Escape from Sarajevo-Part 27: The Escape

SIX

The fog was nothing short of a miracle. It was the thickest fog Sarajevo had seen in months, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. It blanketed the valley, swallowing Hum and Jekovac and the Serbian bunkers on the mountain. As though asserting itself against hate and violence the fog smothered the fighting. There was a line from a waltz by the Yugoslav folk singer Djordjie Balashevich that seemed written for this moment.

The fog seemed like a blessing indeed. It seemed sent from heaven.

By six I was packed and ready to leave. Most of it had been done the night before, everything placed and positioned with the utmost attention to detail. It was my of dealing with the death of the girls Olja and Renata were at the door. Given my previous record we wasted little energy on sad goodbyes.

“I’ll see you all in a few hours,” I remarked as we embraced.

“If things get too bad in Dobrinja,” said Renata, “don’t be foolish. Come back home.”

“Bill, we really must hurry,” Ana urged. “Damir will be waiting.”

The ramp was a little hump in the road where it crossed the tracks between Hum and Ana’s neighborhood. The unfinished concrete supports of an unfinished highway climbed into the swirling fog and disappeared. There were goats grazing nearby among the burned-out rail cars of the train station, watch over by an old Muslim woman. Damir was late so we waited, grateful for the fog and these last few moments together. I held her close. Without looking at me Ana said she knew I wouldn’t return this time.

“I love you, you know,” I said.

Her eyes held mine as they had done that first night as we explored the city. “Do you?’

“More than life.”

“Completely, even down to your socks?”

“Even down to my socks.”

We could hear Damir’s nasty cough long before we saw him. He called to us and waved. His voice strained nearly gone. He coughed again, hunching his shoulders and holding his chest as he did. He said it was definitely pneumonia.

“Can you make it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “What choice is there? There’s no getting off the line unless you’re crippled or dead.” 

He looked away as Ana and I said our final goodbyes. She and I hoped that we would meet again soon, and that it would be far away from war. This time it really felt like goodbye.

“Go home before you catch cold,” I kissed her cool forehead, letting my lips linger there for a moment. Ana held me so tight as I breathed her in one last time. Finally she tore herself away, then faded into the mist with my heart.

Damir threw an arm around me and said not to worry. We stopped briefly at the Tito barracks near the plaza so he could report for duty. From there we wound through the factory district. It seemed as if the whole city was out, despite the early hour. Many carried bundles of firewood, or rummaged through trash piles and ruins for anything of use. Others struggled with water canisters. Everywhere people made last minute preparations for winter. Damir and I passed quickly through Alipashno, jogging the open ground into Dobrinja.  Despite the fog the Dobrinja was alive with the pop and crackle of small arms fire. I followed a few paces behind Damir, just as he instructed. He chanced a look in my direction and gave a reassuring nod.

We passed through the first few blocks without difficulty. That luxury was painfully short lived. The Dobrinja canal ran lengthwise through Dobrinja. Serbian gunners to either side of the canal effectively cut Bosnian territory in half here. The ground was open to either side of the canal. Ignoring the fog the Serbs fired on the approaches to a small sandbagged bridge. Damir and I waited for the shooting to let up then made a dash for the bridge. We reached it just as the shooting began again. Bullets sounded like angry hornets slapping into the sandbags along the bridge. A small trench at the far side covered part of the open ground there. The shooting was worse here, and a number of men were clustered at the edge of the trench. One by one we made for the cover of buildings forty yards away.

There was a cordon of soldiers up ahead, and more in the vacant windows overlooking the street. I recognized one of them. It was Karlo, the soldier who felt so guilty the night I was arrested in Dobrinja. Our eyes met for an instant and a cold shiver ran down my spine. He was looking at me when Damir pulled up my collar and shoved my head down. I glanced back at Karlo. He turned and walked away.

“Wait here,” said Damir. He chatted with several soldiers for a moment then waved me over. Before anyone could protest or question us he shoved me through the line, and kept pushing until we were safely inside the first building of the tunnel complex. He sighed heavy and looked back along the street to be sure no one had followed.

“That was too easy,” he said. “Ajmo.”

The building was as dank and dark as a dungeon. We were in a narrow passageway with small windows and gaps every few yards or so. The walls had been stripped to the bare concrete. The floor was a mess of mud and debris. Bullet holes peppered the walls at each window. Dark stains among them told the price of miscalculation. The nearest Serb lines were barely a hundred yards. The passage turned to the right up through gutted apartment flats. We came upon a long line of ragged-looking refugees. The air was heavy and thick, and filled with the acrid bite of urine and unwashed human bodies. Someone had shit their pants and a woman near me vomited and collapsed to the muddy floor sobbing. Bullets slapped loudly against the building.

This was a desperate place. This was the siege. It was at once heartbreaking and hopeful. It was a supremely human place, and cursed with every human failing. But the tunnel was a constant contradiction. It was here that Sarajevo defended herself on one hand and defiled herself on the other. Women bartered their bodies and men gave their souls to the devil for the chance of crossing to freedom. The men who fought and died defending the tunnel were a special breed, but everywhere there were opportunists who preyed on the desperate and weak, like rats coming to a carcass. More than anything the fate of Sarajevo depended on this place. Without it the city would fall within a week.

Damir left me and pushed ahead through the tightly packed bodies. By the soft moans and muzzled sobs I guessed that many had been there for sometime, perhaps several days. I could only wonder what that meant for my chances. Damir returned a short time later. I tried to figure my chances from his expression but could not. He pulled me to the side and up against the wall.

“Maybe we wait one hour,” he whispered, “and then we go.”

“I’ve waited a month,” I replied. “I can wait one hour.”

The line crept forward a little. Not that anyone was getting through, but from an anxious surge as the fighting outside grew worse. We were cattle, anxiously awaiting salvation or slaughter. Alternately we prayed for both. I looked at the sullen expressions and could feel the deadly determination of animal survival stirring in each soul. Each person was making subtle negotiations with their own humanity, each of us fully at the mercy of our individual strengths and fears. The temperature rose with the crush of bodies. Sweat and filth streaked faces turned to the sooty ceiling for any bit of unused air. Small pockets struggled against one another. A baby cried somewhere. Grown men were reduced to tears. Nearby a woman huddled with two small girls and some bundled belongs. One man succumbed and collapsed against a post. We stepped over him as though he was trash. There was nothing more to be done.

All the while soldiers came and went from the tunnel. I wondered what place the story of the tunnel would take in Sarajevo’s long history. Outsiders had written much of the city’s history, and outsiders were forbidden from getting near the tunnel. Even to Sarajevans what happened there was but a whisper of a rumor, a shadow, a secret that doomed the memory of this place.

Damir’s hour went by, and then another. I was drenched in sweat, my own and that of those around me. It ran under my collar and over my body in slimy tentacles that made the miserable excruciating. The crowd surged again and was fought back by soldiers. Now and again the soldiers would pull someone out line and push them down into the tunnel. There seemed no rhyme or reason, except to relieve pressure or if a soldier recognized a face. Damir was pleading with an officer. The officer was as filthy and haggard as the rest of us. He considered things for a moment then gave a nod.

There was no hesitation. Damir yanked me out of line and shoved me towards the tunnel. I skidded down into the hole and into an open air trench through the remains of an old farm. The ground closed around us as I dipped my head and entered the tunnel once more. Mud oozed from the walls, and the ceiling seemed to sag with the weight of tons of wet earth. Murky brown water sloshed nearly to our knees. I could feel the walls closing in on me. Panic threatened to overwhelm me. I had to stop and collect myself.

“Okay?” asked Damir sympathetically

“Yeah.” I was sweating rivers.

“Six hundred meters. Can you make it?”

“I can make it.”

He went ahead, squeezing past me in the narrow passage. There were sounds up ahead, loud splashing and clanking sounds. More soldiers were coming from the Butmir side, laden with weapons food and supplies. One of them dipped a shoulder and came at me hard believing momentum would prevent us from getting stuck. As we ground past one another the muzzle of his rifle smashed hard into my face. It knocked me hard to the wall and I came up spitting blood and bits of tooth. I was still shaking off the blow when Damir shoved me into a little cubbyhole as two men pushed a cart of artillery shells past.

At five hundred meters I tasted fresh air again. It renewed me, and gave me the strength to finish the last hundred meters or so. Damir and I stumbled onto the road outside the tunnel gulping in clean air. I looked back in the direction of the city. The fog erased the world beyond a small chicken coup. It was almost as if Sarajevo had never existed. Damir walked with me as far as the dull green Zheljazhnitsa River.

“This is as far as I can go,” he said beside a half finished bridge. “Any father and I will be considered a deserter. Stay on the road to Sokolovichi, then straight across the field to Hrasnica. Remember, to the left and to the right are the Chetnik lines.”

“Damir…” I began. He cut me off.

“Maybe one day we will see each other again.”

“I owe you everything.”

“Nemam nishta,” it’s nothing he said. “Good luck.”

I was soaked to the bone, and could already feel it conspiring with the cold. I needed a change of dry clothes, but there was no time. The fog was beginning to clear, with little glimpses of blue swirling overhead. The workmen on the bridge noticed it too. In a few hours they would be fair game for Serbian snipers in Gornji Kotorac. I would too if I didn’t get moving. I only prayed the fog would hold until I reached the mountain road. Already exhausted I pressed on to Hrasnica.

The wooded slopes of Igman rose behind a small white Mosque at the end of a small lane. There was a babbling brook beside the Mosque. I paused beside it and said a small prayer for luck. The fog was lifting faster now. There was no time to find the way I had come into the valley a month or so earlier. I would have to find a way up the slope from here or wait until night fall, but that brought up a whole new set of dangers.

I found a way through a small garden. It was less a trail than a path gouged from mountain runoff. I could already see the edge of the road up above, and knew snipers would be able to see it soon as well.  I scrambled over scrub and rocks and around numerous cars blown off the road. There was no time to catch my breath. The fog had lifted clear to the edge of town. The guns began to awaken across the valley, coming closer and more sustained. Another half hour and nothing would be able to move on the mountain without drawing fire. I climbed the last few yards to the road and threw off my pack with a groan.

The fog lifted just as I reached the tree line. It was a short climb to the clearing into bright warm sunshine. Several mountain warriors chatted near the center of the clearing. To the right of the clearing an elderly couple was preparing a modest winter shelter from logs and heavy plastic. A piece of cardboard was tacked to a tree. It read “Kafana.” They had a good fire going. Fat logs crackled and popped. The scent of cold pine and wood smoke awoke my senses. Vehicles were already gathering among the trees above the clearing. The soldiers waved me over as if I was a neighbor.

The soldiers were local guys from the mountain. Two of them were young enough that I thought the third might be their father. He looked my passport over curiously. He was most interested in the international visas that filled the back of the booklet. He winked mischievously at the boys and asked why there were no visas for Bosnia.

“This is a sovereign nation,” he bellowed, fighting the urge to smile. “You must have a visa or you can be arrested.” 

I pulled out a pen and handed it over, also winking at the boys. They laughed as he handed back the passport. “It’s okay. America is a good friend to Bosnia.”

One of the boys produced a bottle of brandy and we toasted to our new friendship.

“To peace.”

“What’s that?” one of the boy’s remarked.

“Whatever it is,” I said and took another swig.

“You came from Sarajevo?” the older man asked.

I nodded.

“Igman is very dangerous now. A lot of fighting.”

“What can I do, huh?”

“Keep the brandy,” he said. “It will help to keep you warm.”

I took the brandy and climbed down to a ledge above the valley. All that remained of the fog were patches here and there. It was gathered around the waist of Hum and among the lower hills to the south. Sniper fire crackled above and below the clearing as Bosnian gunners found targets in the valley. There was little return fire, but enough that I retreated from the ledge back to the clearing.

A white VW Rabbit raced down the mountain and skidded to a hard stop near the soldiers. The driver, a man in civilian clothes was fuming and had a murderous expression as he climbed from the car and slammed the door with an excess of emotion. It was then that I noticed the figure in the back seat. It was a teenage boy dressed in camouflage, his eyes tightly bound with a scarf. The driver drew a pistol and began to rant and rave, working himself up to something.

“Fucking Chetnik!” he hissed. I looked in at the boy. His head was cocked at a funny angle as he tried to see beneath the scarf. Along with a lock of his long brown hair the rag hid a nasty welt under one eye. His expression was empty, like a man who knew he was already dead. An old man rapped his cane hard against the window causing the boy to jump with fright. The old man flashed a filthy, toothless grin and drew a finger slowly across his throat.

“He looks familiar,” someone said.

“Teshalovich,” the driver checked a round into the pistol.

“I knew a Teshalovich once,” someone else remarked, “from Trnovo.”

“Trnovo?” inquired the old man.

“I don’t know if he had a son.”

“Fuck him,” another spat.

The driver’s anger flared. “I have a mind to put a bullet in his fucking skull!”

Someone motioned to me. “We, uh, have a visitor. An American.”

“Sranje!” The driver glared in my direction. “And fuck him too!”

Spitting in my direction the driver yanked open the door and began to drag the Serbian kid from the car. I felt sorry for the kid and felt sure he was about to die. I thought of the two girls in the neighborhood the night before, more than ten thousand dead in the city and Ana. A part of me pitied the boy the way I might pity a drowning rat. I pulled my camera and backed away from the scene. Someone saw the camera though and the driver warned in no uncertain terms against taking a photo.

“Mother fucker!” he screamed and shoved the kid back into the car. As the car sped off though something had happened to the men in the clearing. From that moment they hardly acknowledged me at all.

I couldn’t bring myself to worry about the kid. There were more important concerns. As the sun set behind Igman the temperature dropped dramatically. The wind howled through the trees stabbing through my wet clothes. I stomped and worked my arms to keep warm. The fire at the edge of the clearing had been doused to keep from drawing artillery fire. The first stars were splashed across the darkening sky. As night fell soldiers passed back and forth from the lines. Trucks moved into place and then started down into the valley. The thunder of Serb shells falling on the road shook the mountain. Before long all I could think about was the cold, and began to fear that I might die on the mountain.

“Imate li cigareta?” a passing soldier asked. It was a simple enough question, right out of my Serbo-Croatian phrase book, a question I had heard a thousand times in the Balkans, but my mind was so muddled by the cold that I could only stare dumbly.

“Imate li cigareta?” he said once more with emphasis.

“English,” I managed to say, shivering so badly I could barely get the word out.

“You look terrible,” he said in decent English. His name was Zhijad, an average looking sort with wavy dark hair. He wasn’t much older than I, but pipes of gray hair at Zhijad’s temples betrayed the hardships and horrors of the war.

“I’m freezing,” I stammered.

“You must get off this mountain. It might snow tonight. You’ll freeze for sure.”

“I could sure use some help. I’m Bill. We shook hands. His hand was so warm I hated to let go.

“Sometimes cars come to drop people off, or meet them. You must watch and be clever. You have some money?”

“Only a little.”

“Everyone needs money here.”

“I’ll make a deal with you,” I began. “If I find a ride I’ll take you. If you find one…I’ll pay our way. Deal?”

Snow tumbled in the air and my clothing had begun to freeze in places, sticking to my flesh. The parade of men and equipment seemed unending. I watched their face, trying any way possible to divert my mind from the cold. There was no one in Bosnia who had not lost someone close. Some lost more than others, and too many had lost everything. In the end war was always about revenge.

Zhijad was all I had in the world at that moment. Without him I was at the mercy of the killing cold. He encouraged me to keep talking and to keep moving, anything to stay warm, but it did little good. My words slurred as though I was drunk, and I would lose track of thoughts mid sentence. Before long I was having trouble making any sense at all. Zhijad held me in a vain attempt to keep me warm.

His face was cut with deep lines of sorrow and three hard years of war. He looked so much older than his thirty-two years.  He was an engineer before the war, a career; he said longingly, that gave him a decent and purposeful life. Staring blankly at the parade of men and vehicles he mentioned a girl he knew before the war.

“What happened?” I asked, teeth chattering loudly.

“I lost her somewhere,” he replied soulfully.

“And your family?”

“I am the oldest of four brothers.”

“All in the army?”

“They were,” he said. “They were all killed. It’s funny, after each funeral there was always one less brother. Finally I was there alone. Now who will bury me?”

“How can you ever forgive after this war?” I asked. I pressed closer to his warmth, but it was of little consequence.

A passing soldier cried in a tone one might use to rally a sports team, “Allah u Ahkbar!” God is great. A smattering of others replied in kind. It was hardly the Jihadist sort of zeal some Serbs spoke of.

“It is not my place to forgive or not to forgive,” said Zhijad. He was struggling with every word, against a deeper hatred that screamed for revenge. “That is for God to do. Why all this happened is not for me to say. I use to hate them, the Chetniks that killed my brothers, but I don’t have the energy anymore. This war has robbed everything from me. Everything is gone, Bill, and all I have left is my fate.”

A feeling of warmth and euphoria came over me suddenly. The world seemed at the end of a dark tunnel, into which I sank deeper and deeper. I wanted to sleep and would have wandered off somewhere if some part of my mind hadn’t reminded me that I was dying. Zhijad saw it too and shook me hard. He left me and ran to catch a jeep turning around a few yards away. Just as he grabbed for the mirror Zhijad slipped. The front tire ran over his right foot with an awful crunch. As the jeep sped away Jihad screamed in pain.

“It’s broken, broken!” he wailed. “This is bad, so bad.”

Bracing himself on my shoulder Zhijad tested his weight on the shattered foot. He screamed as it gave out under him.

“We’ll get off this mountain and find a doctor. I’ll help you.”

“You don’t understand, I must be back on the line in two days!”

“Well, you can’t go on the line with a broken foot.”

“I have no choice. Zhijad was near tears now. He started to undo the boot. “This is bad. Someone can die because of me. Someone will be in jeopardy because of my handicap.”

He winced as he pulled away the boot and wool sock. The front half of his foot had already swelled badly, while a dark bruise was already forming across the top of his foot. A silver Audi pulled up and dropped a soldier off half way across the clearing. Zhijad was as desperate as I was to get off the mountain now. Hobbling over he banged on the car’s window to plead with the driver. A minute later he waved me over.

“I found us a ride,” he said. Inside the Audi the driver was already fending off several others, every bit as desperate as Zhijad and I.

“How much?” I asked.

“He will take us for eighty Marks.” It was more cash than I could spare.

“Tell him forty. I’ll pay, but I need a place to sleep tonight.”

Luckily the driver was as eager to get off the mountain as we were. The clearing was complete chaos now. Refugees and soldiers milled about contained and kept from the road by constant threats from the security detail. All the while trucks passed on their way to the valley; an endless effort to sustain a city of three hundred thousand. Shells slammed into the road below the clearing as Zhijad and I piled into the Audi. I could only imagine the carnage if the Serbs managed to find the clearing itself.  Through the trees I caught one final look at the city below. I was thinking of Ana, my heart trying to tear itself from my chest. As we turned into the mountain I could take no more and passed out cold.