The Lazarus Project

by Aleksandar Hemon

  Chief Shippy stands frozen, holding his breath, exhaling with relief as the young man dies, the gun smoke slowly moving across the room, like a school of fish.

  I am a reasonably loyal citizen of a couple of countries. In America— that somber land—I waste my vote, pay taxes grudgingly, share my life with a native wife, and try hard not to wish painful death to the idiot president. But I also have a Bosnian passport I seldom use; I go to Bosnia for heartbreaking vacations and funerals, and on or around March 1, with other Chicago Bosnians, I proudly and dutifully celebrate our Independence Day with an appropriately ceremonious dinner.

  Strictly speaking, the Independence Day is February 29—a typically Bosnian convolution. I suppose it would be too weird and unsovereignly to celebrate it every leap year, so it is an annual, chaotic affair taking place at some suburban hotel. Bosnians come in droves and early; parking their cars, they might run into a fight over a parking space for the disabled: a couple of men swing their crutches at each other, trying to determine who might be more impaired—the one whose leg was blown off by a land mine, or the one whose spine was damaged by a beating in a Serbian camp. While waiting in the vestibule, for no discernible reason, to enter the preposterously named dining hall (Westchester, Windsor, Lake Tahoe), my fellow double-citizens smoke, as numerous signs inform them that smoking is strictly prohibited. Once the door is opened they rush toward the white-clothed tables with an excess of glasses and utensils, driven by a poor people’s affliction: the timeless feeling that plenty never means enough for all. They spread the napkins in their laps; they hang them on their chests; they have a hard time explaining to the wait staff that they would like to eat their salad with the main dish, not before it; they make disparaging remarks about the food, which then turn into contemptuous contemplation of American obesity. And pretty soon whatever meager Americanness has been accrued in the past decade or so entirely evaporates for the night; everybody—myself included—is solidly Bosnian, everybody has an instructive story about cultural differences between us and them. Of these things I sometimes wrote.

  Americans, we are bound to agree, go out after they wash their hair, with their hair still wet—even in the winter! We concede that no sane Bosnian mother would ever allow her child to do that, as everybody knows that going out with your hair wet commonly results in lethal brain inflammation. At this point I usually attest that my American wife, even though she is a neurosurgeon—a brain doctor, mind you—does the same thing. Everybody around the table shakes their head, concerned not only about her health and welfare but about the dubious prospects of my intercultural marriage as well. Someone is likely to mention the baffling absence of draft in the United States: Americans keep all of their windows open, and they don’t care if they are exposed to draft, although it is well known that being exposed to severe airflow might cause brain inflammation. In my country, we are suspicious of free-flowing air.

  Inevitably, over the dessert, the war is discussed, first in terms of battles or massacres unintelligible to someone (like me) who has not experienced the horrors. Eventually the conversation turns to funny ways of not dying. Everyone is roaring with laughter, and our guests who do not speak Bosnian would never know that the amusing story is, say, about the many dishes based on nettles (nettle pie, nettle pudding, nettle steak), or about a certain Salko who survived a mob of murderous Chetniks by playing dead, and now is dancing over there—and someone points him out: the skinny, sinewy survivor, soaking his shirt with the sweat of lucky resurrection.

  In the official part of the evening, cultural diversity, ethnic tolerance, and Allah are praised, and there is always a series of prideful speeches, followed by a program celebrating the brain-inflammation-free arts and culture of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian people. A choir of kids of uneven height and width (which always reminds me of the Chicago skyline) struggles with a traditional Bosnian song, their hearing and accent forever altered by American teenagehood. They dance, too, the kids, under the approving gaze of a mustached dance coach. The girls are wearing headscarves, silky, ballooning trousers, and short vests foregrounding their nascent bosoms; the boys wear fezzes and felt pants. No one in the audience has ever worn such clothes in their lives; the costumed fantasies are enacted to recall a dignified past divested of evil and poverty. I participate in that self-deception; in fact, I like to help with it, for, at least once a year, I am a Bosnian patriot. Just like everybody else, I enjoy the unearned nobility of belonging to one nation and not another; I like deciding who can join us, who is out, and who is to be welcome when visiting. The dance performance is also supposed to impress potential American benefactors, who are far more likely to fork out their charitable money in support of the Association of Bosnian-Americans if convinced that our culture is nothing like theirs so that they can exhibit their tolerance and help our unintelligible customs (now that we have reached these shores and are never going back), to be preserved forever, like a fly in resin.

  So on March 3, 2004, I was seated next to Bill Schuettler, the man who was clinking against his empty beer bottle with a dessert spoon, following the irregular, uneven rhythm of the dance. The patriotic people of the organizing committee wanted me to impress Bill and his wife with my writerly success and personal charm, since the Schuettlers were board members of Glory Foundation and thereby controlled all kinds of glorious funds. Bill had not read my columns—indeed, it seemed that the only thing he ever read was the Bible—but he had seen my picture in the Chicago Tribune (twice!) and was therefore duly convinced of my importance. He was a comfortably retired banker; he wore a navy-blue suit that gave him an aura of admirality. He had sparkling cuff links that rhymed with the rings on his wife’s arthritic talons. I liked his wife—her name was Susie. When Bill wiggled out of his chair and wobbled toward the bathroom, Susie told me she had read several of my columns and enjoyed them—it was amazing, she said, how different the things you knew well looked through the eyes of a foreigner. That’s why she liked reading; she liked to learn new things; she had read many books. In fact, she liked reading more than sex, she said, and winked, demanding my complicity. When Bill came back and sat stiffly between us, I kept talking to her, as through a confession-booth partition.

  Both of them were in their seventies, but Bill seemed fully fit for death, what with his hips replaced, the indelible age blots on his face, and an urge to acquire a comfortable condo in eternity by spending his money charitably. Susie was not ready for the infinity of Florida; she had the voracious curiosity of a college junior. She showered me (and my ego) with questions and would not relent.

  Yes, I write those columns in English.

  Yes, I think in English, but I also think in Bosnian; often I don’t think at all. (She laughed, throwing her head back.)

  No, my wife is not Bosnian, she is American, her name is Mary.

  Yes, I did speak English before I got here. I have a degree in English language and literature from the University of Sarajevo. But I am still learning it.

  I was teaching English as a second language, and The Reader asked my boss to recommend someone who could talk about the experience of the newly arrived immigrants. She recommended me, so I’ve been writing the column since.

  No, it is not called At the Home of the Brave, it is called In the Land of the Free.

  I don’t teach English as a second language anymore. I just write the column for The Reader. It doesn’t pay much, but a lot of people read it.

  I am hoping to write about a Jewish immigrant shot by the Chicago police a hundred years ago. I stumbled upon it while doing research for my column.

  I am applying for grants so I can work on my book.

  No, I am not Jewish. Neither is Mary.

  Nor am I Muslim, Serb, or Croat.

  I am complicated.

  Mary is a neurosurgeon at Northwestern Hospital, in surgery tonight.

  Would you like to dance, Mrs. Schuettler?

  Thank you.

  Bosnian is not an ethnicity, it’s a ci
tizenship.

  It’s a long story. My great-grandparents came to Bosnia after it was swallowed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  A century or so ago. The empire has long vanished.

  Yes, it is hard to understand all that history. That is why I would like to work on that book.

  No, I did not know that Glory Foundation accepted applications for individual grants. I’d be most happy to apply.

  And I’d be happy to call you Susie.

  Would Susie like to dance?

  In a sprightly step we joined the rather stupid but simple dance, whereby people hold hands high up, forming a circle, then move sideways, two steps to the right, one step to the left. She picked it up fast, while I, distracted by the sudden grant possibility, was confused and did my one-step-right-two-steps-left, stepping on her toes quite a few times. My elderly lady friend withstood my anti-rhythmic assaults stoically, until I nearly broke her foot. She dropped out of the circle, her foot fell out of her shoe, she grimaced in pain, skittering one-leggedly. The stocking was bunched up at her big toe; she had a small heel and a swollen ankle. I failed to grasp her fluttering hands, then went down on my knees to pay proper attention to her injured foot, which she unhelpfully kept moving around rapidly. To everyone watching, it seemed that we were dancing with abandon—she a one-footed belly dance, I exalting at her moves—and the Bosnians clapped their hands, and they shrieked with joy, and a flash went off.

  When I looked up, I was blinded by another flash, and I could not see the photographer. The dancers were circling around us, the floor slippery with sweat. Susie and I were the showstoppers; a young man with a seriously unbuttoned shirt dropped on his knees and, leaning back, shook his hairy chest at Susie. She seemed to have quickly switched from pain to pleasure, getting rid of her other shoe to succumb barefoot to the orgiastic chest-shaking. I crawled out of the circle, pressed down by a sense of gooey idiocy.

  Later on, all the Bosnians in the organizing committee were delighted and praised me for giving Susie a good old time, for now that she and Bill had been exposed to the ecstatic joys of Bosnian culture, a hefty check was doubtless in the offing. I failed to mention to them the prospect of individual applications, which beat in my chest like a brand-new heart. For I was, you see, kept by my wife. In my country, money has a man’s face, but Mary was the serious wage earner in the family, and, let me tell you, neurosurgeons make a lot of money. I contributed to the Field-Brik marital budget symbolically: the lousy English-teaching pay, until I got fired, plus not much per column. A beautiful grant took shape in my mind, a glorious grant that would allow me to spare our marriage from the expenses and exertions of my research and scribbling. While the dancing crowd was congealing into another dance, I commenced plotting an easeful lunch with Susie—Bill would be busy in his church or with whatever he wasted his last years on; I would be charming, dispensing amusing stories, laying down before her my project, my ideas, my writerly heart; she would be attentive and acquiescent. At the right moment I could perhaps present to her the picture of our bonding dance; she would laugh, throwing her head back, I would laugh with her, maybe touch her hand among the wineglasses; she would feel young again, and subsequently make sure that my grant proposal was approved. Whereupon I could show Mary that I was not a wastrel or a slacker or a lazy Eastern European, but a person of talent and potential.

  Let me be honest: I am not a strong-willed guy, nor am I someone who does not take a long time to make decisions—Mary could easily bear witness to that. But on the Bosnian Independence Day, I immediately set out to work on fulfilling my plan. First, I needed to get a hold of the picture of Susie and me, and with not all too restrained determination, I sought the photographer out in the crowd. Over the claret fezzes and jiggling bosoms, over the loosened ties and minds, over the hopping children and ruined pieces of cholesterol-happy cake, I looked for the light. I pushed through the crowd, elbowing old ladies and teenagers, and finally found the photographer facing a grinning family, each smile frozen in expectation. After the blaze-off, the tableau ungrinned and disassembled, and here I was facing Rora.

  Rora. Good fucking God. Rora.

  It happens to me all the time: I run into people I used to know in my previous, Sarajevo, life. We yelp in surprise; we kiss or slap each other on the back; we exchange basic information and gossip about common acquaintances; we make firm promises about getting together soon or staying in touch. Afterwards, a tide of crushing sadness always overwhelms me, for I instantly recognize that whatever had connected us has now nearly entirely dissolved; we only make gestures, get through the ritual of recognition, and pretend it was only through our negligence that we had been parted. The old film of the common past disintegrates when exposed to the light of a new life. Of such things I also wrote.

  Well, when I recognized the photographer as Rora, I did yelp in surprise and I did step toward him to kiss his cheek or slap him on the back. But he moved aside and ignored my advance, merely mumbling, Šta ima? as though we were passing each other on the street. I have to say I was perplexed by that; I introduced myself. I am Brik, I said. We went to the same high school. He nodded, obviously finding me silly for thinking that he would not remember me. Still, he had no intention of embracing the past and slapping it heartily on my back; he held his Canon camera, the flash facing down, like an idle gun. It was not a digital camera, the awkwardness made me notice.

  That’s not a digital camera, I said.

  You know everything, he said. This is not a digital camera at all.

  The music stopped; the dancers filed back toward their tables. I was committed to this otiose exchange; I couldn’t simply walk away, I could not leave behind all this Bosnian independence and culture business, the past embodied in strangers, the present in foreigners, the schmoozing of Susie Schuettler, the dancing and the kneeling, the escape plan. Funny how when you act once, you cannot stop acting.

  I see you never gave up photography, I said.

  I took it up again in the war, he said.

  I knew from experience that if I—I who had left just before the beginning and missed the whole shebang—were to ask a Bosnian about the war, my question could easily lead to a lengthy monologue about the horrors of war and my inability to understand what it was really like. I was self-trained to avoid falling into that situation, but this time I asked:

  Were you in Sarajevo for the whole siege?

  No, he said. Just for the best parts.

  I came here in the spring of 1992, I said, unasked.

  You were lucky, he said, and I was about to object, when a whole family approached him, demanding a photo: the burly, bespectacled father, the burly, short-armed mother, two burly girls with shimmeringly combed hair—they all lined up, stiffened up, and bared their burly teeth for eternal memory.

  Rora.

  Everybody from Sarajevo had entered your life decades ago; everybody was liable to reenter it with a heavy sack of trivial memories. I knew him well in high school. We smoked at recess in the third-floor bathroom, then threw butts into a de-grilled heating vent, sometimes making bets on who would hit it or miss it. Rora usually had hard-packed Marlboro Reds, much superior to the shit we smoked, which was for some reason always named after various Yugoslav rivers prone to spring flooding. While our cigarettes—it was widely believed—were made from the crumbs swept off the factory floor at the end of a shift, the hard-packed Marlboro Reds had to have been brought from abroad. They tasted like abundance, like the harvest in the milk-and-honey land. Rora was always willing to share his cigarettes, not out of generosity, but rather so he could tell us about his latest travels abroad and show us the pictures of the foreign countries. Most of us still vacationed with parents in dull coastal towns, and we never dared miss school, let alone travel abroad alone. Rora was steadily unreal: he would disappear, clearly comfortable with missing school, inexplicably never getting reprimanded or punished. The word was that his parents had died in a car crash and he lived with his sister who was not
much older. And then there were all kinds of far less plausible rumors: his father used to be a spy for the Military Intelligence and his old friends took care of Rora now; he was an illegitimate son of a member of the Central Committee; he was a spy himself. It was hard to take such stories seriously, yet if they fit anyone, they fit Rora. He invariably won the cigarette-butt bets.

  He would tell us about the time he had flown to London in a cockpit: when they were high up over the Alps, the pilot let him hold the steering wheel for a little while. In Sweden he had had a guaranteed place in bed with an older woman who showered him with gifts—he would pull apart his shirt and offer us a thumb-thick golden necklace for inspection. She let him drive her Porsche, and would have given it to him if he’d wanted it; he showed us a picture of the Porsche. In Milan he had made so much money playing gin rummy that he had to spend it right then and there or the people he had fleeced would have killed him. So he took them all to the most expensive restaurant in the world, where they ate fried monkey eyes and black mamba kebab and, for dessert, licked honey off the breasts of drop-dead-gorgeous waitresses. He showed us as evidence a photo of the Milan Cathedral. We believed him, even while we sneered at his stories, because he didn’t seem to care if we believed him.