Escape from Sarajevo-Part 21: Ghosts of Sarajevo

EIGHT

Two in the morning. Ana says she speaks to the ghosts of Sarajevo. I’ve heard many people say that in Bosnia. Even an ardent skeptic like me admits that there is a mystical, haunted quality to this land. There is a palpable quality that deepens every shadow and chills every wind. Ana says they come to her in whispers in the night. Sometimes their screams are as maddening as the guns in the hills. Their lyrical voices beckon and entice, sometimes offering glimpses of the future or teasing and tormenting with cruel lies.  Ana says it is difficult to know which, and she scoffs at my skepticism. She says the voices of the dead rise from this land like the tattered untended fields of Bosnia. There are many more voices now, she says.

Keka says the ghosts told her that I would come and that Ana and I would marry. I can’t speak to that, but somehow we managed to find one another across and ocean and amid a terrible war. A part of me wanted to believe that it was preordained. How else could one explain the sketch, except by some amazing coincidence? Any sense, however, that we w ere blessed, or that the universe had conspired to bring us together was tempered by the suffering of so many others. Then again perhaps we were not as blessed as we believed. Perhaps we had squandered or spent our allotment and this story would end with a shell or a bullet. Perhaps the war and distance would prove too much to overcome.

I had dozed off for a time. A rifle shot and the heavy drone of a Hercules cargo plane at the airport startled me from sleep. The fire had gone out during the night, and the predawn cold and damp permeated my body. I stretched without standing and finished the last of a chocolate bar in my pocket. There was bread on the table and I was still hungry, I was calculating my chances for stealing some when the telephone began to ring. A soldier burst in and snapped up the receiver.

“Da?’ he shouted at the receiver. “Molim? Molim? Ah, jebim te!” he cursed and slammed down the phone.

More cold and damp rushed through the open door.  I shivered and pulled my jacket tight around me, with little benefit. The Serb was a young kid, made much older by the war. He shuffled wearily and grumbled to himself like an ornery old man. It took him forever to close the door. He nodded to me.

“Hladno?” cold, he asked checking the stove.

“A little,” I replied in English. He quickly restarted the fire with some newspaper and a couple bits of wood. More troops filed in and someone started a pot of coffee. One of them brought me a cup. I gladly accepted it. The coffee was bitter and thick as oil and so strong that the first steaming sip caused me to shudder. I finished it quickly and held out the cup for more.

“Dobar, eh?” smiled a soldier as he refilled the cup.

“Perfect,” I replied.

“Please, some bread,” he gestured to the table. I tore away a piece and gobbled it down, much to the amusement of several of the men. There were weapons on the table. I reached over one for the bread. There were two more beside the door. The Serbs were careless with them, and left them lying about as if I wasn’t there.  For just a moment I considered seizing one of the guns. There were maybe six or eight men in the room. Most of them were at the stove with their backs turned. I think I might have dispatched most of the men in the room with one or two bursts, but there was no telling how many more were outside, or among the other houses and bunkers in the neighborhood.  It was a quarter mile to the airport and the UN, and maybe fifty yards to the nearest Bosnian positions. To reach either I would have to cross a forbidding landscape of snipers, machine guns, trenches and mines. Even if I was lucky enough to make it out of the house chances are I would make an inviting target for Bosnian gunners as I came through the fog from enemy lines.

There was a flurry of gunfire just before dawn. The loud clatter of small arms and automatic fire came and went along the line like waves on the shore. The fighting built and peaked before collapsing in a tatter of stray shots.  Someone flipped the passport into my lap and ordered me outside. I climbed slowly to my feet not knowing what to expect. A heavy fog had settled over the valley during the night. The wreckage and ruin of the neighborhood were vague apparitions. My pack was beside the house where I had left it the night before. On the road a UN truck waited to take me to the airport. I only stared, believing the truck was an illusion and that it would become a Serbian truck that would take me to prison.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“You have a friend in Pale.”

“Who?’

He didn’t say, just stared at me through the dark slits of tired eyes. I ran up the embankment and climbed into the truck. It was warm inside and smelled of old cigarettes. I sunk back into the seat, numb for the two-minute ride to the airport. Once through the gate I was overcome with emotion. Wiping tears from my eyes I thanked Ana’s ghosts.