Note: This story contains depictions of sexual violence. 

About six kilometres away from Sarajevo lies the little town of Vogošća, by the river of the same name and surrounded by rolling hills and sleepy suburbs. It is an utterly boring place. It had been a manufacturing hub for Swedish and German cars before the war, and was the most prosperous municipality in the former Yugoslavia. Our father loved the wilderness around Sarajevo, and every weekend we would head out to explore. One day, one of his old orthopedist colleagues told him about a great delicacy: the brain omelette from Kod Sonje, in Vogošća. We thought it sounded disgusting, but Tata had a thing for offal, and made us eat it, too. It was good for our brain health, he said. Somehow he got it into his head to buy the colleague’s family home, an ancient stone house perched up ...