by Glenn Meade
I’ve heard rumors that in David’s camp, the men and boys live in worse conditions and have even fewer blankets than we have. Every day—every single day—I worry about David. How is he? Is he coping? How is his health?
The questions torment me.
There is little food in the women’s camp, though some days there might be fresh bread and milk and eggs. Mostly our rations consist of watery bean soup with rice and stale bread. One day, a woman complains. One of the guards undoes his fly and urinates in the soup. “Complain now, you whiner.”
He laughs and strides away.
Fourteen women and six children died in the first month. All the children died of illness and malnutrition. Eight women died from internal bleeding after being raped. Victims’ bodies are dumped in a pit at the edge of the camp.
The deaths of children are the hardest to deal with.
Their mothers wail and lose their minds. Two mothers who lost children ran blindly into the barbed wire and were shot by the guards, their bodies left to rot as a warning to others.
Luka no longer runs and plays and teases. Carla is listless and sad, and no longer carefree.
I try desperately to look after them, but I find my health is worsening with so little food, and I worry I will fall ill. Carla, being older, knows what is going on but Luka is totally confused. They miss their father desperately.
Carla talks about him all the time. She never stops praying and hoping that he is safe and well.
Just when we are in the depths of misery, we experience a small miracle.
Spring has come early in the first week of March. The sun shines.
The pump for the well that supplies the camp’s water breaks down. Alma and I are ordered to take a load of guards’ clothes down to a river to wash.
First a gruff young guard takes us to a janitor’s closet in one of the hallways off the main building.
In the closet are sackfuls of foul-smelling clothes. He hands us bars of soap and warns us to do a good job or else he’ll beat us.
The guard escorts us out of the camp. Alma drags two sacks. I carry Luka in my arms and Carla and I haul another two sacks.
We walk through a forest to a beautiful meadow with a shallow, gently flowing river. Butterflies float past and it’s like a summer’s day, a world away from the Devil’s Hill.
The guard lies with his rifle against a tree and chain-smokes, watching us soaping the clothes.
Carla and Luka splash the water but Alma warns them not to make too much noise in case the guard gets irritated.
“Can we swim, Mama? Can we swim, please?”
“No, Carla. The guard wouldn’t allow it.”
I wasn’t thinking about swimming. I was thinking about escape.
In the distance I see rooftops, a church spire. We are almost five hundred yards from the camp. We could be gone before anyone notices, if only we could disarm the guard, and tie him up or knock him unconscious.
I glance back at him. He’s chewing a stem of grass, not even bothering to look at us. He’s thin, and doesn’t look very strong. Could Alma and I overpower him?
Then I think of David.
How could we ever leave him behind?
Before I can gather my thoughts I see Carla brazenly march up to the guard.
“Sir, we need to wash. May we bathe in the river, sir? Please?”
The guard says lazily, “Ten minutes, no more. I’ll be watching, so don’t try anything, you hear?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
I take her arm. “Carla, no. Luka’s had a cold.”
“Please, Mama. Luka’s well now.”
“Carla . . .”
“But, Mama, how often do we get the chance to wash in a river?”
Alma says, “She’s right, Lana. Take it while it’s going, is my motto.”
I give in. The gently flowing river looks tempting, and it’s not too cold.
We undress, and Carla helps me remove Luka’s disheveled clothes. He is overjoyed, and can’t wait to splash naked in the water.
The guard watches us all naked as we wash, and really it seems so absurd.
In the midst of all this death and despair, we hold hands with Alma and rush together out into the river, scooping out armfuls of water and whooping with joy.
I feel like a child again.
As I soap Luka he gets into an excited fit of giggles and his pink little bottom runs away from me and I chase him through the water. For a few brief minutes we delight in the pleasure and the awe of being alive.
Carla begs him for a kiss. Luka chuckles and runs away.
“No, no kisses for you today,” he teases.
Then Carla catches him and he laughs with joy and plants kisses on our cheeks in reward.
“I told you, Mama. He needs this,” Carla says, and we all lie down in the river and let it soak our bodies, and looking up at the aching blue sky it almost feels as if we’re on a beach and the waves are washing over us.
When the guard beckons, we dry ourselves with our clothes, dress, and walk back to the camp. As we approach the gates, Luka and Carla are skipping as they walk.
For the first time since we arrived in the camp, I see smiles on their faces.
I can never tell the children about my rape.
That night after bathing in the river the young guard escorting us came into our dormitory. He was joined by Boris Arkov, and both were drunk.
I can smell their vodka breath.
Carla and Luka are fast asleep. Arkov and the young guard grab me and another woman.
My heart pounds and I whimper as they drag me to their billet.
Boris Arkov beats me hard with his fists. “Shut up! Shut up, do you hear? Do as you’re told or I’ll kill you.”
Arkov and the young guard take turns raping me. When Arkov falls into a drunk sleep, the young guard finally throws me out of the billet.
I feel defiled.
I feel beyond anger. Beyond any feeling of self-pity.
I crawl back to our dormitory and into the corner of a freezing cold shower. I find a piece of wire pot scrubber. No matter how much I scrub my raw skin under icy water with the harsh wire, I still feel dirty.
The pain between my legs feels like a fire. It takes an hour for my bleeding to stop. When I return to the dormitory and lie beside my two sleeping children I stifle my tears. I look at Carla and Luka, and I feel so ashamed.
There is an unspoken rule among the women that we never talk about what happened to us—pained glances are enough to communicate our suffering. Despite everything I’m grateful that I’m still alive and that it was me they chose and not my daughter.
Not a minute goes by when Boris Arkov’s threat doesn’t torment me.
How can I protect Carla? How?
I’ve seen Arkov take young girls to his quarters, some no more than thirteen or fourteen. Guards have raped girls as young as twelve.
I’m terrified for Carla. She’s still a child.
And the guards are becoming even more cruel and debased.
Sometimes they rape mothers in front of their children. Or enter the dormitory and order a group of young women to strip. They pick the ones they want. Sometimes they pick mothers and older daughters to add to the degradation.
The next day, Arkov is drunk again. He grins as he passes me.
“Well, did you enjoy last night? Maybe next time I might try that young daughter of yours.”
Luka has a low fever and a cough. I’m afraid the bathing in the river has harmed his health.
Later that afternoon, we hear shelling in the far distance.
The guards look anxious. A rumor spreads that the camp will soon be under attack from liberating Bosniak forces.
Alma confides that she thinks the guards will kill us all—we’re witnesses to their crimes. I fear it may be true.
I look at Carla and Luka and ask myself what kind of men could kill such beautiful children. But I know the answer—the same men who have raped us, degra
ded us, shot us, tortured us.
I long for David.
To feel him hold me, and to hold him. It is unbearable, not being able to see the one you love, or know if he is all right.
To add to our despair, these last weeks our rations of soup and bread are cut. The children are like skin and bone. Desperate women try to steal food from the guards to feed their hungry children, or willingly trade their bodies for any medicines they can get. But if they are caught stealing, they risk the wrath of Mila Shavik or Boris Arkov.
I recall a young woman who was caught stealing some chocolate from a guard to give her little boy. Shavik was away from the camp that week. Arkov was in charge, and as a guard beat her, he appeared.
Arkov slurred his words, sounding drunk as he said to the woman, “So you stole from one of my men?”
“My . . . my child was hungry, sir.”
“Point out your child to me.”
The woman was deathly pale.
Arkov used his truncheon to lift her chin. “I said point the child out to me.”
She pointed to a boy, no more than eight. Mila crooked his finger at him. “Come here, boy.”
The fearful child approached, and stared at him dumbly.
Arkov drew his pistol. “Was the chocolate good, little boy?”
When he didn’t answer Arkov cocked his pistol.
The mother became distraught and begged him not to harm the child. Arkov fired into the ground in front of her, making her dance.
When he stopped shooting, a laughing Arkov grabbed a rope from one of the guards. He slipped it around the woman’s neck and threw it over a wooden beam above a loading bay. In an instant he hauled the woman up, choking her.
The distraught child, watching his mother struggle to breathe, wailed and began to beat Arkov with his fists.
Arkov stared down at him. “Well, was the chocolate good? Was it worth your stupid mother’s life? Don’t you people understand the rules?” He stared wildly and screamed at the prisoners. “Don’t you?”
Then Arkov simply staggered away drunkenly as the woman choked to death.
The boy was left there, crying beside his mother’s corpse until one of the guards hauled him away and we never saw him again.
It snows, flakes falling all day. A sudden cold snap worries us. Everyone’s health is frail.
More distant shelling tonight, and crackling gunfire. I try to keep Luka warm, but his nose is constantly running. For something to do, I let him draw on the back of my diary with some crayons Alma managed to find.
Luka draws a picture of the camp, guarded by men with guns. Another picture shows the figures of a man and woman and two children, a boy and a girl. All have tears falling from their eyes.
Underneath each figure Luka wrote a name: Mama, Papa, Carla, Luka. Beside each he drew a shaky red heart and signed the drawing: Luka.
It breaks my heart. When I see my son’s little face look up at me with a weak, runny-nosed smile I want to cry.
Alma hears of an outbreak of pneumonia in the men’s camp.
She says the words I dread. “I heard one of the ill men is an American.”
This is the first news I have heard about David in months.
I despair knowing he’s ill.
One of the women, the nurse, says he will need antibiotics to survive.
To make things worse, Carla has a cold, and Luka, too.
Luka’s health is even more troubling. He coughs all night and has a temperature.
His chest was always weak. We should never have gone for that swim.
It is my fault, not Carla’s. I allowed it.
And now I am worried sick for my children as well as my husband.
The next day, Luka’s fever worsens and he starts to cough up blood.
“My chest hurts, Mama.”
He looks sickly, his breathing labored. Carla and I take turns cooling Luka’s fevered brow with a damp cloth. I need antibiotics, for the children and for David. I know the guards will give us nothing.
I feel so desperate with worry.
In my despair, I know I have only one vain chance.
Reveal myself to Mila Shavik and plead with him to help. Beg him on my knees and do whatever I have to in return for antibiotics.
And I know in my heart I must try to convince him to let me see David.
I tell Alma my plan, as much detail as I need to.
She looks frightened. “Catch Shavik in a bad mood and he’s liable to kill you.”
“His father knew mine.”
“You mean they were acquaintances?”
“No. They hated each other. They came from the same village.”
“For heaven’s sake, Lana, don’t do this. What if he kills you?”
“I’ll need soap. A little makeup. Someone to help tidy my hair.”
“You . . . you’re going to offer yourself to Shavik?”
“I’ll do whatever I have to.”
Alma looks revolted, but I know she understands.
That evening I wash my hair and my body. I have no perfume, no decent clothes. I have no good underwear but scrub and wash my only change of dress. Alma loans me her cardigan.
I put on a little makeup she has managed to scrape together for me.
Carla sees me tidied up and says, “What . . . what are you doing, Mama?”
“I need to talk to someone.”
“Who?”
“Mila Shavik. I need to ask him for medicines.”
“I . . . I don’t need medicines.”
“Perhaps, but Luka and your father do.”
Carla gives me the horrified look of a ten-year-old who suddenly comprehends the harsh adult ways of the world.
At that moment I am ashamed of my daughter’s accusing stare.
But I know what I must do.
I kiss her forehead, leave Alma to take care of my children, and make my way to the camp office.
Behind the frosted glass, I see a lightbulb swinging above a desk and hear Shavik’s gruff voice on the telephone.
The slovenly guard outside licks his lips and grins. “Well, well. All dressed up and nowhere to go. What do you want, woman?”
“To see Commandant Mila Shavik.”
“Why?”
“Please tell him Lana Tanovic from Konjic wishes to see him.”
Carla paused. The next page was missing.
What happened to her mother? Had Shavik raped her? Had her mother been so ashamed afterward she had ripped out the page recounting her ordeal?
Carla felt a soaring anger.
And a powerful connection to her mother.
To save her family she had risked her life, offering herself to an animal like Shavik. She hated him. Hated Shavik and his guards for the savagery they inflicted upon so many.
Carla tried to ignore the missing page. But it was almost impossible—she kept imagining the terrible humiliation her mother must have endured.
She read on.
Only a few pages remained, and the entries looked rushed . . .
It’s done. I did what I had to.
What Shavik did makes me cry.
A little later he strides into our dormitory. He stares at me, not speaking. But I see a strange, unfathomable look in his eyes. I wonder if the man has a soul? He studies Carla, watching her a long time, then without a word, he tosses a bag of antibiotics at me.
He strides out again, a kind of anger in his gait.
At least he kept his word. I give Luka his antibiotics. His fever is still rising. Alma will watch over him and Carla while I bring antibiotics to David.
Shavik will allow me thirty minutes to see him—thirty minutes more than I ever expected. Shavik’s on edge—like the entire camp. Distant explosions erupt all day. It can’t be long before the camp is overrun.
Will we be freed? I pray that we will. That my family lives through this.
The snow still falls. A guard arrives at noon in a truck and drives me for several miles to David’s camp. They cal
l it Omarska. A big, red-bricked, disused iron-mining complex with several outbuildings.
But nothing prepares me for what I see.
It is absolutely inhuman.
I imagine it is worse than Auschwitz was. There the prisoners had barracks and bunks. There was some element of hygiene.
But at Omarska, the prisoners are kept in filthy dormitories with tightly packed metal cots, or in cattle stalls.
The camp is freezing and stinks of sweat and excrement. Each stall holds about a dozen men. They are all matchstick-thin—bones protrude from their flesh, their hair chopped tight, their eyes huge in starving faces. Despair hangs in the air like an atmosphere.
I weep as the guard escorts me down the center aisle of the stalls.
My heart pounds as I scan the prisoners for David. Gaunt faces stare back at me—husbands and sons, old men and young, boys as young as fourteen, their ribs showing through ragged clothes. They look spiritless and terrified.
They look like they should be in school, or playing football, enjoying their youth, but they huddle together like farm animals for warmth.
A few are crying and look like they have lost their minds. I see a boy no more than fifteen shake his head from side to side, crying for his mother. Everyone stares at me as if I’m an apparition. There’s an air of submissive silence.
The guard checks his list and halts at a filthy stall. The stench of human excrement is awful. The male prisoners look like skeletons.
I don’t recognize David at first.
He’s sitting in a corner, propped against a metal rail, wearing the same blue shirt I last saw him wearing. It’s caked with dirt, his blond hair matted, his parched lips cracked with a mass of sores.
My heart freezes. He is skin and bone. He looks ill. I can see his ribs through his shirt. His eyes flutter when he sees me. He can’t believe it’s me at first, and then he weeps.
The guard opens the gate, and I sit with David in the foul-smelling stall, but nothing matters now that I am close to him again.
I kiss his face, wipe his eyes, and clutch his bony hands. “David. My beautiful David.”
He whispers hoarsely, still in shock. “Lana, it’s really you . . . ?”
I’m so overcome I cannot answer.
“How are you? How . . . are the children?”
“They’re well, David. We’re all well.”
