Rose of Sarajevo (20 page)

Hana was waiting on the neighbor’s balcony when Nimeta and Fiko got home.

“I tried to put her to bed, but she wouldn’t listen,” Azra said. “She’s been scribbling in a notebook all night.”

“She’s following Zlata’s lead,” Nimeta said. “You know the girl I told you about, the one who’s keeping a journal? Hana’s taken to writing every night as well.”

“Has Raif gone?” Azra asked.

“He’s leaving early in the morning,” Nimeta said. “May God watch over him and shield Mother from the kind of pain he’s suffered.”

They said good night to Azra and went home.

A few minutes later, Nimeta tapped on Fiko’s door. He’d gone straight to his room.

“Have you gone to bed?” she asked.

“I’m just about to.”

She pushed open the door a crack, just enough to see her son putting something under his pillow. She pretended not to have seen. He looked mortified.

“I know how upsetting it must have been to say good-bye to your uncle,” Nimeta said. “And I know how much you’ll miss him. But he’s doing the right thing. Your father will keep an eye on him. This meaningless war will come to an end one day, and they’ll come home together.”

Fiko got out of bed and hugged his mother tight.

“Good night, Son,” she said, closing the door behind her.

When she got to her own room, she found Hana in her bed, the sheet pulled up to her chin. “What are you doing in my bed?” she asked.

“Can I sleep with you tonight?”

“Okay,” Nimeta said, “but I’m not letting Bozo in my room.”

She crawled into bed, gave Hana a hug, and fell into a deep but troubled sleep.

When she woke up, it was nearly nine o’clock, and Hana was still sound asleep. She must have forgotten to set the alarm; she was sure it hadn’t rung. She jumped out of bed, ran to the kitchen, and sawed a few slices off a loaf of stale bread. Then she took the tea kettle and the bread down to the entrance to the apartment building, where her neighbors had long since finished their morning cooking. The wood-burning stove they’d set up there was one of many dotting the streets of the city. The trees that had once provided shade were now used as fuel.

She went back inside without waiting for the kettle to come to a boil. She’d gone through hell to get some milk for Hana, but the fridge wasn’t working, and it had curdled. She made a face at the smell, and dumped the milk down the drain. She splashed some water on her face from a bottle that her mother had lugged home from the brewery and walked down the hall to wake Fiko.

“The alarm didn’t go off this morning,” she shouted through the door. “You got an extra half hour of sleep.” He probably needed it as much as she had, she thought to herself. First his father, now his uncl
e . . .
He was losing the men in his family one by one, just at the age when he needed them most. Would she be able to act as both mother and father to him?

She went into the kitchen and set the table. They had some olives and some gooey butter to go with their bread. She shook her head at the sight of the pitiful breakfast spread out on the table. Was this all they had to show for all the years they’d slaved away, she and Burhan doing everything they could to make sure their kids enjoyed a better life than they had? Nutritious meals, good schools, new clothing—she tried to swallow the lump in her throat.

There was still no sign of her son.

“Fiko! Don’t make me come and get you! You know what I’ll do,” she shouted down the hall.

There was nothing like tickling to get her son out of bed. He had laughed so hard when he was little that Raziyanım had come to the rescue, afraid he’d choke to death. That’s what it had been like living with her mother: she couldn’t even tickle her own son.

She grabbed a pinch of mint, put some tea in a small cup, and ran down to the stove. She’d brew the brownish liquid that passed for tea these days right in the kettle, making a hot concoction that tasted and smelled of absolutely nothing. It was the lack of coffee that got to her, but how were regular tea drinkers managing, she wondered? Moving the kettle aside, she arranged the slices of bread on top of the stove.

She started thinking about Burhan. What did he have for breakfast? How many people would get shot today? She read the daily lists of casualties at work first thing every day and counted herself lucky on the days she didn’t find the names of her husband and friends. Now her heart would beat twice as quickly as she scanned the lists for Raif’s name as well.

As she carried the kettle and the bread up to the kitchen, Bozo kept rubbing against her leg. She opened the balcony door so that he could get to his litter box.

“Fiko!” she shouted. “If you’re not out of bed by the time I’m through with the bathroom, I’m coming in to get you. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

She went into the bathroom and locked the door. Out of habit, she turned the faucet in the shower, which produced a mocking “tisss.” She poured a cold, thin stream of water over her body, watching the droplets roll across her skin. Had Raif arrived safely? Esat had told her that it was normally about a two-hour drive but could take up to four hours. When she’d gone up with Fiko, it had taken them three hours because they had kept stopping to check for mines.

She’d expected to find Fiko eating his breakfast when she stepped into the kitchen in her bathrobe. The little rat was still in bed! She marched down the hall and threw open his door. Fiko wasn’t there. She went back to the kitchen, then checked the living room, the dining room, and Hana’s bedroom. When she went into her own bedroom, Hana was still sound asleep. She checked the kitchen again, then Fiko’s bedroom once more, tearing the pocket of her robe when it caught on the doorknob. She turned on the light without pulling open the curtains.

There was an envelope on the nightstand. Heart sinking, weak at the knees, she sank onto the bed and tore open the envelope addressed to “Mom.” On a sheet of lined paper torn from her son’s notebook, she read:

Dear Mom,

I wanted to tell you earlier, but I was afraid you’d try to stop me. I’m going up to the mountains with Uncle Raif and Dad to fight for Bosnia, because a lot of guys as young as me are fighting, and I should be up there too. I’ve wanted to do this ever since we visited that day. I can’t think about anything else. I know you’ll understand and that you’ll forgive me. Kiss Hana and my grandmother for me. Don’t let this upset you, and try not to worry about me. I’ll be with Dad and Raif. See you one day soon in free Bosnia.

All my love,

Fiko

ETHNIC CLEANSING

Summer 1992

When Stefan Stefanoviç first told his bosses at the newspaper that he wanted to do an investigative piece on the Bosniaks forced to flee to Croatia, and that he hoped his research would influence international opinion, the reaction was lukewarm at best. Thousands of ethnic Croatians fleeing Serbian atrocities had been inundating Croatia for the past year. Nobody would want to read about Bosniak refugees, they told Stefan. But when tens of thousands of Bosniaks who had been forced out of their homes at gunpoint, many of them tortured as well, began massing in camps on the Croatian border, Stefan pitched his project to management again. Europe could no longer ignore this humanitarian crisis, and the plight of refugees would have to be addressed on an international platform.

“Unfortunately, print media doesn’t influence the public the way television does,” he said. “So if we want to draw attention to the thousands of people massed on our border and the torture they’ve suffered, we’ll need a piece that is absolutely riveting. Otherwise, nobody will care about the ethnic cleansing being perpetrated against the Muslims by Karadžić.”

“Frankly, I don’t care all that much myself,” Boris said, “but if you’re determined to write this thing up, knock yourself out.”

“Boris, do you have any idea how many people have been killed or displaced since April, when Karadžić declared the Serbian Republic of Bosnia?” Stefan asked.

“About three hundred thousand.”

“That was the figure back in April. By now it’s risen to 1.1 million.”

“Holy shit!” exclaimed Boris.

“Have I managed to prick your conscience a little, Boris?”

“Look, Stefan, I’m never going to get worked up over Bosniaks the way you do. And speaking of pricks, I believe yours is what led you to feel such sympathy for the Bosniaks in the first place.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it!”

“I approved your piece. What more do you want? Now get to work, and leave me and my conscience alone.”

Stefan was out of the office like a shot. Boris was right: he’d need to get down to work immediately. He’d need a Serbian ID card so that he could easily cross into Karadžić’s Serbian enclave, and he’d need a list of camps so that he could arrange interviews.

When he was quoted a price for a fake ID the following day, he said, “Fine. I’ll give them whatever they want. Just get me the ID right away.”

While Stefan waited for his ID, Croatia kept its borders closed to the next wave of refugees. As tens of thousands of Bosniaks trapped in the mountains of northern Bosnia began falling victim to Serbian torture, rape, and execution, the people of Sarajevo, along with their president, Alija Izetbegović, finally shook themselves awake from the dream that the West would come riding in to the rescue. Human rights organizations wouldn’t save them. The UN wouldn’t save them. They were completely and utterly on their own, at the mercy of the very enemies that had been plotting against them for years. Izetbegović no longer had a choice: he had to stop the Bosniaks from fleeing their country or see Bosnia erased from the map.

Jovan Plavić

Stefan stared wide-eyed at his reflection in the mirror. His chestnut hair was a few shades lighter than usual, and the mustache he’d sported for years was gone. The space between his nose and upper lip seemed to have expanded by a few inches. Strangest of all, he looked about fifteen years younger. He’d have barely recognized himself if it hadn’t been for those familiar eyes, the cut of his chin, and the shape of his nose. Had the bottle of hair dye, now empty and resting on the back of the sink, caused this transformation, or was it the whiskers he’d washed down the drain?

He combed his hair back without parting it, as he always did. Then he remembered the warning the ID-card man had given him: if he was discovered to be an imposter, the consequences would be dire. He tried parting his hair on the right, but the resemblance to Hitler was unsettling. When he parted it on the left, his hair stuck up like a rooster’s tail. He smoothed it down with some hair gel; now he looked like an Italian rake straight out of a ’30s’ flick. He washed off the gel and pushed his hair back with his fingers. It would have to do. He studied his new face for a few minutes, then threw on some clothes, ran down the stairs to his car, and drove until he found a barbershop somewhere in north Zagreb.

“Give me a number two,” he told the barber once he was settled in the chair.

The clean shaven person with a buzz cut looking at him in the mirror now looked like a soldier.

“You looked better with long hair,” the barber said with a sad shake of his head.

“I’ve got a long journey ahead of me,” Stefan said. “This is more practical.”

“If it’s grown out by the time you get back to Zagreb, look me up. We’ll pick out a more flattering style.”

“
Inshallah
,” Stefan said, an expression he’d picked up from Nimeta and his old Muslim colleagues.

The barber narrowed his eyes.

Stefan had agreed to leave Nimeta, but that didn’t mean he never thought about her, sometimes with longing. He was also honest enough to admit to himself that the possibility of seeing her again was one of the reasons he’d wanted to do the story. Nimeta still had a place in his heart, even if it was mostly scar tissue. Although the pain was gone, something of her would stay with him forever, that much he knew.

He paid the cashier and went back over to tip the barber, who pushed his hand away.

“Anything the matter?” Stefan asked.

“No,” the barber said.

“Are you refusing a tip because I said ‘
inshallah
’?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Stefan was furious. He was determined to have it out with the racist barber.

“My grandmother was a Muslim. I haven’t heard anyone use that expression since she died. Thank you for reminding me of her.”

“So you’re half Muslim then,” Stefan said, feeling a little sheepish.

“One quarter. But you know what it’s like in the Balkans: nobody can be sure exactly what they are. We’ve been mingling for centuries. I’ll never understand what all this fighting is about.”

“It’s about a power grab by a bunch of madmen,” Stefan said. “Isn’t that always the way? A mad scramble for power, and the rest of us pay for it.”

“Some of the rest of us follow along like a flock of sheep,” the barber said.

“I’ll stop in again on my way back,” Stefan said. “My hair will have grown out by then and we can continue our chat—
inshallah
,” he added with a smile. “Oh, by the way, is there anywhere around here where I can get a mug shot taken?”

“There’s a shop on the opposite side of the street, about two hundred meters to the right. Are you a Muslim?”

“A quarter.”

“Mother’s side or father’s side?”

“A woman’s side.”

When Stefan stepped out of the shop, he glanced up at the sign so that he’d remember it. The man waved a chubby hand at him through the window.

Stefan found the photographer’s in no time and asked for two snapshots.

“There’s a minimum of eight,” he was told. “It’ll only take ten minutes.”

After the photographer had carefully cut and trimmed the photos with a pair of scissors, Stefan paid for them and walked out of the shop without even looking at them. When he got home, he dialed the ID man’s number.

“The mug shots are ready. You can pick them up.”

At nine the next morning, he was holding his new ID card. He studied the face of the man with the light brown buzz cut, a bit too much space between his nose and his upper lip, and a trace of sadness in his eyes. His name was Jovan Plavić, and he had been born in Jajce.

Jovan Plavić thought it prudent to avoid the northern border crossing into Bosnia that Stefan Stefanoviç had passed through so many times. Instead, he traveled the length of Croatia until he reached the country’s southern border. If he hadn’t chosen that alternate route, he would never have seen the refugees who had been forced out of Foča and Višegrad, some of whom were later picked off by Arkan’s Tigers as they crossed the mountains on foot.

They’d been walking for days under a blistering sun to get to Split. Those lucky enough to be on buses were sometimes forced out onto the road, robbed, and beaten. Many had died on the way.

Stefan should have known better than to approach a group of dusty travelers near the border and ask a young woman, “Where are all your men?”

“No men under seventy escaped. Either they were killed or they were taken away to camps.”

These were the camps Jovan Plavić intended to visit. He was going to see the people detained at them, talk to them, and write about them for an international audience. And he might run into Nimeta while doing so.

An elderly woman came over to him. “You’re not a Serb, are you?” she asked.

“No.”

“I could tell,” she said.

Stefan didn’t say another word. He’d changed his name and face, but there must have been something that gave him away. The guy who had brought him his ID card had told him to “think like a Serb” if he wanted to pass as one. But even a weary old woman had been able to tell at a glance what he was and what he wasn’t. That was bad.

“You shouldn’t go up to strangers,” he advised the elderly woman. “And be careful what questions you ask. You could get yourself killed.”

“Ah, I’ve got no reason to be careful anymore. I can’t wait to die. If I were dead, I wouldn’t have seen them skin our men alive. I wouldn’t have seen them chop off the hands and feet of our husbands and sons so they couldn’t kill themselves when they were left to die, covered in flies, some of them out of their minds from the pain. Some died right away, but others—”

“Hey! What are you doing talking to those women?” a Serbian policeman shouted, marching over to them.

“I was asking about the roads,” Stefan said.

Stefan hadn’t expected to have any trouble from the Serbian policemen at the border, but he’d been mistaken.

“Why are you trying to get into Bosnia when everyone else is trying to get out?” the policeman asked.

“I was living in Zagreb when the war started, but I’m Bosnian. I’m going to stay with my family.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Sarajevo.”

“How long do you plan to stay?”

“For good.”

“Is that all you’ve got with you?” the policeman asked, eyeing the bag and small suitcase Stefan was carrying.

“Yes.”

“You’re going back for good and you haven’t got anything else?”

“I’m single. I don’t need to travel with a suite of furniture.”

“Don’t get smart with me, or I won’t let you cross.”

“My boss wouldn’t be too happy about that.”

“Who’s your boss?”

“Mitević.”

The policeman blanched. “Is Mitević really your boss?”

“I work for Belgrade television. I’m going to shoot some footage in Bosnia.”

“Wait for me here,” the policeman said.

Then he disappeared into a makeshift hut with Stefan’s ID card.

Stefan sat down on a bench a few feet away. As he waited in the sun, another banged-up bus covered with dust pulled to a stop. A group of miserable-looking travelers got out of it. A small boy started crying. A policeman told his mother to shut him up. She picked up her son, rocked him, whispered in his ear and kissed him, but he kept crying. The policeman snatched the boy from her arms and pinched his nose hard. The boy couldn’t breathe. When his mother sank to the ground, the boy started crying again. The policeman picked up the boy and threw him against the wall. He fell to the ground and was silent. Nobody moved. Nobody intervened. They were all used to this sort of thing. The mother lay on the ground. Another woman ran over and made a pillow with her knees. Nobody dared to go over to the boy. Stefan got up and started walking.