Response #2 Dragan (page 45-154)

When Dragan first sees Emina he hopes she doesn’t notice him and won’t try to talk to him. I don’t think he’s being rude when he thinks this. He just doesn’t want to be reminded of the way things used to be, when he could stop and get caught up with an old friend in the street without being shot at. Dragan “can perhaps learn to bear the destruction of buildings, but the destruction of the living is too much for him”. So he doesn’t want to talk to Emina because he doesn’t want to see how the war has changed her. However, Emina spots him and asks about his wife, and they begin to talk against Dragan’s will at first. When the topic shifts to the war, Dragan puts a wall up and that is why he is unnecessarily harsh with Emina when he says “No one is coming. Don’t you know that?” Emina answers “I know no one is coming. I just don’t want to believe it”. This gets them talking again and Dragan seems more comfortable with the conversation. I think this is because he has found someone who he feels he can open up to. When Dragan decides to cross the street and is shot at, he runs back to Emina, “glad for the first time in a long while to be alive”. I believe this is a turning point for Dragan. The fact that he is happy to be alive surprises him and I think he realizes how long he has been living without really caring if he lived or died. This spurs him to ask Emina “do you think it’s worse to be wounded or killed?” When Emina answers wounded because you have a chance to live, Dragan disagrees and argues with her that you would just die later anyway. Dragan doesn’t know why he keeps saying these horrible things, but he can’t stop himself. I think he is looking for answers, and searching for hope. He is arguing, but he wants Emina to prove him wrong by telling him about all the people who have survived, but she can’t. He wants her to say that there is a chance to live so that he can find hope. She doesn’t speak for a while, and then tells him about the cellist. After another pause Dragan says “Why did the Sarajevan cross the road? To get to the other side.” It is a bad joke, but he doesn’t care. “He hasn’t told a joke in months. It feels good, even if the joke is awful.” As Dragan and Emina talk I think he somehow begins to find that little bit of hope that he has been waiting for. Little by little as he talks to her he finds that he seems to care more. About living and about the well being of others. When Emina decides to cross Dragan stays because only minutes ago he was shot at while trying to cross. I think Dragan would have normally just gone with Emina, but with this new outlook that he has, he cares more about living. He also feels scared for the first time in a long period of time in which I think he felt nothing but attempted indifference and numbness. When he hugs her, Emina feels “more substantial” because he has realized that even though the war has changed her, the same person is still in there, which reminds him that hope and fight are still within him.