Braco

by Lesleyanne Ryan

“I don’t have the time.”

  Tarak opened the rear hatch, slid Omar gently off his back, and laid him inside. The peacekeeper slammed the driver’s door shut and walked to the back of the vehicle. Tarak raised his rifle and then jammed it into the peacekeeper’s chest.

  “Cowards. You’re supposed to stop them. Now you are running away like frightened hens. Where are the air strikes?”

  “I don’t know where they are,” the peacekeeper replied. “They told us the planes would come this morning. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No,” the peacekeeper said, his features softening. “But I think someone is lying to us.” He glanced at the carriers. “Look, I’m going to Bravo. I can drop you on the road by the hospital.”

  “Fine,” Tarak said, lowering his weapon. He climbed into the back of the vehicle and returned his attention to Omar. Salko and the peacekeeper jumped in the jeep and it screeched away, navigating among the people fleeing the town. The number of refugees grew the farther they drove. The jeep slowed to a crawl short of the hospital.

  “Let us out here,” Tarak told the driver

  The vehicle came to a halt. While they were taking Omar out, fleeing civilians took their place in the jeep. The peacekeeper didn’t try to stop them. By the time Tarak had Omar across his shoulders again, the vehicle was swarming with refugees, inside and out.

  Tarak struggled up the steep driveway; Omar was unconscious, a dead weight on his back. He and Salko pushed their way into the crowded hospital and walked from room to room, looking for help. A nurse stopped them and then led them to a gurney in the main hallway. When Tarak placed him on the gurney, Omar groaned and his eyes flickered.

  “You’re at the hospital,” Tarak whispered close to Omar’s ear. “They’re going to take care of you, Omar. You’re going to be all right.”

  Omar’s eyes shifted up. He grunted a word Tarak couldn’t understand. The nurse inspected Omar’s wounds and then she wrote his name on a tag and pinned it to his shirt.

  “I need to take him in now. You can wait if you want.”

  Omar grabbed Tarak’s arm and moved his head from side to side.

  “Okay,” Tarak said, taking Omar’s hand. “But we’ll be back to see you in a few hours, okay?”

  Omar managed a smile and raised two fingers to his mouth. Tarak fished a half pack of cigarettes out of a pocket and stuffed them into Omar’s shirt pocket, patting it as the nurse pushed the gurney into the examination room. The door slammed shut.

  “Shit,” Tarak said, shaking his head.

  “I know, friend.”

  A doctor halted in front of the soldiers.

  “Good, they sent someone. The stretchers are outside. We need you to take them over to the Dutch. They’re taking them to Potocari.”

  “No one sent….”

  Salko slapped Tarak’s arm. The doctor moved off.

  “Nothing we can do on the line. We might as well help here.”

  Tarak slung his pack onto his back and followed Salko outside. A dozen occupied stretchers lined the sidewalk. Tarak looked at the steep hill leading to the road and at the mass of people moving towards the Dutch camp a short distance away.

  “I think I’d rather go fight.”

  “The Dutch aren’t going to be able to stick around on that road and, once they pull back, the town is gone. We need to get as many people as possible to Potocari.”

  Tarak turned back to the stretchers. A soldier lay on the closest one. He was unconscious and his thigh was tightly bandaged. A nurse indicated to Tarak and Salko with her hand that he should be taken first.

  They fought for more than an hour to carry the stretchers through the panicked crowd, struggling to keep the stretchers level. At first, the Dutch had been hesitant to accept the wounded men, but then an officer appeared and opened the gate. He had directed them towards a troop truck on which other stretchers waited for transportation. As they returned to the hospital for the seventh time, they passed a number of men and several peacekeepers carrying stretchers.

  “Last one,” Salko said as they deposited the seventh stretcher. “We need to see what’s going on.”

  They left the camp and turned towards the post office. The small red brick structure functioned as their headquarters. Tarak expected to see soldiers hanging around the door, but the entrance was vacant. He took the steps two at a time, lunged though the door, and ran from room to room.

  Empty. Even the short wave radio was gone.

  He walked back outside. Salko was speaking to a familiar face in the thinning crowd.

  “Rasim,” Tarak shouted. He walked over to greet his friend.

  “Zdravo, Tarak,” Rasim said, lighting a cigarette. No one smiled. A soldier standing off to the side was crying.

  “Where is everyone? What’s going on?”

  “They’ve given up,” Salko told him. “They’re gathering at Susnjari. They want to go through the woods.”

  “So they’re not even going to try?”

  “What’s the sense?” Rasim pointed to a man with a radio. “Alija made a broadcast demanding that the blue helmets intervene. He said forty thousand Chetniks were waiting to take the town. Not much we can do against that with six thousand men and no weapons or ammunition.”

  Tarak shook his head. Alija Izetbegovic was the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tarak knew he would have access to Western intelligence. If the president said forty-thousand Serbs waited to take the town, Tarak wouldn’t question it.

  Or, he wondered, is Izetbegovic inflating the numbers to make the blue helmets act?

  “Fuck the blue helmets,” one of the men said. “They’ve sold us out.”

  “Fuck France. Fuck Britain and America,” another said. “They’ve made a deal with the Chetniks. Srebrenica for Sarajevo. They’ve signed our death warrants.”

  Tarak looked at Rasim.

  “Who knows?” Rasim said with a shrug. “Look, you and Salko should gather up all the food you can carry and get up to Susnjari.”

  “What about my grandfather?”

  Rasim took a long draw on his cigarette and blew the smoke from his nose.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Tarak. If you can get him to the Dutch, they’ll probably take care of him.”

  Tarak felt sick. His grandfather was eighty-six and stubborn enough to refuse to go with the Dutch. He didn’t trust the blue helmets any more than Tarak did.

  “I have to get him,” Tarak said, leaning down to pick up his pack. “I’ll check on Omar and I’ll see you in Susnjari.”

  No one responded. When Tarak looked up, the others were staring into the sky as two fighter jets split the air above them heading towards the Serb lines.

  Tarak stopped and leaned against a street sign to catch his breath. He was carrying his grandfather in his arms and a full pack on his back. His grandfather had managed to walk only the first kilometre. Tarak’s attempts to convince him to go to Potocari had failed.

  “They’re puppets,” his grandfather had mumbled as Tarak grabbed the few cans of food sitting in the cupboards. “They do what the West thinks is best. They will abandon us. You saw. They dropped two bombs and didn’t come back. Srebrenica is in the way of peace. That is what the West wants. They don’t care about us.”

  “There are thousands of people there now, Dada. The Dutch will watch over them. They’ll get trucks and send them all to Tuzla. You’ll see. You will be okay.”

  “No. I’ll go with you. I’d rather die on my feet, where and when I choose.”

  Tarak locked eyes with his grandfather.

  I’m not going to win this one.

  When they got to Susnjari, men were gathering at the soccer field. Thousands were sitting in small groups on and off the field. Some coo
ked meals, others prayed. There were a few women and soldiers, but the rest were civilian men and teenage boys. Tarak found an open spot next to the bleachers and left his grandfather alone with a bottle of water and some crackers before going to search for someone in charge. He recognized a group of men arguing on the edge of the field. Salko was crouched next to them, jamming supplies into a pack.

  “Zdravo, Salko.”

  “Where’s your grandfather?” Salko asked, securing the flap on his pack.

  “He’s here,” Tarak replied, cocking a thumb towards the bleachers. “What are they arguing about?”

  Salko rolled his eyes as he straightened up. “What don’t they argue about?”

  Tarak smiled.

  “They’re a bureaucracy,” Salko said. “They have to argue. Some want to go to Tuzla. Some want to go to Zepa. Some want to stand and fight.”

  “What is wrong with Zepa? It’s closer than Tuzla and the Chetniks would have a hard time advancing in that terrain. They have more food there and we could join up with their forces. We could keep Zepa safe. Maybe keep the Chetniks occupied long enough to save Gorazde.”

  Salko nodded as Tarak spoke. “That’s what I’ve been telling them, but someone said Zepa has fallen. They don’t want to take the chance.”

  “Fallen? Are you sure?” Tarak bit his lip. He had hoped to join a group going to Zepa. He didn’t think his grandfather would make it anywhere else.

  “No one is sure about anything,” Salko said, glancing at the arguing men. “That’s the problem. All I know is the longer we sit here scratching our asses, the closer the Chetniks will come.”

  “They should let groups leave now. If Zepa is gone, we should all head north in small groups; some towards Zvornik, some towards Tisca, some towards Nova Kasaba.”

  “Listen!” a boy shouted. He stood and ran towards the arguing men. “Listen!”

  The men became quiet. The boy held up a radio; Tarak strained to hear the words, but he couldn’t make them out through the static. Suddenly, the men cheered. Some kissed one another. Some didn’t react at all.

  Salko spoke to one of the men and then turned back to Tarak.

  “He said the Chetniks are going to open up a corridor to let anyone through who is not a war criminal.”

  “What good is that?”

  “Can’t you see what they’re saying,” Salko shouted at the men. They stopped to listen. “As far as the Chetniks are concerned, we’re all war criminals. Every last one of us. It doesn’t matter how old, young, or infirmed we are, they will kill us all. Don’t be taken in by this.”

  Tarak stepped up next to Salko.

  “Enough with the arguing. We need to go now.”

  The men turned away and started arguing again.

  “Let me know when they’re done. I have to see to my grandfather.”

  Salko nodded and then joined the heated discussion. Tarak picked up his pack and walked back to the bleachers. His grandfather held up the water and two crackers.

  “No,” Tarak said, pushing them away. “I have plenty. Go ahead, finish them.”

  The old man hesitated and then ate the crackers. Tarak sat down and sorted through the supplies he had dumped into his pack. He had enough food for both of them for only three days, but he wasn’t concerned. Early in the war, the Americans had dropped thousands of ration packs over the enclave in an attempt to bypass Serb blockades. Tarak had found dozens of packs in the woods and buried them in several locations for just this type of emergency. If they decided on Tuzla, there was enough food buried along the route to last them both at least two weeks. The only question was how to get his grandfather that far north.

  The arguing stopped and the men dispersed. Salko walked to where Tarak was sitting and threw his pack on the ground.

  “Idiots,” he said. “We’re going as one group. To Tuzla via Zvornik.”

  “Seriously?”

  “They think because it’s been fairly quiet over the last few months the Chetniks will just conveniently not notice thousands of men going for a walk through the woods. Don’t those fools remember anything?”

  Tarak sighed hard and looked at his grandfather. The fifty kilometre walk involved steep hills, swamps, thick forests, and minefields. He had no doubt they would be under fire for part of the journey.

  “Are they leaving now?”

  “As soon as they can get the units ready. We’re bringing up the rear. Some guys are going on ahead now to make a path through the minefields. All the politicians and most of the soldiers are going to the front. They’re hoping they’ll be able to open a passage across the road so that everyone can get to the other side.”

  “You don’t think it’ll work?”

  “You were at Cerska. You know what it’s like. By daybreak, the Chetniks will have a clear view of us in the hills and fields. We’ll be sitting ducks.”

  Salko crouched down and said hello to Tarak’s grandfather and then he pulled Tarak aside.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Tarak said. “He doesn’t want to go to Potocari. I guess I’ll have to carry him.”

  Salko leaned closer.

  “We both know you can’t carry him that far. With all the rain we had, the rivers will be swollen and the swamps will be barely passable. The mud on those hills will make them slicker than a ski slope.”

  “I know, I know,” Tarak said. “But he’s my grandfather.”

  Salko reached into a pouch on his web belt.

  “He’s an old man, Tarak. He has lived a good life. If you truly love him, you’ll find a nice spot on the side of a hill, somewhere he can see the sunrise, and give him this.”

  Salko dropped a grenade into Tarak’s hands and walked away.

  WEDNESDAY: TARAK SMAJLOVIC

  TARAK PICKED A long blade of grass and chewed on it while his grandfather slept. The climb had taken most of the morning and left his grandfather exhausted. They were out of sight of the Serb guns and had a good view of the rolling hills that extended to the western horizon.

  After spending the night at the soccer field, Tarak had bid farewell to Salko and walked into the fog with his grandfather. Most of the men had left by then. Watching from the hillside, he saw only a few hundred lingering in the area after the fog had cleared and by noon the trail was deserted. Tarak glanced up at the late afternoon sun. He knew he had to leave soon if he were to catch up to the men by sunset.

  “You should go.”

  Tarak helped his grandfather sit up against the tree.

  “I have a few more minutes, Dada.”

  “No, you don’t. You should have left hours ago.”

  His grandfather ate crackers and washed them down with water. Tarak cleared his throat.

  “I can still take you to Potocari.”

  “If you take me to Potocari,” his grandfather said, pointing a half-eaten cracker in his grandson’s direction, “the Chetniks will get me and they may get you, too. You’re all that’s left of our family. I will not put you in harm’s way.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “That’s what your father said.”

  Tarak opened his mouth to respond, but then he shut it. Tarak had been serving in the Yugoslav army when the war in Croatia broke out. The Croat soldiers had already deserted and more and more Bosnians were following their lead as the Serbs took full control of the army. Tarak waited until Vukovar to leave. By then, he knew the war would spread. He knew the Zvornik region would be a primary target because of the industry, roads, and rail lines in the area. Tarak warned his father and their neighbours, but few believed him.

  His grandfather believed. He had seen it sixty years earlier.

  When it happened, Tarak was visiting friends in Srebrenica with his grandfather. Unable to return to Zvornik,
they took over an abandoned house near Jaglici. The army gave him enough food to keep his grandfather fed and healthy.

  Tarak didn’t want to admit to himself that three years of struggling with his grandfather against shells and starvation had all been for nothing.

  His grandfather laid a hand on his arm.

  “You need to forgive yourself, Tarak.”

  “Dada….”

  “No. Please, Tarak. You’ve been a good boy. You took care of me. Now, I have to take care of you.” He paused to draw in a long breath. “You must go. They need you out there. I will be okay. I have food and water and a nice view.” He fingered the grenade in his lap. “I won’t be cold.”

  Tarak looked away.

  “You’re all I have left,” his grandfather said, squeezing his arm. “You have to survive. For me. For your parents. For Fadil.”

  Tarak’s head dropped as he fought the emotion rising from his gut.

  “You don’t have to say anything. Just pick up your stuff and go. You must go. You must survive.”

  Tarak drew his arm across his face and nodded. He leaned sideways and kissed his grandfather on the cheek.

  “I love you, Dada.”

  “Take care of yourself, Tarak.”

  Tarak grabbed his pack and rifle and walked away from his grandfather. He picked his way down the side of the hill, his feet growing heavier with each step. When the ground levelled out, he paused and looked back at the hill. His grandfather was well out of sight, alone near the top.

  “I can carry you, Dada.”

  Branches swayed but did not respond. Tarak dropped his rifle and threw his pack to the ground. Tears blurred his vision. He stood motionless, glaring at his equipment as memories flashed through his mind.

  His father trying to teach him how to drive his new Yugo and breaking down before they had turned off their street. His grandfather teaching him how to hunt. His mother pruning her favorite roses.

  Holding Fadil for the first time.

  Tarak’s teeth clenched so hard his head hurt. His breath came rapidly. He turned around and started to walk back up the hill. He stopped.