Escape from Sarajevo-Part 25: Party in Hell

THREE

I slipped between the cargo containers along the Skendarija Bridge. A desolate stretch of road bent along the bank of the river towards Grbavica. It was perhaps a quarter mile to the frontline, marked by a French observation bunker. A bullet riddled bus and a burned out car sat lifeless in the road. The city was quiet and the thought of crossing the line unnoticed eclipsed all reason. It seemed impossible that every inch of the valley could be completely guarded. With frontlines running through fields and forests, factories and neighborhoods there had to be at least one place unattended or overlooked. There were rumors about secret routes out of the city, of underground tunnels between Grbavica and Marin Dvor. The first steps were the most difficult, but soon the illusion that I could simply walk out of the city overtook me. I looked back at the barricades, rust pouring from a hundred bullet holes and knew I could make it. When I reached the bus I wondered how Ana would take the news of my sudden and unexplained departure.

Suddenly a sniper stitched a line of bullets past me. I dove into a doorway and pressed myself flat against the door. Another volley cut along the sidewalk inches away. I had been a fool to believe that I could leave the city this way, but desperation could play tricks on the mind. I waited the better part of an hour before slipping around the corner and back to the city.

I sulked most of the day, believing there was no way out of the city. Everyone left me to it believing that it was part of the process. It was the same process they had gone through when the war began. Ana sat down beside me and ran her hand across my back.

“I feel abandoned by the world,” I said.

“Now you know how we felt three years ago,” Renata offered.

I smiled painfully. “It could be a long winter.”

“You won’t be here that long,” said Ana. “Tomorrow we will go to see Damir and Nina and talk about the tunnel.”

I nodded. “Let’s hope I have better luck this time.”

Ana and I went to a party near the cemetery that night.  Olja’s boyfriend, a smalltime blackmarketeers, had managed a dozen cases of the local brew, Sarajevsko Pivo, a rare treat. We met Nina near Ciglana and crossed the park wary of a battle taking shape near the zoo. Shells erupted around the Bosnian positions there, the gray-yellow smoke drifting down across the cemetery and into the city. As we crossed the cemetery I lamented the fact that I was stuck in Sarajevo.

“But here I am walking arm in arm with the two prettiest girls in Sarajevo,” I remarked. “This could be much worse.”

“Sure,” Ana laughed cynically, we could all be in Rwanda!”

A deafening explosion and a hail of gunfire chased up the hill to the first floor apartment. It was an old Austrian era place, with tall elegant windows that once house German officers during the Nazi occupation. Olja and her boyfriend were waiting at the door when we arrived. He was a sly looking kid with curly blond hair cut close at the back and sides. His name was Edin, a war orphan who had learned to care for himself on the tough streets of the city. Though Edin wasn’t much older than Olja he had already been a soldier for several years, but it had cost the eighteen year old dearly. He suffered from Post Traumatic Stress that came in the form of debilitating anxiety attacks and sudden bouts of uncontrollable rage. Since legal medications were virtually nonexistent in the war kids like Edin relied on alternative means for dealing. That was quickly apparent when Ana and I stepped inside the murky flat. The air was thick with the musty sweet fragrance of marijuana smoke. Heavy metal music blared from a stereo rigged to a couple of car batteries, nearly drowning the battle growing in intensity down the street.

Olja was already drunk and wavered as she led us around and introduced us to her friends. Mostly they were an odd mix of Sarajevo’s counter youth culture. Many were longhaired conscription dodgers and pacifists, all of whom led a largely nocturnal existence as they played a cat and mouse game with authorities. They snuck around the city like rats always keeping one step ahead of the authorities. Each of their stories was different. Some were cowards, others believed the war was madness and primitivism, and ultimately futile and purposeless. Others were of mixed marriage, one parent one religion and the other another religion. One kid was the last surviving child of a family that had already suffered far too much. Edin shoved a beer into my hand and said he had heard that I was stuck.

“What can I do?” I made a toast.

“Nothing,” he replied.

“Yep.”

“Drink up then.”

Outside the fighting raged, often eclipsing the deafening Rock music. This was definitely not Nina’s crowd. A ballroom dancer, she preferred a much different crowd than the rowdies and burnouts in Edin’s flat. She waited for a lull in the fighting and left just before curfew. By midnight the party, like the fighting was nearing it’s climax. Bright white tracers streaked past the windows flashing brightly in the room and giving the party something of a psychedelic feel. Olja watched the deadly lightshow from a window until it conspired with the smoke and booze to make her dizzy. Suddenly she turned and bolted for the bathroom. Ana and I were standing over her when several soldiers arrived. They were just off the line, some of them covered in mud. One of them stood alone watching everyone from a distance with a mixture of resentment and envy, almost as if they were alien creatures.

“Stay away from that guy,” warned a scrappy fighter named Zoran. Zoran lived just up the street. With thick dark hair and sleepy eyes he looked more like a poolroom punk than one of the city’s best fighters. His reputation for being good with a knife and calm under fire had earned him the kid with a Serbian name the respect of a local Muslim warlord named Tsatso.

“That guy?” I asked, shouting about the racket.

“He’s killed a lot of people.” Zoran drew a line across his throat. It was relative of course. Zoran had killed his fair share of men in the war as well. At sixteen he shot his first man on a war-ravaged street in Grbavica. For that he was rewarded with a pack of cigarettes. He was on leave from the fighting on Treskavica, where he had been for the last month or so. He was headed back to the front in the morning. Zoran had a terrible feeling he wouldn’t be coming home this time.