"Everything for Love" a Bosnian War Memory Part II

ANOTHER EXERPT FROM THE UPCOMING MEMOIR BASED ON W.C. TURCK'S HARROWING TO BESIEGED SARAJEVO AND THE WOMAN WHOS AVED HIS SOUL...

“No, look,” I said. Miraculously the car emerged and was still making for the safety of the tree line above. Another shell went high, taking the top off a tree. The Serbs had squandered the opportunity as the car disappeared from view. The guns fell silent again. A muffled cheer went up.

The tunnel complex was hidden among the bombed-out buildings near the little town of Butmir. The Serbs had tried for more than a year to destroy it by pounding the town incessantly. Day and night Serb spies and commandoes hunted that elusive prey to choke off supplies for the city’s defenders. They would never have believed that the Bosnians would build it so close to the frontline, literally under their noses.
I had lost sight with Amer, and with him went anyone who could speak for me. I was alone, and worse than that I stood out among the uniformed men. It wasn’t long before I drew the suspicion of some locals who had joined the column at the river. I drew the disdain of a young woman struggling with a bundle on her shoulder. For a time she glared at me as I did my best to ignore her. Before long she was making loud comments about foreigners coming to gawk at their misery.

“Where are you going?” she asked accusingly in English.

“The tunnel,” I replied, trying to put some distance between us.

“The tunnel?’ she scoffed. “They won’t let you go to the tunnel. Foreigners are forbidden there!” She adjusted the bundle on her shoulder.

“Please just leave me alone,” I begged. “I’ve done nothing to you.”

“Why will you go there if I tell you it is forbidden?” She was working herself to hysteria. “You have to go back. You will see. They will arrest you. I shall tell them who you are. You can be shot!”

“Tell them,” I snapped. “Just leave me alone!”

“Why are you here? Tell me, if you have nothing to hide.”

“I have friends in the city. They’re waiting for me.”

“What friends? Chetniks?”

“Muslims.”

“When did you last see them?”

“In March.”

“Six months?” she laughed cruelly. “Maybe they are all dead and this is all a waste of time. Did you ever think about that?”
I had. I had thought about all those things, and a good many more since leaving the family.

“It is our tunnel,” her tone had softened now, almost pleading, “not yours. It is our lives. You will go back to America and tell everyone about your heroic adventure. You’ll tell journalists about the tunnel and then the Chetniks will know too.”

“I won’t,” I said, knowing that she wasn’t convinced.

“You will see,” she cried as I trotted up the road away from her. “I shall tell them who you are!”

The tunnel was hidden among a handful of small buildings and far houses between Butmir and the frontline village of Donji Kotorac. A narrow trench forced the column into a single line and I was able to escape from the young woman without much difficulty. Several campfires burned brightly behind a small barn. Soldiers were clustered tightly around each of them. The cold had worked its way into my wet clothes. Dropping my pack I pressed in among the men around the closest fire, but I couldn’t get close enough to make any difference. It was then that I remembered the winter jacket I had carried since Mostar for Alisha’s father.

I quickly stripped to the waist and fished for a dry shirt. The jacket was well made, and I felt the difference immediately. On the sleeve was a blue Bosnian arm patch. As I studied it I saw the young woman again. She was moving among the fires with several armed soldiers, no doubt searching for me. I swore under my breath and turned away as they passed. No doubt the jacket had saved me. I had been lucky once more, but there was no telling just how long that luck would last. Men were moving up to the road now, preparing to enter the tunnel. The road was quickly packed with men, many of whom were just coming to know that death could come at any moment. There were whispers, hushed apprehensions and quiet consolations. A man behind whispered “Nishta,” nothing, and I knew it was more for his benefit than mine.

There was fighting across the runway in Dobrinja, the frontline neighborhood within the siege lines. A bright white flare arced illuminating rows of battered and vacant apartment blocks. Bright green tracer rounds split the air overhead, accompanied by the bang and pop of mortars and grenades in close quarter fighting. The sounds whipped among the men like a virus. They crushed towards the tunnel building. Those against the door bore the brunt of all of this. I could see them, just a few feet away being smashed against the building as more and more men pushed towards the entrance. Their eyes turned towards the sky, mouths open in silent cries. Those of us who could turned and fought back in a desperate battle for survival. Some of those on the street cursed and made threats, but we only fought harder until the pressure was relieved.

At long last the door swung open and I was yanked inside with several others. A single bare bulb swung from the ceiling, throwing light wildly among the barren room. I was momentarily blinded by it, and helpless as someone tore the back from my shoulders. Another man searched my pockets and patted down my legs. The others were being searched as well.

“No pictures in tunnel,” said the man searching my pack when he discovered my camera. He spoke in Bosnian, apparently fooled by the jacket.

“Ne, ne,” I stammered.

“You’re not carrying explosives? They are forbidden in the tunnel.”

I stared blankly, not understanding at first.

“You have grenades? You know boom-boom?”

“Oh, um, ne, nishta,” I replied. With that I was shoved through a door into the deepest blackness I had ever known. The air was heavy and un-breathable, and smelled of rotting wood, stagnate water and the bitter bite of fresh vomit. I teetered at the edge of uneven wooden steps and the sense that I was descending into my own grave.




CHAPTER TWO
SARAJEVO, MY LOVE






ONE

At eight hundred meters in length, the tunnel was narrow and no more than four feet in height. It was tough for me at a shade under six feet, but torturous for the lanky soldier ahead of me. He was loaded down with a bedroll, a hunting rifle and goods from the cheaper markets outside the siege, which he had stuffed in every pocket. In one hand he protected a crate of eggs. With a single egg going for around eight Dollars in the city he was carrying a veritable fortune. He turned to me with a look that betrayed the terror of that transient grave. We splashed through ankle deep water, slipping on thin tracks hidden there. I braced myself against the oozing walls. UN vehicles rumbled barely six feet above our heads.

At four hundred meters the guy in front of me collapsed or tripped on the submerged rails, or fell under the weight of his supplies. Whatever it was he went down hard and began to sob. No one ever got use to the tunnel. No man could ever completely escape that part of him that wished to scrape and claw his way out. It evoked all manner of fears and carried even the strongest men to the edge of madness. For a moment the men behind seemed to understand that. They seemed to understand that it could have been any of us there in the muck. They understood that the tunnel reduced a man to the sum of his fears. When he made no effort to move curses and shouts rose up.

“Let’s go, “I tried to move him but it was impossible.

“Ne mogu,” I can’t, he sobbed. A moment later he managed to get back to his feet only to fall again a short time later. This time there was no hesitation from the others. I waved them off and tried to rally the poor lout, but he had all but given up. There were threats from behind us, and I wanted to stomp him in to the muck and get the fuck out of there myself.

“Move him or shoot him,” someone yelled. Somehow I found the strength to pull him up and shove him the last hundred or so meters. We burst into an open-air trench gulping in fresh morning air. The stars had never seemed to beautiful, and to a man every soul that emerged from the tunnel looked at them as if it was the face of God. Bullets zipped and whistled overhead and a sniper took aim from the trench, squeezing off a shot as I passed.

I paid a couple smugglers eighty Marks for the three-mile trip between Dobrinja and the family’s building in Marin Dvor. Hard to say if it was a fair price, but Dobrinja was a desolate dangerous place and I was happy to be out of it. I watched them leave and looked up at that battered old building as if it was the Taj Mahal. I gave a long, tired groan and through the wooden door not at all sure I had the energy to reach the third floor. I had been on the move almost continuously for the last seventeen hours.

I took to the steps as if I was climbing the summit of Everest. Wind whispering through the shell hole on the second floor carrying the rumble of distant artillery. The door to the family’s flat was lost to the shadow of the deep doorway. I started to knock but stopped myself. What if something had happened to them, I wondered? It was possible Hasan had been killed on the line, or perhaps Sulejman had tempted the snipers once too often begging for scraps at the Holiday Inn? I wasn’t at all sure I could live with that. I struck a match against the wall and swept it across the door. There was a note there, written in black marker. It read: Haljevac Family- Nadja, Hasan and Sulejman. Below Sulejman’s name the word “Tachkitca” was hastily scribbled.

There was a scratching sound at the door and I jumped back in fear. Sarajevo’s rats had grown fat off the dead, and had become fearless and vicious. A moment later a puppy yelped and I laughed out loud. My last memory of little Sulejman was of him cradling a puppy in the tobacco factory. He had gotten a puppy after all. It howled once again amid the scuffling of feet and urgent whispers.

“Who is it?” Hasan asked, trying to sound bigger and meaner than he was.

“Bill from America.”

The door opened. Nadja drew me quickly inside while Sulejman wrestled with a small golden puppy. She felt my cheek and said how awful I looked. Never had I seen three more beautiful faces.

“You must be starved,” she smiled. Hasan was just as happy and swept me into his arms.

“I must be dreaming,” he remarked.

“I’m sorry for the hour.”

“You came back,” Sulejman yawned. “I can’t believe it!”

We moved into the room. Hasan wanted to know every detail of my trip. He helped me with the pack as we tried not to trip and fall over the puppy running circles around our feet. The room was filled with the family. It smelled of them and I breathed it in as though my life depended on it. I told him of the tunnel and he groaned.

“It is quite unbelievable, you must tell me every detail,” he said, but Nadja said it could wait until morning when I was better rested. She readied the cot in the next room for me. I laid back and felt the journey drain away. As the world conceded to sleep I had no clue that a chance meeting the next day would challenge and change my life in ways I could never have known. Sleep came quickly, absolving me, for a time, of thoughts and burdens...

NEXT: Inside besieged Sarajevo