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Rose of Sarajevo

Page 24

by Ayşe Kulin


  “Like a form of public relations,” Burhan said.

  “Exactly.”

  Burhan’s eyes were on Fiko’s leg. He’d noticed a patch of fresh blood that was spreading but didn’t want to alarm his son. When Raif saw Burhan rummaging through the bag of medical supplies, he’d taken up the thread of Burhan’s story to help keep Fiko’s mind off his wound.

  “The Middle Ages were a dark time for Christianity. The pope was persecuting the Bogomils on behalf of the Catholic Church, while the patriarchate did the same on behalf of the Orthodox faith of the Byzantines. But the Bosniaks are a stubborn people. They clung to their faith through torture and oppression.”

  “But the Bogomils were Christians too, weren’t they?” Fiko asked. “What was the problem?”

  Burhan took a syringe out of the bag.

  “Dad, are you about to give me another injection?” Fiko groaned.

  “Just listen to your uncle,” Burhan said. “Don’t worry about what I’m doing.”

  “Keep talking, Uncle! I’ll learn the entire history of the Bosnian people just as I’m going. Why didn’t you tell me any of this earlier?”

  “Going where?” Raif asked.

  Fiko and his father answered simultaneously: the former with, “To the other side,” and the latter with, “To the nearest hospital.”

  It took a moment for Fiko’s words to register. Burhan’s voice cracked as he responded.

  “Fiko, you’re not going to the other side. You’ve got a long, happy life ahead of you. When your mother gets here, this nightmare will be over. You’ve got to believe that everything will work out. All we have right now is hope.”

  Raif though it best to change the subject as quickly as possible.

  “Now, where were we? Ah, you’re right, we never talked about any of this history. That’s because we were taught that we had become a single people, and they discouraged any talk about our differences. After all, we were Yugoslavians too!” A smile twisted Raif’s lips and he looked as though he didn’t know whether to spit or to cry. The Bosniaks had never made a fuss over their Muslim faith, and what had that got them?

  “The Bogomils were Christians, but they didn’t cross themselves, get baptized, or view Christ as the son of God. To them, Christ was a prophet, no more. They also preferred to perform their rituals outdoors, not in a church, and believed in the rejection of the fruits of this world. To them, the world was the work of Satan, while paradise was the realm of God. Because of the similarities between their faiths, Bosniak peasants and nobility alike began taking an interest in the Bektashi Sufi Order that was spreading through the Balkans at the time. Did you know that the Muslims of Anatolia were influenced by Zoroastrians and shamans, just as the Bogomils were?”

  “You’re confusing me, Uncle.”

  “It’s quite simple though. The Bogomils suffered greatly at the hands of their fellow Christians, and when they found a religious order with which they had a lot in common—”

  “They had no choice but to become Muslims. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “They did have a choice, Fiko.” Raif wanted to make certain his nephew understood clearly. “The Ottomans wouldn’t have cared if they’d chosen Catholicism. They weren’t interested in forcing their religion on others; their main interest was collecting taxes. When the Bogomils were offered the opportunity to register themselves as Muslims in Ottoman ledgers, many accepted. Had they been registered as Christians, they would have faced the persecution of either the Catholic or the Orthodox churches. Islam didn’t take root overnight, Fiko; it spread over centuries. In the fifteenth century, there were about eight times as many Christians as Muslims in Bosnia. By the middle of the sixteenth century, half of the people in Bosnia were Muslim.”

  Burhan prepared to give his son another injection of Methergine.

  “Time to take a break from your history lesson,” he said as he plunged the needle into Fiko’s haunch.

  “Dad, when did you learn to give injections?” Fiko asked.

  “War teaches you a lot of things. If only it taught us how to live in peace.”

  Burhan turned to Raif and said, “I had no idea you were such a history buff.”

  “The war’s uncovered everybody’s secret side. In all these years we’ve known each other, I never realized what a jewel of a character you’ve kept hidden away.”

  Burhan laughed. “I wish . . .” he began, before he fell silent.

  Raif tried to guess how he’d have ended that sentence: “I wish there hadn’t been a war and you’d never realized it.” Or perhaps, “I wish Nimeta had realized it.” Ever since he’d grown close to Burhan, Raif had felt a twinge of uneasiness at the mention of Nimeta’s name. He turned to Fiko and resumed the history lesson.

  Fiko was coming down with a fever. When he’d first started shaking, Burhan had pulled one of the parkas out from under his leg and covered him with it. Then Fiko started drifting in and out of consciousness. When he was feeling alert, he’d say, “Go on, Uncle.” Raif felt a bit like Shahrazad as he resumed his tale, dragging it out and embroidering it with details. When he grew tired, Burhan would take over; it was as though they feared that if they finished their story and fell silent, it would be the end of Fiko. As though the history of Bosnia had cast a spell over the three of them, and the sound of their voices would keep death at bay and keep them all alive. “Tell me more, Uncle . . . Tell me more, Dad.”

  They talked and talked, with Fiko drifting in and out between sleep and the labyrinths of history. Ottoman raiders started riding through the Balkans in the middle of the fourteenth century, sweeping in across Thrace and Bulgaria, resisted by Serb, Bosniak, Hungarian, and Croatian alike. The raiders left but returned each spring, stronger than ever. Fiko was leading an army. Sword brandished, he led a charge through Kosovo. Ottoman cavalrymen suddenly turned into crusaders in silver helmets and chain mail. Again, Fiko was there, this time cutting down crusaders left and right. Never-ending war and an endless stream of blood—so much blood that the Miljacka turned first pink, then a bright red.

  Burhan had wrapped his cigarette case in gauze and was pressing it with all his might against his son’s wound. Raif had pulled off his undershirt and was using it to mop Fiko’s feverish forehead, dampening the cloth from time to time from his canteen.

  Fiko was charging across the plains, sword held high. “Tell me more, Uncle . . . more,” he whispered, the beads of sweat standing out on his forehead.

  Raif kept talking, and it was only when he tasted salt that he realized tears were rolling down his cheeks. Burhan’s lips trembled as he silently prayed for his son’s survival. And still Raif kept talking of Fatih Sultan Mehmet and his victorious army, of how a distinctive Bosnian culture flourished during Ottoman rule, of the Janissaries, of the waning days of the empire . . .

  “Raif . . . he’s unconscious . . . you can stop now.”

  Not only was Fiko unconscious, the life was draining out of him slowly but surely. Burhan had no idea what to do. He got out of the ambulance and emptied the contents of the medical supplies bag onto the ground, then sorted through the boxes and vials of medicine, picking up one after another, reading the labels, and tossing them back onto the ground. Finally, he returned empty-handed to the ambulance, where he cradled his son’s head in his lap once again. He leaned his head against the window, and as he stroked Fiko’s burning forehead and damp hair, he thought hard about life.

  In a lifespan of seventy or eighty years, he thought to himself, the first and the last ten years are marked by the helplessness of childhood and old age, but are we sent to this earth to squander the remaining fifty or sixty years by constantly being at each other’s throats, fighting and waging war, and then suffering the losses and destruction that result? Whether Bogomil or Christian, Jew or Muslim, was that really mankind’s fate?

  Then he started thinking about something
else. After a long silence, he spoke. “You know something, Raif,” he began. “I think I know a way we can solve our problem.”

  “Are you saying we should wait until dark and try to carry Fiko through the forest?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I was thinking about our predicament, and it suddenly came to me . . . Is there no way to get into a city under siege?”

  “They’re dug in to positions on the mountains. They’ve got snipers ready to pick off anyone walking along the street.”

  “What if we didn’t go overland but underground . . .”

  “What are you saying?”

  “A tunnel . . . If we dug a tunnel all the way to our point of exit, we could get shipments of food and pharmaceuticals out, and our wounded in.”

  “Are you saying we should start digging a tunnel?”

  “Not right now I’m not. But we should develop this idea of a tunnel.”

  Raif knew Burhan was prepared to die to get his son out of this hopeless situation. As long as they remained calm, they might find a way. But now the guy was starting to spout nonsense. A tunnel! He didn’t even bother to respond.

  The cloud of dust they’d noticed a short while ago seemed to be getting closer, seemed to be a vehicle of some kind, winding its way up the steep road.

  “I think something’s coming up the mountain,” Raif had said. “It looks like a jeep, and it must be going fast to kick up all that dust.”

  They held their breaths and waited. Fiko was grimacing in pain. He turned his head from side to side in his father’s lap. Raif dampened the undershirt on Fiko’s forehead again and rubbed his temples.

  “If we could only lower his fever . . .” Burhan said.

  He’d gone white and looked prepared to cut a deal with the devil himself if it would save his son. But even the devil hadn’t visited this isolated mountain for some time; the devil was down in Sarajevo, blocking the roads into the city.

  “It was more important that we staunch the bleeding, and we’ve managed that at least,” Raif said.

  The roar of the approaching vehicle was growing louder. Burhan thought he heard a horn honk, a beep-beep-beep off in the distance, as though whoever was coming wanted to make sure they knew it. He sat stock-still so that he wouldn’t jar his son’s head.

  “Raif, go have a look,” he said.

  Like Burhan, Raif had been sitting still, scared to get up and find out that the vehicle they’d pinned all their hopes on was nothing more than a mirage.

  When Burhan glanced out the window, he saw Raif gleefully waving his arms about in the air. It was a jeep. So Nimeta had come through for their son. He checked his watch and was astonished to see that they had only been waiting for a few hours. The entire history of Bosnia, from beginning to end, had been related in little more than half an hour.

  Raif was running down the hill. He shut his eyes and waited. Then he heard Nusret’s voice.

  “Commander,” he said. “We’ve succeeded. Your wife found someone who can get Fiko through the Croatian zone with no problem.”

  “Could you hand me that bag?” Burhan said, pointing to a spot in the front seat.

  He took the bag and gently slipped it under his son’s head before he got out of the ambulance. The man in the jeep also got out and started walking over. A man in civilian clothes with a clean-shaven head. He recognized the face but couldn’t place it.

  “I hope I’m not too late. I’ve come to get Fiko,” the man said, holding out a hand. “Burhan, it’s me, Stefan. Don’t you remember me?”

  Stefan was left with his hand in midair.

  Stefan! It couldn’t be! Stefan!

  “Nimeta’s friend . . . from Zagreb TV . . . She introduced us a while back, in Zagreb.”

  Burhan’s ears were buzzing. His knees shook. So the devil had arrived and was ready to cut a deal for his son’s life. He’d wanted help to arrive, even in the form of the devil himself, and here he was, standing right across from him.

  “Give me your son,” he said.

  But Burhan no longer wanted to deal with the devil: he wanted to kill him.

  “How do you think you’ve kept your job in Knin when everyone else lost theirs?” a rough voice said in his mind. “If it weren’t for the connections of that Croat who’s screwing your wife, you’d have been fired ages ago, just like the rest of us. Then we’d have seen what you were really made of. Are you ready to fight and kill Croats or not?”

  Burhan clamped his hands over his ears, but he could still hear that voice. The man had run off, cupping a broken nose. It had been so long ago, but his voice still echoed in Burhan’s ears. “That Croat who’s screwing your wife . . . screwing your wife . . .”

  He reached for the gun at his waist before he realized what he was doing.

  “Burhan!”

  Raif’s voice brought him to his senses. Nusret and Raif were staring at him.

  “What?” he managed to say. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve come to get the boy. Fiko. I was going to take him to Sarajevo via Stup, but Raif tells me we don’t have much time. I can get him to a fully equipped hospital in our zone. We need to hurry.”

  “Where did you come from? Who sent you?”

  “Nimeta sent word, because I’ve got transit passes for both sides. Sonya was lucky to find me. If she’d called half an hour later, I’d have been gone. I was planning on leaving Sarajevo a few weeks ago, but some work came up and I stayed. Must be kismet.”

  Burhan heard Fiko moan in his sleep. His son was seventeen. He had to live. Nothing else mattered. He’d sit down and deal.

  “Kismet it is!” he said. There was a reason for everything. Like he’d said to Nimeta, he must be paying for some sin wrongly ascribed to him.

  “How soon can we leave?” Burhan asked.

  “I can’t take you with me, Burhan. It would be dangerous for the boy as well. I promise to send you word as soon as I get him to a hospital, though.”

  “If you can’t get me across the border, how are you going to get Fiko through?” Burhan asked.

  “I told you, I have a transit pass. Fiko’s still underage. I’ll say he’s my son or nephew and that he’s badly hurt. It’s an emergency. I’m sure I’ll get him through any checkpoints.”

  The two men stood across from each other.

  First you take my wife, and now my son, Burhan thought to himself. He’d compressed his lips so tightly that his mouth looked like a scimitar. His gritted teeth ached.

  Stefan guessed what was going through Burhan’s mind. The expression on Burhan’s face had instantly told him that he knew everything. If he drew the gun at his waist and pointed it at Stefan, he could pull the trigger.

  A vein throbbed in Burhan’s temple. His eyes were like two dark wells, drained of color, retaining nothing but the pain he felt. He took a deep breath. The animosity that had rankled in Bosnia for centuries was searing his heart. He felt trapped, but there was no other way out. He’d have to surrender his son to Stefan and hope Fiko made it to the hospital.

  Burhan felt he’d aged at least a decade in a matter of seconds. The years rolled past, and he was shaken and buffeted by memories from centuries ago. He looked at this man from a neighboring land: at times, his ancestors had lived in harmony with his; at others, they had gouged one another’s eyes out.

  It was strange. The moment he resigned himself to saving his son at all costs, his fury started to subside, until finally the scorching rage in his heart had dissipated until it left no trace. He suddenly felt as though he’d known the man standing across from him for the longest time. Was it because Stefan was the only person able to save his son?

  He spun around and walked over to the ambulance. Fiko was talking deliriously in his sleep again. He poured the last drops of water in the canteen onto the undershirt folded on his son’s forehead. The
n he went back to Stefan.

  “I’d rather Fiko didn’t have a rough ride. Could you take the ambulance?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Stefan replied.

  “As soon as you hand Fiko over to a doctor, call the TV station. As you know, the phones work there,” Burhan said. “There’s not much left in the medical supply bag, but you’ll find some rolls of gauze . . . If he bleeds on the way, press down on the wound.”

  “Okay,” Stefan said. “I know how to administer first aid, but there shouldn’t be any need for it. I’ll drive straight to a hospital and let you know how he’s doing. I’ll look after him like my own . . .” He stopped himself from saying “son,” and said instead, “like my own brother. Don’t worry.”

  Burhan got back in the ambulance. He took his son’s hot hand into the palm of his own hand and pressed it to his heart.

  “Have a safe journey, Son. Stay safe, get well, and come back to us in one piece. Godspeed.”

  He touched his lips to his son’s cheek, got out of the ambulance, and stood before Stefan. This time he was the one who reached out his hand. The two men clasped hands for a moment. They were from the same race, and maybe even the same bloodline. They were roughly the same height and about the same age. They loved the same woman. Their ancestors had chosen different paths by which to get closer to God, and for that reason one of them was a Bosniak, the other a Croat. It hadn’t been their own choice, any more than they’d chosen this war or their fate.

  They had one more thing in common: neither had any expectations for tomorrow. Tomorrow would be filled with bullets, bombs, and blood. Still, whether they realized it or not, each man hoped for a “brighter tomorrow.” For all the pain, sorrow, and violence inflicted on this magnificent world by people of different faiths for whatever misguided reason, hope springs eternal. Hope is life.

 

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