Pretty Birds (28 page)

Aleksandra interrupted by holding a
Vogue
up to the light of Mrs. Zaric's cooking fire. “There are beautiful models in here who look like frogs because they cover themselves with sludge from seaweed,” she announced.

Irena turned to her with an air of authority. “It draws out the toxins,” she explained.

“
Vogue
models are so toxic? Look,” she said, nudging Irena.

It was a recruitment ad for the Royal Navy. There were small, full-color murals of thatched beach huts in some unspecified West Indian port, sapphire blue waves lapping the beaches of Rio, and the gull wings of the Opera House against the glitter of Sydney's skyline.

“Look at this,” Alexandra said again, tracing over the words with the burning end of her cigarette. “ ‘The sport, the social life, the comradeship, the travel.' I think I've figured out why the West won't help us,” she said. “War is messy. The beaches close. How do we get help when all we can advertise is ‘The snipers. The cold. Getting shot in a place you don't know or care about.' Why should we expect anyone in the world to come and save us?”

The small gray franks began to sputter and pop in the pan.

28.

TEDIC RELIEVED THE
drudgery of Irena's daily duties by asking her to assist the crew from an Arabic-language television service that had been slipped into Sarajevo to interview the Home Minister. Some delicacy was involved. Arab groups had been generous in their support for Bosnia's besieged Muslims. Bosnians were grateful. And yet many Arabs sensed something chilly in their expressions of appreciation—the cold, merely correct formality of a printed thank-you card.

Bosnian officials eloquently told the world that they were European and ecumenical. Some Arabs heard a sniff of disdain in these boasts of secularism.

“As if,” the Home Minister had explained to Tedic, “we do not see ourselves as Muslims. As if Bosnians do not see our plight as being at one with the beleaguered Palestinians.”

“And
you
have been selected to reassure Arab viewers otherwise?” Tedic inquired with comically arched brows.

The Home Minister was married to a woman who had been educated in convent schools. Their religious life was nominal, sundry, and ceremonial. They observed Ramadan by attending parties to break the fast, and offered similar devotions on Yom Kippur. When their children were growing up, the Home Minister and his wife decorated Easter eggs and opened presents on Christmas morning. They did not want their children to feel as if Islam had cheated them of some seasonal reward. But the Home Minister tended to venture into actual houses of worship only for funerals and weddings. He shifted from foot to foot during the most solemn intonations, rushing through the text of a prayer as if it were the fine print on a car-rental contract.

“I hope to God, Kemal, they don't ask you when you were last in a mosque,” said Tedic.

“I can answer that,” replied the Home Minister smoothly. “Eid ul-Adha.”

“Nineteen seventy-five?”

“The year escapes me. Yoko Ono had just broken up the Beatles. I was bereft. But I will assure our guests from the Kingdom of Saud that I look forward to making my pilgrimage someday.”

“To the four-star restaurants of Rome,” said Tedic.

Yet the Home Minister was a faithful man. He believed in Sarajevo.

         

TEDIC TOLD IRENA
that she should accompany the television crew to their interview in the Home Minister's basement office in the Presidency Building.

“Smile. Laugh at their sly witticisms and marvel at the brilliance of their Muhammadan parables. Lug their equipment, flatter them, make them at home,” he told her. “Then, listen carefully to what they say and repeat it to me, word for word.”

“And if they don't say a thing?”

“They will,” Tedic asserted. “
They will.
To a young Muslim girl they are trying to impress.”

“These people are trying to help us,” said Irena. “Why don't you trust them?”

“I'll need a better reason than that,” Tedic told her. “In the country—some of the villages—they sneak in guns and fighters to save the place for Islam. Which means they drive out everyone else. Officially, we don't notice. Moral reservations are an expensive indulgence. As long as Uncle Sam stays away, we need the ayatollahs. That's why the Home Minister is participating in such a farce. But we watch the bastards,” said Tedic. “Just as closely as they watch us.”

The delegation from the television syndicate consisted of four men, all dangling U.N. media credentials stamped the day before in Zagreb. The Home Ministry had given them rooms at a former Holiday Inn along the front lines in which certain diplomats, soldiers, U.N. officials, and Bosnian functionaries were staying, as well as most of the international press covering the siege. The hotel was no safer than the rest of the city, and only marginally more comfortable. The water pipes were dry. The rooms were dark and powerless. Some groups brought in generators. But because of the lack of gas they were useful only for the sporadic operation of computers and satellite television and telephones.

Freebooters in the employ of the hotel brought in black-market food and old Slovenian wines, which they sold at the hotel at magnified prices. The Americans, British, and Canadians bought and enjoyed the wines, which the French and Italians pronounced “Barely drinkable” before draining their glasses.

The hotel's mountain-side rooms had once been the most prestigious. But now direct views onto snow-clad peaks were dangerous, as so many shattered windows attested. Tedic had dispatched Jackie, rosy Jackie, to be his liaison for the Arab delegation, and to explain why they had to be housed in such dark, grim, common quarters. Irena did not see any of the Arabs in the hotel's dining area—they may have felt uncomfortable around such public drinking—and so walked up seven flights to find their fleet of rooms. She was pleased not to feel winded; the coil in her legs was still tight and strong.

A man named Charif answered the door of Room 706. He wore a white shirt, buttoned to the neck, and smooth black pants. He had a black beard and small, dark, merry eyes.

“Hi, Ingrid, yes. Tedic said you would be making contact. We have some other guests here, too.”

The visitors had opened the door between two adjoining rooms and had arrayed small plastic drums of raisins and nuts on one of the beds. There were easily twenty people between the two rooms, standing and talking. But it was the first time in months that Irena had been in a room with more than two people that wasn't suffused with smoke. Some of the men wore black or white turbans, which Irena had not seen outside of textbooks or movies, or variations in Western women's fashion magazines. Many also wore expensive-looking woolen winter coats over black vests and high-collared white shirts.

Jackie stood near the curtained windows, caught in conversation, and met Irena's eye with a wink. Jackie had a soft black silk head scarf with gold embroidery clasped at her coltish throat. Irena flushed with embarrassment and thrust a hand up to her own head.

“I'm sorry,” she told Charif. “No one warned me.”

“No problem, Ingrid,” he said. “We know most women here want to look European.”

He led her toward the nuts and raisins, and offered her tea and coffee from brass pots they had set over a small camp stove in another corner of the room.

“Are you a Muslim, Ingrid?” he asked in English as he handed her a small glass of dark coffee.

“Yes.”

“Aha,” said Charif, as if he had just removed the wrapping of an unexpected present. “You say ‘Yes,' not ‘Of course.' ”

Irena hesitated but smiled. “I say ‘Yes' because we can be a great many things here in Sarajevo.”

“I understand,” said Charif. “I am Egyptian. Those who say ‘Yes, I am a Muslim' leave open the chance of other choices. But those of us who know the word of God and His Prophet say ‘Of course.' Once we have heard His word, there is no other choice to make.”

Charif delivered his speech with utter cheerfulness. If he admitted of no other spiritual choice, his graciousness seemed to invite Irena to respond with a question, or perhaps even a contrary opinion. Instead, she said, “I see.”

“You will see more,” said Charif. “You have come at just the right moment. The Prince is visiting. We are going to hear from the Prince.”

“I was not told about any prince,” Irena said carefully. “Only about you and your crew.”

“The Prince is amazing,” Charif said in a quieter voice. “The Prince carries the message of the Prophet. He wanted no official notice of his visit. He did not want to inconvenience anyone. He is that modest. A prince, truly, a man of great wealth. A prominent Saudi family that built the great modern structures of Mecca. But the Prince lives among refugees and outcasts. His presence will be an immense gift to all he meets here. You do not know who I mean?”

Irena shook her head.

“Take my hand here, Ingrid,” Charif said. “Let's see if we can get across this busy room before he begins.”

Charif took Irena's hand and she clasped her glass of coffee to her chest as he led her to the far side of the room. The men in turbans and high-collared shirts had turned toward a tall man with a long beard, who was wearing an immaculate long white gown underneath a soiled green American army-surplus jacket. At last, Irena thought to herself, the U.S. Army comes to Sarajevo. Charif lifted Irena's free hand as he held both of his palms up humbly to the Prince. It took a moment for the Prince to see this.

“May I present a new friend,” said Charif with his head bowed. Irena reflexively turned her face down toward the floor in time to hear the Prince respond simply, “If it pleases you.”

“This is Ingrid, my Prince. Ingrid, who lives here. Ingrid, who is helping us.”

Irena lifted her head in time to see the Prince raise a hand to his heart. His fingers were long and lean, his nails so polished and glassy that his hands reminded Irena of long branches on a tree, glistening with ice.

Irena opened her mouth. But she had nothing—she found it hard to know what—to say. She picked up Jackie in the corner of her eye, and noticed that she had tugged her head scarf more tightly over the crown of her head as the Prince faced the room to speak.

         

HE DID NOT
need to clear his throat, tap a glass, clap his hands, or shout. The din of the room just stopped, as if someone had clicked off a switch. When the quiet was complete, the Prince received it with a small smile.

“Allah Akhbar, God is great,” he said quietly. And then he took a long, jaguar stride toward the windows. With wiry arms he took hold of the curtains and yanked them open. Somebody's coffee cup was knocked to the floor. Somebody's pad of paper sailed a few inches across the ledge. Twenty cries of surprise sprang up around the room. Two men sank onto the bed, eyes brimming. The malevolent mountains, cloaked by snow and swarming with unseen snipers, looked grim and gray in the top of the window frame. The Prince turned his back to them and faced the room.

“God will protect us,” he announced softly. “There is no God but Allah. In the name of God the most merciful, I bring you greetings.”

“Allah Akhbar! Allah Akhbar!” Shouts and cries moved over the room.

         

THE PRINCE BEGAN
in a low, slow tone.

“You here in Sarajevo live on the edge of the West,” he told them. “You live within the hot breath of the beast. In fact”—and here the Prince leveled one of his lean, elegant fingers at the blank screen of the mute television—“the beast has revealed himself to you. Now that the lack of electricity has blinded him, your own eyes can open. You can see how this beast was filling your lives with vile and useless images. Sex without love. Flesh without humanity. Bloodshed without consequence. Prosperity without spirituality. Nike, Marlboro, Rolex, Coca-Cola, Heineken, Air Jordan. You know those names, don't you?”

The men around the room gave amused and knowing murmurs of assent.

“They mock us with things that adorn or invade our bodies. But these things do nothing to nourish our souls. What you have seen should not make you envious. The beast is rich but empty. Violent but cowardly. He is surrounded by things, but lonely inside without our real God.”

Heads nodded. People murmured low, involuntary sounds of enchantment as the Prince continued in a voice as soft as spun wool.

“We can see now, as we approach the end of the twentieth century, how much of history has been manipulated by Jews. I don't say this as an anti-Semite. Whenever the West hears some truth it would rather conceal, they dismiss it as anti-Semitic. We Muslims cannot be anti-Semitic. It would be against ourselves.
We are Semites.
When it comes to Semites, we Muslims are far more numerous than Jews.

“The people of the East are Muslims. The people of the West are the Crusaders. They may call themselves Christians, Jews, British, French, Italians, or Americans. These days, even Russians. But those are different brand names for the same lethal cigarette. They are the Crusaders. They are the infidels. They defile our faith. They rape our sisters, mothers, and daughters. God says, ‘Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion.' ”

The Prince stopped for a moment to peer above the heads of the men and women in the room. “World War I began here. Just steps away, right? Were it possible for me to walk around outside, like a simple visitor, I would see the plaque on that spot where it began. Someday we must chisel in the truth. With that war, which the Serbs began, the whole Islamic world fell under the Crusaders' banner. The British, French, and Italian governments divided the world. Britain got Palestine, our Holy Land. Who divided Palestine, our lands and families? The British Lord Arthur Balfour, servant of the Jews Weizmann and Rothschild. How many hundreds of thousands of Muslims have since been killed, imprisoned, or maimed?”

“Millions,” a voice called out.

“This war in Bosnia is a continuation of this genocide,” said the Prince. “This battle is part of a chain of the long, fierce, and ugly Crusader war.”

Irena finally noticed his eyes. They were milky brown, warm, and light. The Prince pitched his voice even lower, but the silence of the room seemed to deepen as people stood on their toes and drew in their breath to hear him.

“In the twentieth century, whenever a nation tries to protect itself against craven Jews, the Jews cry genocide. The vast armies of the Crusaders march to save Jews. Jews like Weizmann and Einstein invent the most terrible weapons and use them against those who do not accept the god of the Crusaders.

“But when Muslims are killed those vast armies stay home. They play games. This war here is practically within the Crusaders' breast. It is on television all over America. Our Muslim brothers are being killed, our women raped, our children massacred—all under the watch of the United Nations. And the Blue Helmets sit idly by. And should we be so surprised?”