Braco

by Lesleyanne Ryan

  You must go. They need you out there.

  “What difference is one rifle going to make, Dada?” he whispered to empty air. “I can carry you. Why won’t you let me try?”

  He swore under his breath and trudged back to his gear, collapsing to the ground. He wiped the tears from his cheeks.

  “I can’t do this anymore, Dada. I’m tired.”

  There was no future except war. Nothing but more killing and suffering. He picked up his rifle and laid it across his lap, staring at it for a long time.

  A twig snapped.

  Tarak raised his head and then returned his attention to the rifle. He’d taken the weapon from a wounded Serb two years before. He’d shot the soldier in the head afterwards. He didn’t regret it. The Serb would have done the same to him. Tarak drew his hand across the weapon, feeling the worn wooden stock, the cold steel of the barrel. A Yugoslav made AK-47 semi-automatic rifle. Exceptional quality. He was lucky to have it.

  His heart slammed against his ribs.

  You’re all I have left.

  He felt his grandfather’s hand squeeze his arm.

  You have to survive.

  He propped the rifle up until the steel barrel lay against his cheek.

  For me. For your parents. For Fadil.

  Tarak’s finger played with the safety switch, flicking it on and off. Then on again.

  You must go. You must survive.

  He flicked the safety off again.

  You need to forgive yourself.

  Another twig snapped.

  Tarak dropped to the ground, bringing the rifle up to bear on the trees in front of him. He held his breath and listened. Muffled footfalls slowed their pace a few metres away.

  Am I that close to the trail?

  He let the air seep out of his lungs and then reached for his pack, pulling it on. The footfalls continued away from him. Tarak climbed to his feet and shadowed the sound, stepping carefully until the sound ceased. Whispering voices drew Tarak’s attention to his left. He moved closer to the sound and caught a glimpse of three heads in the brush. An overweight man stood up with some effort and then called out to someone else. He walked away and the other two followed.

  Tarak made his way to the edge of the treeline, crouching behind bushes. The three men were walking towards a teenage boy. Tarak slipped the pack from his shoulders, lowered it to the ground, and then moved in to get a better view of the boy. The overweight man told the boy they were going to Zepa.

  “What are you carrying?” the man said.

  The boy backed up, giving Tarak a clear view of him.

  Fadil?

  “Nothing,” the boy said. “Just some water and clothes.”

  “Let me see.”

  “It’s just water and clothes.”

  The man made a grab for the boy who ducked the oversized hand but fell backwards onto the ground. Raising his rifle, Tarak stepped from the treeline.

  “Take it off,” the man was shouting, hovering over the terrified boy.

  Tarak brought the rifle tight to his shoulder and drew a bead on the fat man.

  “Leave him alone.”

  WEDNESDAY: ATIF STAVIC

  ATIF STARED AT the young soldier holding the automatic rifle levelled at the three men. He wore a mixture of uniforms: Canadian boots, Dutch pants, and a Yugoslav army shirt. The harness and pouches of his webbing were not the same colour green. His long hair was tied back in a ponytail and there was a white band around his left arm.

  “Who do you think you are?” the fat man said. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I know who you are,” the soldier replied. He shifted his feet, taking a step forward. “And don’t imagine for a moment that I’d think twice about putting a round through your well-fed skull.”

  “I don’t believe you.” The man moved closer to the soldier. “In fact, I’m guessing they left you behind because you don’t have any rounds for that piece of junk.”

  One of the soldier’s eyebrows arched and then his hand came up and cocked the weapon. A single brass round tumbled through the air.

  “There are twenty-nine more.”

  The large man’s chest rose and fell. He expelled air in a huff and then raised a pudgy finger. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “It’s mine to make.” The soldier pointed west with the barrel of his weapon. “If you fools want to go to Zepa then leave. Now.”

  The man turned to his friends. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, retrieving his bag. His friends paused, looking between Atif and the soldier. “I said, let’s go.”

  The men said nothing. They picked up their bags and followed the fat man westward. Atif remained on the ground. The soldier kept his rifle high, waiting until the trio disappeared from sight. Then he lowered the barrel, bent down, and retrieved the errant round and returned it to the magazine.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The soldier offered a hand. Atif stood up on his own and took a step back.

  “Don’t worry. I have no interest in your pack,” the soldier said. He walked to the treeline and picked up a rucksack. “You see, I have my own.” He returned and stood before Atif, cradling the rifle in his arms like a baby. “What’s your name?”

  Atif looked around.

  “I’m alone,” the soldier said.

  “Why aren’t you with the men?”

  “I was…,” he started, his eyes darting away for a moment. “I was delayed. What about you?”

  “It wasn’t safe in Potocari.” Atif told the soldier about the Serb in Potocari and how his mother and Jac made him leave.

  “How old are you?”

  “I’ll be fifteen in October.”

  “Really? You look older. Your mother and the Dutchman were right to make you leave. At least out here you have a fighting chance.”

  “I’m not so sure my mother thinks she was right.”

  “Of course not. She’s your mother.”

  “It’s just….” Atif said, glancing south. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

  “You’re more worried about your mother than yourself. Right?”

  Atif looked down at his feet.

  “You said they’re taking the men away in Potocari. If you go back, they will have you. You may make it to a bus, but then you have a long drive to Tisca. The Chetniks will board and search the buses.”

  Atif kicked at the dirt.

  “If you want to live, you need to walk to Tuzla.”

  Atif lifted his gaze.

  “And since we seem to be walking in the same direction, I wouldn’t mind a little company.”

  “Really?”

  “Tell you what. Promise you’ll listen to me. If I say run, you run. If I say get down, you get down. If I say shut up, you shut up. Do that and I’ll get you to Tuzla in one piece. I’ll get you back to your family. How’s that sound?”

  “How do I know you won’t leave me if I get in the way?”

  “I don’t think you will.”

  Atif glanced at the trail leading to Potocari.

  “I had a little brother like you once,” the soldier said. “I would like to think that you would have done the same for him.”

  Atif met the soldier’s gaze. Tired eyes. Like his father.

  “Okay.”

  The soldier smiled.

  “So, what’s your name?”

  “Atif.”

  “I’m Tarak.” The soldier untied his white armband and tore it in half. “First thing you’ll need is a white armband.”

  “Is this to tell us apart from the Chetniks?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Tarak replied, tying the piece of material around Atif’s left arm. Then he h
eld up his rifle, flicking the safety on. “Do you know anything about weapons?”

  Atif took the rifle and held it, his left hand under the barrel and his right on the grip. He laid his finger straight along the trigger guard and pointed the weapon down and away from Tarak. He studied the weapon. The metal gleamed and gave off a strong scent of gun oil. The wooden stock was worn but cared for, the magazine rusted along the seams.

  “A Yugoslav-made Kalashnikov automatic rifle or AK-47,” Atif said. “Selective fire, 7.62 mm gas operated assault rifle with a thirty round magazine. Mikhail Kalashnikov created it in 1947. It’s the most reliable automatic weapon out there and is used more than any other assault rifle in the world.”

  Tarak stared at him.

  “Mr. Kalashnikov is still alive, too,” Atif said, with a shrug.

  Tarak took the weapon back.

  “Forget I asked,” he said. “Reciting the textbook answer is one thing. Do you know how to use it?”

  “I fired one once to test it. My father taught me how to repair them.”

  “Well, you could come in handy,” Tarak said, slinging the rifle over his shoulder. “Now, we need to move quickly if we want to catch up with the rest of the men before dark. You have water?”

  “Two bottles.”

  “Good. Drink as much as you want as we walk. There are some rivers ahead. Okay?”

  “Yes,” Atif said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me, Braco.” The soldier’s eyes shifted to the hillside. “We’re both getting something out of this.”

  Atif cocked his head. The soldier looked at the hill for a long moment. Then he turned away, motioning with his head for Atif to follow. Atif glanced back.

  Does he think the Chetniks are following?

  He eyed the hill. A swaying tree caught his attention, but then the motion moved along with the rest of the trees on the hill like a wave on a lake.

  It’s only the wind.

  As his eyes made a final sweep of the area, a pillar of dust rose up between the trees. A sharp pop followed. Atif flinched and looked at Tarak. The soldier stopped but didn’t turn around. Then he continued walking.

  “Are the Chetniks that close?” Atif asked, catching up to the soldier.

  “No. Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”

  Tarak kept a brisk pace and said little as he led Atif through an abandoned Serb trench. They climbed the first of three steep ridges. Trampled vegetation, garbage, and bodies marked the trail in the dense brush. They came across the first body during the climb from the base of the second ravine. An old man with a ragged suit jacket draped over his head lay next to the trail, his feet bare. There were two more bodies near the top of the ridge. The white bones of skeletons gleamed on the other side of the trail.

  A steep slope led into the third ravine. Atif navigated through the brush and then pressed the tip of his boot into the exposed roots of a tree. He grabbed onto its branches but missed the next foothold, slipping onto his back and sliding more than a metre before Tarak snagged the straps of his backpack.

  Atif looked up and nodded.

  He felt like a puppet as Tarak held on to the straps while they descended the final few metres into the base of the third ravine. Tarak released him at the bottom and then Atif took a step forward. He stepped on something soft. He jerked his foot back and looked down. An arm lay motionless on the ground, reaching out from the bushes.

  “Another body,” he said to Tarak in a hushed voice. Tarak leaned forward and pushed the branches aside with the barrel of his rifle. Behind the bushes, three bodies lay side by side. A jacket covered their faces; their shoes were gone. Unlike the others, their chests and legs were sliced open from shrapnel or gunfire.

  Tarak crouched and Atif followed suit. The soldier pulled out a pair of compact binoculars and scanned the area. Atif looked west where the setting sun cast long shadows.

  “They must have been fired on from those hills. I don’t see anything there now. Not that it means anything. Come on.”

  They kept low as they shuffled across the shallow river. On the other side, they sat down in the shadow of the next hill. Atif shed his pack and pulled out the water bottles. A few mouthfuls swished in the bottom of one.

  “I’ll refill them,” Tarak said. “If you want to eat something, do it now. We’ll rest here for a few minutes.”

  Atif passed the bottles to Tarak. The soldier crawled to the edge of the river, dipped the bottles into the fast-moving water, and then dunked his head. Atif examined the half-dozen ration packs Jac had put in his bag. The meals were like the American, Canadian, German, and British rations he had tried in the past. He preferred any one of them to the American meals although nothing compared to the German rations. They all had a big chocolate bar. The rations usually contained a main meal, drink crystals, candy, and a variety of crackers or bread as well as plastic cutlery, matches, and packets of salt, pepper, and sugar. Atif opened one and checked the English NATO label on the main meal pouch.

  Pork and beans.

  Atif stared at it. He had never eaten pork, but not because his father adhered to Islamic law. They simply didn’t eat pork the same way his mother refused to eat meat on some Fridays.

  Tradition.

  He only had a few rations and it could take up to a week to walk to Tuzla.

  Do I throw it away?

  Tarak crawled back and returned Atif’s bottles. He looked at the meal pack in Atif’s hands.

  “What is it?”

  “Pork and beans.”

  Tarak laughed, spitting the water he had been about to swallow. He reached over and took the meal pack, feeling the contents inside the soft pouch.

  “Reminds me of when the Americans started dropping the packs. I didn’t know which was funnier: dropping rations older than me or dropping rations with pork to a community full of hungry Muslims.”

  Atif suddenly understood why his father had taken some of the American meal packs to trade.

  “Do you practice?” Tarak asked, handing the meal back to Atif.

  “My father promised to take me to mosque,” Atif replied, shrugging. “Promised me for years, but he didn’t. I don’t think he believed anymore.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She’s Croat,” he replied, still surprised he would describe her that way. Until the war started, he had no idea she was Croatian or that it mattered. “I think I know more about her religion than I do my own.”

  “There’s not much pork in it anyway, but leave it to last if you’re not comfortable. When you get hungry enough, you’ll eat it.”

  Atif didn’t argue. He knew what the empty, gnawing ache in his stomach felt like. He stuffed the pouch inside his bag and pulled out another.

  Beef stew. Atif opened it and chugged half the pouch.

  Tarak took a Canadian and German ration from his own pack, looked at both, and then tossed the German one back into his pack. He tore it open and scooped out the contents with a plastic spoon.

  “What about your father. Is he out here?”

  Somewhere.

  “No. He used to guide soldiers and others through the woods. They say he got caught in that big snowstorm in April.”

  “I remember that. There were about a dozen of them?”

  “Yes. They were going north.”

  “Well, if I remember correctly, they never found any bodies. He could still be alive.”

  Atif kept his eyes low.

  “I lost my family when the Chetniks took Zvornik,” Tarak said after a few quiet moments. “My grandfather survived. Stayed in Srebrenica with me. What about your grandparents?”

  “They’re all gone. My father’s parents died in a car accident before I was born. My mother’s parents died in Vukovar.”

  “Really?”
>
  Atif eyed the soldier. “Why?”

  “I was at Vukovar.”

  “How could you have been there?”

  “I was in the Yugoslav army finishing up my year of service when everything started to crumble. Of course, that early on, I never thought the war would spread. As far as I was concerned, I was Yugoslav and wanted to keep my country together. I thought we were just going to quell some dissent in Croatia. I stayed with them until Vukovar, but after the hospital massacre, I decided I had had enough. So, I deserted like all the others. By that time, most of the army was Chetnik anyway.”

  “Did you actually fight in Vukovar?”

  “No. I was Muslim. All I was good for was digging trenches and latrines.”

  “Oh,” Atif mumbled, not sure what else to say. He finished the beef stew and pulled out a packet of drink crystals, pouring it into a bottle of water.

  “So, what happened to you?” Tarak asked, motioning to the bandage on Atif’s head.

  “Shrapnel.”

  “The shell that hit the alley?”

  Atif glanced up and nodded.

  “They were your friends?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tarak said. “I really am. This bloody war has been hard on everyone.”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “That too.” Tarak chewed through a row of crackers, his eyes fixed on the southern face of the ravine.

  “How come you were so far behind the others?” Atif asked.

  Tarak washed the crackers down with water.

  “I had to leave my grandfather behind.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “We seem to be digging up a lot of hard stuff, Braco.” He forced a quick smile and shrugged. “He was old, stubborn. He had a good life.”

  Tarak finished his meal and tossed the empty pouch away. Artillery fell in the distance and he straightened up to listen. Gunfire echoed through the hills. He took a swig of his water and then stuffed it into his pack, gesturing to Atif to do the same.

  “We’re making good time. If we keep up the pace, we should catch up with them before the sun sets.”

  Atif hauled his pack on and stared at the steep hill ahead. He didn’t remember climbing so much when he helped his father bring back food from Kravica.