Burn Down the Sky: Part Twenty

 

8

Alan was numb, and the cognac was helping him to remain that way. It helped him from thinking too much about Donna and what he was about to do. On that agonizingly long flight from Chicago to Munich the golden spirit relieved him of those weighty burdens. There would be time enough to rejoin all of them, but for now he preferred things exactly as they were.

“You alright, partner?” the big man beside him asked. He had bright red and a long, freckled face.  Struck Alan as one of those eternally optimistic people, and Alan just wasn’t in the mood for that crap right now. People like that pissed him off, because they either didn’t comprehend or didn’t care about the dark side of the human heart unless it affected them directly. People like that didn’t see the gray in life, which made them perfect functionaries for governments, corporate communications and religion. Such people saw life as a team sport and thus were quite willing to twist every argument and overlook every moral and ethical question to suit the needs of whatever team they happened to be serving under that moment. He had seen these people a thousand times in his career as a war correspondent. They infected every religion, led national movements, and presided over corrupt governments, exploitative companies and genocidal campaigns. Alan looked at the fellow, wondering what exactly about the guy had set those thoughts alight and enraged him so. Alan raised his glass in answer and nodded without saying anything. He looked to the window and the turquoise waters of the North Atlantic far below. With luck the guy would get the hint that Alan wasn’t interested in talking much. Instead he persisted.

“Because you look like you’re a million miles away.”

“Fine, thanks,” Alan said without looking at him.

“Gosh, I hope so. I mean it would be a crime for me to sit here knowing I could help a neighbor in need. Four more hours to Europe, the least we can do is be friends, right?”

“Four hours,” Alan groaned.

  “Never been to Europe,” he chuckled. “Heck, never been out of the country, except Canada, but that doesn’t really count, eh? Get it? Eh! Sweet Lord, where are my manners. I’m Carl Brundig. Minister Brundig, but you can call me Carl.”

Alan was still looking out the window. He downed the last of his cognac and noticed the guy had his hand out. It hung there for a terribly uncomfortable moment before Alan finally took it.

“That’s a good man,” Carl said. “I knew we’d be friends. First time in Munich?”

“No.”

“Wow,” Carl exclaimed with the contrived sincerity of a used car salesman, “a regular world traveler! Sorry, didn’t get your name.”

“Didn’t give it.”

“Oh.” There was an uncomfortable pause that made Alan almost feel sorry for the guy. “So, you are?”

“Al.”

“Hallelujah, Al. So since you’re an old hat at this what advice do you have for getting along in a foreign country?”

“Be a good guest, and remember you’re the foreigner.”

Carl laughed. “Sure, sure. Makes sense. So, traveling on business?”

“Sort of.”

“No problem, Al. I don’t want to pry. The way I see it, a person’s business is their own. As for me, if you’re interested, I’m leading a mission to Chechnya. You might have heard about it if you’re into the news and stuff.”

Alan couldn’t help himself. “Mission? What sort of mission?”

Carl seemed almost taken aback by the question. “Why we’re bringing the word of our Lord Jesus Christ to that troubled region.”

“To Muslims?”

“Turn them from the immoral message of a misguided religion and a false God.”

“Maybe they don’t need your saving. Maybe they think you’re the misguided one.” Alan felt suddenly enraged, all of the pent up emotion from the funeral and the conversation with Byars boiling up. Seeing the anger in Alan’s eyes, Carl’s whole demeanor changed.

“We’ll they’re wrong. It says so in the Bible. The Gospel compels us as Christians to preach the word of the Lord and bring salvation to the heathen hordes. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel onto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed! This isn’t a fight for the faint of heart. There are a great many pitfalls and temptations along the way. The powers of Satan can be strong and wily. For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. There’s a war on, man, a war for souls, and we are the warriors in that great crusade.”

“A crusade?”

“A fulfillment of the prophecy, for these are the end times, my friend, and the Lord’s will must be done. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained by God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. Romans; Chapter thirteen. Clearly this is a call to arms to the warriors of the Lord.”

“Even if these people simply wish to be left alone.”

“It’s not for me to question God’s word. There are many thousands of us waging this war for souls. We’ve been doing this work all along, but now the September attacks have brought new life to the movement. We are now in every Muslim country in the world. You say that you are on business, friend, well so are we. That’s all that it is, it’s business.”

“The two most immoral words in the English language; its business.”

“Have you forgotten, they attacked us? Maybe you should remember that once in a while. Maybe if it was one of your loved-ones. The Muslims declared war on us, so we are bound to exterminate them.” Carl’s face was suddenly bright red with rage. “Tell you what, pal. Let’s just pretend that this conversation never happened. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bother me for the rest of the trip!”

Munich’s bright Franz Josef airport was crowded with Christian missionaries. Each group had signs or placards with the name of their church and the town they were from. Some were headed to Africa, the Ukraine or the Middle East. They were expectant and wide-eyed at facing the unknown, like fresh grunts about to go into battle. Others were returning home, blustering and bragging like triumphant soldiers.

   Alan watched them and thought about what the man on the plane had said. It was a war, and quite unexpectedly he had found himself on the frontlines of that war. As he boarded the plane for Bosnia he thought of Donna. He imagined her at the little cottage they talked of buying along the Lake Superior shore. He remembered the way the wind and sun would play in her soft blond hair, carrying the scent of her soft perfume. Their life together had been stolen from him, and someone would have to account for that, but first he had to know whether or not Adnan was responsible. He felt a headache coming on and lay his head against the small airplane window. Far below the blue-green mountains of the Bosnian Dinaric Alps drifted silently past.

The touchdown in Sarajevo’s tiny airport was smooth. Even back in ninety-seven, when he covered the Pope’s historic visit to the city he had come by car. It felt odd coming to Sarajevo this way. There were no checkpoints, barbed wire or landmines. Gone were white-painted UN vehicles darting here and there, and gone was most of the wreckage of war. The city had been rebuilt, mostly, and now bright new apartment blocks gleamed in the late morning sun, where only a few years before stood bombed-out ruins. The war-dust and smoke that once seemed a quality of the tragic valley was gone, replaced by crisp, clean mountain air. The mountains where battles raged and death poured down on the besieged city were now tranquil and majestic.

He took a taxi from the airport for the fifteen-minute ride downtown. The closer he came to meeting Adnan face to face, to stirring up so many old ghosts, the more uncertain he became. His whole life Alan had tried to see all sides to every issue. A part of him wanted to understand a world of things that brought he and Adnan to this moment. He remembered the death of Adnan’s parents, the brutal siege, and the polluting effect of hate. Alan would ask him why, and then wonder if Adnan could offer any explanation that would suffice. There were so many things to consider, but Alan swept them away with one simple fact, and that was that Donna was still dead.

It was a lovely day, warm for October. He left a message for Emina at the Office for Iranian charities where she worked, but he had no idea if she would come. He sat at a small café in the Turkish Market called “TO BE OR NOT TO BE,” warming himself in the sun. It was a cozy little place with brightly painted awnings, decorated like a warm Bosnian country house. Sunlight fell obliquely through narrow windows, and upon the terra cotta tiles and slowly collapsing gutters across the way. The owner, a retired Art professor, was lost in a book at the back of the café. A cigarette burned away in his long fingers. Pigeons hunted for morsels among the well-worn cobblestones.

 The market was busy, but the majority of people kept to the wider pedestrian avenues at either end of the small street, leaving the café quiet and undisturbed. A Muslim call to midday prayer drifted with the wind through the market. Alan slowly dragged a spoon through the tiny cup of tan Espresso.

He checked his watch and frowned. She was already late, yet still he waited. The afternoon shadows grew until the street was quite cool. The air carried the mineral cool taste of snow. His breath rose in the air with the growing shadows. Alan checked his watch once more, threw ten Euros on the table, mostly for the trouble, and left.

He turned up the street and walked to the river. Traffic was heavy there. A tram rattled and clanged past. At the Princip Bridge, so named for the boy who fired the first shots of World War One, Alan paused to look along the dark river where its stonewalls cut neatly through the city. It was with a heavy heart that Alan feared this was all a terrible waste of time. He quietly cursed Adnan and Emina under his breath. If there was nothing to hide than they surely would have come.

“Alan?”

He turned to find Emina. A long cream colored scarf covered her hair He noticed a simple wedding band upon her finger and felt a twinge of melancholy.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I saw no need to torture either of us.”

“And yet you came anyway.”

Emina shrugged. “Who is to say which torture is the cruelest.”

“I think that the unknown is the most cruel,” he said.

She studied him darkly. “Alan, you are totally unknown to me now.”

“It has been a long time, Emina. I hope that some memories we shared are still kept by you.”

She went to the wall and looked out over the river. “In some ways eternity would not be long enough to forget.”

He nodded and felt colder for her words.

“We could walk for a bit?” he offered.

“I haven’t much time. I have a husband and child at home.”

“Just a short walk.”

They went across the river, walking near the old brewery, with its high walls and clock tower. They retraced steps taken as friends and lovers years earlier. At a small Mosque near the river they paused at yard. A tiny Muslim graveyard was half hidden in tall grass and the stringy branches of a crooked old willow.

“How is Adnan?”

“Did you come so far to ask me this?”

“Is it so terrible a question?”

She started to say something, but stopped herself. There was frustration behind her expression.

“Alan,” she sighed, her eyes flitting over the crooked gravestones.

“If there is something to say, please say it.”

“Some things are better left unsaid.”

“Is it so bad?” he asked. “Are the memories of our time together so terrible? It’s as though you hate me.”

As they walked slowly Emina wrestled with his words and her own heart. She stopped and faced him. There were tears in her eyes. There was so much to tell him, so much more than she had the courage to say.

“Hate you? Alan I don’t hate you. I hate myself. I hate that I allowed myself to fall in love with you, and I hate that I had to let you go. I hate that I had to kill a part of myself in order to forget you, and now here you are and I feel pulled again in too many different directions.”

“What was it?” he asked her. “Why have I been haunted by you all of these years? I’ve tried to forget you as well, but it seems like fate is intent on pulling us together again.”

“Are you so weak to be a pawn to that fate, Alan?”

“Perhaps.”

“I cannot be,” she said resolutely.

They walked again, through steep, winding streets on the mountain and among the old Muslim Mahalas. They came to the old Bistrik stationhouse. A road had replaced the railroad and now Gypsies lived where people once waited for the morning and afternoon train, but three great wars had come and gone since those days. Alan told her about meeting Donna, about their wedding, and about the bombing in Paris. Emina looked down upon her city, the lights coming up as the sun set behind the mountains to the west. Her gaze was far away.

“Alan, I am sorry for you.”

“When did the innocent become the ones who suffer most in war?”

She laughed cynically. “Have you become so blinded by your own grief that you have forgotten the tragedy of this country? The innocent have always suffered. It is the purpose of war, to see which side will bear the greatest trauma before conceding. Only in America can you hold such naïve notions. War was a far away thing to you. Now only when it has come to your own cities do you decry the blood of the innocent. You perceive yourself as victim, and Muslims the perpetrators, while Muslims see America as the perpetrators. For ignorant minds the differences in these positions are irreconcilable. The rest of us will be caught in the middle until their ignorance forces us to choose sides.”

“What does that leave us with?”

“Certain doom.”

“Cynical?”

“Reality,” Her jaw tightened. She was late to meet her son at school. “It was wrong to meet this way. It accomplished nothing but to open old wounds. Goodbye, Alan.”

“Emina,” he called after her. “I must talk to Adnan.”

“Please, Alan.”

He went to her. His heart was beating wildly. “I have information that he might be involved in my wife’s… in the bombing in Paris.”

“He isn’t. I know that he isn’t.”

“I have to hear him say it. I have to look into his eyes and hear him say the words.”

“Do you believe that he helped to kill your wife?”

“I don’t know. I don’t believe if he did that it was on purpose.”

“This is your crusade?” she accused. “And then what? What if he is guilty? What if you are not convinced of his innocence, then what? Will it be because he is guilty or because your pain has already condemned him?”

“I condemn no one, Emina. If Adnan is condemned for anything then it will be for what he brings upon himself.”

“I will not be a party to this. Adnan is innocent.”

“Was he innocent of trying to kill the Pope? Was he innocent of killing an opposition candidate, or all of the other things I’ve heard him accused of?”

Emina was almost shaking with rage. “I will not tell you what I am thinking right now, so I will leave before I can no longer control my temper.”         

“I’ll be at the Hotel Europa until tomorrow,” he said as she left. She did not look back and soon had disappeared from sight. Alan felt colder for what he was thinking as he watched her leave. A shiver of dread ran through him as he wondered if the desire to punish Adnan had less to do with Donna than with Emina.  

Later that evening Alan stood in the window of his hotel room. The city was spread out before him, her lights sparkling, seeming to reflect the bright canopy of stars overhead. He waited for Adnan to come. Indeed he hoped and prayed that he would come, but as the minutes slipped away he began to feel more resolute in what he was about to do. When he had given up completely on Adnan, Alan could more easily rationalize that Adnan and Adnan alone had decided upon his own fate.

It was late when he decided upon a walk along the river. Aside from clearing his head in the cold air Alan was saying goodbye to Sarajevo in the same way one laments the passing of an old rival. In the end he sought some reconciliation with the city and her adjoining memories. Each time those thoughts invariably led back to Emina, Adnan, and finally the open wound in his heart caused by Donna’s death.

The city was quiet and peaceful. In moments he could feel the ages of the stones beneath his feet. He could feel their history spanning centuries and generations. Alan felt himself a part of that history, if only for a very brief moment. And that was the key in the end. It was simply a matter of accepting that the city and all that came with her was as much a part of him as he was of it.

There was music playing somewhere. It was an old Tom Waits song that drew him to a small, dark riverside tavern. The door was open to the street. The strong herbal scent of Marijuana greeted him instantly. The bar was warm inside. It wrapped around him like welcoming arms. The place was all but deserted. A single patron, a rather scruffy looking character, sat to one end of the small bar mumbling into a drink. The longhaired bartender bobbed his head, lost in the music and gently curling smoke of the fat Marijuana cigarette burning in his fingers. Alan thought the song fit this scene perfectly. He took a stool at the bar. The place seemed well suited to his mood.

Well I got a bad liver and a broken heart.

Yeah I drunk me a river since you tore me apart,

And I don’t have a drinkin’ problem,

‘Cept when I can’t get a drink

“Hey, ciao,” said the very mellow bartender, finally noticing him.

“Whiskey,” Alan said simply. He took a stool at the bar.

“Led?” Ice, asked the bartender.

“Ne,” Alan shook his head slowly.

He poured Alan a healthy drink. Alan dropped ten Euros on the bar and told him to keep the change. The first sip warmed him nicely. Alan closed his eyes and savored it for a moment. The trip here had been such a great disappointment. In truth, though, what did he hope would come of it? Was Emina right, and had he already decided on Adnan’s guilt? It didn’t matter anymore. Adnan had made his choice, and now Alan would have to make his. No one would play him for a fool, Donna’s memory forbid that.

“You’re American?” said the scruffy character at the end of the bar. He had a heavy Bosnian accent, made all the more difficult to understand aafter an evening spent at the bar. Alan eyed him suspiciously. He was tall and lanky, with a tossled mop of salt and pepper hair. Alan’s first impression was that the guy was just another dejected soul washing away the pain of life in alcohol.

“You’re drunk,” Alan observed, trying to put the bloke off.

“No, my friend, I am stinking drunk!” he stood and weaved his way over to where Alan sat. “Is there a law against extinguishing the dark thoughts in one’s own mind? Who are you?”

‘Who are you?” Alan shot back without looking up from his drink.

The Bosnian spit on the floor and motioned to the bartender for another drink. “I am nobody. I am a body awaiting death, trapped in life by the mind of a coward. I am freedom trapped in hell.”

“I was just leaving,” Alan started to get up.

“Have one more.” He motioned again to the bartender. “Hey, chovek, yosh yedan cocktail.”

“No thanks,” said Alan

“Don’t insult me, please!” the guy scolded, slipping onto a stool beside him. He reeked of alcohol. “Tell me, what do you know of Sarajevo, eh?”

“I was here for the war.”

“It was a nice city. Life was good under the Communists. Then came the nationalists, who see nothing but their own desires. Now we have the Islamists who are no better in the long run. I tell you this as a Muslim, my friend.

 “We have the same thing where I come from. We call them Christians.”

“Same animal, different stripes.” The comment was worth a toast. They clinked their glasses together. Tom Waits sang the soundtrack to their hearts

…I’ll raise you one more,

And you can pour me a cab,

I just can’t drink no more,

‘Cause it don’t douse the flames,

That are started by dames…

“Same animal.” 

“Count yourself lucky, friend,” said the Bosnian. “You have a future in America for your family. The Serbs killed my whole family at the start of the war, and now I am alone. But I fought for this country, and when it was over my own people tossed me aside like trash. Now I have no one.” He lifted his glass and drained it in a single gulp. “No one but this glass, and we have become dear, dear friends.”

“Everyone?” Alan asked.

“Everyone what?”

“Everyone in your family?”

The Bosnian’s gaze was dark and dull. His face was animated by so many emotions. “Even the dog.”

“Do you hate them, the people who killed your family?”

“I hate all men, but I seem to have this fatal affliction which compels me to forgive.”

“How can you?”

“Hate is too heavy a burden to bear for very long. It is the element that erodes the soul over time. Inevitable, I fear, but I want to believe that we play apart in slowing that eventual destruction. In the war I was very good with a knife, and many of their men did not return home to their families because of that. I thought that if I could kill ten of them for each of my family then I would erase the their faces, that I could rebuild what existed of my life. But then twenty was not enough. And now I am haunted by the faces of the men I killed as well. For that I am certainly doomed to hell, but if there is chance for redemption, if there is a chance that I may see my family again, even once, then I must try.”

Alan pondered those words a moment. The bartender poured them both another drink. The two men touched the rim of their glasses gently. They were quiet for a time. An old Stevie Wonder song came on and it made Alan smile, the first time he could remember doing so since Donna’s death. The words took him to another simpler time and the smile faded. He was a boy again and the possibility to choose the road ahead was still there.

 

“Lookin’ back on when I was a nappy-headed boy,

And my only worry was for Christmas what would be my toy…”

 

In the bottom of his glass he could see the road, the long weary miles and the pitfalls. It saddened him that he had not seen them before, when now they were so obvious. He sighed and looked around the tiny bar. What pitfalls awaited him on the road still to be traveled? Had he learned nothing all these years of how to predict what might lay ahead, or was he confusing his own cynicism with wisdom?

 

“…I wish those days could come back once more,

Why did those days and fun have to go…”

He looked over at the Bosnian fellow and tried to imagine his pain. Was it any more or less than his? Every person’s pain was their own, the most terrible, the most important. As such it was a man’s survival and his condemnation.

“What if you found the Serbs who did that?” Alan asked. “Who calls them to account for their crimes?”

It took some time before the Bosnian could answer. Just the idea seemed to cause him to age before Alan’s eyes.

“Thought about that many times. I will not lie to you, I have dreamed many times of cutting their throats very slowly. I have fantasized about torturing them until they begged for mercy as my family did. I would cut pieces from them, keeping them alive for the longest time, suffering the maximum pain. When I was a young man I would daydream all day about girls and sex, but after …I no longer think of women in that way. Hate and revenge murdered that part of me. I wished to hunt them all down, but it seemed that I was only creating more pain in the world, and moving farther from heaven.” He looked at Alan. “This topic is something more for you, yes?”

Through the open door Alan spied a couple walking arm in arm along the river. For Alan they were from some alien species. He thought of the Bosnian’s words and of Donna. He wished to be with her in place of that young couple, but it seemed that place in him had been replaced by something darker and colder. It was a place where hate and revenge and pain coexisted, held tentatively in place by virtue and morality. He was trapped in that place, swimming in it, breathing it all in until he could see and feel and imagine nothing more. A rage rose in him that could only be appeased by blood. It was a demon, a part of him that endeavored to rule him, and Alan was not at all unsure that was a bad thing. He shook his head without looking at the Bosnian.

“Just curious,” Alan replied. He finished the drink and left.