by Ayşe Kulin
Mijda was too choked to speak. Raif noticed for the first time that her skirt was caked with dried blood and excrement.
“And Bianka? What happened to her?”
“Muho was bawling and screaming at the top of his little lungs. One of Arkan’s Tigers grabbed him and threw him out the window.”
A strangled growl rose from Raif’s throat.
“Bianka freed her hands and feet and rushed over to the window. She began cursing the Serbs. Then one of them grabbed her, pushed her down to the floor, and stuck his rifle between her legs. Raif, he stuck it way in . . . And then I heard a gunshot . . . I must have passed out.”
Raziyanım was tired of waiting in the car. She slowly opened the door and got out. It was a mild day. Spring had come early to the Balkans. She breathed in the smell of fresh grass and began walking toward the milling crowd. While waiting in the car, she’d made up her mind: if her children were really that fed up with her and she could only do wrong in their eyes, she’d move in with her widowed sister-in-law. She would live in Zvornik for as long as God gave her sister-in-law a healthy life.
APRIL 10, 1992
Bijeljina was no more. Zvornik was no more. Raif’s young wife, Nimeta’s sister-in-law, was no more. His baby boy was no more. Thousands of young men were no more. Thousands of young women and children were no more. And those who remained behind would lead poisoned lives. All that was left were women with torn sexual organs and anuses, children who would never speak again, old people who’d suffered strokes and heart attacks and were ashamed to be alive. The ethnic cleansing was complete. Emboldened by Belgrade—that is, by Milošević—under the orders of Radovan Karadžić, deployed and commanded by the radical nationalist Šešelj, Arkan’s Tigers had “liberated” Zvornik.
But whom exactly had Zvornik been liberated from?
It had been liberated from people who spoke the same language, shared the same culture, enjoyed the same events, joined in the celebrations of their neighbors’ feast days and Christmases, presented gifts on each other’s holy days, and sympathized and grieved with them when times were bad. The only thing that was different about these people—the ones who’d been plundered, cut down, clubbed, skinned alive, and raped, all in the name of liberating Zvornik—was that they fasted one month a year, performed special prayers on the first day of their own religious festivals, and had their sons circumcised. And because of this, they had lost their lives, their families, their livelihoods, their possessions, and their land. The five thousand survivors of the massacre had become destitute overnight.
Nimeta listened to the afternoon news on the radio, stock-still, her face blank, her eyes glassy. Ivan brought her a cup of hot coffee and said, “Drink it, Nimeta. It’ll do you good.”
“Are you asking me to just give up hope for all those people?” Nimeta asked.
“We have a list of the survivors. There’s no hope for those who were rounded up outside the valley. Say a prayer for the dead, and save your strength for the living.”
“Mother’s been in the hospital since yesterday. They keep giving her sedatives,” Nimeta said. “My brother’s been kept asleep.”
Ivan remembered Nimeta’s earlier breakdown and had been afraid she’d have another one. But Nimeta had turned out to be stronger than he’d imagined possible.
She didn’t seem surprised—it was almost as though she’d been expecting this all along. There was a heavy dullness to her, that was all. And she kept repeating the same thing.
“Can you believe it, Ivan? Alija Izetbegović asked the Serbian army for help—the very same army that was behind this massacre. How could anyone be so blind? Tell me, what on earth was he thinking? As the Serbs began filling Zvornik with their paramilitary forces, their arms, their wireless phones and jeeps, Izetbegović actually extended an official invitation to the Yugoslav National Army to come and stop the slaughter.”
“Don’t get yourself worked up for nothing,” Ivan said. “If he hadn’t asked the army for help, would that have stopped them? Even if Izetbegović had demanded that the federal army not set foot in Zvornik, they still would have come and slaughtered everyone. The Serbs are engaged in ethnic cleansing. You’ve got to understand that.”
“What are we going to do next, Ivan?”
“Either we find a way to flee, or we stay and wait our turn. They’ll come for us, you can be sure of it.”
“Stop it! You’re depressing me!” Sonya shouted. “The world would never allow it. The whole world’s watching, and they’d never turn a blind eye to another genocide. Even if nobody else cares, the Jews with ties to the Balkans would never let it happen. I haven’t given up hope. The madness has to stop.”
“They’re waiting for the Bosniaks to be wiped out before they put a stop to the madness,” Nimeta said. “My neighbor, Azra, has been right all along,”
“Who do you mean by ‘they’?” Sonya asked.
“Those who don’t want a Bosniak presence in the Balkans.” Nimeta’s voice was flat and hollow, as though it were coming not from her throat but from a metal pipe.
“Well, we’re here,” Sonya said. “And we’re staying here. We Bosniaks will be here till the end!”
MAY 2–3, 1992
Nimeta was trying to make lunch for Hana before she left for work, but with power cut after power cut, it seemed the meal would never finish cooking. It hadn’t taken long for her to start missing the days when her mother had taken care of the housework, the cooking, and the shopping. Working part-time hadn’t freed her up; it had made her a slave to her household. Her only luxury was the hour she had to herself after everyone left in the morning, a few blissful moments stretched out in an armchair with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, alone with her own thoughts. She still had to get up early to get the kids ready for school, but at least she had that one precious hour before she moved on to housework and cooking. For years she’d complained about never having enough time. But today, with an entire morning stretching out before her, a morning punctuated by the sound of distant gunfire, the only thing she could think to do was light a cigarette and scan the newspaper. There was nothing else to do in Sarajevo. Going to the marketplace was out of the question, let alone visiting a couple of galleries, taking in a film, or stopping by a friend’s for coffee.
The war had swept into their lives like a tornado. Though the events in Kosovo way back in May of ’89 had all but made war inevitable, it nevertheless seemed so sudden. While the Bosniaks had been sleeping, the Serbs, under Milošević’s leadership, had gradually been realizing their ambitions. It had been a deep sleep, a sweet dream of peace, one shared by President Alija Izetbegović. In this day and age, the countries of the West would never allow a war of this kind to rage right under their noses. They would never permit a bully to use brute force to deprive people of their homes, homelands, and lives. They would never permit genocide and torture. It was a sweet dream, very naïve, and very human.
Although the schools had officially been closed since the events of April 6, a few enterprising teachers had decided to continue giving lessons in underground shelters. Pantries and storerooms were being used for this purpose on virtually every street so that the children wouldn’t have to walk through sniper fire. Children of mixed ages attended these makeshift classes. Most of Hana’s group was the same age, but a few of her classmates were ten or eleven. Fiko’s education continued in a different cellar with students his own age.
The Bosniaks of Sarajevo had two choices: they could either bow completely to a war with an unpredictable outcome and pick up whatever pieces of their shattered lives remained once it was over, or they could continue to go about their daily lives as best they could. Those able to keep alive even the slightest hope for the future chose the latter, which meant continuing to educate their children at all costs.
For people like Burhan and Nimeta, life had gone underground. Families joined with teacher
s to help educate their children. In dark cellars illuminated by kerosene lanterns and candles during the frequent power cuts, life went on. Women who faced death daily on the streets above found that they no longer feared the rats in their cellars. Rats, bugs, darkness, mildew, cobwebs, gunfire, and fear of death had all become part of daily life.
Raziyanım had moved into her own flat in Tomislav, not far from her daughter. Raif, who now lived with his mother, hadn’t spoken a word since the Zvornik massacre.
Nimeta checked the pot on the stove; it wouldn’t be done until the afternoon. She considered leaving a note telling Hana to have lunch at her grandmother’s. There was always something to eat there. Raziyanım was convinced that any and all of the children’s problems could be solved through food. If one of the kids looked upset, out of the oven would come some freshly baked börek or custard.
“Have some of this and you’ll be fine. I made it myself just for you,” she’d say, placing before them a steaming plate or a tray heaped with dates.
Nimeta had once remarked to her brother, “If Mother had been as generous with a sympathetic ear as she was with her food, you and I would have turned out completely different.”
“She’s a talker, not a listener,” Raif had said. “But give credit where it’s due. She’s a great cook.”
Unfortunately, Raziyanım was rapidly running out of ingredients with which to treat her son. It had become next to impossible to find provisions in Sarajevo. The butchers and grocers had closed up shop after they were looted. New deliveries had failed to arrive. Karadžić had thrown up barricades as part of his plan to partition the city into Serbian, Croatian, and Muslim districts. And the Serbian commanders in charge of the city’s checkpoints were doing everything in their power to starve the Bosniaks.
Even so, nobody—including the local Serbs—could imagine Sarajevo being permanently divided into ethnic enclaves. Their homes, workplaces, shops, schools—in short, their lives—had been intertwined for centuries. They couldn’t imagine it being otherwise.
But others could.
At his military headquarters in Pale, Karadžić was spreading maps of the city across tables and drawing lines with a red pen. The old Ottoman neighborhood of narrow lanes centered around the Baščaršija bazaar in the eastern part of the city would be left to the Bosniaks, while the wide boulevards built at the time of the Habsburgs would go to the Croatians. The modern business and industrial district built mainly in the twentieth century in the western part of the city was to be allocated in its entirety to the Serbs, thereby cramming most of the population into the eastern districts, while the Serbs enjoyed plenty of space in the west.
Nimeta was horrified by the signs of intolerance and racism spreading around her. Something had begun happening to her neighbors, the people with whom she’d grown up, gone to university, had fun, made love, and gone through good and bad times over the years. Humans may have grown more sophisticated and technologically adept over time, but certain primitive instincts had obviously remained unchanged since the day the first human first stood erect on two feet.
Nimeta checked the time. She couldn’t be late for work. Alija Izetbegović was returning that afternoon from a three-day visit to Lisbon. Though she already knew he’d emerged from meetings empty-handed, she’d still have to meet him at the airport to get a firsthand account.
She hoped Ivan would send someone else. She was in no shape to do anything today, having spent the better part of the previous night quarreling with Burhan. She’d told him she’d be home late the following day and asked him to come home early. Burhan had exploded.
“If you expect me to be the lady of the house, you can go work on construction sites,” he’d said.
“Can’t we share the responsibility of raising the children?”
“We already do. But you’ve been working late into the night more and more.”
“There’s a war on, Burhan. I’m a journalist. That’s just about the only job left in Sarajevo these days. If I quit, how are we supposed to make ends meet?”
The moment the words left her mouth, she realized she’d gone too far. Most of Burhan’s work had been in Knin; ever since he’d signed over the business there, he’d barely earned any money. He’d actually been lucky: many of the Bosniaks working in Croatia had lost their jobs much earlier when the Croats first began discriminating against Muslims. Watching the contracts of his fellow engineers and friends cancelled one by one as he kept his own job had made Burhan uncomfortable.
Then the Serbs had arrived. Though they’d been focused on getting rid of the Croats at the time, he’d terminated his contract, since he knew he’d be next anyway. Experienced engineers were quickly snatched up, and he’d been able to find work elsewhere. But then the Serbs had begun terminating any work contracts with non-Serbs across all of Yugoslavia. Burhan was left with a single contract in Sarajevo before the outbreak of war shut down the construction sector entirely. He continued to drop by his office in the twin towers of Momo and Üzeyir, the symbols of modern Sarajevo, just to keep himself busy.
Burhan and Nimeta had laughed when Raziyanım said, “Silly goose, why’d you open an office in Momo when you could have worked in the Üzeyir tower?” Then she had felt the need to explain herself by adding, “You can’t expect any good to come of places named after giaours.” Her words turned out to have been prophetic: the offices in Momo were being closed one after another, but now even office blocks with good Muslim names were also facing the same fate all across the city.
His pride wounded as a result of having to depend on his wife financially, Burhan had grown increasingly irritable. For quite some time, he’d been grumbling and scowling at the most trivial things. Nimeta knew why and generally did her best to humor him.
Another economic victim of the Serbs’ chess game was Mirsada. She’d called Nimeta a few months ago, sounding distraught.
“They’ve fired me for no reason,” she said.
A few months earlier, Mirsada had quit her job as their Belgrade correspondent to go to work for the same Serbian news agency as Petar. He’d arranged the whole thing, foolishly imagining they could keep her Bosniak identity a secret. Nimeta and the others had begged her to reconsider, and now they’d all been proven right.
Mirsada was far too proud to ask Ivan for her old job back and didn’t want any of her old colleagues to know that she was unemployed. Nimeta had had to swear several times that she wouldn’t say anything.
“Come home,” Nimeta said. “You’ll be able to find work anywhere in Sarajevo. How many journalists have your kind of experience?”
“I don’t want to leave Petar,” Mirsada said. “It took me so many years to finally believe in true love. How can I walk away from him now, especially at my age?”
Nimeta knew all too well what it meant to walk out on love, but she bit her lip and held her tongue.
Fortunately, Petar managed to find Mirsada another job, where she was known by the Serbian nickname “Miza.”
After speaking with Mirsada, Nimeta said to Burhan, “If you weren’t such a well-known engineer, you’d have hid your identity too. But all the construction firms know you.”
“I’ve had this name for centuries, and I’m keeping it for as long as the world keeps turning,” he said.
It was the first time Nimeta had ever heard her husband express any pride in his name, and it surprised her. Unemployment and despair can do things to a person’s character, she thought to herself.
Nimeta considered herself unlucky and had accepted that fortune would rarely smile on her; even so, the minor irritations of life infuriated her, such as a power cut while she was cooking lunch on a day when she absolutely couldn’t be late for work.
She quickly jotted down, “Hana, sweetie, have lunch at your grandmother’s and call me when you get home,” on a slip of paper and stuck it in the corner of the mirror across from the fro
nt door. Just as she was leaving, it occurred to her that she’d better let her mother know that Hana would be over soon. She picked up the receiver and waited for a dial tone. There was a strange clicking sound, and she didn’t know whether the line was dead or the phone was broken.
She stepped out into the corridor and knocked on her neighbor’s door. Azra opened it in her nightgown.
“Excuse the outfit, Nimeta,” she said. “I have trouble telling if it’s day or night anymore. We can’t go out on the street, so what’s the point of getting dressed?”
“You have a point. It seemed like the gunfire was heavier today than ever.”
“I turn the radio up full blast so I don’t hear it.”
“But the power’s out.”
“Mine’s battery operated.”
“Good idea. I’ll get some batteries on the way home.”
“If you can find any, grab them quick. I’m glad I always kept extra ones around the house.”
Not for the first time Nimeta realized what a strain the minutiae of everyday life had become. From coffee to medication, basic foodstuffs to batteries, everything had disappeared. Gas, electricity, and water outages were frequent. They’d gone back to living in the Middle Ages.
“Azra, is your phone working?”
“It hasn’t rung since this morning,” Azra said. She walked over and picked up the receiver. “It’s dead.”
“So it’s not just my line,” Nimeta said. “I was going to phone my mother. Oh well, I’ll stop by the post office and give her a call.”
