Girl at War: A Novel

by Sara Novic

  I nodded.

  “It’ll take some work to get you out of here. But I think I can do it.”

  —

  Petar contacted MediMission, who offered a terse response that family reunification cases were not within the scope of their work, but that he could reapply on my behalf if I ever fell ill. Then he considered refugee status, but there wasn’t an American embassy in Croatia yet. The consulate in Belgrade was running a looping voice mail that apologized for the wait time and said, due to the high volume of inquiries, they were working through a backlog of applications at this time.

  “Never mind that,” said Petar. “I know someone.”

  The next morning Petar and I rang the buzzer of a basement apartment beneath a butcher shop in a southern part of the city where I’d never been. We waited, listening as a series of chains and dead bolts clinked on the other side of the door. It opened a sliver, enough to reveal one pale eye, then closed to allow for more unlocking.

  “Security,” the man said. “You know how it is.” Finally the door opened a passable amount and Petar and I slipped inside. The flat was dank and smelled moldy. It was hard to make out at first, but as my eyes adjusted it was clear the single-room efficiency was home to more than just an overweight bachelor; the entirety of the counter space was lined with equipment ranging from typewriters and printing presses to what was, by my best guess, a blowtorch.

  “What happened to you?” the man said, gesturing to Petar’s arm.

  “Shattered humerus. Shrapnel still in there.” I felt bad that I’d never asked, but it had always seemed like he didn’t want to talk about it, and that I could understand.

  The man changed the subject. “And what can I do for you today?” He squatted down when he spoke to me. “You want a driver’s license?”

  “Ha ha,” said Petar, and the two men executed a combination handshake-hug. The man kissed Petar three times, the Orthodox way, and I winced. “Ana,” Petar said, “this is Srdjan.” An indisputably Serbian name. My heartbeat quickened. “An old friend from high school. Srdjan knew your parents.”

  Srdjan was holding out his hand. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear.”

  “Go on then. Shake his hand.”

  “I can help you,” Srdjan said. I put my hand in his. “I hear you need an American visa.”

  I looked up at Petar, who nodded. I nodded, too.

  “Well, luckily, I happen to produce absolutely foolproof visas,” Srdjan said, with a sweeping gesture at his workshop. “I even have the very same paper that the United States of America uses.” He rummaged through paper-filled cabinets. “How are you going to fly?”

  “Probably through Germany,” Petar said. “I’m still working out the finer points.”

  “Germany,” he said. “As long as you stay in the international terminal you’ll be fine.”

  He flipped some levers on the printing equipment, and the machines hummed. “With this paper I can produce exact American replicas! I got it from an intern at the embassy—”

  “She doesn’t need to know where you got it,” Petar said, predicting the course of the story.

  “Tits”—Srdjan held his hands far out from his chest—“as big as honeydew melons, I shit you not.”

  Petar chuckled uneasily, and Srdjan looked surprised to find worry in his friend’s face.

  “What’s wrong with tits? She’s a girl. She’s going to have tits.”

  “All right! Enough with the tits.”

  “Fine,” Srdjan said. He looked down at me. “Didn’t know he was so sensitive.”

  “What about a passport?”

  “What do you mean? We’ll just staple it in her regular passport.”

  “It got…lost,” Petar said.

  “Well, you could apply for a new one.”

  “Not enough time. Can’t you just make her one? Make her a German one!”

  “Yeah, I’ll make a fake German passport and we’ll send a kid who doesn’t speak any German to Germany with it!” Srdjan raised the heel of his hand and smacked Petar in the forehead, then shot me a wink. “Look out—we’ve got a real genius on our hands!”

  “All right, all right,” said Petar. “Make her one of ours then. Don’t you need to take her picture or something?”

  “Indeed.” Srdjan adjusted a pair of photographer’s lights that looked like umbrellas, and I stood stoic against a white sheet while he snapped a picture.

  “I’ll be back to pick it up Wednesday?” Petar handed him an envelope, and Srdjan fingered the flap and peeked inside. “I’ll bring the rest then.”

  “Very well,” Srdjan said, and took a dramatic bow before walking us to the door and releasing us out into the daylight. “Ana.”

  I turned back.

  “Your parents. They were good.”

  “Thanks.” I tried to think of something better to say, but Srdjan had already shut the door, the dead bolts clicking behind us.

  —

  Voices of my neighbors echoed in the stairwell as we climbed the stairs to my flat; the walls there had always been thin. Just as I’d been unsettled at the idea that my friends had been going to school without me, I was shocked to find people were still living out normal existences here in my building, that their lives had not stalled as mine had. Petar turned the extra key in the lock, but instead of smashing against the wall, the door stuck to the frame, and he forced it open with his good shoulder.

  “Can you stay out here?” I said. He looked hurt but hung back anyway.

  Inside, the room was dim and the air was stale. Cuts of sunlight slid between the blinds, revealing swirling columns of dust. The door to my parents’ bedroom was closed, and I left it that way and moved through the kitchen. A sour smell emanated from the refrigerator, and something small and shadowy ran alongside the baseboard and disappeared under the door of the pantry.

  In the living room I ran my hand over the armrest of the couch where my father used to sit. Then I pulled my clothes from the bookshelf and shoved them into my pillowcase. From the bottom shelf I gathered a sampling of the pirated radio tapes my father and I had made. Over the piano there was a photo of the four of us, and another of me as a baby in Tiska. I took them from their adjacent places on the wall. My parents’ wedding picture was hung higher up, but I couldn’t reach it.

  Petar called out and asked how I was doing and I jumped. Plunking my hand down on the bottom octave of the piano, I ran from the room, dragging the bulging pillowcase behind me. I thought about asking Petar to go back for the wedding picture, but as he turned in the doorway, the light revealed his reddened eyes, so I said nothing.

  —

  The night before I left, Luka appeared under my window on his bike. Petar had instructed me not to tell anyone when I was leaving or where I was going, but I had told Luka anyway, swearing him to secrecy.

  “How did you—”

  “I snuck out. Come down.”

  “Come up.” I met him at the door, and we trod warily through the kitchen and out to the fire escape. Marina and the family in the next building had strung a clothesline across the alley, and someone’s bed linens crackled in the wind.

  “Will you be safe there?”

  “I think so. Rahela is safe.”

  “But you know in the movies. All those cowboys and gangsters.”

  “I guess all places are sort of dangerous.”

  “I guess.” He put his hand on mine, then pulled it away.

  “Will you write me?” I said. He said he would, and we sat for a while contemplating the Wild West and New York City and Philadelphia, where I might be able to see Rocky. When Luka’s eyelids began to flutter, I punched him in the arm and told him he could stay the night, but he had to get home before he was discovered missing. The ladder on the fire escape was broken, so he climbed back into the flat and let himself out.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I whispered as he swung a leg over his bicycle.

  “So don’t say anything. When you come back, it wil
l be like you never left.” He stood up on his bike pedals and bounced down the gravel drive, then turned the corner out of sight.

  —

  I woke in the dark with Petar standing over me.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s time.”

  “I’m awake.” I dressed in the only clothes I hadn’t packed. I went to the bedroom to say goodbye to Marina, kissing her on the cheek.

  “Be safe,” she murmured. “And take care of Rahela.”

  “Come. Be my co-pilot,” Petar said, motioning to the passenger seat. He was wearing his army uniform with the left sleeve cut off to accommodate the brace. He put a yellow envelope in my lap and backed out of the driveway. “Now this is very important. These are all your documents—ticket, passport, contact information for the family, letter of invitation, and”—he reached in his pocket and stuffed some dinar into the envelope—“something extra in case anyone gets hungry.”

  “Hungry?”

  “Not for food,” he said, tapping the envelope. “You’ll find powerful men can often be persuaded. At least they can here. I don’t know about America. Don’t worry. You’ll know if you need it. Subtlety is not the military way. Now. When you get to Germany—”

  “Don’t leave the international terminal,” I said, remembering Srdjan’s instructions.

  “Good. And when you get to New York?”

  I gave him a blank look. I couldn’t remember any advice about America.

  “Just play it cool!” he said. “They’re going to meet you at the airport, so once you make it through customs, you’re home free.”

  I leafed through the papers. I went back to the start of the pile and looked through them again. There was only one ticket.

  “This says Frankfurt–New York. Where’s the other half?” I’d assumed the American visa would be the hardest component to procure; I hadn’t considered that getting out of this country would be a problem. But the more I thought about it, the more frightened I became. Of course no company would be stupid enough to fly commercial planes in war zone airspace.

  “I’ve made arrangements,” Petar said.

  “How did you find all these people to help us?”

  “I’ve always known people. You just didn’t notice. You were young.”

  The airport was ringed by white vehicles: smooth-front supply trucks with covered flatbeds, fuel carrier tankers, shiny white SUVs, even a series of white tanks, all bearing UN in bold black paint. On both sides of the fence, the area was swarming with Peacekeepers, their helmets and flak jackets almost luminous in the diffuse dawn light. But Petar drove past the entrance. I waited for him to turn in to a side gate or service road. Instead he got on the highway, southbound.

  “Petar. The airport?”

  “We’re not going there,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Too heavily guarded. They check the planes.”

  “Then where are we going?”

  “Otočac.”

  “Otočac! Do they even have an airport? Aren’t there Četniks down there?”

  “We’re counting on it,” he said. “Right now, disorder is our friend. No one will notice you.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” he said. The sun was red with morning, and I stared at my feet to avoid the glare. We rode in silence until I no longer recognized anything.

  “We’re going to get you out of here,” Petar said. “When we get to Otočac, a Peacekeeper named Stanfeld will meet us.”

  “I’m scared,” I said.

  “You should be.”

  “What?”

  “It’d be weird if you weren’t.”

  “The UN. Why is he helping us?”

  “It’s a woman,” Petar said. “And I saved her life.”

  “Is that how you hurt your arm?”

  “Nah. She was on my day off.” Pleased with himself, he gave way to a smile I couldn’t help but return. Petar put his hand on my knee. “She’ll take care of you.”

  After about an hour, we passed into Lika and arrived on the outskirts of Otočac. Farmland gave way to small clusters of beige and red-clay-roofed houses along the road. Most of them had been shelled and were in varying states of disrepair.

  “Shit,” said Petar, and I looked ahead to see bearded men in the road. “For fuck’s sake.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Get in the back and lie on the floor and don’t move until I tell you,” he said. I stuffed the envelope in the waistband of my pants, climbed over the gearshift, and pressed my face against the dirty floor mat. Petar threw a blanket over me and submitted to the checkpoint.

  I heard him crank down the window, then a stranger’s voice, close: “Can I help you?”

  “I’ve got a delivery,” Petar said, and I heard the crinkling of paper, wondered if it was some instruction sheet or dinar to quench the “hunger” he’d mentioned.

  “This road is closed. You need to turn around.”

  “Haven’t you people heard of a cease-fire?” said Petar.

  “I heard the JNA agreed to one. Luckily, I’m not in that army.”

  “Look, I have a delivery. Commander Stanfeld.”

  “There’s no Stanfeld here,” the soldier said, repeating the foreign last name with some difficulty.

  “She’s UN.”

  “She?” he said, amused. “There’s no UN here.”

  “You better check your messages,” said Petar. “They’re at the airport right now, and there’ll be hell to pay if you make them wait.”

  “I don’t take orders from Peacekeepers.” Paper rustling again. “Hold on.” A radio beeped, and the soldier asked about a delivery, the staticky reply indiscernible.

  “Well, comrade. My commander doesn’t know about your delivery. So I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car.”

  “Sure thing,” said Petar, but I could see him sliding his hand into the skinny space between seats, past his seat belt, where the glint of gunmetal caught my eye.

  “Hurry up! Out!”

  “Ana, count to three, then run to the center post office,” he whispered.

  “What?” the soldier said.

  “Sorry,” Petar said, and I heard him open his door. “I’m just—”

  I heard the pop of gunfire and flew from the car, still clutching the blanket around my shoulders. The Četnik was on the ground holding his face, and Petar was running into the scrub across the road, distracting the other soldiers as I darted through the fields down into the town.

  “Goodbye!” I yelled to Petar, though I knew he wouldn’t hear. Would he be able to fight or get away with his bad arm? Maybe if I ran fast enough and found Stanfeld, the UN could send Blue Helmets to help him. The streets were potholed and gravelly from mortars, and I tried not to trip.

  Compared to Zagreb, Otočac was a squat town. The houses looked the same—the familiar tan and white façades and clay roofs—but there were no tall buildings here, nothing more than a few stories, so it was hard to find the center of town. There weren’t many people on the street, and no one noticed me.

  “Post office?” I said to a man slumped on the corner drinking rakija from the bottle.

  “Doesn’t work,” he said.

  “I know, but where is it?”

  “What good is it if it’s closed?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Two streets up. Next to the closed bakery and the closed bank and the closed—”

  “Thanks.” I ran the two blocks, but there was no one out in front of the post office and it looked dark inside. The air raid siren began to sound.

  Through the alley and around the back, I found a woman in Peacekeeping uniform. She adjusted her ponytail beneath her helmet, looked at her watch. I tapped her on the arm.

  “Well, what do we have here?” she said in English. She gestured to my blanket. “Are you Superwoman?” I was intimidated by her language and her uniform, but needed her to send help for Petar, so I concentrated on the words I’d learned in s
chool and from my mother.

  “Stanfeld,” I said.

  “Yes, how did you—Ana?”

  “Petar has trouble.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Četniks,” I said. “The big road.”

  “Is he hurt?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shit.” She spoke into a walkie-talkie strapped to her upper arm, a series of numbers and something I couldn’t understand. Then to me she said, “Don’t worry, they’ll take care of him. Now let’s get you on this plane.”

  —

  At the airport, Peacekeepers were guarding all entrances. I handed her the envelope Petar had given me.

  “Money inside,” I said.

  “Hopefully we won’t need it.” She squinted at the guard by the front. “No, not him.” I followed her to the next gate. “Nope.” Then, at the back gate, “That’ll work.” She pulled the elastic from her ponytail, and her hair came down around her shoulders in blond waves.

  “Hey, you,” she said, and the guard looked up, startled.

  “Oh, hey, Sharon.”

  “Mind swiping me through? We’re gonna be late for transport.”

  “Who’s the kid?”

  “She’s my SFF…AF-6. I told you about her, remember?”

  “SFF—” He looked confused. “Does she have a pass?”

  “Of course she does,” Stanfeld said. “But I had a blond moment and left it in my luggage. If you swipe us through I could get it and show it to you.”

  “Well—”

  “You’re the best,” she said. She took another step toward him, too close. He slid his pass through the scanner and let us in.

  “Idiot,” she said when we were out of earshot. We crouched behind a generator and she retied her hair. Before the war, the airport in Otočac had been recreational, and I could see where a chunk of runway, dirt-packed, had been added to accommodate larger aircraft. I studied the plane, a stubby green cargo transport. I’d never been on a plane before, and this one looked much too fat to take off. A Blue Helmet opened the cabin latch, a door with built-in stairs, then stepped off for a smoke. Ms. Stanfeld squeezed my hand, and we ran across the tarmac.

  Inside it was not what I thought a plane would look like; there were no seats, only benches, green netting on the wall to hold on to, and stacks and stacks of boxes.