Here on the East Coast most residents survived an earthquake and hurricane in the space of five to six days in late August. I felt the effects of both (shaky office floors, swirling, whistling wind): all in all not nearly as much damage as could have happened.

As we now bear down on the 10-year anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, you are probably already tired of these three stories: hurricane, earthquake, and the anniversary of unforgettable horror. But bear with me while I take you to another time and place in order to try and make sense of these things.

Steven Galloway, a novelist and professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia, wrote a gripping novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo, about a cellist during the siege of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 1992-1996. Approximately 10,000 were killed during the siege of Sarajevo, the longest in modern warfare, and another 56,000 wounded in a city of half a million.

My daughter’s book discussion group of symphony colleagues studied it awhile back and I borrowed it from her shelves on a recent visit. The plot line, briefly, is after a mortar attack kills 22 residents of Sarajevo, who were simply standing in line to buy bread, a cellist (based on real life cellist Vedran Smailovi, who eventually escaped the war torn country) lifted the spirits and humanity of residents by risking his life to play every day at 4 p.m. for 22 days on the scar of the mortar.

Two of my college friends who married spent a number of years in the former Yugoslavia in the 70s/early 80s before returning to the U.S. to live and work. They lived for awhile in both Zagreb and Sarajevo. I remember so well Sara’s words to me when I asked her about her friends there enduring so much fighting and bloodshed. She said something along the lines of “I can’t think about it too much or it immobilizes me,” which is often the necessary response of war veterans, victims of disaster, or human-caused disaster and abuse. It is how we as humans cope.

Galloway probes these questions in a way that makes a thoughtful reader pause and seize the wonder and beauty of normal daily life. His four fictional characters scurry through the besieged streets as “the men on the hills” send mortars and sniper bullets to pick off the residents as they try to get water or buy bread. I particularly liked one passage where Kenan, who has hazarded his life all day in an attempt to fetch and carry back precious water for his family, is carried by means of the cellist’s music to a future healed city. He sees the dirty tuxedo and scuffed shoes of the cellist, his matted hair and dark circles, but as the musician plays, the music “seeps” into Kenan. “He watches as the cellist’s hair smoothes itself out, a dirty tuxedo becomes clean, shoes polished bright as mirrors. The building behind the cellist repairs itself, the scars of bullets and shrapnel are covered, windows reassemble … the city heals itself around him” (p. 186). He imagines returning with the water to his family where he is greeted by a sweeping hug and romantic kiss from his wife. In this scenario his son’s response to the embrace is a typical teenage “gross,” and his wife, suddenly shy again, pulls away and they all walk into the city to a small restaurant he’s “been going to since he was a boy; they’ll eat until their stomachs can hold no more … and laugh with the waiter when he spills coffee on the table.” In short, they enjoy the sweet little exchanges and humdrum of daily life: life as we experience it when not besieged with a 9/11 attack, war, or natural disaster, and too seldom stop to savor for the beauty in the ordinary.

I can’t read a book like this without being reminded that hundreds of thousands throughout the world are living right now in situations similar to that of Kenan and the cellist. Often we can’t really bear to think of the starving in Sudan, the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, recovering earthquake victims in Haiti still living in tents, tsunami survivors in Japan, or we become immobilized. And we are all a hair’s breadth away from the possibility of war or another terror attack (that’s why they call it terrorism).

Kenan, who is chagrined about his own cowardice, ultimately is compelled to go back into the terrorized streets to fetch the extra water jugs he had to abandon for his neighbor at one point: a woman who never has a kind word to say to him. He doesn’t know what made her the way she is, but he now realizes that something killed her: “She has been a ghost for a long time. And to be a ghost while you’re still alive is the worst thing he can imagine.” Kenan realizes that he, too, might as well be a walking dead man or “ghost” unless he continues to make the effort to live, love and be loved. Powerful stuff ripe for discussion. “There are dead among the living,” Galloway writes, “and they will be here long after this madness ends, if it ever ends” (p. 192).

After 9/11, the best thing that happened is that so many of us felt closer, felt bonded through adversity, and reached out to our neighbors—even across racial and religious lines—the same thing that happens after natural disasters. To be sure, there are charlatans who get rich, either politically or economically, through war and other disasters (which Galloway recognizes in his novel as he talks about the residents of Sarajevo having to buy rice that was sent as “donated relief” and meant to be free). But that doesn’t mean we should quit being kind, quit donating. We can’t die to our neighbors.

For a free booklet, Finding Strength to Survive a Crisis or Tragedy, write to Another Way, Box 22, Harrisonburg, VA 22803 or email melodied@mennomedia.org.

Another Way is a column from Third Way Media by Melodie Davis. She is the author of nine books, most recently Whatever Happened to Dinner and has written Another Way since 1987. She is also the producer and co-host of Shaping Families radio program (shapingfamilies.com) airing nationally.