Rose of Sarajevo

by Ayşe Kulin

  They both jumped at what sounded like a clap of thunder. They could hear the tinkle of shattered glass.

  “Shall we go down to the cellar?” Nimeta asked.

  “Let’s not bother,” Azra said. “It’ll be over soon.”

  She seemed inured to the sounds of gunfire and bombs. The Serbs had been shelling the city every day for a month, and the people of Sarajevo were constantly being bombarded from Serbian positions on the mountaintops.

  “Have you got enough time to have a cup of tea?” Azra asked.

  “I’m afraid not. Izetbegović is returning today. I’ve got a lot of work to do, and I’m already late.”

  “Is Izetbegović crazy or what? He keeps knocking on door after door, trying to solve this mess. Does he really expect the giaour countries to help Muslims?”

  “This isn’t just about Muslims and non-Muslims, it’s also a human rights issue. Karadžić has laid siege to areas where the Muslims are the majority. He’s forcing people out of their homes at gunpoint and killing them. Like those poor Bosniaks in Dobrinya, who’ve been there practically forever, who woke up one day to find that some madman had declared their town to be in the so-called Republic of Serbia. But the West cares too much about human rights to let this continue—”

  “Look, Nimeta, I haven’t got your education or your brains, but I can tell you and Izetbegović both that if you’re waiting for the West to save the day, you’re waiting for nothing. People in the West will only start thinking about human rights when every last Muslim is dead.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I’m more of a realist than you are. Go ask Izetbegović what he managed to wheedle out of the West in Lisbon. I can tell you right now: nothing!”

  Deciding that there was no point in arguing with Azra, Nimeta changed the subject. “Do you want me to get you anything on the way home?”

  “Just get yourself home safely,” Azra said.

  Nimeta headed out and began walking briskly. She knew that fresh fighting was likely to break out soon. The commander of the Bosnian units, Sefer Halilović, had surrounded the barracks housing the YNA units under the command of Kukanjac and given them an ultimatum: surrender your arms and withdraw from all Bosniak-majority areas. Nobody expected the Serbs to sit on their hands and let that happen.

  As Nimeta walked along thinking about this latest development, the city was shaken by another explosion, and all the pedestrians darted into nearby doorways and under eaves. When it was clear that the bomb had landed somewhere else, they started walking again. Bosniaks had learned to hug the doorways as they made their way down the sidewalk.

  Nimeta turned a corner and began running toward the post office. The sound of gunshots was getting closer. All of a sudden she was enveloped in smoke and a red glow, the sky turned scarlet, and the clouds were tinged red. There must be a fire, a terrible fire somewhere, was her first thought. She sprinted down the street and turned left. Rounding the bend, she froze in her tracks, horrified by what she saw.

  Shards of glass were raining down from the sky, a crystal waterfall, and crunching under the feet of people, who were dashing in all directions as flames burst forth, licking and swallowing everything in their path. Everything. The newly renovated post office had been reduced to a heap of glass and stone and was ablaze.

  Nimeta stood knee-deep in broken glass, straight-backed and spellbound, watching Sarajevo burn: the post office, the national theater, the law school. A new series of explosions erupted, followed by waves of fresh flames. Fanned by the wind, an inferno was spreading across the city.

  Now this, this is hell! Nimeta said to herself. I’ve lived to see hell on earth. God must be making us pay for our sins here and now.

  When the Serbs were fighting in Croatia, they’d used the YNA units to reduce cities to rubble, leveling buildings and eradicating centuries of history, before they moved in to capture what was left. They were now employing this same strategy of total destruction on Sarajevo.

  “Hey, Nimeta! Are you in shock?”

  “Mate! What are you doing here?”

  “I was wondering the same thing about you. You looked like you’d been hypnotized. Come on, let’s get out of here before something lands on our heads.”

  Mate had materialized like a guardian angel. Ignoring the heavy camera resting on his shoulder, he began dragging Nimeta away from the flames.

  “Mate, I have to call my mother.”

  “Forget it, Nimeta. The post office is gone, and the lines are all down anyway. They’ve been out since this morning. Didn’t you notice?”

  They crunched through the broken glass.

  “The car’s over here,” Mate said.

  The car windows and windshield were shattered. Nimeta’s legs were a bloody mess from the knees down. She winced in pain as Mate helped her pull out dozens of slivers of glass.

  “There’s a pharmacy over there,” Nimeta said, pointing to the right.

  “They just bombed it.”

  “What about the obstetrics clinic a little farther along?”

  “It was on fire. Let’s go to the TV station. We can get you cleaned up there.”

  “But Mate, the kids! My kids!”

  “Where are they?”

  “They went to class in a cellar a couple of streets down from our house.”

  “We can’t go back that way, Nimeta. There hasn’t been any fighting or bombs in your neighborhood. Besides, their teachers wouldn’t let them leave class if it was dangerous.”

  “But Mate—”

  “No ‘buts’ about it. Are you coming with me?”

  Nimeta opened the car door. The seats were covered in glass. They brushed away the glass with Nimeta’s scarf and sat down. Nimeta told herself that Mate was right: her own neighborhood was probably the safest place in the city. And she was certain that Burhan would come home early as she’d asked, despite their quarrel.

  Mate drove at breakneck speed all the way to the television station in the western part of the city. When they got there, still reeling from the fire, they were informed that President Alija Izetbegović was missing. He’d flown out of Lisbon the night before but had never landed. His plane had either crashed or been hijacked.

  With forty thousand phone lines out of order across the city since morning, it had been extremely difficult to conduct a thorough investigation. The television station’s direct working line to the presidential residence had been busy all day.

  Nimeta had intended to make an appearance at work and then go straight home at the first opportunity, but Ivan ordered everyone to stay put until the “Izetbegović incident” was resolved. When some of her colleagues started grumbling, he bellowed, “We’re in the middle of a war! Your jobs demand total commitment. If necessary, you’ll stay on the job for the next twenty-four hours straight—or even forty-eight hours if that’s what it takes. If you’re not up to it, the door’s right over there!”

  Nimeta sank into her chair with a curse. Azra had been right about one thing: Izetbegović hadn’t simply returned empty-handed; he hadn’t even managed to return at all.

  Sonya told the others about a rumor that was circulating. Fikret Abdić, the president’s political rival, had supposedly plotted with the Serbs to kill Izetbegović, upon which Abdić would become the leader of the Bosniaks.

  “Isn’t that the same guy who opposed independence for Bosnia?” Nimeta shouted. “Mirsada sent us some confidential information about him from Belgrade. If Abdić had taken the reins, the war would be over, and we would have joined the rump state of Yugoslavia.”

  “We’d have spent our lives as a minority under the Serbian fist,” Mate said. “That’s not my idea of peace.”

  Muša poked his head through the door: “Ivan wants everybody in his office on the double! With the phones down, he’s probably going to send us all out to gather informa
tion.”

  At the meeting the team ironed out the final details of that evening’s broadcast. Their direct line to the president was still busy, and there had been no reports about him. Everyone was tense; Nimeta even more so because her thoughts kept returning to her argument with Burhan the night before. She was anxious to get home and make peace, but as usual everything had gone wrong. Whenever Burhan managed to come home early, she was tied up at work, but as soon as he left town on business, there wasn’t a single newsworthy incident in the entire country. Izetbegović had chosen a fine day to go missing!

  “Stop looking at me with those pitiful eyes,” Ivan told her when the meeting was over. “If there are no more developments after the evening news, you’re free to go home, Nimeta.”

  That evening, the anchorman presented the news, and Mate’s footage of the fire had just aired. The entire team was watching the live broadcast together when the phone rang. Ivan reached over and answered it. His face went chalk white.

  “What? What are you saying?”

  Ivan cleared his throat and relayed instructions into the news presenter’s earpiece: “We’ve got the president on the line. Start doing a live interview. Now!”

  The presenter managed to conceal his astonishment. They’d decided not to cover the president’s disappearance on the news that evening, so the presenter simply asked him a couple of routine questions about the talks in Lisbon. Then Ivan prompted him to ask the question they’d been wondering about all night.

  “Where are you right now, Mr. President?”

  “I’m in Lukavica,” Izetbegović replied.

  There was a collective gasp in the conference room. Every Bosniak living in Sarajevo knew that the Serbs’ most important military headquarters, the place where they planned all their attacks, was in Lukavica. The president had fallen into enemy hands.

  In a voice that trembled slightly, the speaker asked a follow-up question. “In what capacity are you there, Mr. President?”

  “It would appear that I have been kidnapped.”

  When Nimeta finally stumbled home sometime near dawn, she was greeted by her husband’s ghostly white face.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?” Burhan asked.

  “Do you have any idea what’s been going on? Haven’t you seen the news? Izetbegović was kidnapped. I was just on my way home and—”

  “Is Izetbegović more important to you than Fiko and Hana, than your husband, your mother, and your brother? You couldn’t care less about any of us. Did a bomb fall on our heads? Did the kids get home in one piece? Are they hungry or ill? You don’t seem to give a damn.”

  “How can you say that?” Nimeta shouted. “I started working part-time just for them!”

  “Is this what you call working part-time? It’s nearly five o’clock in the morning.”

  “What would we do if I lost my job? You haven’t been earning enough for us to get by. Don’t you realize that, Burhan?”

  “When did you become so money hungry, Nimeta?”

  “We’re in the middle of a war, and I’m doing all I can to make sure we don’t go hungry, even if it means working all night. When I do finally get home, this is how you welcome me?”

  “Working all night where?” Burhan asked, eyes blazing in his ashen face. His hands were trembling, and his voice shook.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Tell me where you’ve been working all night. At the TV station or in that Croat’s bed?”

  Nimeta clutched at the wall for support. Her heart pounded in her ears. She could hear her blood pulsing. It was deafening.

  “I asked you a question,” Burhan said in a menacing whistle.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Nimeta managed to whisper.

  “The meaning is this,” Burhan said, approaching his wife so that their faces were mere inches apart. She could feel his breath, could smell the brandy on his breath.

  “The meaning is that you’ve been sleeping with that Croatian dog for years. You’ve cheated on your husband and betrayed your family, and you’ve behaved shamelessly. You had a breakdown because of him, but you made it look like it was my fault, which is just another kind of betrayal. Did you think I’d never find out, Nimeta? Well, I have! And if you only knew how I found out.”

  He went quiet, breathing hard; one of his bloodshot eyes began twitching. Nimeta was glued to the wall. Pressed back against the hard concrete, she wanted nothing more than to somehow push her way through and lose herself in the wall. But she was stuck in the hall, unable to speak, her heart bleeding and aching more than her legs had throughout that terrible day. “It’s not like that,” she wanted to say. “It’s not what you think. I fell in love, that’s all. I couldn’t help it, but I couldn’t leave you and the kids either, Burhan. I could never leave you.”

  “Speak!” Burhan shouted. “Tell me how you could do this to me. Tell me what I’ve done to deserve such a terrible punishment. I don’t remember doing anything bad to you. Am I paying for the sins of my ancestors? Is that it?”

  Nimeta felt like she was shouting at the top of her lungs but not a sound left her throat.

  “You don’t even bother to deny it,” Burhan said as his right hand sliced through the air and landed on Nimeta’s face.

  For a moment she thought she really had gone through the wall, was inside the wall. She felt like she had a mouthful of broken teeth, and she saw flashes of light. When she came to, Burhan was gone. Bending over her as she lay stretched out on the floor at the end of the hallway was Fiko. The wounded look in his eyes, the pain and fear in his expression, were unspeakable.

  MAY TO JUNE 1992

  Nimeta set the table for dinner as though nothing had happened. Burhan would be home soon. She decided to act normally and wait until the children were in bed before she talked things over with her husband. She had nothing to hide—Burhan now knew all about her affair—but he also needed to know that the affair had been over for a long time. She had to tell him that she’d been unable to leave him, that her family meant more to her than anything else in the world. She would ask Burhan to understand her and forgive her. She was only human.

  During a difficult period in their relationship, when they’d drifted apart and she was feeling particularly lonely, another man had appeared, and she’d been carried away. Except she hadn’t gone anywhere. She’d stayed. She’d stayed with her husband and children, and she’d promised herself that she’d never see Stefan again. Never again would they meet, talk, kiss, and make love. Stefan had left Yugoslavia and gone to London out of respect for her decision. Would Burhan ever be able to appreciate how difficult it had been for her to break it off with Stefan?

  A tear ran down her cheek and spread onto the freshly laid tablecloth. No, nobody would ever understand what a struggle it had been—not Burhan, not the kids, not her mother, nobody. In everyone else’s eyes, she and Stefan were nothing but a pair of impulsive adulterers.

  She’d fallen hard for him, but even when her heart was soaring above the clouds, she’d never forgotten she was a married woman with two children; even when their love had been at its most ecstatic, she’d felt cursed. Guilt and a sense of impending doom lurked always in the background. She knew that her mother would never forgive her if she found out. She doubted that even her own children could forgive her. Hana might when she grew into a young woman, but only if she learned through her own experience that a married woman with children might still have a heart and body open to love and feelings she couldn’t control. But she’d never want that to happen to her daughter, even if it helped her to understand her mother. It was better that Hana never forgive her than she suffer the same pain and shame.

  She brought in a stack of dishes and set the table. One plate on each side. She set the table just as she had all those years ago when she’d made her final decision to break it off with Stefan. She’d b
een bracing herself to tell Burhan that she loved another man. She’d imagined the table the following day, one plate short. A missing plate—Burhan’s plate. Her hand had shaken so badly that the plate slipped through her fingers and broke. A broken plate and the shattered heart of her husband when he heard what she had to tell him.

  She’d fetched the broom, swept the broken pieces into the dustpan, and dumped them in the trash. Later, after she’d finished setting the table and heated up dinner, she’d inexplicably dashed into the kitchen and retrieved the broken pieces from the trash. She’d washed the pieces of porcelain and set them aside.

  When Burhan saw them, he’d said, “Why don’t you throw them away, darling? We can always get new plates.”

  “I want to glue them together,” she’d said.

  “That plate will never be any good, not after it’s been broken. Just throw it away.”

  Nimeta had phoned Stefan the following day and said, “I couldn’t tell Burhan. I won’t be able to leave him. Forgive me, Stefan.”

  If she told him about that plate tonight, would he understand? Would Fiko, who’d stared at her that morning with such horrified, accusing eyes? Would her son ever understand how she’d battled with herself not to abandon her family?

  She hadn’t even tried to explain.

  “Fiko, sometimes husbands and wives fight,” she’d told her son. “The war’s making us all a bit jumpy. Go get me some ice. And don’t say a word to Hana.”

  “Mom, why did Dad hit you?”

  “We were arguing.”

  “Why’d he hit you?”

  “He didn’t hit me. I fell. I slipped and fell.”

  “Why’d he hit you, Mom?”

  Nimeta tried to get up off the floor. “Fiko, why don’t you help me instead of asking silly questions? What did I tell you? Get me some ice quick.”

  “Mom, I heard what he said. Dad said something about paying for his sins. What did he mean?”