One Day the Soldiers Came (29 page)

Christof did not return to the summer camp on Mount Igman; he stopped attending the Sunday program. In some neighborhood in Sarajevo he continued to work out his anger and his gentleness, figuring out which side of himself to follow. Bosnia seems poised for a hard time ahead, and young men with little money and a lot of rage could be the powder keg that sets off another war. As the most senior international official in Bosnia noted, the situation “can all too easily escalate into violence in a society where weapons are everywhere, alcohol plentiful, and the summer long and hot.” One likes to think that when the moment comes, Christof will remember the dog, Prijatelj, panting under the heavy sun on Mount Igman, that he will remember giving little Sofya a ride on his back, and how peacefully she slept with her arms around his neck. One hopes that he will join with other moderates and be a voice
for cooperation. These decisions come from the fabric of a life, after all, and there is much sewn into the fabric of his life, of all their lives.

The riches each child of war carries into adulthood are forged from moment to moment; who they will be is built up quietly as events unfold, as they try to fathom the kindness they receive and the betrayals they feel, as they calculate their survival and learn who their friends are.

The young experience it all in war: the highs of human kindness and the lows of human cruelty. They are at both ends, giving and receiving, their stories unfolding without fanfare. Records are rarely kept on their movements and little notice is taken of their deaths unless it serves a political end. There is no prescription, no single way to ensure that children survive the hardships of war or flourish as adults but to eliminate wars altogether. Granted, for some children, the challenges they face in times of crisis can actually benefit them, help them build “character,” as I saw time and again among the children I met. But there is no way to know that they would not have flourished in peace-time as well, tackling the day to day challenges of living with the same energy and courage as they tackled survival.

If a society restores itself as part of the peace process, rebuilding its institutions and moral norms, if it includes the young in the dialogue of rebuilding and renewal, the odds for war’s children improve. Sometimes greater intervention will be needed—psychiatric care, physical therapy, job training, development aid, peacekeeping forces. Each culture and each conflict are unique, as is each child. They want different things for the future.

Jeanine, a fifteen-year-old Burundian girl sleeping on the streets of a refugee camp, wanted peace for her own country and the opportunity to move home again, to rebuild. “I want to return home, when it is safe,” Jeanine said. “I want to go home and farm my land.”

She scoffed at the idea of moving to the United States or Canada as many others from the camp longed to do. She wanted to go home. She did not want to live the life of an exile nor the life of handouts that refugees are subject to, and she had had enough of parents. Her own were dead and the ones who took her in, her foster parents, she said, mistreated her. The war in Burundi, the war that took her parents from her, did not define her, though it impeded her dreams. It was a distant memory and the day-to-day things, the chores, the gossip, the games, the work of living took up her time and her energy.

Paul too scoffed at the idea of moving to the United States or Canada, though he did indicate that he would like to be somewhere safe where he could attend school.

“Can a child do this in Canada?” he asked. Perhaps his reluctance to resettle if he had the option was due more to a lack of perspective than a lack of desire. Regardless, his main desire for the moment was to get an education and to get out of the demobilization center where he lived with the other boys. He also said he would like a real soccer ball. The other boys at the center seconded his wish. Their dreams for the future ran parallel to their quotidian desires: soccer and joking and scribbling in books and drawing pictures and still more soccer.

Marko, the ringleader of his group of friends in the Serb enclave in Kosovo, wanted to return to Pristina, the capital city, where he had lived before the war. He was tired of the provincial life and longed for the hustle and excitement of the city, which was cut off from him by ethnic conflict. He did not want to leave Kosovo, as his parents often mentioned.

“Kosovo is our place,” he said. “We don’t want to leave. We want to remain here and to remain part of Serbia.” Asked if he wanted that even if it meant another war, he toned down some of his bravado. “No one wants war,” he said. Having seen his displays of kung fu against hypothetical Albanians, I won
dered, when he got older, which version of Marko would come to the foreground, the one who wanted peace or the one who was ready to “kick Albanian asses”? The question is hardly academic. War’s children will one day become the adults of their societies.

There is no way to know for certain what sort of adults they will become. Their actions probably suggest more about the moment in which they act; their inconsistencies the working arithmetic of building a life and of surviving. They showed me parts of themselves, the parts they wanted to show. I saw other parts of some of them when they let their guard down during a game or a long walk, as when Christof slipped our dog some water and patted him behind the ears when he thought no one was watching. Other parts of who they are I’ve guessed at, based on their drawings, on what other children and other adults told me, based on what I’ve learned about their history.

Christof’s cruelty and his kindness do not exclude each other, nor do they sum him up. Marko’s wish for peace and his inherent racism, though contradictory, hold the key to what he will one day be, though no one, least of all Marko, knows what that is yet. Paul’s capacity for violence and his generosity of spirit will vie with each other in his identity, his memories and his values often at odds.

In
Civilization and Its Discontents
, a book written when the possibility of a second war in Europe loomed large overhead, Sigmund Freud described the two primal drives in human beings:
Eros,
the instinct that drives us toward love, to seek out comfort and support (and pleasure) from others, and
Thanatos
, the instinct that drives of us toward death and destruction, the instinct that pushes us not to love our neighbor as ourselves, but to use our neighbor, exploit him, rape him, humiliate him, and burn his house to the ground. He implies that these two
instincts are the two “Heavenly Powers” battling for supremacy: good and evil, God and the Devil, Life and Death. He ends his brief essay on human civilization with a passage added after publication to the second edition, as his own anxieties about Hitler’s rise to power grew stronger.

“Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that…they would have no difficulty in exterminating each other to the last man,” he wrote. “And now it is to be expected that the other of the two Heavenly Powers, eternal
Eros,
will make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary [Death]. But who can foresee with what success and with what result?”

Looking for clues on what the future might hold for war’s children, I am reminded of an incident that occurred early in my travel. I had wandered to the school in the part of Lugufu camp where Justin, Keto, and Melanie lived. The school consisted of three low-slung buildings with thatched roofs and dirt floors. The buildings surrounded a large dirt field, and the children spilled out onto it the way children always spill out of classrooms when they are released: with a lot of shouting, shoving, and giggling. I kept my distance, not wanting to change anyone’s behavior by my presence. I watched as girls and boys ran off into the rows of houses and tents in the camp, holding hands and laughing. I saw little Melanie, wearing the same tattered red dress she wore when we met. She chased after two larger girls, all of them laughing, and disappeared into the camp.

A group stayed behind to play soccer, this time with a real ball that belonged to one of the teachers. The moment he took it out of his bag, the boys crowded around him. He shouted out commands, dividing them into teams. This game was more organized than most and would, it seemed, have goals and points. The teacher acted as referee. He set the ball down, and the
game began. The teacher strolled from side to side, calling out what sounded like reprimands or advice. He never stopped the play, even when one boy tripped Keto and Keto got up to shove him. They wrestled a moment, with everyone around watching, and the scuffle ended nearly as quickly as it started. Both boys returned to playing. They seemed to be on the same team.

I saw Justin standing on the sidelines, not playing. He saw me and wandered over to where I stood. Several boys followed. The teacher noticed me, but exhorted the boys to keep playing.

“You play football?” Justin asked, pointing at the field.

“Not today, I think.”

“Me not today too,” he said. His English was not half bad. The other boys around us whispered and poked each other, staring at me, wondering what Justin and I were saying.

“They never talk to a
mzungu
before,” he explained, smiling. We had spoken the day before and he was, therefore, an expert. “You first time to Africa?”

“Yes it is.”

“This is our school. We have—”

“Greetings!” the teacher trotted over, leaving the game to its own devices. The children kept playing as the referee quit the field and came up to me, interrupting Justin as if he weren’t there. “You are welcome.”

“Thank you.”

“This is our school,” he explained and offered to give me a tour. I accepted, and we walked together, Justin accompanying us and the other boys walking just behind.

“Your first time to Africa?” the teacher asked.

“Yes.”

“You are with an NGO? Or UNHCR?”

“I’m researching the lives of children.”

“The children have it very hard in this camp. I try to teach them, but there is no money. I do not get paid, you know?”

“I did not know that.”

“And we have no money for materials.”

“Where do you get your funding?”

“The school was built by the UNHCR, but we get little bits of money here and there from the community. It is not very much.”

“Justin was just telling me about the school.”

“Justin, yes,” the teacher said, acknowledging the boy for the first time. He patted him on the shoulder. He said something to the other boys, and they answered. Justin looked at his feet. The teacher and Justin exchanged words briefly, while the other boys watched. I did not speak the language, but I could tell when a teacher lectured a pupil. He had the downcast look, part misery, part defiance. I looked to my translator.

“He tells him that it is time for adults to speak and it is not right to listen,” the translator whispered. “He tells him to go play like the other boys.” With a quick pat, he sends Justin running off toward the game with the rest of the children.

“This boy is troubled. I try to make him forget,” the teacher said. “He does not play like the others and he thinks about the past very much.”

“Maybe this is his way of coping,” I suggested.

“No, I know this boy,” the teacher said, watching him join the game. “He will not be well if he does not play with the others.”

We watched the game together for a while, not saying much. Justin played reluctantly, hanging back, never rushing in to seize the ball. The others largely ignored him. As he played, he looked over at where we stood, his longing to return to our conversation obvious. He did not fit in, though his teacher was determined that he try to fit in.

I suggested Justin might not want to play soccer anymore.

“The children must be part of the community.” He said no more about it. Sigmund Freud also wrote in
Civilization and Its
Discontents
: “There is indeed another and a better path [to happiness]: that of becoming a member of the human community.” I cannot imagine this teacher had read Freud, but through his own observation he came to the same conclusion as the founder of psychoanalysis. In order to survive, one must be part of something. We are social creatures; we cannot do it alone. Not he, not I, not little Justin.

Within a few minutes, Justin had the ball and maneuvered it down field. One of the other boys knocked it from him. He chased after it and kicked at the boy’s legs. The boy stopped playing, threw a punch that connected with Justin’s shoulder. Justin smacked him back. They scuffled a moment, and the teacher beside me simply watched. The second fight of the game was brief and dusty and when it ended, the game resumed. Justin, visibly angry, kept playing. Within minutes he was part of the game again, smiling and shouting with the rest of them, having what looked like a good time, the scuffle forgotten, though his eyes flashed with anger whenever he passed near the boy who punched him. But the others seemed, for the moment, not to care that he was an outsider, a Tutsi among the Hutu, an orphan among the parented. They played together because that was the task at hand. Though Freud’s “inclination toward aggression” emerged for a moment, it was a form of love, the
Eros
of play, that won the day. The children played and kept the drive toward death at bay, at least for a few more hours. Gunfire often ripped the night air in the refugee camp,
Thanatos
giving the children no quarter, even as they slept.

War’s children are not a lumpen mass, but a collection of little hopes and needs and impulses and desires lived out from day to day. They live their lives amid the backdrop of terrible violence and deprivation, amid constantly shifting loyalties and labels and dangers, but also amid the backdrop of going to
school, of who-can-juggle-the-soccer-ball-better, of sewing torn pants, of funny pratfalls, and of family and friends. Of play. The children are a collection of all the things that happen to them, and the kinds of people they become is being decided every second, in the struggle of love versus death, in the battling of the primal urges and the relationships that form around them.