Ghosts by Daylight

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Ghosts by Daylight
Janine Di Giovanni
Memoir, 2011

When everyone at one time or another dreamed of becoming an archaeologist, thanks to Indiana Jones movies, I, dreamed of becoming a war reporter though international news is far and wide then. I was in high school when the Bosnia and Herzegovina happened and it opened my eyes to the bitter consequences of war.

While I read memoirs about lives while the wars were on-going, this is the first time that I got hold of a love story between two war reporters. Their love story started in Sarajevo. What I liked about the memoir is that how the author makes her function as war reporter seem so easy and natural to her, and the settling down and creating a home as difficult as it can get for her. It all lies in her honesty.

 I also liked how the author and her spouse wanted to have a child who will bring them to a state of normalcy. Both struggled to put on their new roles. The author survived the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because she is resilient while her husband did not stop drinking, a normal behavior among war reporters to numb their senses and be able to sleep through despite the deaths and inhuman treatments they saw through the day and they get no hang-over the next day as the adrenaline rushes again the next day as more news on war unfolds. Both struggled to parent their son and they did it while being separated.

 In the end, both of them enjoyed their parenthood and both of them are still alive and the husband got sober. All this struggle for normalcy despite news of suicide of their colleagues for "having seen a lot" and new of deaths. This memoir is indeed about love. Love for the unusual job she got, love for her ex-husband Bruno who "got her," love for their son Luca, Love for the unfolding of a "normal life."

There is a poetic quality in how she tells her story without imposing her own understanding but presenting it in a way that she convinces me that this is her love letter to Bruno. She proved me right that it is only in true love that one becomes courageous. I did some online searches and found the life work of Janine Di Giovanni.

She has a website and published a book in 2016, Dispatches from Syria.

 I read a novel called The Cellist of Sarajevo which recreated the atrocities of Bosnia-Herzegovina war. I recalled, I loved that novel.

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