by Verner Jones
“He’s not going to die. That much I can promise.”
“I will be alright. It takes more than a little flesh wound to put out Damir Obric.” The man produced a knife from his pocket and said to the other man, “Hold his sleeve tight while I cut the material away.” The other man bent down and held Damir's jacket taught. “Don’t, you will ruin my only good coat.”
“I will cut it at the seam then your wife can sew it back for you. Is that alright or should I leave it and let you bleed to death?”
“I’m sorry. Do what you have to.” The man removed his sleeves and examined the wound. “You are lucky friend. The bullet hasn’t broken any bone. Pass me the shirt sleeve.” The other man obeyed saying nothing. He took the sleeve and wrapped it around the wound. At that moment a car screeched up and onto the pavement to within feet of the doorway. Damir’s friend Rizo got out. “Damir are you alright?” He rushed up the step to see if he could be of any help. “I have my car here. We can get him to the hospital.”
“I don’t need that. It is only a scratch. It will heal in no time.”
“Good is it very far?” Asked the first man turning to look at the new arrival.
“No. We can be there in ten minutes.” He turned back to face Damir.
“You will have to go friend at least to get the wound cleaned and dressed. You don’t want to loose your arm through infection do you!” Damir answered a resigned ‘No I don’t.’ “Let’s get him in the car.”
“I’m coming with you uncle.”
“No. It’s better if you take the food and go home. I’ll be fine and I can make my own way back when they are finished. Damir looked at his Samaritan friend. “Will you make sure Marta gets back safely to our home, please?” He looked at Marta and then back to Damir. “Yes I will. Now let us get you to the hospital.” The three men helped Damir into the car. Rizo took the wheel and shouted back to Marta as he started to leave, for her not to worry, and that Damir would be back before nightfall. Then he was gone and Marta was left alone with the two men in the doorway.
Marta slumped down onto the step and put her head in her hands. “When is all this madness going to stop?” she said. Both men took a seat either side of her. The Samaritan put his arm on Marta’s shoulder to comfort her. Immediately she pulled back from his comforting gesture, allergic to his touch. She turned towards him embarrassed by her actions. “I’m sorry. I’m just jumpy that’s all.”
“That’s understandable. You have just been shot at. I would be as well.” His voice was compassionate and sincere as if he understood first hand what she was feeling. Then the full impact of what had just transpired hit her and she looked at both the men sitting next to her. They had risked their lives to help her and her uncle to safety. She took a hand of each of them in hers. They both looked at her. “You two have just risked your lives to help us. Thank you for being brave and coming to our aid. They can shoot at us and starve us but they can never break our spirit can they!”
“No, that they can’t,” replied the man from the doorway. For the first time Marta took notice of him. He was dressed in khaki, a soldier but without his tunic top or any identification marks as to what army he belonged to, instead he wore a pullover that was two sizes too big for him. He wasn’t a Muslim. His fair complexion was pock marked with red dots. He had a skin problem. With his round wire glasses perched on his nose Marta thought he looked like a teacher or academic, not a fighter. Marta turned to the other man. She was sure that he had medical skills. How he had helped her uncle was with hands that were familiar to such a situation, though he looked too young to be a doctor. She smiled at him. He was probably very attractive underneath all that dirt.
“Are you feeling stronger?” he asked. Her composure was returning. “Yes, I’m feeling better.”
“Good. He held out a hand to her. “My name’s Stipe Mesic.” She shook it.
“Marta Obric.” He passed his hand to the other man. For a moment the man hesitated then clasped his palm onto Stipe’s. “Toni Popovic.” He held the grip for a few seconds looking into the face of Stipe gauging his reaction to hearing his name. Then he let go. They both looked at him. Stipe said while looking at his khaki trousers and paratrooper boots, “You are a Serbian soldier aren’t you?” They both waited for his reply. “ I am a Bosnian just like you, who as been forced to fight against his fellow countrymen and who hates all this madness as much as you do. Yes I am Serbian, a deserter from the army. I am also a man who has just offered you the hand of friendship in you moment of need. Remember that before you judge me.” It was true thought Marta. This war had turned people inside out, set friend against friend, neighbour against neighbour, just for lines on a map through whipped up emotions of nationalistic pride. It was all bullshit. Before she would not have cared if this man was Serb, Jew, Croat or Pygmy for that matter and out of all the people standing in the queue that were Muslims, he had chosen to help them when it was needed. She re clasped his hand. “All us Bosnians are suffering in this war,” she said. “Come you two. There will be no more bread until later. You can come back to my Uncle’s house. We have water and food. You can clean yourselves up and we can share some bread together.” Both men were starving having only sparsely eaten in the last few days. “Let’s go then, said Toni. It will be good to get this stench off of my body.”
“And some fresh baked bread into our stomachs,” said Stipe. They all stood up and followed Marta’s lead, any racial or political indifferences being buried in their shared experience. They were Bosnian’s again, friends. Friends in a land that had been forced to forget it could have fellowship with someone who wasn’t of the same ethnic background. They walked arms linked back to Marta’s place.
7
Amra broke down crying when she heard the news about Damir. It took a full half an hour before all three of them managed to calm her and reassure her that Damir would recover. After hearing the account of the two men who had befriended them Amra prepared what little food they had while the two men cleaned themselves up. Amra gave them fresh shirts and trousers from her son’s wardrobe, who was away fighting with the army and took theirs away to be washed. They took turns to use Damir's razor. When Toni and Stipe emerged clean and refreshed Marta hardly recognized them. With the dirt removed and their appearances put in order, it was as if the two vagrants she had first met had never existed. She was pleased that they looked human again. “Come, let’s eat,” said Marta.
They sat down to a meal of macaroni, fresh bread dipped in oil and one glass of water each. That was all they had, but even that was a luxury nowadays. Even if you had money you couldn’t buy what wasn’t there. Stipe remembered the plentiful supply of goods he had obtained from Ton, and wished he had just a tenth of what he had sold to his customers. Now he had nothing, nothing at all. Everything that he owned and loved lay sprawled and scattered alongside a valley stream. A picture of his parents huddled together flashed into his mind making him shudder and draw a deep breath. Marta stared at him. “Is everything alright, Stipe?” Stipe blinked his thoughts back into the present. “Yes, Marta. I’m fine,” he forced himself to say. Marta smiled at him. Amra said, “I am going to clean the dishes and wash your clothes for you. Marta, why don’t you take your friends into the lounge and rest for a while? I’ll bring some tea in to you when I’ve finished.”
“Thank you auntie.” Marta knew that Amra was using up what little supplies she had to show gratitude to the two young men for saving her husband. They would be scraping around for food for the next week when the men were gone.
They went into the lounge and sat in the dimly lit room. It was sparse and the only light came from the one window that wasn’t boarded up and didn’t face towards the mountains. They talked between them; the conversation flowed fluidly around the room with even the occasional laughter. They found they all had a lot in common. They were of a similar age, had the same tastes in music and had all decided to follow professional career paths. Stipe as a doctor, Toni as a compute
r engineer, and Marta was going into the arts. They could have been cherries on the same tree if the war hadn’t shaken their branches. They talked for a couple of hours. The time passed effortlessly. Near tragedy had brought them together, and their chance union was developing into friendship. As the conversation developed each became aware that the other was being reticent about their past. Marta asked the question that was to start the chain reaction that would link them together inextricably.
“What made you come to Sarajevo Stipe?” Stipe fell silent. He didn’t know what to say. He wanted desperately to tell someone of the pain that was ripping through his soul, to release his anger at the outrage that had killed his family. Suddenly he found himself talking, as he stared forward into the empty fireplace seeing only images of the last days he spent in Srebrenica, only the pictures were words that he was sharing with his companions. He told of his black market activities, how they had fled when the Serb army came and how in the killing fields outside Konjevic, his father had told him to run just before he died. And he had run, run for days, eating wild fruits to survive heading he didn’t know where, until he saw a sign that said Sarajevo fifty kilometres and he had decided to head there and lose himself in the city. And that was how he was wandering the streets when he saw a line of people and guessed they were waiting for food and had joined the queue. He looked up from the fireplace. “That is how by chance I came across you two. The only people I know in Sarajevo.” Marta looked at Toni and they both looked at Stipe. He had tears in his eyes. He wiped them away feeling better for having started the purging process. “What about you guys. Have you a story to tell?”
Marta looked down at her dress and felt a compelling need to talk about her experiences, only the pain was too great and the shame irrevocable. No, I’m lucky. I’ve no bad stories to tell. Stipe noticed her unease and didn’t believe her. It was quiet for a minute as they absorbed what had been spoken. Toni thought long and hard before he chose to reveal his experiences, and his newly formed plan that involved all of them.
“Can I tell you of my experience now? It’s not has harrowing as what you have been through, though every bit as life changing if we want it to be.” Marta and Stipe looked at him slightly puzzled. “Go on then Toni, we’re friends now,” said Marta.
“I’m a computer freak. Some people might even say a bit of a nerd, but I love what I love and I never hurt anybody. That is until this damn war came along and I was forced to take up arms against people I had long called friends. I watched as my town was torn apart by blind, nationalistic pride, whipped up by those monsters in Montenegro. All I wanted to do was live peacefully and do my own thing. We all did. I had dreams of maybe going to America one day. There are great opportunities there for web-page designers and computer programming specialists like me. They got some of the fastest Internet connections in the world. With the right processors you can download stuff in seconds not hours. That’s pure juice for me. But no. I have to start shooting at people and nearly getting killed myself. I learned while I was away with my unit that both my parents were killed when troops led by Nasir Oric attacked our hometown. A mortar shell landed squarely in their lap. They probably never felt a thing. Then my sergeant selects me, and three others, to go back to an area that we found clear the previous day. It felt clandestine and I think that we were going without the knowledge of our superiors. But who am I to argue. Sergeant Zoran is a mean bastard and I wasn’t going against him. We get to this big house. The occupants are decaying where we left them. And this is the interesting bit my two, new friends. When I started to talk I said this could be life changing for us. What we found in there, and sergeant Zoran had guessed might be there all along, was a safe with a two key lock.” Toni took the keys out of his pocket and placed them on the floor in the middle of the group. “These two keys. And inside enough money and diamonds for the three of us to get out of this god-forsaken country and go anywhere we like and start a new life. I came here looking for my brother, so together we could collect the loot and cross over into Austria. I found out the other day that a sniper had killed him only a few days ago. Now I’m asking you two. The only people I know whom I think I can trust. Do you two want to join with me to go back for the money and try and make it to the Austrian border and freedom from this killing?”
They both looked at him thoughtfully. He had captured their attention. Marta picked up the keys and scrutinized them. Stipe spoke first.
“What happened to the rest of your unit?”
“Hmm, Zoran, that double crossing sergeant, sent me out to collect our jeep. I heard gunshots and thought someone had been hiding and had chose their moment to reveal themselves. I go back into the house, sensing something is wrong. When I see Zoran standing over the body of one of our men, and him with the only gun in his hand, I knew that he had killed them. He tried to shoot me, but I was faster and lucky, that’s all. I replaced all the stuff back in the safe and came here, leaving Zoran for dead. Everything that is except this.” Toni took the diamond out of his pocket and handed it to Stipe. “It’s the genuine article alright, Zoran said so, and apparently he knew about these things.”
Stipe held the stone up to the light. It certainly had the glint of authenticity about it. He passed it to Marta who did the same. “Where is this place that the diamonds and money are hidden in?”
“It’s about an hour and a half drive away. My jeep is outside the city, hidden. It ran out of fuel ten kilometres from here. I managed to pull it off of the road and into some bushes before it stalled completely. If we can get some fuel here and sneak out of the city together, in two days from now we could be crossing the Austrian border rich and safe.” Stipe looked at Marta. He could see in her eyes that she was thinking the same as him. It was a very tempting proposition.
“This house. Is it in Serb held territory?” asked Marta.
“It is, but I am a Serb soldier and in the jeep is a uniform I had brought for my brother that will fit Stipe. With luck we can move around undetected. We can hide you in the back until we get to the house and you can change into a uniform there until we all can discard them when we get out of the Serb controlled area. What do you say?” Stipe had no hesitation.
“I’m game for it. I have got nothing here for me now. If I stay here there’s a good chance I will be killed anyway from a mortar or a sniper. I might as well risk death with a chance of gaining something out of it. Count me in.”
“What about you Marta?” asked Toni. Marta for a moment was unsure and stalled her answer. She would have to leave her aunt and uncle whom she had started to draw near to. But she couldn’t live forever with them. One day she knew she would have to leave and she was only an added strain on their sparse food supply, though her uncle would never admit that to her. Then she felt apprehensive about putting herself at risk knowing what the Serb soldiers were doing to Muslim women, she would put her gun to her own head rather than be raped again, and she wasn’t ready to die yet despite everything. But the lure of all that money and a chance to wake up in the morning and know that no one was trying to kill you was too much for Marta to be able to refuse. She made her decision with one condition.
“If I go along I want us to make a pact together.”
“What is it?” asked Toni.
“We have all lost our families, everyone of us. You can’t get by with just money alone. We make a bond, a solemn promise between us that we will look out for each other as if we are brothers. We must become like a family together, that’s the only way we can survive. Otherwise, if we just go together and pursue the money, each of us only worried about ourselves, then we will fail. We need something to tie us all together. Do we agree?” Stipe nodded his approval. Her words made sense. Toni said with a smile,
“I’ve never had a sister before. I like that idea.”
“Wait here then.” Marta rose and left the room and went into her cousin’s bedroom where she had been sleeping while he was away. She opened a draw where Amra had said she could put h
er things and took out a bag that belonged to her cousin that contained four vials of insulin and two hypodermic needles. Marta took one of the needles and placed the bag back in the draw and returned to the lounge. She offered the needle to Stipe. “Take this and draw a little blood from each of us. When it’s mixed I want you to inject us all with an equal amount then we will truly have each others blood flowing through us and our pact will be real.” It was a symbolic gesture. Toni rolled up his sleeve and offered his arm. So did Marta and Stipe. After the injections they held hands and vowed their allegiance to each other. A new brotherhood had been formed.
When they let go of each other’s hands Stipe remembered something and reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. He was excited when he spoke, “You said Toni that there is a bag full of diamonds at the house. The Dutch guy I told you about, who I traded food with, gave me the address of his father in Amsterdam. He is a jeweller and Amsterdam is the diamond centre of the world. We should go and look him up. He should get us a good price for the stones.”
“We have to get them first brother.” Stipe smiled at Marta. “We will sister, and I think we ought to leave tomorrow.”
“ Me too,” said Toni. Then they talked and planned the details for the rest of the night.
In the morning they woke early. Marta had fixed it with Amra for Toni and Stipe to stay the night. She’d readily agreed. Damir arrived back from the hospital late, driven by his friend Rizo. They had stitched his arm and bandaged the wound and told him not to lift anything heavy until it had healed. Marta decided to be blunt and forthright and tell her uncle that she was leaving today. She heard him coming down the stairs and decided to make him a hot drink first. When she told him the news he was not happy, saying it was a foolish thing to be chasing around the countryside risking death for money they probably would never live to spend. After Marta pointed out to him that she was nearly killed yesterday while helping him across the road and was in as much danger here if she stayed or left with the others, Damir relented and gave her his blessing. Then he told them where they could get petrol from, but it was scarce and expensive. A litre of diesel was fetching nearly six deutschmarks.
