. “He’s tired of getting water, and he’s tired from the world he lives in. He’s tired of carrying water for a woman who has never had a kind word to say to him, who acts as if she’s doing him a favour, whose bottles don’t have handles and who refuses to switch. If she likes the bottles so much, she should carry them to the brewery, she should watch as the street fills with blood and then washes itself clean... while the dead are loaded into a van.” Kenan leaves Mrs. Ristovski’s bottles in a small hole on the other side of the bridge and continues home without them.

On his way home Kenan hears the cellist play and he “watches as his city heals itself around him”. He watches the people stand up taller and watches happiness appear in their features, but then the music stops and it is all gone. Kenan decides to go back and get Mrs. Ristovski’s water. I think when the cellist’s music stops Kenan realizes that even the people who are still alive are the “dead among the living” and he wonders what killed Mrs. Ristovski, because she is a ghost. Was it her husband dying so many years ago, or something else? Kenan doesn’t want to be a ghost. He wants to live and help rebuild his beloved city. I think he knows he will rebuild it by being like the second group at the brewery and helping others. I think this is why he goes back to get the water. He has realized that the only way people will make it through this war is by helping each other, regardless of whether the favour is returned, or even appreciated.