Where the West Meets the East: The War-Torn Crossroads
The Balkans lay claim to a tumultuous history of war, conflict, and genocide due to the distinct identities of its inhabitants, its proximity between mainland Europe and the Near East, and the multiple political reversals that spell change.
In The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna, Gost is a fictional village that exists as the intersection between north-south and east-west routes that promote conflict as the past blends in with the present. Forna makes Gost’s location apparent in the line, “From the hillside you have a view of the road, one of the three that lead into town: the first comes direct from the north, the second and third from the south-east and the south-west respectively” (Forna 1). Although Gost’s occupiers may have changed, its location allows inhabitants like Duro and Fabjan to perpetuate the conflicts and allegiances that existed before the occupiers departed.…show more content… We were talking about it today…’ ‘It means visitor,’ I told Laura...‘Guest and visitor mean more or less the same thing. Although guest is somehow more special. Anyone can be a visitor. A stranger can be a visitor, somebody uninvited can be a visitor. A guest is somebody who is being treated in a certain way, the way you’d treat somebody you had asked to your home. Hopefully you’d treat a visitor that way too, but not necessarily’” (Forna 107). A lot of strangers have passed through Gost due to its location, and due to the history of Austro-Hungarian Empire and the mountainous landscape, the survival of travelers depended on the hospitality of mountain