arts & entertainment

Co-authors: Kenan
Trebincevic and West

Bloomfield native

Susan Shapiro at a

reading for The Bosnia

List.

Spine Trouble

A Jewish/Muslim story of healing.

Susan Shapiro

Special to the Jewish News

S

how me where pain is," said the
physical therapist with a foreign
accent that September.
Where wasn't it? I was distraught
because my beloved, cantankerous doc-
tor father had a near-fatal heart attack.
Stressed, I'd injured my back so badly
I could barely walk or get on the plane
to visit him in West Bloomfield. My

'Konen Trebineaviee courageous story of

survival and remembrance is pMetefelly told..

THE BOSNIA LIST

Kenan TrebinEevie

AND SUSAN SHAPIRO

A MEMOIR OF WAR. EXILE. AND RETURN

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Memoir chronicles Kenan Trebincevic's
escape from brutal ethnic cleansing and
his journey to redemption.

husband, Charlie, was elsewhere, on a
month-long Singapore business trip,
when my editor rejected my next two
projects. A decade of success felt over.
I prayed Kenan, the spine specialist
at the nearby rehab center, could help.
With a baby face, Chinos and soccer jer-
sey, he looked like a teenager. In sweats
and oversized top, I felt ancient.
"I have a disc tear," I told him.
"Which discs? I need MRI printout,"
Kenan said. "Would not guess. Will not
make worse."
His mangled tenses and missing con-
nectives were oddly charming. Was he
Middle-Eastern?
"My dad is a doctor. He read my scan.
He knows." I dialed my cell, relieved my
father picked up at home.
That summer, after his cardiac arrest,
Dad had morphed from physician to
patient with a cane at his own Midwest
hospital. (Think: a Hebrew Dr. House.)
When I'd called, he trashed my last auto-
biographical book from bed. So his last
words to me could have been: "that crap
you waste your life on."
"Daddy, I forgot my MRI," I now
regressed. "The physical therapist won't
touch me without it." No matter how old
or estranged we were, I still wanted him
to save me.
"Good, someone with a brain," barked
Dad. I handed Kenan the phone, and
they talked for 10 minutes. None of
my other medicine men consulted my
father. It seemed sweetly old-fashioned.
When I was 13, he'd scare off my dates

answering the door in his boxer shorts,
smoking a 6-inch cigar. His heart was
recovered enough to be protective.
Afterward, when Kenan asked how I'd
hurt myself, I shrugged. "I was swim-
ming laps, speed-walking, kickboxing
every day."
"Kickboxing! You are 50. College
teacher, not athlete." He read my chart.
"Twisting horrible for back," he scolded.
"Especially at your age."
"Why don't I just kill myself now?" I
joked.
"No, do not?' His tone was alarmed.
"Don't worry, we figure out?' Stretching
me on a low table, he pulled up my left
leg. I gasped at the sharp ache.
"How old are you?" I interrogated him
for distraction. "Where are you from?
"Left leg worse than right." He
scrawled notes. "I'm 30. Bosnian?'
"Exiled during the war? Have you vis-
ited?"
"You always so nosy?"
"Twenty years as a journalist," I
answered.
"Went last month with brother and
dad."
"Are you Muslim?" I asked. He nod-
ded.
My body tensed. I had many close
relatives in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
After 9-11, living near the World Trade
Center, I secretly feared I had become
Islamophobic. I decided to avoid talking
religion or politics.
"Do bridges. Like this." As he lifted
my stomach, I spied a tattoo under his

shirt. Didn't Islam ban body ink, like
traditional Jews in my clan?
As he left to assist another patient, I
pulled a stack of student essays from my
purse to grade.
"What I Did on My Summer
Vacation?" he asked when he returned.
"Actually my first assignment is: Write
three pages on your most humiliating
secret," I said.
"You Americans," he scoffed. "Why
would anyone reveal that?"
"It's healing?' I left out my
psychoanalyst's theory that my intensity
brought out everybody's twisted
darkness.
"Don't worry, I never spill:' Kenan
said. "I keep to my chest?'
Why was he so closed off? "Didn't
your mother go back to Bosnia?" I kept
pushing.
Finally he answered. "She said, 'I'd
rather be dead than go back there: She
get wish. Died of cancer five years ago. I
blame mass murderers who started war
and destroyed her life?'
He sounded traumatized by his
past. "Write about going back to your
homeland without her?'
"I do not write. I fix backs:' he
snapped. "Turn for side lifts?' As I
struggled, he moved my leg up and
down. "You're very weak."
"I'm not!" I insisted. "I just couldn't
exercise for four months?'
"Come twice weekly, you improve. But
you must listen, trust me. That will be
hard for you."
"You think I'm fixable?"
Kenan nodded. "But there is lot of
damage here?'
I was thinking the same of him.

A Writer Is Born
That night he emailed to check on
my back. For inspiration, I forwarded
my student Danielle's published
essay about how, on Yom Kippur, she
ate cheeseburgers with her mother,
a Holocaust survivor, in a twisted
commemoration of her father's suicide
on the holy day, years earlier.
"Touchy," Kenan responded. I gathered
he meant "touching?'
A week later, I lay flat, in agony, as
Kenan hooked me up to electrodes. He
surprised me by handing me his three
typed pages. He'd recounted returning
to Bosnia that August, two decades after

Spine Trouble on page 61

July 31 • 2014

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