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REVIEW FOR SCOTTISH REVIEW OF BOOKS

COLIN WATERS

Shadow Behind The Sun

Remzije Sherifi with Robert Davidson

Looking at Thomas Faed’s The Last Of The Clan, Remzije Sherifi thinks, “I recognise the truth in the painting”. A refugee living in Glasgow, Sherifi and her family were forced in 1999 to flee their native Kosovo for their lives.

Her excellent biography clearly delineates the febrile politics and culture of her birthplace, no mean feat when you consider the various nationalities resident there have histories as tangled as they are bloody. Her own ethnic group, the Albanians, the largest within Kosovo, fell foul of Milosovic’s power-play. Sherifi grew up hearing her grandparents’ stories of Serbian attacks on Albanians but had only ever known good relations with her Serb neighbours.

“These things could happen, had happened, but surely not in our place and time.” But they did. Albanians are forced out of the police and education. Trucks roll into town handing out guns to Serbs. After the first NATO strike against Serbia, a shopkeeper tells her, “Nothing for you, Albanian. Clinton can feed you”. As if she didn’t have nothing woe, Sherifi was also fighting breast cancer, and at a time of medical shortages too.

A copy of Shadow Behind The Sun should be sent to every Daily Mail reader.