Escape from Sarajevo-part 17: the War Worsens

THREE
Just before dawn the Bosnian Fifth Corps broke out of the encircled Bihach pocket sixty miles North of Sarajevo. It was a desperate attempt to link up with Bosnian forces in the south. They had caught the Serbs napping, but many of the fighters were conscripts, and many of them were untrained old men and boys without guns. Still they quickly over ran Serb positions, pressing towards the town of Sanski Most and road to Sarajevo. They drove the panicked Serb forces and thousands of refugees before them. As for Sarajevo, there was little it could do. The Fifth Corps would have to succeed or fail on its own. More fighting broke out along the Bosna River valley, and to the south as Bosnian forces pressed their offensive across the rocky heights of Treskavica. The fighting there was terrible. Hundreds died in bloody trench warfare. Snipers stepped up attacks in the city, effectively cutting it in two. Gun battles flared all along the siege line while shells fell on Butmir and Hrasnica. Movement in much of the city now became a deadly proposition.
Ana and I kept to doorways as we made our way to see a neighbor who had offered to help us negotiate the inane government bureaucracy to get married. Her name was Keka, an oddly mysterious woman with a reputation as the neighborhood psychic. She wore thick eyeglasses and seemed a bit of a know-it-all at first. Clips of curtly blond hair kept falling into her eyes. Over coffee Ana told a fantastic story of how Keka had predicted all this would happen. I listened with my usual measure of skepticism, believing assertions about her connection to the spirit world only masked Tarot and fortune telling tricks for the gullible. The more she spoke, however, the more I understood that she was most sincere. Not that I was prepared to believe in any of this, but I knew that Keka believed every fortune she foretold.
By afternoon the fighting had slowed enough for us to go to Opshtina, the Sarajevo city hall. The red-brick building was along the river, across from the French outpost at Skendarija. I was still a little suspicious of Keka’s intentions. She seemed a little too eager to help us with all of this. Ana reassure me. She genuinely believed in Keka and was reassured by her professed experience in dealing with the government.
“They’re all piranhas,” she remarked as we stepped inside the sprawling marriage bureau. “They would think nothing of eating a nice couple like you for lunch.”
The place was the very definition of chaos. A sea of desks were crammed among canyons of overstuffed file cabinets. A handful of officious and hopelessly overworked women toiled over mountainous stacks of papers, seemingly oblivious or unconcerned to the ever-growing piles. Ana, Keka and I sat at a small desk before a middle-aged woman who, under the guise of small talk, proceeded to tell me how repugnant she found the United States. She was a pissy woman with the face of someone who sucked lemons as a matter of course. Ana could see she was trying to bait me into an argument and reached over to squeeze my knee when she saw I was getting perturbed. I had a mind to fire back as meanly as I could, but for Ana’s sake I nodded and smiled passively.
Keka rummaged through her purse, setting a pack of cheap Drina cigarettes on the desk for the woman to see before producing an expensive pack of Marlboros. She offered the woman one, allowing me a brief reprieve from the woman’s indignation. We sat quietly for a time as the women stared past one another through the cigarette smoke. This was an unspoken negotiation; as if the women were playing a high stakes game of poker. I was struggling to remember Keka’s advice about being patient because nothing in Bosnia ever happened quickly. After a long silence the woman leaned forward and cleared her throat. With that she mechanically rattled off a list of documents and translations Ana and I would need if Ana and I were to be married. The most important was a letter from the American Embassy in the Holiday Inn confirming my citizenship and marital status. There wasn’t a minute to lose. We had forty-eight hours to get the paperwork and organize a wedding before I met Damir at the tunnel Wednesday night. It might be my last chance to escape. He was being transferred from the tunnel.
There was shooting in the plaza and around the Holiday Inn. Bullets flew thick and heavy as we neared the Catholic Church at the edge of the plaza. A dozen or more people were pinned down there. Along sniper alley French and Ukrainian peacekeepers cowered behind vehicles. High above the valley, floating like a vulture in the afternoon sun, a NATO warplane circled impotently. Ana wanted to get Dom Luka’s blessing for our civil ceremony, but the fighting made it too risky to reach the church. Suddenly she bolted down the alley. Believing Ana would draw sniper fire an older woman behind the church took off towards the hotel, running awkwardly in high heels across the glass-strewn lot. She screamed as bullets kicked up dust around her. It seemed forever before the woman collapsed sobbing and exhausted behind a car across the road. I started after Ana, but Keka pulled me back.
“She’ll be okay. You’re too good a target. You’ll only get killed!”
An old man dodged across the road. A hail of bullets slapped the ground around him. He tripped and went down hard, covering the last twenty yards or so on hands and knees. I was frantic and couldn’t just leave Ana out in the open. Just then she reappeared, ducking bullets as she raced down the alley. She fell into my arms unable to catch her breath.
“Jesus, Ana! Was that worth it?” Unable to speak all she could do was nod.
I had to get to the holiday Inn, despite the fighting. There simply was no time to waste. I went around the back of the plaza, using the cover of several apartment buildings. Climbing through a bombed-out store front I made the two hundred yard dash across open ground to the hotel. Out front a French anti-sniper team arrived with a recoilless rifle. For nearly a minute the gun’s thundering whumpf-whumpf-whumpf filled the plaza. When it was over the sniper fire had ended. Some poor lout had just been blasted to pieces, but the other snipers had retreated to look for new hiding places. I hoped to make it back before the shooting started again. Already there was new shooting near the Brotherhood and Unity Bridge.
It was dark and cool inside the hotel. The lobby was empty as usual. A few journalists kept to the shadows and relative safety of a small bar at the back of the cavernous lobby. Bosnian snipers were firing across the river into Grbavica now. The gunfire reverberated with muffled, hollow reports, like the dull throbbing of a kettledrum. I hated it here. The hotel was a monument to the hypocrisy of war. The Serbs left the place more or less alone, despite that nearly every other building in and around the plaza had been destroyed or heavily damaged. The upper floors were gutted, and the Serbs took occasional pot shots at the front of the building, but that was simply to rattle the foreign Press and diplomats who stayed there. The Holiday Inn had always had something of an unsavory reputation. The squat yellow and peach building looked as if it had been dropped by accident among some of Sarajevo’s best known and most beautiful architecture. There were rumors that the owners had made some arrangement with the Serbs and local mafia. The relatively cosmetic damage to the place only tended to bolster its nefarious reputation.
The American delegation to Bosnia was on the third floor. It was called an embassy, but only in the loosest possible terms. Next door to the embassy the Newsweek correspondent, a rather miserable looking fellow, was working on a story. A Bosnian guard slept in a chair in front of the embassy. A fully loaded assault rifle threatened to spill from his lap. I quietly slipped past into the embassy. The reception area was cramped and I surprised several intelligence officers who scattered like cockroaches. A tall blond diplomat stepped forward, blocking me until they were gone.
“Dave Johnson, First Secretary ,” he said with all the sincerity of a used car salesman. He listened quickly to my story. “So, you’re getting married. Fantastic! That’s just great. No problem, we can give you whatever you need.”
As he spoke Johnson guided me towards the door.
“Oh, and they also need something that says I’m not married back in the States.”
“Oh,” Johnson winced. “That might be tricky, if not downright impossible. Tell you what, let me call out consular office in Zagreb. We’re nothing here, just more or less a liaison office.”
I waited while he placed a call to the embassy in Zagreb Croatia. Sure enough he said the only way to get proof about marital status would be back in Chicago. He apologized and said it was really out of his hands.
“You might try asking the Bosnians to forego that requirement,” he offered.
“But I can get the citizen ship paper?” I asked.
“Just tell me what you need and I’ll have it typed up for you.” Johnson flashed a broad Ivy League grin and deftly guided me out into the hall. “I wish you luck, though. Let me be the first to congratulate you.”
Ana was less than pleased with the news from the embassy. Back at Opshtina the woman was less than sympathetic. She refused to budge on the marriage document. We could not get married without it, she said. Ana sank in her chair, utterly dejected.
“Of course,” the woman said cynically, “there are other ways to deal with a problem if one is creative. Perhaps we might think of some way.”
I knew what she was asking, but I had barely enough money to escape the city. Paying a bribe was simply out of the question. My unwillingness annoyed her. She began to rattle off various and steeply inflated costs for paperwork, seeming to take joy in crushing our dream of getting married.
“You won’t have enough to get out?” Ana said worried.
“It’s all within reason,” I tried to reassure both of us.
“Unfortunately,” said the woman, “there is still the problem with your marital status.”
“Everything is possible with money,” Keka offered. Ana rubbed her forehead, tortured by stress.
“I’m not rich,” my temper rose.
“It is the only way,” said the woman.
“I can’t finance the whole damn war!” I had finally had enough. Ana tried to calm me as it all fell apart before our eyes. The woman stood and retrieved a file from across the room. She opened it and handed it to me. It was a file on two British journalists married a month before.
“This is what we require. It is the law. You must understand,” she smiled cruelly, “it is out of my hands.” Only when she saw Ana’s heart break did she soften. “I am sorry.”
I caught up to Ana and Keka beside the Ali Pasha Mosque. Ana refused even to look at me. I took her arms. The instant our eyes met I knew exactly what I had to do.
“Go home and wait for me,” I started back to Opshtina.
“Bill, where are you going?”
“I have something to do.” I had one last chance, and it was a long shot. In fact, it was unlikely to work out the way I hoped, but what choice did I have? If it failed I knew that I would lose Ana forever.
I barged into the marriage bureau startling the women there. One of them screamed and hurried to find a guard. The others could do little more that protest feebly as I went to the cabinet and pulled out the file on the foreign journalists. In an instant I had it opened and had my journal out.
“You must leave here or we will have you arrested,” one woman complained. I ignored her and quickly copied the citizenship document.
“One document can say both things?” I asked. The blond-haired woman nodded. Johnson at the embassy had already said that I could get the citizenship paper. That was the easy part. Near the center of the page I inserted the line, “In so far as this embassy is aware Mr. Turck is not married.” Nothing about the statement was untrue. I wasn’t married and the embassy had no idea one way or another. It was a long shot, but it was all I had.
There was shooting in the plaza again. I ignored it. There was no time to worry about it now. I had to get back to the embassy no matter what, but as I stepped from the bombed-out storefront two bullets struck the wall beside my head. I dove headfirst through the window and crawled up against the wall.
“Shit!” I exclaimed, my frightened breaths exploding the empty shop. Every heartbeat thundered in my ears. I laughed, realizing how close I’d come to being killed. Fear was a weight I could ill afford, that is if I really wanted to be with Ana, but it was a power pulling me back from the window. I fought it and threw myself into the open and let sheer momentum decide for me. I was immediately at a dead run. Ahead of me, past the hotel and a Ukrainian APC on the road, death stalked from a thousand empty windows. A rifle shot thundered in the plaza. I shouted and strained to cover the last few yards before collapsing against the back of the hotel. Upstairs in the embassy Johnson gave the paper a quick review and nodded.
“I’m sure this will be fine,” he said. “We’ll type it up. Why don’t you come back in the morning?”
“Dave,” I said at the door, “do me a favor and get an office in a better neighborhood. Every time I come here I get shot at. I’m starting to get a bad impression of Sarajevo.”
There was a woman I knew in the lobby. Her name was Fahira, an impeccably dressed business-like woman in her mid forties. She was sitting before one of the hotel’s tall windows staring out at the desolation of her city. Fahira was there most days hoping to make money as a translator, but no one cared about Bosnian much anymore. I sat beside her, and knew better than to ask her how business was. She hadn’t worked in many months and was growing more discouraged by the day.
“I thought you might have gone by now,” she said without looking at me.
“Soon, I hope.” I said nothing of Ana.
“I think the war is lost.” She said dully. I didn’t reply. “When the world no longer cares what happens here, when the Chetniks know the world is looking the other way they will come and slaughter us.”
I let the topic go. I was in no mood for politics. “How is your daughter?”
“She asks for things. What do I tell her?” Fahira pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse. She counted them and thought better of having one. She put them away and huffed. “I think that I have ruined her. When everyone else was starving I could still afford food. We always had money, you know? Now we have no food, nothing. I almost wish that something terrible would happen, then perhaps someone will come and I will make a little money for her.”
I sat with her a while longer, though we didn’t say much. She did most of the talking. I stood and looked out into the plaza. The sun was setting and I didn’t want Ana to worry.
“Well,” I said, not looking at her, “good luck to you.” Fahira nodded slightly and looked off across the plaza.
Rain came that evening, falling over the city as a soft sigh that grew to a gentle whisper. By the time Ana and I left for Nadja and Hasan’s it was pouring, dancing upon tiled rooftops and gurgling into overburdened gutters, It was a cold rain. Ana pulled herself close to my side. The big black umbrella did little to keep us dry. We walked slowly, savoring the peace and tranquility of the storm. I was thinking of our first steps together that first day. Looking back they seemed predestined. Ana pulled my face to hers and we kissed.
“Maybe by Christmas you can in Chicago,” I said hopefully.
“We have to face some facts,” she said. “I have no passport or money. Where would I go? I can’t come to America without a visa, even if we are married.”
“I know.”
“The war is getting worse, and I can be drafted into the army.”
“Whatever happens, Ana, I will come back for you.”
“And I will be waiting.” We held each other beside the ruins of a small Mosque. “Please don’t forget me.”
Nadja and Hasan were stunned by our sudden announcement. Nadja laughed and curled up close to Hasan, her face aglow with romance. She and Ana chattered excitedly about weddings, while Hasan was full of advice about how to handle a real “Bosnian” woman. Now and then Ana would roll her eyes at the comments, though we knew he had only the best intentions. We had really come to ask an important favor. According to Bosnian tradition I would ask Hasan, my best friend in Sarajevo, to be my Kum. It was an honored position usually reserved for family or close kin. He smiled modestly and agreed. If not for the candlelight I swear we might have seen him blush.
From the street Ana and I watched a battle on Trebevich near the old Olympic bobsled track. Shells exploded with blinding flashes among the tall pines illuminating the silhouettes of bunkers and trenches in treacherous snapshots. Muzzle flashes from dueling machine guns spat fire, throwing bright orange and blue tracers against one another. This is what I would face when I escaped the city in two days. It seemed strange that the safest thing would be to leave Ana behind in Sarajevo until we could find a safer way to get her out.