The Unquiet Dead (25 page)

She tugged at Khattak's jacket.

“Sir,” she said. “Isn't that David Newhall?”

 

24.

We heard it on the radio. They will send the airplanes now.

They will save us now.

They were pushing and pounding him from every direction, asking questions he couldn't answer. He didn't have time to take stock of their desperation when the same feeling was oozing from his pores.

It was hot. God of the heavens and earth, it was hot. His neck and hands were slippery with sweat, the shirt he hadn't changed in three days was soaked through. He reeked like a wild animal and he was hungry. There wasn't a scrap of food within three square miles, not a drop of water to spare.

The sky had shriveled, hanging over them like a judgment, corrosive and dull.

The whole place was a rathole.

He didn't care about any of that. All he cared about in a rapidly shrinking world was four irrefutable realities. His mother, father, brother, and brother.

Was it twenty thousand people or thirty?

It felt like every person he had ever met in his life was here, every grandmother who had touched his hair, every girl he had flirted with in high school, every officer who had rotated in and out of this open jail. Yet each face had changed, condensed into a pair of terrified eyes and desiccated lips.

Everyone was carrying something, everyone was searching for someone.

He couldn't help.

Even if he found someone he could use his translation skills on, there was nothing to say.

Today he had only one message to communicate, and he would sound it out over and over again, even if he had to wend his way through every last corridor of this concrete maze, breaking every window the mortars hadn't exploded. Even if he had to crawl over every single body jammed behind the gates that obliterated the name of the battalion stationed there.

He would find the major, take his gun and kill him if he had to.

Today, there was only one truth, one order that mattered. One thought that hammered him through the stench, the cries, the incremental terror.

His family was not leaving this base.

*   *   *

He heard a stranger's moan. “I'm not going to any safe place. The Serbs are going to take me.”

From every direction he heard similar cries.

Noise. Chaos. Terror. Misery. Four words that now made up his world.

They had closed the gate. They had sealed the hole in the fence. What did the Dutch know that he didn't? There were some five or six thousand people inside the base, but how many more had been left outside? Fifteen thousand? Twenty? Where would those people go? What would they do when the enemy came?

He knew what the gate was. It was a dividing line between those who would live and those who would die. Inside the base was life. Outside, death.

He shoved his family forward. His mother complained and he pushed her harder. They had to get away from the gate. They had to push their way inside as far as the soldiers would let them. If he had to step on other people, if he had to crawl over their bodies he would. You didn't manage three and a half years without running water, electricity, or a steady supply of food just to give it all up at the end. He was valuable. He wasn't going anywhere. And neither was his family.

He expected bad things to happen. He had always expected them: the first shot fired in the war, the first mortar launched at Sarajevo, the first village burned and looted in the east, corpses piled high beside the rubble of the mosque.

Bad things had happened. Worse things were coming. The base was the only safety there was.

The Dutch were the only protection they had, the thin blue-helmeted line between survival and mass murder. He didn't care about the graffiti that marked their compound, adding insult to injury. He didn't care about the lies they had told him up to this very moment. He didn't care about anything except what their blue and white flag represented.

Safety. Survival. The chance to weather the siege for just another day.

He wouldn't think about the faces on the other side of the gate. He wouldn't think about the panic or the hopelessness in their eyes.

Noise. Chaos. Terror. Misery.

That was all there was. That's what he wouldn't think about.

*   *   *

He realized they'd reached the endpoint, his small desk just outside the major's office. He gave the chair to his mother and placed his youngest brother on the desk. Ahmo was a small, wiry thirteen. Malnourished and terrified but trying to hide it.

They were getting to the place where no one could hide anything anymore.

His father and his other brother, Mesha, paced nervously at the door. He knew they wanted cigarettes. He wanted one himself, the way he wanted other things. Water from the tap. A phone call to his girlfriend. An acre full of livestock.

Bread and circuses.

Nothing mattered except survival.

Mother, father, Ahmo and Mesha.

That was it.

The major came. He looked harried and angry. Preoccupied with his orders. Whatever he'd been expecting, it hadn't been this onslaught of refugees. Thirty thousand people at Poto
č
ari. Thousands and thousands outside the gate.

He could feel the sweat on his skin, taste the panic on his tongue.

“We waited all night,” he said. “Where are the planes? The safe area is under attack. Srebrenica will fall.”

The major ignored him, as he'd known he would. He was searching his office for something that didn't take him long to find. A megaphone. He handed it to Damir, his eyes skirting over his family.

“What's this for? What do you expect me to do?”

“We pay you to translate. So translate.”

“We waited all night. Where are the planes?”

The major was sweating too, he saw.

“Tell the people they must leave the base. Tell them now, Damir. This is UN property.”

“UN property?” He spat out the words. “Do you think we care if this is UN property? Do you understand what's waiting on the other side of the gate?”

“Tell them. They must leave in groups of five. They must leave now. We can't have the Serbs see them as provocation.”

“Provocation? They see us as fodder. They see bodies, dead bodies. Fields and fields full of them. Are you crazy?” he demanded. “This base is the only thing keeping these people alive.”

His voice ratcheted out of control. He could hear himself raving like a madman, spittle flying from his lips. The major backed away in distaste.

“Don't make me call my men, Damir. Tell the people to leave the base at once. Five at a time. Everyone must go.”

“Now you want to call them? Now? Why don't you tell your men to guard the gate? Why don't you tell them to help the people come in? Why did you seal the fence?”

“Procedure.”

Damir threw away the megaphone. “Your procedure will see us dead and buried in the ground. No, not in the ground. They'll shoot us where we stand and leave our bodies to rot. Have you seen what's happening at the gate? Have you?”

The major avoided his eyes. “If you won't translate, you have no purpose here.”

“I work for you!” Damir screamed. “I've worked for you through this whole bloody mess, translating your lies, making your lives easier. You expect me to tell my people to march out the gate to their deaths? They're separating the men and women at the gate. They've taken the men. Do you know what that means?”

“They are screening for war crimes, that's all. There will be a prisoner exchange.”

“Are you mad? Demented? Didn't you hear Mladi
ć
? He said we would have blood up to our knees. What do you think they're doing with the men? And not just the men but the boys? What do you think, Major? How many lies will you tell us?”

The major grabbed the megaphone and forced it back into his hand. “If you won't translate my instructions, someone else will. But you'll have to leave. You're all going.” He pointed at Damir's father. “He can stay. Your father is a negotiator. He can stay with you on the base. Everyone else must go.”

He now knew that terror had a color. A red as bright and immersive as blood. “What about my mother? What about my brothers? If they go to the gate, they're as good as dead.”

“Everyone must go. No one has permission to stay on the base.”

“They're not going. I won't let you take them.”

There was no door that protected his small workspace. If there had been, he would have barricaded his family inside.

His father could see what was happening. And Mesha. He was nineteen. He didn't speak English but he could see what was coming, plain as day.

“Tell your family what I've told you.” The major's voice was implacable.

All these months of indecision, and now at last the major had found his resolve.

“What is it? What's happening?”

He started to cry. There was nowhere else for his panic to go but tears. And when he started, Ahmo did as well. Huge, gulping sobs.

“You can stay, Father,” he managed. “He says you can stay but no one else.”

Mesha swore at him.

His father and mother stared at him without answer.

“They are making everyone leave the base. All of us. Except for the negotiators.” He gestured at his father. “And those who work here.”

“Negotiators—what a joke. We never had any power to negotiate. What are we negotiating? The manner of our death?”

At his brother's words, his mother began to cry.

His father pointed behind him. “I won't stay without Ahmo and Mesha. I won't let the Chetniks take them.”

He turned to find that from among the crowded corridors of the base, the major had summoned three of his soldiers and three of the military observers, weapons at the ready.

“What in hell are you doing?”

“Your family will show the others. Tell them to leave.”

Mesha rolled forward on his feet. Damir blocked him with an arm across his chest.

“Listen to me, Major, please! Don't make them go out there. Let them stay with me on the base! They won't take up any room. They don't need any rations. I won't tell anyone. Just let them stay. Let them stay, I beg you.” His tears rained thick and fast, blurring his glasses.

“I've said your father can stay.”

“He won't stay without my brothers,” he shouted. “Can't you see what you're doing?”

“That's his choice. He doesn't have to stay if he doesn't want to. But General Mladi
ć
knows who he is.”

“I know that! Do you think I don't know that? Please, Major!” His voice tore in his throat. He saw the decision in their faces, the inexorable reality. There was no weakening of the major's voice.

“Please, Major, just my brothers. Just Ahmo and Mesha. Don't send them to the gate. You know what's waiting on the other side of the gate.”

The major turned away, nodding at his men. Damir latched on to his arm with desperate strength.

“Stop begging these bastards for me! I don't need you to beg for my life,” Mesha said.

He swore at his brother over his shoulder. “Please, Major. This is all the family I have. I beg you, let them stay.”

“Take them out.”

The soldiers began to shepherd his family through the crowd.

He followed along, desperate, hysterical.

“Please. Just Ahmo then, just Ahmo. He's only a boy. He's only thirteen.”

“Don't worry,” one of the observers said to him. “They're not separating children.”

“They are. Please. I know they are. Please. Leave Ahmo. Let Ahmo stay. I beg you. I'll give you anything. I'll do anything. I'll tell all these people to go. Just leave Ahmo.”

They marched ahead without answering. His family trailed between them, a tiny rivulet dwarfed by mountains.

His father stopped for a moment, turned back.

“Please, Father, stay,” he whispered. “Stay with me.”

“I cannot leave your brothers. I must protect them from our enemies. You stay, Damir. You stay and look for us when you can. Look for us in Tuzla.”

He saw death in his father's eyes. There would be no Tuzla.

For the thousands of men on the other side of the gate, there would be no Tuzla.

*   *   *

He knew at last what he must do.

“Wait!” He hurried along beside them, elbowing the same people he had treated so shamefully in his rush to reach safety. “If they won't let you stay, I'm coming with you. We'll go together.”

His father's eyes were kind, so kind.

“You stay here, Damir. You'll be safe and I will know you are safe. Stay.”