Rose of Sarajevo (26 page)

“If they head east, they might be able to make it through the Croatian zone and into the city. But they’d need travel permits and other documents. Either that or they wait until evening and try their luck with the Serbian barricades.”

“Do you really think you can just crash through the barricades?”

“If that’s the only choice we’ve got.”

“Go through the Croatian zone.”

“Yes, but if they don’t make it, they’ll have lost time and traveled over rough roads with the patient for nothing. Anyway, Commander Burhan asked me to fill you in on the situation. He thought that with your connections as a journalist, you might be able to get travel passes and whatever else they nee
d . . .
Otherwise, they’ll probably be unable to get through. If you could try and—”

“Please come in,” Nimeta said, cutting him off.

“I’m in a hurry.”

“Come in. I’ve thought of something. Just give me a little time.”

The man reluctantly stepped inside and took a seat. Hana and Raziyanım didn’t say a word. For the first time in her life, Raziyanım forgot to offer a guest refreshments. Nimeta grabbed her coat and stood at the door.

“I’m going to go find those documents. Wait for me,” she said.

“I hope it doesn’t take long,” the man said.

She scampered down the steps and broke into a run along the backstreets. She entered the back door of the Holiday Inn and jogged up to the reception desk, panting and disheveled.

“Can you tell me Stefan Stefanoviç’s room number?”

“He checked out a week ago.”

“Did he leave an address?”

The receptionist looked through the registry. “No, it seems he didn’t.”

Nimeta left the hotel too tired to run but walking as fast as her legs would carry her. She entered a backstreet. The buses had been avoiding the mostly barricaded main streets ever since the war had begun. She flagged down an approaching bus. At the television building, she yelled for the driver to stop and leapt off.

She stormed into the building and rushed up to Sonya. “Quick, find Stefan for me,” she said.

“My God, Nimeta, you look awful. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. It’s urgent. A matter of life and death. Find him and send him to my house.”

“But I thought you said you didn’t want him visiting you at home. That your mother—”

“Never mind my mother. This is an emergency. Don’t you understand? If it’s too much trouble, tell me where he is. They said he’d checked out of the hotel.”

“Ivan’s been wondering where you were. You were supposed to come back to work today, Nimeta.”

Nimeta grabbed Sonya by the collar. “Sonya, shut up! Go find Stefan. Now! Do you understand?”

“Okay,” Sonya said. “What should I tell him?”

“Tell him whatever you want. Tell him I’m dying. Tell him I’m taking my last breat
h . . .
Just make sure he comes right away!”

Sonya grabbed the coat hanging on a hook behind her chair and asked, “Where are you going now?”

“I’ve got to get back home so the man there can leave.”

“What man? What are you talking about?”

“Sonya, we’re wasting time. Go. I’ll explain later,” Nimeta said.

She dragged Sonya to the staircase while their bemused coworkers looked on.

Jumping on one of the bicycles in the courtyard, she began pedaling, shouting over her shoulder to the security guard in his hut that she had some urgent business and would bring the bike back that evening. She slipped past the checkpoint barrier without waiting for a response.

When she got home, she found her mother in the kitchen, lined up in front of the window with Hana and the visitor.

“We’ll have to wait,” Nimeta told him.

“For how long?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Until we find the person I’m looking for.”

“I can’t stay here all day. I’ve got other things to do. If you want me to come back in a few hours—”

“I can’t give you an exact time. Just wait for a little while longer. We might find him in a few minutes, or it might take a few hours.”

“I can’t wait. I’ll come back later.”

“Weren’t you the one who said it was an emergency?”

“Yes, but you can’t even tell me how long I’ll need to wait.”

“Just a second,” Nimeta said as she ran to a back room.

She returned carrying a huge rifle, her father’s hunting rifle from years before. Raziyanım, Hana, and the man stared in amazement.

“You’ll wait for as long as it takes. Nobody move.”

The man stood up and started walking toward the door. A bullet whizzed past his right ear and opened a hole in the wall.

“Are you out of your mind?” Raziyanım shouted.

Hana started to cry.

“Stop your blubbering!” Nimeta yelled.

The man hesitated for a moment. Then he slowly sat back down.

“What’s your name?” Nimeta asked him.

“Nusret.”

“You’re not leaving here unless you kill me first,” she said. “It’s either you or me: one of us dies. Or we wait here together. Do I make myself clear, Nusret?”

Nimeta pulled the nearest chair closer and sat down, the rifle trained on Nusret.

“Perhaps I’d better go to another roo
m . . .
” Raziyanım began.

“Nobody move,” Nimeta said.

An hour later she was still sitting on the chair with the rifle pointed at Nusret. There was a knock on the door at around two.

“Go open the door, Hana,” Nimeta said.

Hana darted out of her grandmother’s arms and over to the door. Stefan and Sonya had arrived together.

When Sonya saw the scene in the living room, she wondered briefly whether Nimeta had lost her mind.

“Nimeta, it’ll be all right, dear. Everything’s okay,” she said in soothing tones.

“Stop talking nonsense,” Nimeta snapped. “Nothing’s okay.” Then she turned to the man and said, “They say patience is a virtue. Thank you for waiting, Nusret.”

“What are you doing here?” Raziyanım asked Stefan.

“Shut up, Mother!” Nimeta said.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Nusret said.

Nimeta finally lowered the rifle and pointed to the hallway with her chin.

As the man trotted off, Stefan asked, “Who’s he? Has he done something to you?”

“Stefan, I need you to do something for me,” Nimeta said. “I’m begging you: save my son.”

“Fiko?” Stefan asked, stunned.

“Fiko’s hurt. He’s got to get to a hospital right away. The Serbs have barricaded the roads, and the ambulance can’t get past. You’ve got both a Croatian and a Serbian ID. Find a way to get Fiko into the city through the Croatian zone. But hurry. He’s seriously wounded.”

“Where is he now?” Stefan asked as Nusret was coming back from the bathroom.

“Nusret will take you to him,” Nimeta said. “Hurry.”

“I’ve got to stop by the place I’m staying,” Stefan said. “Come on, Nusret. Let’s go.”

“Take me with you. I want to come too,” Nimeta said. “Wait just a sec.”

“We won’t be able to bring you back,” Nusret said. “And it’ll be easier if there are only two of us. Don’t make us waste any more time. I’m late as it is.”

“I’m coming too.”

The man pulled a gun out of his back pocket and said, “Look, I could have neutralized you if I’d wanted to. I understood how upset you were, so I sat and waited. But now you need to listen to me: you’re not coming. Don’t make me have to stop you.”

As the two men were walking out the door, Nimeta grabbed Stefan’s hands. She brought his hands to her lips and kissed them.

“God bless you, Stefan,” she said. “God bless you.”

After Stefan and Nusret left, Nimeta went to her mother’s room, picked up the Koran on the nightstand, went over to the window, and lifted her eyes to the heavens.

“Allah, save my son,” she pleaded.

She placed the Koran on the window ledge, rested her right hand on top of it, and said, “Allah, I swear to you on the holy book that if you bring my son safely back to me, I’ll never see Stefan again. No matter what, I promise I’ll never see him again.”

TREBEVIĆ, MARCH 1993

Having checked every last road, track, and pass and tried everything he could to get closer to the city, Burhan returned to the spot where he’d dropped off Nusret. They’d agreed that if he failed to find a way through, he’d wait at this spot for Nusret to come back.

Burhan was confident that Nimeta would leave no stone unturned to get Fiko passage through the Croatian zone. He knew he was running out of time. If they didn’t come up with a solution, his son would lose his leg and maybe even his life.

He’d considered slinging Fiko over his shoulder and trekking through the forest down to the city but decided he’d be needlessly risking both their lives. The only answer was to wait a while longer. If Nimeta managed to work miracles, wonderful; if not, they’d crash through the barricades, prepared to risk death, knowing that to wait any longer would mean certain death for Fiko in any case. Crashing through the barricades was a last resort for when they had nothing to lose. Until then, he simply had to wait, calm and full of hope, praying and trying not to panic.

Burhan opened the door to the ambulance. The cool air would do Fiko good. He lifted his son’s head a little higher and made sure that the wounded leg, which was wrapped in layer upon layer of parkas, was as high as possible. He’d recently given Fiko an injection of morphine and an antihemorrhagic provided by the doctor. When his son grew thirsty, he gave him sips of water.

Raif, who was pacing in circles around the ambulance, watched his brother-in-law with respect and admiration. Raif had always considered Burhan to be overly serious and a bit of a workaholic, but in the mountains he’d discovered new sides of Burhan’s character. For one thing, he was stoic to a degree seen in few people; it was as though he had prepared himself in advance for every eventuality. He never seemed surprised, overjoyed, or distraught, and he never fell to pieces. Coolheaded and farsighted, he had an ability to analyze a situation and ready himself for every outcome, which had earned him a great deal of respect among his fellow soldiers. As Raif had gotten to know his brother-in-law better, he came to understand why their command post had enjoyed greater success than those on other mountains.

Burhan hadn’t even panicked when Fiko was wounded. He’d gone into the tent, rested his head on his hands, and spent about five minutes weighing their options. After speaking first to the doctor and then to his son, he’d learned that Fiko would rather die than have his leg amputated.

“But he’s still a boy,” Raif had said. “How can you make a decision based on what he says? Thousands of boys his age have lost arms and legs in this war. It doesn’t matter if he’s missing his leg as long as he stays alive.”

“I’m not letting him decide. I wanted to find out how important it was to him to keep his leg,” Burhan had replied. “He could have said, ‘Cut my leg off right away and save me.’ But he didn’t.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“First, we’ll try to save his leg. For as long as we can. If we fail, he’ll lose it.”

“Will they amputate it here?”

“That’s the problem, Raif. An operation in these conditions could well lead to septicemia. I’m going to do everything I can to get him to a hospital.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Good,” Burhan had said.

Nusret drove the ambulance. When they’d spotted the barricades, they’d turned back and decided to let the driver, a commando intimately familiar with the mountain paths, strike out on his own to get word to Nimeta.

Now they were waiting.

His head resting on his father’s lap, Fiko gazed down at the Miljacka River, which the rays of the rising sun had tinted red.

“Look over there, Dad,” he said. “The Miljacka’s turned red.”

“The Bosniaks say that the Miljacka turns that color every dawn in memory of the blood they have shed over the centuries.”

“I’ve never heard that.”

Burhan caressed his son’s head. “It’s an old saying. As old as Kulin. You’ve never heard it because your generation wasn’t supposed to take up arms. We thought you’d learn about warfare only in history books. We didn’t expect Bosniak blood to flow again. We were wrong.”

Like a fiery serpent, the Miljacka twisted and turned through the valley on the way to the Bosna River. Meanwhile, Fiko, his father, and his uncle waited to be rescue
d . . .
patiently. Bosniaks were well practiced in waiting.

TREBEVIĆ, MARCH 1993

Peering through his binoculars way down to the very bottom of the steep hillside, Burhan spotted what looked like a cloud of dust.

“Please, God,” he prayed to himself, “may it be Nusret. May Nimeta have found a way out.”

As the approaching cloud of dust grew thicker, Burhan grew more hopeful. The safe conduct passes, identity cards, travel papers that would save his son’s life—whatever it was that Nimeta had somehow found—were getting closer with every passing second. He wanted to believe it more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

He’d been cradling his son’s head in his lap for many hours already. As the effect of the morphine had begun wearing off, Burhan had desperately tried to find a way to distract his son from the pain in his wounded leg. As they’d begun talking about the bloodred Miljacka River and the saying about the river crying tears of blood for the Bosniaks, Fiko had said he’d never heard the saying.

“It’s as old as Kulin,” Burhan had told his son.

“Dad, what’s all this about ‘old as Kulin’?” Fiko had said.

Hearing his family name used in this figure of speech had always given him the creeps. It made him feel like one of those tattered bits of hand-embroidered cloth, faded and worn with time, on sale in dusty secondhand shops, or like one of the many useless lengths of fabric laid away in his grandmother’s mothball-scented wooden chests.

Like all children his age, Fiko had studied the official version of history in the post-Tito era. Now, with his head in his father’s lap in an ambulance, his life in danger and his leg throbbing, he found himself suddenly eager to learn the real history of his people.

Inwardly rejoicing at his son’s interest, Burhan began relating the story of the Bosniak people as though he were telling his son a bedtime story.

“Once upon a time, in the sixth or seventh century, no more than ten or so feudal lords shared the lands of Bosnia in peace and harmony. They were the most powerful and independent feudal lords in all of Europe. Unlike in other feudal systems, they retained their lands even when they failed to fulfill their duties to the monarchies to which they’d sworn fealty. And so the years passed. Then, in 1082, when the Hungarian king invaded Bosnia, he appointed an aristocrat named Stefan to be the Ban, or Viceroy, of Bosnia. That is, Stefan was to collect taxes and raise an army on behalf of the kingdom of Hungary. From that point on, the feudal lords began battling each other for the title of
ban
.

“Three
ban
made their mark on Bosnia in the Middle Ages. Under the rule of the first one, Ban Kulin, the Bosniaks were liberated from Serbian domination and became fully autonomous for the first time in their history in 1180. Ban Kulin later liberated the Bosnian church and declared the Bogomil sect to be the state religion. Years later, however, he was forced to convert to Catholicism to prevent his people from being burned at the stake by the Pope’s crusaders. When he died a year later, it was said to be of a broken heart.”

“What about the other two
ban
?”

“The other two important
ban
were Kotromanić and Tvrtko. Prince Kotromanić ascended the throne in 1322. During his reign, Hersek became part of Bosnia. He too was a Bogomil, but he was tortured by the crusaders until he converted to Catholicism. Tvrtko came to power in 1358. He extended Bosnian territory as far as the Dalmatian coast and changed his title from
ban
to king. Still, of the eighteen Bosnian
ban
and kings, Ban Kulin is the only one whose reign is legendary and still spoken of today as a golden age of peace and prosperity. Bosnians wrote poetry and songs in his honor, and the expression ‘as old as Kulin’ was coined.”

Burhan saw that Fiko’s eyes were shut and decided to stop talking in case he’d fallen asleep. He himself was just nodding off, chin on his chest, when Fiko startled him with the question, “Dad, why did we become Muslims then, when we were already Christian?”

He wet his son’s parched lips with a few drops of water from his canteen and checked the bandages on his leg. The bleeding seemed to have stopped.

“Do you want to sleep for a bit?” he asked his son.

“Dad, why did we become Muslims?” Fiko asked again. “Why did we convert from Christianity to Islam?”

“Do you really want me to explain all that right now?”

As the sun rose higher above the horizon, it was getting hot inside the ambulance, and Burhan’s stomach started churning from the smell of blood. There was still no sign of Nusret. They were in a race against time, and Burhan couldn’t have cared less just then about the Bosnians’ reasons for becoming Muslims. If they’d remained Christians, they might not be stuck here in the ambulance, he even thought to himself. But then again, the Serbian butchers and treacherous Croats would probably just have found another excuse to expel them from their homeland.

“It wouldn’t be accurate to say that the Bosniaks ‘converted,’ Fiko,” Raif said. “The Bogomil sect had a lot in common with Islam in any case. As you know, the Ottoman Empire was established in the lands of Asia Minor known as Anatolia. Even as the Turks were staging incursions, they’d begun trickling into the Balkans as migrants. In a sense, those first settlers from Anatolia were part of the propaganda efforts for the Ottoman conquest. Before sending in the army, they sent dervishes to win over the local people.”

“Like a form of public relations,” Burhan said.

“Exactly.”

Burhan’s eyes were on Fiko’s leg. He’d noticed a patch of fresh blood that was spreading but didn’t want to alarm his son. When Raif saw Burhan rummaging through the bag of medical supplies, he’d taken up the thread of Burhan’s story to help keep Fiko’s mind off his wound.

“The Middle Ages were a dark time for Christianity. The pope was persecuting the Bogomils on behalf of the Catholic Church, while the patriarchate did the same on behalf of the Orthodox faith of the Byzantines. But the Bosniaks are a stubborn people. They clung to their faith through torture and oppression.”

“But the Bogomils were Christians too, weren’t they?” Fiko asked. “What was the problem?”

Burhan took a syringe out of the bag.

“Dad, are you about to give me another injection?” Fiko groaned.

“Just listen to your uncle,” Burhan said. “Don’t worry about what I’m doing.”

“Keep talking, Uncle! I’ll learn the entire history of the Bosnian people just as I’m going. Why didn’t you tell me any of this earlier?”

“Going where?” Raif asked.

Fiko and his father answered simultaneously: the former with, “To the other side,” and the latter with, “To the nearest hospital.”

It took a moment for Fiko’s words to register. Burhan’s voice cracked as he responded.

“Fiko, you’re not going to the other side. You’ve got a long, happy life ahead of you. When your mother gets here, this nightmare will be over. You’ve got to believe that everything will work out. All we have right now is hope.”

Raif though it best to change the subject as quickly as possible.

“Now, where were we? Ah, you’re right, we never talked about any of this history. That’s because we were taught that we had become a single people, and they discouraged any talk about our differences. After all, we were Yugoslavians too!” A smile twisted Raif’s lips and he looked as though he didn’t know whether to spit or to cry. The Bosniaks had never made a fuss over their Muslim faith, and what had that got them?

“The Bogomils were Christians, but they didn’t cross themselves, get baptized, or view Christ as the son of God. To them, Christ was a prophet, no more. They also preferred to perform their rituals outdoors, not in a church, and believed in the rejection of the fruits of this world. To them, the world was the work of Satan, while paradise was the realm of God. Because of the similarities between their faiths, Bosniak peasants and nobility alike began taking an interest in the Bektashi Sufi Order that was spreading through the Balkans at the time. Did you know that the Muslims of Anatolia were influenced by Zoroastrians and shamans, just as the Bogomils were?”

“You’re confusing me, Uncle.”

“It’s quite simple though. The Bogomils suffered greatly at the hands of their fellow Christians, and when they found a religious order with which they had a lot in common—”

“They had no choice but to become Muslims. Is that what you’re saying?”

“They did have a choice, Fiko.” Raif wanted to make certain his nephew understood clearly. “The Ottomans wouldn’t have cared if they’d chosen Catholicism. They weren’t interested in forcing their religion on others; their main interest was collecting taxes. When the Bogomils were offered the opportunity to register themselves as Muslims in Ottoman ledgers, many accepted. Had they been registered as Christians, they would have faced the persecution of either the Catholic or the Orthodox churches. Islam didn’t take root overnight, Fiko; it spread over centuries. In the fifteenth century, there were about eight times as many Christians as Muslims in Bosnia. By the middle of the sixteenth century, half of the people in Bosnia were Muslim.”

Burhan prepared to give his son another injection of Methergine.

“Time to take a break from your history lesson,” he said as he plunged the needle into Fiko’s haunch.

“Dad, when did you learn to give injections?” Fiko asked.

“War teaches you a lot of things. If only it taught us how to live in peace.”

Burhan turned to Raif and said, “I had no idea you were such a history buff.”

“The war’s uncovered everybody’s secret side. In all these years we’ve known each other, I never realized what a jewel of a character you’ve kept hidden away.”

Burhan laughed. “I wis
h . . .
” he began, before he fell silent.

Raif tried to guess how he’d have ended that sentence: “I wish there hadn’t been a war and you’d never realized it.” Or perhaps, “I wish Nimeta had realized it.” Ever since he’d grown close to Burhan, Raif had felt a twinge of uneasiness at the mention of Nimeta’s name. He turned to Fiko and resumed the history lesson.

Fiko was coming down with a fever. When he’d first started shaking, Burhan had pulled one of the parkas out from under his leg and covered him with it. Then Fiko started drifting in and out of consciousness. When he was feeling alert, he’d say, “Go on, Uncle.” Raif felt a bit like Shahrazad as he resumed his tale, dragging it out and embroidering it with details. When he grew tired, Burhan would take over; it was as though they feared that if they finished their story and fell silent, it would be the end of Fiko. As though the history of Bosnia had cast a spell over the three of them, and the sound of their voices would keep death at bay and keep them all alive. “Tell me more, Uncl
e . . .
Tell me more, Dad.”

They talked and talked, with Fiko drifting in and out between sleep and the labyrinths of history. Ottoman raiders started riding through the Balkans in the middle of the fourteenth century, sweeping in across Thrace and Bulgaria, resisted by Serb, Bosniak, Hungarian, and Croatian alike. The raiders left but returned each spring, stronger than ever. Fiko was leading an army. Sword brandished, he led a charge through Kosovo. Ottoman cavalrymen suddenly turned into crusaders in silver helmets and chain mail. Again, Fiko was there, this time cutting down crusaders left and right. Never-ending war and an endless stream of blood—so much blood that the Miljacka turned first pink, then a bright red.

Burhan had wrapped his cigarette case in gauze and was pressing it with all his might against his son’s wound. Raif had pulled off his undershirt and was using it to mop Fiko’s feverish forehead, dampening the cloth from time to time from his canteen.

Fiko was charging across the plains, sword held high. “Tell me more, Uncl
e . . .
more,” he whispered, the beads of sweat standing out on his forehead.

Raif kept talking, and it was only when he tasted salt that he realized tears were rolling down his cheeks. Burhan’s lips trembled as he silently prayed for his son’s survival. And still Raif kept talking of Fatih Sultan Mehmet and his victorious army, of how a distinctive Bosnian culture flourished during Ottoman rule, of the Janissaries, of the waning days of the empir
e . . .

“Rai
f . . .
he’s unconsciou
s . . .
you can stop now.”

Not only was Fiko unconscious, the life was draining out of him slowly but surely. Burhan had no idea what to do. He got out of the ambulance and emptied the contents of the medical supplies bag onto the ground, then sorted through the boxes and vials of medicine, picking up one after another, reading the labels, and tossing them back onto the ground. Finally, he returned empty-handed to the ambulance, where he cradled his son’s head in his lap once again. He leaned his head against the window, and as he stroked Fiko’s burning forehead and damp hair, he thought hard about life.

In a lifespan of seventy or eighty years
, he thought to himself,
the first and the last ten years are marked by the helplessness of childhood and old age, but are we sent to this earth to squander the remaining fifty or sixty years by constantly being at each other’s throats, fighting and waging war, and then suffering the losses and destruction that result? Whether Bogomil or Christian, Jew or Muslim, was that really mankind’s fate?