"When I was 12 years old, in the 7th grade, apartheid ended in South Africa, East Germany became part of the west, Gorbachev was elected President of the Soviet Union, Iraq invaded Kuwait, beginning the first Iraq War... And I was a small pacifist boy, living in small town America with every comfort imaginable, child of a poet and a doctor; good Lutheran boy.

When Dejan was twelve years old, Yugoslavia started to separate, he started to live under economic sanctions. He didn't know why this was happening... He started to feel doors closing from the world that had felt open his entire life. And he was a small boy, living in Serbia with his family, child of a musician and a teacher; good Orthodox boy.

I tirelessly drew landscapes on scraps of paper, and learned at the feet of Daniel, a reclusive neighbor browned from years of sun and alcohol abuse, kind and gentle teacher. And Dejan was a little boy, sitting at the piano of his father, wondering why all of these bad things started to break their good l