by Peter Barry
‘My father’s Serbian.’ I thought that was the simplest explanation.
‘That is a good enough reason. So you are not one of those who are just here to kill people? That is why many people come to this city: so they can shoot their fellow human beings. They think it is more fun, better sport, than shooting wild pig or wolves. They get bored shooting those.’
I changed the subject. ‘What I don’t understand, Santo, is why don’t we march into Sarajevo and take it by force. Why stay up here in the hills?’
‘We would lose too many of our people if we did that. The Serbs have never been good foot soldiers. We are only good with artillery. Also, the UN is down there, in Sarajevo – French, Canadian, Dutch and your British troops, too. They would make things difficult – awkward. Anyway, the Bosnians will surrender soon, so why should we bother? But now it is my turn to ask you something, Milan: why do we allow the UN to use the airport to bring relief into the city?’
‘Do they control the airport?’
‘They do. They keep it so they can fly in humanitarian aid, yet they will not allow the Bosnians in the city to use the airport to escape. So they are prolonging the war: feeding the enemy, but not helping them to leave the city. That is crazy if you ask me.’ He slapped me on the back and laughed. He has a staccato laugh, one that fails to convey happiness – huh, huh, huh, huh! Having a laugh that sounds like an extended burst from a machine gun strikes me as a bonus around here.
‘But there are many crazy things about this war, Milan, so why not one more?’
He then told me how the enemy had built a tunnel beneath the airport’s main runway. They finished it two years ago and it’s now the busiest route in the country, rumoured to have as many as four thousand travelling through it every day. ‘At some time you will be on duty to fire at these people who sprint from the cover of the earth like badgers.’ I asked him where they headed after they left the tunnel. ‘Either into the Sarajevo suburb of Butmir, or the other way, into so-called Free Bosnia, the part of Bosnia that has not yet fallen to our troops.’
We stopped for a few minutes on the way back to the camp and, like some private tour guide, Santo pointed down into the city at some of the places of interest. The Orthodox and Catholic cathedrals, a mosque and a synagogue were all within a few hundred yards of each other, and made me think of the city’s past reputation for tolerance and peaceful coexistence. He showed me the contrast between the old town to the east with its Islamic and Oriental influences, and the wide streets and grand buildings of the newer part of the city, dating from the Austro-Hungarian occupation at the end of the nineteenth century. From the many bridges across the Miljacka River I was able to work out which was the Latin, just downstream from the National Library, where the Serbian militant and student Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austrian throne, prompting Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia and so cause the outbreak of the First World War.
Sarajevo lay motionless and lifeless beneath its sound-stifling sheet of snow. It resembled a white tulip, the top edges of its opened petals being the mountain ridges encircling the town, its stamen, the buildings nestling at the centre. It huddled in the bottom of the valley, a cowering victim on its hands and knees, its face pressed into the mud and snow, waiting for its persecutors to rain further blows on its battered body. The buildings were funnelled, forced from the open plain in the west towards the rocky gorge and its rushing river, slashed into the steep mountainside to the east. On the slopes of the old town, beneath the old military fortress, the frost-covered roofs of the houses and the minarets of the mosques were piled upon each other as if in a desperate bid to escape their surroundings.
It all looked very promising.
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The cold is unbearable. I’ve put on all the clothes I brought with me and I’m still frozen. The worst of the winter is over – or so Santo says – but I can’t imagine January or February being any colder than this.
I was hugging myself by the fire earlier this evening, my frozen fingertips in my armpits, and shivering despite the flames. I basked in the heat. Sometimes I turned my back to the flames so that I’d thaw out all round. Like Napoleon’s troops on the retreat from Moscow, I contemplated throwing myself onto the fire. They had done just that, and to me, now, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
Santo ordered, ‘You do not go away.’ He walked off in the direction of the houses. Five minutes later he returned carrying an army greatcoat, the kind worn by many of the men, but at this stage of the war, so I was informed, impossible to get hold of. He put it around my shoulders.
‘What’s this?’
‘Have you not seen a coat before?’
‘But where did you get it?’
‘Do not ask. It is yours now, that is all you need to know.’
I thanked him, but he told me to shut up. ‘It is not necessary to thank me. You are my friend. Also, you are an Englishman, so you are probably a little soft.’ He grinned at me, pleased with his little joke.
As we ate I studied the men sitting around the fire, their faces in shadow or lit by flames. They had materialised out of nowhere as soon as darkness set in, as if from the hills, the battery, from all points on the compass. Their voices, like the flames that leapt crackling into the night sky, rose above our heads to be extinguished by the blackness.
They were genuine men of the soil. They looked as if they’d spent their lives in the fields. Their bodies and hair were caked with dirt, almost as if they’d been rolling in mud. And they were all smoking. They appeared to have been born with cigarettes in their mouths – every bit as much as they were born with rifles in their hands. From the way they held their rifles, I could see they’d been brought up with them, since childhood. They were a part of them, integral, like an extra arm. I knew fighting was a way of life for these people, that it was what they were used to, and that there had been wars in this part of the world for thousands of years, from the days when the Romans invaded in the third century BC. Peace, I think, would leave them feeling uneasy, would be a time when the world would seem out of sorts. But they’ve never experienced it, and that’s why they’re such great fighters. War is bred into them, has nurtured them, made their hands stubby fingered and their nails black and cracked. It has given them massive forearms to match. They’re big men, not so much tall – although some of them are – but solid. Solid, stolid Slavs. Like great chunks of granite, they look quite immovable, ready to withstand any onslaught.
My father always claimed, ‘The Serbs are legendary fighters. Even though the allies have all turned on us today, they still talk about our resistance to the enemy during the Second World War. They thought we were unbeatable in battle – and so we were.’
‘That man over there, the one smoking a pipe,’ said Santo, nodding his head in the direction of a group in traditional Serb hats, standing together, laughing and talking loudly. ‘He has been here since 1992, when the siege started. He has not missed a day. His name is Mordo, and his brother and sister-in-law and their kids are in the city.’
‘They’re Serbs?’
‘Yes, a few of our people stayed in Sarajevo, just as many Bosnians stayed in Grbavica, on this side of the river. Often families are no more than two or three hundred yards apart, yet they have not spoken to each other throughout the war. Many have joined us, but some still remain in the city. They are traitors, so they deserve to die. This man, Mordo, he and his relations used to shoot at each other during the day then talk over the phone at night. But now he does not know what has happened to them. They no longer speak to him, so it is possible we have shot them all.’
Santo is more intelligent than the others; he told me so himself. ‘They are ignorant, all of them,’ he said after we’d eaten, indicating the men round the fire. ‘Peasants!’ He used to be the manager of an engineering company in Sarajevo, which is why he speaks good English. He had dealings with people in Newcastle, he tells me proudly, and he reads books. ‘Like you, I read book
s, but not novels. I have no need for novels. Those peasants, however, they do not read anything. They have never read anything in their lives, not even comics.’
He has a round face, almost chubby, with the inevitable drooping moustache and thick eyebrows that meet above the nose. He looks like a hairy, pugnacious baby. He reminds me of the detested Mulqueeny: the same height – or lack of – endomorphic shape and baby face. I try not to blame him for this. Although he doesn’t quite have the literary agent’s tonsured look, he’s definitely thinning on top. When he smiles his face lights up, but just as quickly he will stare moodily at the other men around the fire as if he despises their company.
He pointed out to me a bear of a man, well over six feet tall and as wide as two ordinary men. ‘That man is an animal, even more of an animal than everyone else here. His name is Bukus. Be careful of him, my friend. He is dangerous.’ The man appeared to be phenomenally strong. His face was deeply scarred, and his hair long and black, falling to his shoulders. His eyes were small and too close together, like a grouping on a target. The others were wary of him, I could see that. They laughed louder when he recounted his exploits, and they looked as if they would never disagree with him. He seemed quite mad, having a tendency to punch those around him at random while promising to skin others alive. I could see in his eyes that there was no one behind them, no one at home. If eyes are the windows to the soul, then his eyes had been placed in an empty house.
I recognised the man with Bukus. The two men were holding each other up, cavorting around the fire like a couple of drunks on a Soho street in the early hours. ‘That’s Mladic, isn’t it?’
Santo nodded. ‘He often visits the camps. Usually he’s in his bunker at Han Pijesak. That’s where he directs the siege from.’
I was interested to see my father’s hero. He looks like a square slab of pink dough, all eyebrows and hair. He’s overweight, stocky, about five-and-a-half feet, with the look of a bully and a boozer. His face is sad, with a sharply downturned mouth and deep lines running from the sides of his mouth up to the bridge of his nose, practically forming the bottom half of a cross with his eyebrows, which run at an angle of almost forty-five degrees upwards from his nose. The men venerate him.
At first I couldn’t place what was different about him, but finally it struck me: whereas most of the men in the camp are swathed in bandoliers, with grenades and handguns tucked into their belts and Kalashnikovs cradled in their arms, Mladic appeared to carry no weapons at all. He was wearing an army uniform but, compared to his men, he looked quite naked.
Bukus was shouting at everyone that he’d just come back from some farmhouse or other where he’d ‘fucked four of the whores’. He was being egged on by Mladic. The giant disentangled himself from his General so he could show everyone how he’d done it to one woman. He was gesticulating like a madman, waving a bottle of wine in the air, when he reached down and, head bent forward and round-shouldered, struggled to undo his trousers. Finally he succeeded and, like a proud butcher producing a particularly fine cut of meat, took out this massive tool. I got the impression this was a regular performance and that most of the men had seen it before, yet they were still impressed. It looked like a pig’s trotter hanging out of the front of his trousers. And he was waving this half-erect monster around in the air, and describing how he’d done this, that and the other to some woman, and everyone around the campfire was laughing and cheering, some almost crying they were laughing so much, and Mladic was applauding as Bukus poured wine over his tool in an attempt, if I understood him correctly, to cool it off. Briefly, I imagined introducing this maniac to Ms Diane, that literary agent’s receptionist. He’d be sure to fuck her up good and proper. By the time he’d finished with her, she wouldn’t be able to walk again for days. It would certainly stop her laughing at authors for a while.
From where I sat, watching the giant dance on the other side of the fire, lit up against the surrounding darkness, thrusting his hips this way and that in a wild parody of fornication, he looked like an incubus and a madman. But then there are enough madmen here to populate a sizeable asylum. Bukus’s trousers, having by now fallen around his ankles, caused him to crash forward onto his stomach, and I swear I felt the ground shake. He rolled over and laughed, and Mladic stood over him, holding a bottle up in the air and emptying the last of its contents over the giant’s face and open mouth. I don’t think anyone else would have dared to do that. All the men cheered.
‘You see, my friend,’ said Santo, ‘you can do whatever takes your fancy in this beautiful country of ours. Like him’ – pointing to Bukus on the ground – ‘you can do anything you want. For the anarchist, this is paradise. You can murder, rape, rob, torture little children, anything you have ever imagined, and no one will arrest you, or hold you to account, or put you on trial, or throw you into prison. There are no police, no lawyers, no prison guards, no authorities. You can break the highest moral law on earth and get away with it, because it’s legal. Everything is legal.’
Perhaps I looked sceptical; I certainly shrugged, because he went on to tell me that it was the law of the jungle in Bosnia now, and only the strongest would survive. He said it was possible to do anything you wanted to another person, and the only person who would try to stop you was the one you wanted to kill, rape, rob or torture. So long as you had the strength to overcome them, then you could do it, do whatever you dreamt of. There was nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, ever. ‘And that’s when a man truly finds out the kind of person he is, whether he is good or bad.’
He pointed out a handsome, curly haired individual nearby. ‘You see that man there? That is Radomir. He is a good example of what I am telling you. He is a priest, a Catholic priest, and he is killing people every day. He has a rosary wrapped around his rifle, but he is shooting people down in cold blood. He says he is doing it because he wants our people to win back their land and then we can all live in peace. He says he is doing God’s work, but I don’t believe him. I think that is bullshit. He enjoys the killing, that is what I think. You can see it in his eyes. He is no different to a lot of people here. They love killing. Many of them have orgasms when they shoot someone, did you know that? And that priest, he hears his own confession, so he is always sure of forgiveness. They are a clever lot, those religious devils,’ and he shook his head at the wonder of it. He leant towards me, placing a hand on my shoulder and lowering his voice: ‘Once or twice, so I have been told, that priest over there has visited the farmhouse. What do you make of that?’
I didn’t know what to make of it, and was too tired to ask about this farmhouse he was talking about. I was more interested in the idea that you would never be held accountable for anything you did. That was an awesome thought. That was real freedom. To know that no one will ever come knocking on your door opened up a world of possibilities. You were limited only by the limitations of your own imagination. For a novelist this place presented the opportunity to create a life, a real life, to play God.
‘My friend,’ said Santo, his hand still on my shoulder, still trying to win my attention, ‘I could kill you right now and, apart from Papo – who will curse me for having wasted one of our snipers – no one will give a fuck.’ He laughed loudly and slapped me on the back. ‘Think about that.’
‘But then it could be me who kills you, Santo. You think about that.’
He laughed even louder at what he deemed a preposterous suggestion coming from an Englishman, and slapped me on the back again.
There has to be honour amongst thieves, I thought, or can it be more basic than that? These animals don’t kill each other and don’t seem to fight amongst themselves, but surely only for reasons of self-preservation? It can scarcely have anything to do with conscience. They know they’re safe as a group, that their common enemy is elsewhere, so they can’t afford to turn on each other.
A man appeared out of the darkness, his arm extended towards me. ‘My name is Nikola. I am a lawyer.’ It was said as if it might
impress me. It didn’t because I’d already discovered there were lots of professionals among us: lawyers, accountants, engineers, computer people and so on. Strangely enough it’s the peasants who are in charge, the professionals in the main just being volunteers. It must be strange for them to be ordered around by those who can probably neither read nor write.
Santo whispered to me, loud enough for this Nikola to hear: ‘The only court this idiot has seen is a tennis court.’
The newcomer’s face was sad, with haunted, suspicious eyes. His hairline was receding and his shoulders sagged. He was tall and skinny, but his stomach bulged out beneath his belt like an overstuffed bumbag. He looked defeated, if not by this war, then by his own interior one.
‘Why are you joining us?’ Santo snarled. ‘Is it because Bukus won’t let you near enough to lick Mladic’s arse?’
Nikola ignored him, but said to me: ‘You must be careful who you choose to be friendly with.’ He then started to talk politics with me (a Serbian’s main topic of conversation, as far as I can tell), sitting down and quickly launching into an explanation of the current war.
‘A third of Bosnia’s population is Serbian, did you know that?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘And all we want, us Bosnian Serbs, is to become citizens of Greater Serbia. Is that so wrong? Already we control three-quarters of the country, so our enemies should give up now. Why do they go on fighting? It is a waste of time.’
Clutching his half-empty bottle of Slivovitz, the plum brandy they all drink here, Nikola stared morosely into the tall forest of flames, the forest of trees black in the background, as if he were a student puzzling over a difficult exam question.
‘These people who are so ready to condemn our actions, who do not even live here, they have no understanding of what it is like to be a Serb living under a fascist regime in Bosnia or Croatia, to be a minority. They have no right to criticise. They do not know.’ And he spat in the face of his critics by spitting in the dust at his feet.
