Escape from Sarajevo-Part 20: The checkpoint

SEVEN

Ana and I played with the baby while Renata and Olja did laundry by hand in the bathroom. It had been several weeks since water had come to the house and they were nearly out. Various agreements with the Serbs allowed the pumps that ran through their territory to be turned on. For more than two years Sarajevans had to rely on several natural springs offering Serb gunners easy targets. Dysentery and other illnesses ravaged those desperate enough to use water from the polluted river. For people with little to burn collected rainwater and snowmelt were no less unreliable. Opening the pumps came as a godsend to an exhausted Sarajevo, but the Serbs used it as a weapon. With the escalating violence in the mountains the water to the city was shut off once again.   

The girls had collected little to burn for the coming winter, not that there was much left anymore. Like many, the girls were looking longingly at pieces of furniture that could be dismantled, cherished books, and anything else that might allow them to survive the coming winter. This was what I was leaving Ana and her family to, and there was a little I could do but pray that I could get out of the city and find a way to help them somehow.

Tono teetered between us at the end of Ana’s reach. Those stubby little legs would invariably give out and he would flop back onto his butt with a giggle. It was impossible not to imagine how the war would affect him one day, or what he might recall consciously or through indecipherable fears and anxieties. Would the bitter winters and starvation inhibit some capacity for learning or reason or caring for others? Would the terror of an exploding shell, infectious fear of the girls, or growing up in a war-ravaged country resonate through his life in unforeseen ways? Tono rolled onto his belly, kicking and laughing when Ana tickled his belly, and I wondered if love would give him enough strength to overcome.

“There was terrible shelling the night Tono was born.” Ana rubbed his curly hair. Her eyes were filled with light as she looked at him. “Something was wrong. Mom was in terrible pain and bleeding badly. She looked so pale, like the dying. The phones weren’t working. Even if they were no one was fool enough to get up and answer. We were all crawling around on the floor trying not to get killed. We begged a neighbor, told him she was dying and he finally agreed. At the hospital the doctors had no blood to give her. All they could do was tell us it was up to her if she wanted to live or not. I love this little boy more than life. For Olja and me Tono is like our own child.”

Tono struggled to his feet once more, but this time he let go of her hand and found that elusive balance for a moment.

“Mom, come quick!” Ana cried. Renata and Olja rushed into the room to see whet the commotion was all about. We all watched excitedly as the baby took his first step and a half before tumbling into my arms. He repeated the feat several more times, guaranteeing that life in that little apartment would never be the same.

I might have stayed with them there forever, frozen in that perfect moment. Ana went with me as far as the train station. I was still weary from the night before, but determined to make it out this time.. By the time I reached the UN compound at PTT fighting in the mountains and along the line in Dobrinja had renewed in earnest. I had hoped to talk my way into a ride with the UN to the airport, but fighting along the airport road had seen to that. Undeterred I decided to try Dobrinja again, despite the warning from Stalin not to set foot there again.

Outside the compound I was drawn to a line of heavy iron tank barricades across the road, leading west out of the city.  The road ran through a perilous no man’s land, a half-mile of death and desolation separating the city from the world. How many people had stood on that spot wondering if it all wasn’t some terrible mirage, as if war was a mass hypnosis, a cruel vision that would fade if it could somehow be overcome? I wondered if I was infected too, and that bullet riddled trams and buses sitting half cocked in the weeds might return to life and continue on their routes. Could I shatter war’s dark illusion by force of will, or by simply stepping around the barricades? It was a torturously seductive thought, and I wondered over the Sarajevans, for whom war in their city and in their lives once seemed impossible. How many of them had met their ends succumbing to that delusion.

The road to Dobrinja curved gently uphill. To the left were the monstrously tall apartment blocks of Bosnian-held Alipashno. To the right an open battlefront exposed much of the road to Serb gunners in the low houses of Nedjarici. At the top of the hill a wall of stacked vehicles and concrete slabs had been erected piecemeal, but that still left a fifty or seventy yard uphill dash across open ground. Heavy recoilless rounds and sporadic rifle fire across the road only underscored the difficulty in making the run with a full pack. I might have dumped it if not for the survival gear I might need on the mountain. I waited behind a building for the fire to subside then started into the open. A burst of automatic fire chased me back after only a couple of yards. I waited and rallied my courage and strength. I was thinking of Ana, and dying on that road. I wondered if it would be quick, or if I would linger enough to whisper goodbyes at the wind to her, or to cry regrets or grievances.

The shooting let up once more and this time I took off at a hard run, burdened by the uneven weight of the pack. A recoilless round ripped the air, sounding as if the world was being torn in two. I shouted as it went by and exploded against a building across the road.

KKRRRSHK-BANG!

Another shell shot past and exploded. My feet fought for every inch of road. The wall still seemed so far away. I strained and reached for the last several yards, falling hard to my knees when I reached it. I was still trying to collect myself when a mother and two small children went by into the gap.

KKRRRSHK-BANG!

I could see the muzzle flash from the Serb lines not two hundred yards away. The line was close enough that the Serbs knew exactly who they were shooting at. I screamed and threw off my pack in a murderous rage. It was a blinding, all consuming hate from which I knew I could kill without remorse. Indeed, at that moment, I wished all Serbs dead. The round went high and took off the corner of a building across the road. When they finally reached the other side the mother knelt and hugged her children tight.

I was nervous. I stood out in Dobrinja, not so much for my clothing, and I had lost a great deal of weight since coming to Bosnia. It was my eyes that threatened to give me away.  I still had a flicker of hope, unlike the dark and vacant eyes of people I passed.  Even children peered like urchins from the wreckage of homes and from beneath shattered balconies. Like everyone else I kept close to buildings, where people traded food or sold books that could be used for toilet paper or women’s sanitary napkins. People rarely ventured into the street, where death was random and sudden. Soldiers went quickly from Dobrinja, preferring the frontline because it was safer and more predictable. There was a constancy of echoes and rumblings that surrounded and engulfed it from every side. Even UNPROFOR steered clear of the place. I preferred it in the dark. In the light of day I feared being one wrong step or an inch one way or another from a sniper’s crosshairs.

The soldiers guarding the tunnel were tense, shouting and threatening anyone who came to close to their heavy cordon or who failed to show the proper passes. Not wanting a replay of the night before I retreated and carefully weighed my remaining options. Prishtinska Street cut across the rectangular bureau where it came to an end at the airport road. Across the road UN soldiers were pinned down against the clatter of gunfire. The shooting came from both sides of the line, and it was clear that any attempt to cross the road was suicide. Another path in Sarajevo’s hideous maze had come to a soul-shattering end. I had no choice but to head back to the city.

Storm clouds were moving in, rolling down the mountains into the valley. They carried an icy cold wind that dusted the city with snowflakes. In Alipashno I sat on a low wall on a hill overlooking PTT and the road out of town. The thought of returning to Ana a failure was unthinkable. I sketched a picture of her as I gathered my thoughts. A curious little girl sat on the wall beside me and watched me sketch. She had wavy auburn hair and a dark coat that was much too big for her. She couldn’t have been more than five or six.

“So what should I do, huh?” I asked. She only looked at me with those huge auburn eyes, not understanding a word I was saying. I smiled. “You’re fresh out of ideas too, eh?”

I finished the drawing and held it up for her to see. “It’s okay?”

She brushed back her hair and studied it a moment. Suddenly she laughed and buried her face in her coat sleeves.

Down on the road a convoy of UNHCR trucks came to a stop. Grabbing my gear I raced down to the nearest truck. The convoy would pass through several Serbian checkpoints on their way out of the valley. It would be risky without papers from the Serb ministry in Pale. I had the ones issued to me the previous Spring, but they were expired. I was counting on the hope that I could convince them I had been in Sarajevo all this time and only wanted to go home. It was a long shot, but it was the only one I had.

“Where are you headed, Mate?” I asked the Croatian driver.

“Metkovich,” he replied.

 “Can I hitch a ride with you? I’m an American.” I waved my passport hoping that would reassure him. He hesitated as a couple of Bosnian militiamen appeared on the sidewalk.

“I have eighty Marks,” I pleaded. It was nearly all the expendable cash I had left. He considered the offer and looked once more at the militiamen.

“Sorry,” he frowned as the convoy began to move. I stepped back and watched it wind among the barricades and head out of the city. I watched it disappear in the dust and smoke near the Serb lines as one of the Bosnians came over. He was a tall sort, a smart looking young man in a long gray coat. A rifle was slung over one shoulder. He stood next to me and watched until the convoy was gone.

“He wouldn’t take you across,” he said in surprisingly good English. “The Chetniks would stop you for sure. Passengers aren’t allowed. You have an UNPROFOR card?”

“No,” I replied.

“Ha!” he laughed darkly. “The Chetniks would arrest you for sure. Who knows, maybe they would cut your throat.”

“Maybe not,” I replied smugly. “I have some contacts over there.”

“No you don’t,” he countered. “This is war. Those guys over there are killers, and now your president says he won’t allow NATO planes to bomb our guys on Igman? You would be dead for sure.”

We were definitely getting off on the wrong foot, and it was dangerous to make enemies here. His partner, a young kid and the only one in a military uniform sneered like I was just one more of the over-privileged foreigners he despised.

“What choice do I have?” I said.

“Your own people won’t help you?”

“Nobody wants to help me, so I have to help myself.”

“You’re stuck here like the rest of us, eh?” there was a note of sympathy in his voice.

“So it would seem.”

“You’re a journalist?” he asked with a note of disdain.

“An artist.”

“Then you must know Mustafa Skopljak?” The question was clearly a test.

“Know him? I met him last spring. He’s brilliant.”

The guy was taken aback. “And where did you meet him?”

“In his office at the Academy. One of my wife’s professor’s took me there.”

“Your wife?”

“Believe it or not I got married yesterday.”

He laughed and looked back at his partner knowingly. “So technically this is your honeymoon, eh? You know we could arrest you if we wished, but tonight is your lucky night. Mustafa is my cousin. I am Samir. Come and have some coffee.”

In the shadow of the shattered Bitumenka factory five ragtag Bosnian policemen were huddled against the cold in an empty lot. I was a bit reluctant with this bunch at first, given my experience the night before. Instead they welcomed me as if I was an old friend. They weren’t soldiers, and only nominal fighters. Several of them were hardly more than teenagers, university and high school students living with their parents when the war broke out. One of them was a slick looking kid called “Snake,” who seemed out of place anywhere other than a smoky disco, with slick-backed dark hair and a permanent smirk. The oldest of the bunch was Ahmet, a former narcotics officer with the Sarajevo police. Ahmet shivered in a thin leather jacket and gray work slacks. Samir was an engineer with worn out tennis shoes. Someone shoved a steaming cup of coffee into my hands, and Snake pushed a chair over to me.

“Careful of that guy,” Samir motioned to Snake. “He’ll screw anything that moves.”

“You’re all my witnesses,” I managed in broken Bosnian, “I haven’t moved a muscle.”

Snake moved one of his scuffed black dress shoes against my boot and asked if I wanted to trade. I knew he wasn’t serious and made a sigh that I’d have to be nuts.

“I could cut your throat and take them?” He said.

“And I’d make sure to bleed all over them,” I shot back.

Snake shrugged and looked around at the others. “Washes out, right?”

“Leave the poor guy alone.” Samir swatted his shoulder.

The post was a stone’s throw from the UN gate at PTT. I had to ask why they needed a checkpoint so close to the compound. Samir said that a great deal of black marketeering and other awful things happened around the gates. As if to illustrate the point a Bosnian guy slipped out of the UN compound with several cases of Heineken Beer and ran across the road into Alipashno.  

“See,” Snake interrupted. “Where here to kill those guys.”

“He got away,” I jibed.

Snake fought a smile and shrugged. “I know where he lives.”

“We don’t care about a couple of cases of beer,” Samir continued. “We’re here for the serious stuff; the drug dealers, pimps who bring little girls to the gates.”

“The soldiers like virgins,” Ahmet, the narcotics cop, added. “They don’t have AIDS.”

“They do when they leave UNPROFOR,” Snake remarked.

“Or when you get through with them,” someone chided.

“How about I give you some,” he fired back.

“Sometimes the girls come by themselves,” Samir continued. “They trade their bodies for a sandwich or money to buy food for their families. A lot of times they are war orphans with no family and no other way to survive. They fall prey to pimps and blackmarketeers. We try to stop that.” Samir lit a cigarette. “Nice war, huh?”

As night fell there was a sudden flurry of activity through the UN gate. The shooting on the airport road had all but stopped and the last few trucks were getting through for the night. After dark the airport road became a free fire zone I walked with Samir up to the road. It was quite dark now. The UN traffic had slowed to a trickle. I told him the difficult time I was having finding a way out of the city. I didn’t tell him about Dobrinja the night before. He fumbled in his pocket for another cigarette.

“I would help you get to the tunnel if I could.” He brought a cigarette to his lips. “It is just too dangerous.”

“I know.”

“Dangerous for you too,” he pulled out a lighter. “I will ask around though. It is all I can do.”

“I’m not asking, but I appreciate any help.”

“Of course.” Samir lit the cigarette and took a long drag. The End of the cigarette burned cherry red. A half mile away, up a hill and through a gutted apartment building a Serb sniper in Nedjarici drew a bead on the cherry. There was a snap and a rush of air between Samir and I as the sniper put a round where he guessed Samir’s head would be.

“Sranje!” Samir exclaimed as we ran for cover.

A UN truck pulled from the gate and stopped for a moment on the road near the checkpoint.  Grabbing my gear I ran over with my passport at the ready.

“Speak English?” I asked through the half open window.

“A little,” he replied, looking me over carefully.

“I need a lift to the airport. Are you going that way?”

“Journalist?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I lied.

“Sure,” he said hesitantly, “get in.”

We were pressing our luck being on the airport road this late. By right, at this hour, even our white painted truck was fair game. The fighting had reduced once pleasant neighborhoods into indistinguishable forms that merged with the ever-darkening landscape. Tattered tree limbs reached to the stormy sky like bony fingers. Random gunfire cracked and popped all around.

“Going home?” the soldier asked.

“Trying,” I replied. “I appreciate the lift.”

“This is very dangerous. No one should know.”

I nodded just as a Serb soldier stepped into the road ahead just at the limit of the headlights. A rifle rested on his hip. As we slowed to a stop several others stood just off the road, weapons trained on us.

“Serbs?” I asked.

“Serbs,” he replied heavily. The Serb, a young guy with tussled brown hair and an innocent face came around to the driver’s side. The driver was quick with his identification. Hoping it would be enough, and betting the kid wanted to get off the road as much as we did I handed over my passport. Both men looked at me expectantly.

“UNPROFOR card?” asked the Serb. I shook my head. “Please, wait,”

The driver fumed as the Serb soldier coffered with his comrades. “If I knew you had no identification I never would have taken you. I can’t help you.”

There was a tap at my window. I turned and looked into the barrel of an AK-47. The driver bowed his head, and said simply “I’m sorry.”

After being searched I was led down to the ruins of a small house. One of the soldiers told me to leave my things by the door, and that all I could keep was my water bottle. I had a terrible feeling that I would see none of those things, my cameras, the journal and the sketch of Ana ever again.

Wood smoke hung heavy in the room, rising from a small makeshift stove. It burned in my eyes, but the warmth of the room more than made up for that. A single bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, low enough that I had to maneuver around it. It was so weak that the dull yellow light was of little consequence. Someone bumped it causing the ochre shadows to swim around the room. There was a small wooden table to one side with bread, a telephone, a bottle of brandy a rifle and Serbian newspapers. Beside the door were two water jugs. The wood floor was covered with muddy tracks and cigarette butts. The oldest of the bunch carefully went through each page of my passport. He pointed to one of the visa stamps and grinned.

“Serbia.”

Someone offered me bread and a swig of brandy, almost as if I was merely a guest and not their prisoner. The bread was still fresh and heavier than the war bread people in the city had eaten for the last several years. Never once were the Serbs threatening or menacing. It was almost cordial, and I had difficulty reconciling these men with those who had fired at the woman with her children on the road to Dobrinja the day before. I was thinking of a British journalist in a Serbian prison in northern Bosnia. He had been there for some weeks, his only crime being in Serb territory without permission.

I was told to sit on the floor near the bathroom. It was quickly obvious that the plumbing had not worked in some time. Foremost in my mind was my passport. The Serbs were keeping it, and there was no telling when or if I would see it again. It was like being ripped from the world. Without it there was no proof that I existed anywhere in the world. I wondered what Ana was doing. Did she think that I managed to escape the city, or did she fear that I lay dead somewhere?

Men came and went through the night. No one said a word to me, or even paid me any mind. Unable to sleep, as gunfire and mortar rounds split the night, I studied them, struggled to find something that set them apart from former neighbors across the road. I searched for some quality, an unguarded movement that betrayed some inherent evil peculiar to Serbs. There was nothing, at least nothing that I could see. The only difference was their perspective. These men and boys were the machinery of the siege, the physical links of an impregnable chain. Likely many of them had grown up near here, or had been forced from or frightened from homes and lives in Sarajevo, where they had worked and played and lived with their enemy. It was that fact that betrayed the true character of the war. It was not tribal or religious, or even political, at least not on the frontline. It was not about historical injustices or ancient animosities. These were the excuses of those profited from the war, were ignorant, or had no patience for learning the deeper truths. This was a family fight; intimate and terribly personal, which is what made the fighting so bitter and atrocious. The combatants knew each other’s weaknesses and sensibilities and reacted to violations of those things with the fiery rage of brothers or lovers betrayed.

Sarajevo had been under siege for almost a thousand days, the longest siege in modern warfare. The habits and culture of war had replaced the culture and habit of peace. I wondered if the men in that tiny frontline house thought it would drag on for so long. I might have asked Croats and Muslims the same question. Did they fully comprehend the venom unleashed, the seductive trickery of their leaders, or the gullible cruelty of their own hearts? Did they realize the implications of their own choices, of remaining silent, of just going along, or of not looking more deeply through the confusing haze of fear and paranoia? Did they understand any of it any better now?

On the wall by the door someone had tacked a small portrait of the Madonna and baby Jesus.  Their pale round faces were framed in bright golden halos.  From the Virgin Mother’s embrace the child looked at her with enough love and adoration to change the world. I couldn’t help but wonder how that simple message had become so hopelessly confused. With an exhausted sigh I settled against the broken wall and closed my eyes.