He reaches the doorway and stops for a rest. He’s made it across without getting shot, but he’ll never know whether it was because someone chose not to shoot him or if no one saw him at all. This bothers him, this lack of information, and then he realizes to his disgust that while he was crossing the street, while his life was in a grey space, he was making jokes to himself about penguins. There’s no way that his friend Ismet sits in a hole on the front line and thinks such silly, meaningless thoughts. It’s things like this that make him the coward he is, unable to help the wounded at a massacre, or a relatively unharmed man searching for a dog. He didn’t help the man look, or look himself, or even think about looking. He remembers the dog, a brown terrier, and he would know it if he saw it again. Perhaps it’s still there. He should go back for it. It could be waiting in a doorway, or behind a pile of rubble, waiting for someone to find it.
But Kenan doesn’t put down his water, doesn’t go back to look for the dog. He has no doubt that the dog is dead, has always known it, and he knows that even if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t go back. Fear has paralyzed him as surely as a bullet to the spine, and he simply doesn’t have what it takes to go back. Shame soaks through him. All he wants now is to go home and crawl into bed.
He leaves the doorway, continues westward. On his left is the abandoned army barracks, shelled to the ground by its former tenants. On his right is At-Mejdan, where slaves were sold, men were executed and, later, horses raced. It’s now a park, or it would be if there was still such a thing as a park in the city. Before the war he’d come here often with his family to hear outdoor concerts, and sometimes by himself to sit on a bench and drink a coffee on a warm fall day. He moves as quickly as he can, stopping every so often to catch his breath, but he doesn’t linger any longer than he has to. He tries to keep his mind blank, to stop any thoughts that could render him motionless from prying their way into his mind.
As he doglegs to the north a group of bright green and yellow apartments comes into view, nicknamed the parrots by those in the city who thought they were an eyesore. Kenan himself never had a firm opinion about them, though he knew he wouldn’t want to live there. Now, though, he’s happy to see them, because they stand at the foot of the Ćumurija Bridge.
There’s a man on the other side who has just begun crossing, and though it might be possible for two people to cross at once, if one of them stood aside in the middle and let the other pass, Kenan isn’t sure whether he could balance with the water canisters, and he doesn’t know whether this man would give him the right of way, so he decides to wait. He can’t carry all the water over at once. Maybe he could if Mrs. Ristovski’s bottles had handles and he could tie them in with his bottles, but with the way things are it’s impossible. He decides he can take all his own bottles in one go, though. They’re heavy but balanced, and if he takes three at a time there will be no way to balance them. He’ll leave Mrs. Ristovski’s bottles by some rocks and come back for them. Without his own bottles he’ll be able to tuck one under his arm and hold the other in his hand, leaving one hand free to hold on to the side rail of the bridge.
He thinks about this plan. He decides it’s a good one, but is worried that someone will take Mrs. Ristovski’s containers while he’s crossing the bridge. He waits for the man on the bridge to finish crossing, nods hello to him as he passes, and then moves Mrs. Ristovski’s bottles to a concealed spot, a small hole where the bridge meets the road. Satisfied that the bottles are safely out of sight, he shoulders his load of water and steps onto the bridge.
After a few steps he has to stop and steady the motion of his water jugs. They sway like pendulums, their momentum increased every time he steps forward. He slows their swing with his free hand, waits for them to hang motionless before moving forward again. He has to stop twice more before reaching the middle of the bridge. While he waits he looks to the east, and then back in the direction of the brewery. He tries to see if anything looks different from the way it did that morning, other than the still smoking husk of the Yugo. Then it occurs to him that nothing should be different, because nothing has changed. Just because he was there this time, closer than normal to the epicentre of the slaughter, it doesn’t mean it’s more relevant to the city. It’s just another day.
The air-raid sirens have stopped. He thinks they’ve been stopped for a while, but he hadn’t noticed. A shell falls somewhere far to the west, towards the airport. He takes a few steps, lets his load settle, takes a few more. His foot slips a little, which causes the canisters to sway forward, and on their backswing they hit him square in the knee, knocking him to the side. He hits the railing hard, is winded by the force of the blow. He holds on with both hands, puts his foot back on the girder beneath him, but he’s shaken. He feels a rage wash over him, the way it does when he hits his head on the corner of a cupboard door or some object he didn’t expect to be there, a rage that is focused and scattered all at once. He scrambles to the end of the bridge without stopping, adrenalin pushing him to it, and drops his water. He lies down on the ground, stomach pressed to the earth, not caring that he’s out in the open, an easy target. He cries out, but doesn’t recognize the sound that comes out of him. It’s a baby and an animal and an air-raid siren and a man who has been knocked over by his own burden. He listens to it as it dissipates, gone like it never happened, and then he rolls over onto his back and looks at the sky.
He’s tired. He’s tired from getting water, and he’s tired from the world he lives in, a world he never wanted and had no part in creating and wishes didn’t exist. He’s tired of carrying water for a woman who has never had a kind word to say to him, who acts as if she’s doing him a favour, whose bottles don’t have handles and who refuses to switch. If she likes the bottles so much, she should carry them to the brewery, she should watch as the street fills with blood and then washes itself clean, as a man stands with an empty leash and looks for a brown terrier while the dead are loaded into a van.
Kenan gets up off the ground. He looks back to the bridge, at the spot where he hid Mrs. Ristovski’s water. He turns away, and picks up the rope binding his own bottles. His back bends into its yoke. The water rises into the air. Kenan takes a step and then another. Soon he will be home.
THREE
Dragan
THERE’S A SMALL GROUP OF PEOPLE AROUND EMINA, and they’ve removed her coat to get a better look at her arm. Someone hands it to Dragan, and he holds it, feeling useless. She’s been shot just above the elbow, in the lower part of her biceps. It doesn’t look life-threatening to Dragan, but someone has tied a tourniquet below her shoulder. A man who appears to know what he’s doing says there’s a major artery there that may have been severed. Dragan is sceptical, but then he remembers that when the doctor measures blood pressure the inflatable cuff goes around the same spot. Emina has lost a lot of blood, and is still bleeding, despite their efforts. The young man who saved her is gone. Dragan didn’t see him leave, doesn’t know which way he went.
There’s an eruption of gunfire around Grbavica, possibly the defenders’ answer to the sniper. If they know where he’s firing from they might get him. Otherwise, it’s probably a bluff, an attempt to make him think they know where he is. It could convince him to stop for a while. Or it could make him more determined. The volley of bullets might not even be connected with this particular sniper, or any sniper at all. It could even be the sound of the men on the hills trying to drive a wedge into the heart of the city. Dragan cannot decipher the sound of guns.
Someone has gone to flag down a car, or call an ambulance, Dragan can’t remember which. It’s unlikely that the phones work. The cars all travel so fast it’s nearly impossible to get one to stop. Emina is still conscious, and doesn’t seem to be in as much pain as he’d have expected. Her face is white.
He kneels beside her, and she half smiles when she sees him.
“You’re still here,” she says.
“Yes.” He’s ashamed, and wants to tell her so, but it’s not for him
to apologize. He hasn’t earned the right.
“He’s a better shot than we thought.”
Dragan nods. “It’s a good thing he’s not better. You’re lucky.”
“I wanted to see the cellist play today. It’s his last day. Jovan says he’s finished after this.”
A car races up the street, and a few of the group rush towards it and wave.
She sounds sleepy, her words slow and slurred. “Jovan will be upset. He doesn’t like me going out. I just couldn’t live as a prisoner. I had to get outside and walk around.”
“Jovan will be fine,” Dragan says. “And so will you.” He watches the approaching car. When he looks down at Emina her eyes are closed, but she’s still breathing.
The car, dark red with four doors, stops. Its windshield is cracked, and the side of the car has several bullet holes in it. Two men rush out, leaving their doors open and the engine running. They take a quick look at the hatless man lying in the street, agree he’s beyond help, and focus on Emina. After a cursory examination they pick her up and lay her in the back seat. They get back in the car and are moving before their doors are fully shut.
“Wait,” Dragan calls. He wants to go with them, but they’re already gone. He doesn’t think they’d have let him come along, though, and he’s not sure what he would have done at the hospital. The man who seems to know a bit about medicine stands beside him. “She’ll be fine,” he says. “Once she gets to the hospital they’ll fix her up.”
“It’s not too bad?” Dragan asks, unsure whether the man is saying this because it’s true, or if he’s trying to reassure him.
The man shrugs. “You can’t have it much better and still be shot. It’s a flesh wound.”
Dragan looks at the man, believes him to be sincere. “Did you see it happen?”
“Yes. I was a few feet behind you.”
Dragan nods and, after a long uncomfortable silence, the man moves on, to the east, away from the intersection.
Dragan sits down on the cold concrete with his back against the boxcar. His hands still hold Emina’s coat. Something in the pocket rattles, and when he reaches in he finds a bottle of pills and an address. It’s these pills that brought Emina here today, her dead mother’s blood thinners. He puts them in his own pocket, and then places the coat on the ground beside him. She won’t want it now. No one wants the coat they were shot in, even if it were possible to wash out the blood and mend the holes. It was a nice coat when she wore it. Now it doesn’t look like much to him. Just another piece of garbage.
His eyes move from the coat to the body in the street and back to the coat. Was being killed really better than being wounded? He isn’t so sure now. The idea of knowing the moment of your death is imminent no longer seems so bad compared with an instantaneous ending. Emina will survive, of this he feels confident, but if she didn’t, if she were more seriously wounded, wouldn’t it be better to get one last look at the world, even a grey and spoiled vision, than to plunge without warning into darkness?
What makes the difference, he realizes, is whether you want to stay in the world you live in. Because while he will always be afraid of death, and nothing can change that, the question is whether your life is worth that fear. Do you face the terror that must come with knowing you’re about to die, just for the sake of one last glimpse of life? Dragan is surprised to find his answer is yes.
A month ago, he was walking home from his shift at the bakery when a group of half-uniformed men surrounded him and, after examining his papers, ordered him to get into the back of a truck. They ignored his protests that his work at the bakery was deemed essential to the war effort by the government. They didn’t care that he was sixty-four years old. He later found out they were the militia of one of the criminal bosses turned army commander, and they were paid according to how many men they rounded up.
There were seven other men in the back of the truck, and they were unloaded at the front lines, where they spent the next three days digging trenches. They had no weapons, and the only soldiers around were stationed behind them with orders to shoot if they abandoned their posts. They couldn’t tell how close they were to the enemy, when they might be shot, where death would come from. It was difficult to guess how much time passed, and they were given no food. The only light was from the tracer bullets streaking through the sky, and the only sounds were the crunching of their shovels and the detonation of shells. The man next to him was so frightened he began to cry, and Dragan had to grab him by the shoulders and shake him to get him to stop, or at least to cry quietly. It was then that he decided it was better to be killed outright than to be wounded. The thought of spending his last hours in a hole he’d dug at gunpoint held no consolation when compared to his fear of death.
Later, after his superintendent at the bakery discovered where he was and contacted the necessary parties to secure his release, Dragan stopped distinguishing the streets of the city from those trenches, didn’t care whether it was the men on the hills who were shooting or the defenders. It made no difference to him.
Now he wonders whether this was a mistake. He can see a very distinct difference between this street and the ditches he dug. A trench is used for war and only war. But on these streets, the streets of his city, he has walked with Raza’s hand in his, and he has laughed with Davor. Today he shared a conversation with an old friend on one of his streets. There may be a war taking place on them as well, but they used to offer much more. This means something to him, although he can’t put a name to it.
He knows he should have tried to help Emina. He should have rushed into the street with the young man and helped him to carry her. Perhaps that would have allowed them to go faster. But it’s possible this would have made the sniper fire at them instead of at the man in the hat. There’s no arguing with the outcome. Still, he didn’t move when the shots were fired. Not because he thought anything through, but because he was afraid. If that makes him a coward, he’s comfortable calling himself a coward. He isn’t built for war. He doesn’t want to be built for war.
Dragan looks east, towards his sister’s apartment. He thinks of abandoning his trip to the bakery, of heading back. His brother-in-law isn’t so bad. Maybe they could find something to talk about that would help bridge the gap between them. Perhaps they can have a coffee, if there’s any left, if there’s any water to brew it with or wood to heat it. He can always try to make it to the bakery again tomorrow, when he has a shift to show up for.
He doesn’t want to go home, though. His head turns to the southwest, where, if he keeps on going past the bakery and then down through Mojmilo to Dobrinja, the not-so-secret tunnel leads under the airport into unoccupied territory.
He imagines himself handing a pass to an armed guard at the tunnel entrance. Where he could have gotten it he doesn’t know, but no one gets by without a pass, and he imagines the guard inspecting his before allowing him through. He enters the tunnel, ducking low. The tunnel is poorly lit, and the air is stale. It takes him three-quarters of an hour to travel the 760 metres. The ground is covered in water in places, and he has to be careful not to trip over the rails that accommodate small carts. He’s heard that politicians and other important men sometimes ride in these carts, pushed by soldiers, but there’s no one to push him. He doesn’t mind, wouldn’t accept an offer anyway. The tunnel passes under the foreign-controlled airport, where numerous people have been shot while trying to run across the tarmac. None of these people were able to secure permission to use the tunnel. The men on the hills picked them off like ducks on a pond.
As he nears the end of the tunnel the walls get wider and higher. He’s able to stand up straight, and the air is a little fresher. When he emerges in the free territory of Butmir he’s only eight kilometres from his sister’s house. A fifteen-minute drive. But he’s free. Two hours on a bus and he’ll be on the coast. A ferry will deliver him to Italy. The whole trip will take less than a day. It’s less than five hundred kilometres as the crow flies from Sarajevo
to Rome. Not even an hour on an airplane. One and a half hours to Paris. Two hours to London. But he’ll go to Italy, because that’s where his wife and son are.
At first they won’t believe he’s there. Their mouths will hang open, and they will wonder if he’s a ghost. He’ll assure them he’s not, of course, and then they’ll be overcome with joy. Davor will hug him, his arms wrapped tight around his back, like he used to when he was a small boy. Raza will kiss him and run her hands through the hair on the back of his head. He’ll take a shower, the water steaming hot, and dry himself with a soft, clean towel. They’ll go out to a restaurant, and he’ll eat whatever he likes, and he’ll know that tomorrow he can do it all again. They’ll walk through the streets, looking through the windows of shops. There will be trees, their leaves green, and the buildings will be bright and without scars. No one will be on the hills with guns pointed at them, and after a while he won’t even think of this as a benefit, it will simply be an obvious thing, because that’s how life is supposed to be. They will be happy. They won’t hate anyone, and no one will hate them.
In the hills behind him a shell falls. He hears the rattle of automatic gunfire, and then another shell falls. It’s a language, a conversation of violence. He’s back in Sarajevo. There’s no tunnel pass in his pocket, and there never will be. No one is getting out of town now. Certainly not him.
Dragan sits and listens to the men on the hills and the defenders in the city argue with projectiles. Nobody crosses the street. There are hardly any people even waiting, most having decided to take an alternative route, probably crossing the train tracks to the north and moving from east to west behind the protection of yet another barricade of railcars and concrete. Perhaps they’re safer there, perhaps not. There’s more than one sniper on the hills. They have enough men for every intersection if they choose.