The Bone Woman

Back in January 2008, I finished reading another book. This time it was El lenguaje de los huesos (The Bone Woman) by Clea Koff. It has approximately 280 pages, and its cover features a few bones and is bone-colored, appropriately enough. The book was written by an American forensic anthropologist whose website is http://www.thebonewoman.com/—which is the original title of the book. It seems to me that they translated it as they saw fit; at least to me, it feels like they changed the title and/or didn’t respect the original, though I can't say for sure. It is about a book written by this forensic anthropologist who completed overseas missions for her country. She was very young when she went to Rwanda, which is where the book begins.

The book, as categorized by the publisher, deals with real events. Specifically, it tells us about her work for international tribunals. It is not a technical book or one about a specific niche topic, as it might seem—I say this in case anyone thinks it is strictly aimed at anthropologists. In fact, throughout the text, comments about archaeologists, pathologists, etc., appear.

It serves to give you an idea of what a genocide is, told after the fact. It seeks to find the truth of what happened, or at least evidence or traces left behind on the primary victims of a genocide—that is, the dead. This may result in some grim or graphic descriptions, but they are no less interesting for it. The book is or was a bestseller. The author shares that while studying at the university, she read a book about the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team called Witnesses from the Tomb, and that book had a profound influence on her, leading her down the path she later followed.

Furthermore, the book features rich language that allows readers to learn a lot of terminology and, moreover, some of the customs of the places she visited. This includes not only the locations themselves, but also the people who went there and worked alongside her or had some form of relationship with her. Since these were international missions, there was a mix of people from all over the world.

Throughout the 1990s, she was in several places discovering and studying mass graves as a consequence of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (Kibuye and Kigali), and later addressing the aftermath of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo).

She describes the feelings and expressions of many of the people she had the opportunity to observe in her work, from her own teammates to timely visitors, victims' relatives, journalists, etc. She also discusses how the way of working varied from Africa to Europe, as well as the organizational aspects and other details.

In the middle of the book, there are a few pages with photos of her working with her team.

It caught my attention, for example, how in Rwanda they worked more as a cohesive team, whereas toward the end in Kosovo, the organization began to fragment and become more individualistic. Also, looking at which forces were present in Rwanda versus the Balkans, it felt to me as though the Balkans were given higher priority. I suppose that, naturally, a conflict on the doorstep of the First World is not viewed the same as one in developing countries; in any case, that is just a conjecture of mine.

Later, the author mentions that upon her return to the U.S., she conducted some studies on history—or at least implies it—which helps explain how she describes certain parts of her book regarding the internal dynamics of the conflict itself, as well as historical, social, and political matters. It is worth remembering that her work centers on the study of mass graves and multiple graves containing hundreds of victims of different regimes or groups. However, her last mission was no longer about graves containing numerous bodies, but rather individual graves where they sought evidence that the deceased were victims of murder rather than killed in combat, as some of the criminals maintained. At the end of the book, there is a list of some of these criminals—some convicted and others awaiting trial—though that list is now outdated since the book was published in 2004. A notable feature is that the crimes had been committed not long before the author took part in studying and analyzing them.

In the following paragraph, I believe I found a small typo: where it says 1977, it should almost certainly say 1997.

"It was something I had occasion to experience repeatedly during my second mission to Bosnia in 1977. On sunny days (...)." (p. 132)

Below, in my opinion, is an example of a journalist who doesn't know how to ask questions and only bothers those being interviewed. Although both parties (the journalist and the anthropologists) were doing their jobs, one (the journalist) didn't know how to do it properly, causing a degree of annoyance among the rest.

"Next, Bill came over with a Reuters journalist, Eli Kaban, whose questions were almost all personal, including how we coped with death and the families of the deceased. We all answered that we were scientists doing our jobs, that we tried to make our work useful, and that we left emotions for another time. Bill pointed out that we would get nowhere if we dwelt on the tragedy while working, as we would just become 'blubbering idiots.'" (p. 49)

I will conclude by transcribing a few paragraphs that I chose for the blog post out of the many interesting ones in the book.

"I knew that in Srebrenica, thousands were missing, and up to then we had only recovered about two hundred. Just as in Rwanda, I sensed them in other plots, at the end of other dirt tracks. A whole community of corpses surrounded us, though all male. I felt rage toward people who consider murder an acceptable policy. I felt the last vestiges of my innocence vanish as I discovered more and more murdered people with their hands tied behind their backs. And I felt two distinct duties: one to the corpses—to identify them and allow them to incriminate their killers—and another to the relatives—to help return the remains to them." (p. 145)

"Clint asked me to guide the group, and one of the visitors, an American holding a clipboard, asked me: 'Aren't those a pair of jeans?' I answered: 'Yes, you're right.' And he said to me: 'But there's nothing inside those clothes, is there?' It couldn't have been a joke, as the corpse he was pointing to had plenty of flesh left. It was hard not to sound sarcastic, and I had to restrain myself from replying: 'What do you think? That everyone inside had been resurrected?' What I actually answered was: 'Yes, sir, there is a corpse inside those clothes. All the clothes you see have a corpse inside.' I couldn't believe he didn't see the corpse. But as I watched him tilt his head, trying to find the best angle to look at it, I realized he wasn't seeing what I was seeing. It wasn't a matter of angles. He was simply incapable of conceiving it. I had to respect that." (pp. 185–186)

The conclusion with which the book closes is important to read because it lays bare—or rather, clearly shows us—the common points between both genocides, or what the "corpses tell us," which turns out to be "the very same story," revealing the underlying reasons that led to such a disaster.