One of them, I don’t remember who, told me that they did it because it helped with the hunger.
After Papa left for the war, it was just the two of us.
Papa visited whenever he could; whenever the army was within traveling distance, he’d come home. On his trips home, he tried to make it fun. He took out his instruments and played songs for us to sing and dance to. He was a musician again. When Papa came home, he used his understanding of how things worked to come up with tricks to make life easier for Mama and me. He was an engineer again. He hooked our television up to a car battery.
One time we saw a BBC clip of a soldier exchange. We realized that one of the soldiers was a beloved relative we all thought was dead. Mama ran to the phone—which worked throughout the war—and called his wife. Papa held me in his arms as we listened to the sound of Mama and the relative crying together on the phone.
Whenever Papa visited, he went out at night to siphon gasoline from abandoned cars on the street, so Mama and I had cooking fuel when he was gone. It wasn’t until it was time for him to leave us at the door to our apartment that Papa became a soldier again, his long, thin fingers holding fast to a gun.
* * *
I hated when the sirens sounded. When Mama was home, she pulled out an old sled she kept in the closet and placed it in the hallway, outside the apartment door. She grabbed my coloring books and crayons and placed them in my lap on the sled. There were no windows in the hallway.
She always said, “Majra, no matter what, you stay here. You sit, Majra. I’ll run and get things ready, you stay put.”
Mama ran around the apartment gathering things in case we had to make a quick escape from our building. I sat in the dark hallway, in my sled, with the coloring books as my friends.
When Mama was at work, I had to follow the rules. I grabbed the key. I left the apartment, making sure to lock the door after me. Sometimes, there were thieves who took advantage of the sirens. I walked down the six flights of stairs to the basement. In the basement, I had to find a place to stand beside a wall; I had to be alert so I could kick at the big rats when they came near me. I ignored the cockroaches that climbed the walls and scurried along the floor. When it rained, the basement filled up with dirty water, and my feet and clothes got soaked.
Breathe and wait, kick the rats, stand until the adult neighbors say, “Majra, it is safe now. You can go back to your apartment.”
In the apartment, I resume my normal routine.
In the long weeks when we heard no news of Papa, Mama told me things to make me feel better.
If she got an extra slice of bread from a kind neighbor, she said, “Your father dropped it off at the neighbors’ when the army passed through the city today.”
When Mama presented little gifts, like a hot rod car, she said, “It is a gift from your father and it comes with a letter.”
In those moments, I knew it was her way of getting us both to believe that Papa was all right.
* * *
Mama had five miscarriages during the war years. She did not have enough food, so the babies inside her died one by one. I was her only child. It was not my parents’ choice or mine. But we are all reminded that I was lucky to have been born before the war.
When Mama tells me stories about when I was born, she always begins, “Majra, you were born in the most perfect month of the year. You were born in July, when the weather was perfectly warm in Zenica. In August, it would have been too hot. In June, it would still be cool with the breezes from the mountains. In July, it was perfect.”
On the map of Bosnia, Mama showed me our hometown and told me, “Majra, Zenica is the middle of our country. See here?”
She pointed to a little black dot.
“Our city is the pupil of the eye of this nation. Do you know what a pupil is?”
I pointed to my eyes.
“Yes, our city is the pupil of the country, and you, precious one, are the pupil of my eye.”
Mama had been a bookkeeper. She had studied economics in school. She was a professional volleyball player before I was born. During the war years, though, everyone called her simply “Majra’s mother.”
Near the end of the war, something horrible happened. Papa had returned home. We’d just gathered around the dining table when we heard a giant explosion, so loud and close to our building that the walls shook. The building across the street from ours was hit by an unseen missile. Papa ran to the window. Mama ran after him as they yelled for me to stay back. Despite their words, I ran after them. From our window, we all watched as the people on the other side of our street came tumbling out their windows in slow motion and landed on the hard pavement like spattered paint. The side of the building started crumbling. Through the window we heard people’s screams of pain and then the cries of an ambulance making its way to help. When Mama and Papa realized that I was watching everything alongside them, they both pulled me close. Their breathing sounded like wind in my ears.
We returned to the table and the unfinished bread on my plate. Papa told us that the worst massacre on European soil since World War II had happened in a village called Srebrenica.
He said, “Thousands of Bosniak men and boys have been killed by the Bosnian Serb army. A friend told me about how his mother had taken all her boys to the town square and told them each to walk in different directions. She knew that certain death was coming for them if they stayed at home. She’d rather they leave her than die with her. In the end, two escaped and three were killed.”
Mama reached out her hand to hold his shaking hands on the table.
When the war ended in December 1995, the whole of Zenica had become a ruin. I was eight years old. Where once we had been an urban center, the biggest steel center of Yugoslavia, we had become a site of crumbled rock and stone. Of the 180,000 people who lived there, there were countless missing, but we knew that we had not suffered more than other people in other places. The only thing that remained unchanged were the facts of our city’s geography; we were still in a valley surrounded by snowcapped mountains. In the years after the war, Mama got pregnant again and gave birth to a baby they named Amra. My family applied for resettlement.
In 2001, our family was accepted. We arrived in Minnesota on July 11 of that year.
A Bosnian family who had resettled earlier took our family in. Within a month, they had also taken in two other families. There were eight adults and eight children living in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house in St. Louis Park.
For my thirteenth birthday, the family took me with them to Sam’s Club. I could not believe what was before me: boxes and boxes full of food and supplies. They smiled at my wonder. At home, that night, they presented me with the biggest chocolate muffin I had ever seen in my life. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to me. I thought we were all going to share the giant muffin, but the host family laughed and took out a case full of equally big muffins and said that we would each have our own.
I went to Macalester College. I knew exactly what I wanted to study: international studies and economics. I wanted to help rebuild what the wars had broken.
Richard Holbrooke was our freshman convocation speaker. He was the man who had drafted the peace agreement that ended the Bosnian War. As he was talking, I felt the goose bumps rise on my arms, not because of the content of his words, but for the fact that life had brought me to this moment in time.
In my junior year of college, for a moment, I questioned what I wanted to do and who I would become. Then I discovered that I had been placed in Kirk Hall, in Kofi Annan’s old room. Kofi Annan was then the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations. I reckoned with myself.
There was always only one thing I would ever become, this child refugee, a person who knew and understood what it was like to grow up in a war. I had to become brave and I had to use whatever means I could find to save the pieces of myself that were in danger of dying in that lonely apartment where I waited for peace.
—MAJRA MUCIć GIBBONS
>
Part II
CERTIFICATE OF HUMANITY
5
When the Rebels Attacked
WHEN THE BULLETS flew toward our house, some entered through and tore the tapestries at the windows. I had come home early from the guesthouse that day to check on the children and the maid as was my habit. Albert was not yet home. I was holding the baby and talking to the maid. She was telling me we were nearly out of diapers. It was then that the sound of guns rang from outside. I screamed for my children. The lot of them ran toward me from different parts of the house. The maid, a young woman, hands to her ears, sat on the ground and started shaking. The children and I had to pull her along as we crouched low to the ground and made our way into the nearest bedroom. It was the children’s room. I whispered for them all to be quiet. We hid in the bedroom, the baby close to my bosom, until the neighborhood around us grew quiet again. I signaled to the maid to take the baby. I crawled to the only window in the room.
The window was open. A cooling wind came through and I realized I was soaked in sweat. I peeked at the world from the corner of the window. I saw that the sun was still shining and the world was as it had been: all the uniform houses sitting in their rows. I could see a few blocks away that the neighborhood store was still open. A bird chirped nearby.
The baby whimpered. I thought, We only have a few diapers left in the house.
I got up and signaled for everyone else to follow suit. I pulled at my jacket. I was still in my work clothes.
I said, “I should go and buy some diapers. We’ll need them if anything gets worse.”
I asked the maid if she was fine taking care of the kids. She said yes. I told my older children to behave and stay indoors.
I paused only a little at the front door. When I opened it, the day spread out wide and far around me. The streets were empty but for a hen and her chicks pecking at the dirt at the right corner of our house. I grabbed some bills from my wallet.
I said, “I’ll be back soon.”
I walked to my neighbor and dear friend’s house. I called out to her as I neared her front door. She answered brightly that she’d be along shortly. I took deep breaths of the dry air waiting for her. At the door, she agreed to accompany me the few blocks to the store. We both said, “Diapers are important.”
She asked, “Do you want to go and change out of your clothes?”
I answered, “Do I look shabby?”
She said, “No.”
I said, “Then I’m fine in the suit and the heels.”
As my friend and I walked by the side of the unpaved road, we talked of how strange the day had become. I fingered the bills I had in the grip of one hand. We noticed a car approaching. We did not expect it to stop, although we moved farther toward the drying grass to make room for the car to pass. A soldier sat in the front of the car, driving. He halted beside me. The windows were already open.
He said to me, “What’s in your hand?”
I answered, “A little bit of money to go buy diapers for my baby.”
I pointed to the store in the short distance.
The soldier’s eyes did not move from my face.
He asked, “What am I?”
I answered, “You are a soldier.”
The man in the back of the car, the sergeant, opened his mouth, and said, “Freedom fighter.”
I looked from one man to the other, dread dripping down my spine.
The driver said slowly, “I feel like killing you.”
I saw that he had a gun by his side, on the seat of the car.
I said, “What?”
He repeated himself slowly, “I feel like killing you.”
I said, “Why?”
The sergeant in the back answered, “He is a freedom fighter, not a soldier.”
I repeated, “He is a freedom fighter.”
The driver shook his head in disgust and said, “I still feel like killing you.”
My whole body had grown very still. My friend had a hold of my arm and her grip was hard and stiff.
We were so afraid that it did not register that another man in uniform was approaching us until he was right beside me. I recognized him as a friend of my husband’s. I turned helplessly toward him. I wanted to say I have babies at home. I wanted to say I have not done anything wrong. But I knew that if I said anything at all, the man in the car would kill me. When the friend spoke, his voice broke through the ringing in my ears.
He said to the driver of the car, “Don’t do that.”
He added, “Let’s take the women to the station and we can talk about it.”
The sergeant in the back of the car got out of the car with great deliberation. He closed the car door gently. He stood in front of us and looked at us. I was tall. We were nearly the same height. I did not dare look him in the face. I kept my gaze down but trained on his movements. He breathed heavily. Then snorted and turned away, walking slowly around the car to the other side. He opened the passenger door in front, went in, sat down, heaved a deep sigh, then slammed the door closed. My husband’s friend urged us with his hands to get into the back of the car. We had no choice but to oblige. My friend got in first. I got in second. He followed after us. We were all silent. The driver shifted the car into gear and it started moving. My dear friend’s hand relaxed on mine only when she noticed that the car was taking us in the direction of the checkpoint into Bong Mining Company.
The gatekeeper, a familiar face, came up to the car as it slowed in front of the station. He took one look and discerned what was going on. He knew they were just picking on us. He told us to get into the station office. It was a small square building with a door and windows, usually left wide open but closed on this day. He opened the door and pushed us in, then closed it again.
We were in a darkened room. The body of our best friend, a local man who was kind and funny and thoughtful, was on the floor. Blood pooled around his body. We could see that some of the blood had coagulated. Upon touch, his body was cold. He could not have been dead a few hours. We held fast to each other. I stood there feeling like my feet were not on solid ground, feeling like I would faint one moment and then throw up the next. My body was hot then cold then hot again. I could hear the men talking outside. The gatekeeper and my husband’s friend taking on casual, laughing voices, cajoling like they were telling a silly story. The sergeant and offended driver said very little. I was relieved to hear the sound of car doors slamming. I heard the car engine start and tires begin to roll away. My friend and I started crying.
The door opened and light entered the room. I will never forget the sight of our fallen friend in that sliver of sunlight. His neck was broken. His face sagged in pain, eyes rolled back. We looked into the light of the doorway to see the figure of the gatekeeper there. His face was sweaty. He had a hand to his neck as if he was feeling himself for a fever.
He said in a quiet voice, “You can go.”
Outside, we decided to take an alternate road home. We didn’t want to be caught by any other cars. We were a mere block away from the station. We’d both just finished drying our tears when a familiar car drove up to us. It was the same car. The driving soldier was the same one. The sergeant in the back was the same one.
The driver said, “Keep walking home.”
We didn’t know what else to do so we kept on walking as he drove the car very slowly and deliberately beside us. When we got close enough to the house, Albert came running out. My friend and I did not dare run to him. When he made it close enough to us, I thought my legs would give out and I would crumble to the ground at his feet, but I did not. Albert was wary. He didn’t come close. He stared instead at the men in the car.
It was the sergeant who spoke.
He said in a very calm voice, “I almost killed your wife.”
Albert said, “Why?”
He said, “She can tell you about it.”
Then, they drove off.
Inside the house, I held my baby in my arms. I knew there woul
d be no more diapers in our lives.
We had no idea that it was just the beginning. The next day, there was no more work. There was nothing. The Germans and the Italians who owned Bong Mining Company had been evacuated. I called and found out that the same thing had happened at the Firestone Natural Rubber Company.
Albert and I both had family at the Firestone Natural Rubber Company. In fact, we had both been born and raised there in Harbel, a township in the plantation. My father had been a rubber tree tapper. Albert’s father had been the man who drove a company truck across the neighborhoods spraying for rodents and other pests. Years before we met, when I was just a child, Albert’s father had made friends with me on his routine visits, quizzed me on my ability to speak the Kissi tribal language, and when I had surpassed his expectations had given me money and treats. He’d told me, “One day, you will marry one of my sons.” Although Albert and I believe that our eventual meeting and choosing marriage was our decision, who knows what those words had done to shape our destinies. What we did know was that our family there was in as much danger as we were.
Albert and I went to talk to our neighbors and our friends. Many were leaving. There was a small group of people who told us they would stay. They believed that the Germans and the Italians were far stronger than any rebel force. The Europeans would return and our lives would resume. Albert and I talked and decided we would stay and form a close network with the other families. The maid chose to return to her home village to be united with her family. She could not bear the thought of being separated. We respected her decision and wished her well. But we could not leave. We had built a good life for ourselves in Bong Town.
The town was part of the Bong Mining Company, founded by the Germans in 1958, but owned jointly in the 1980s by the Germans and the Italians. The town was only an hour and forty-five minutes by car away from Harbel. It was close enough so that we could visit our families whenever we needed, especially my mother and his father who we were both fond of. In Bong Town, we had found good jobs with the company. I was the supervisor for their guesthouse, managing the daily operations to make sure that the guests were happy and comfortable. Albert got a job in the inventory control for the factory part of the mining operations. We were living the lives our parents had dreamed for us as capable adults.
Somewhere in the Unknown World Page 6
