The Devil Couldn't Break Me

by Laura Aslan

  “It’s cold,” one man said.

  He pointed to his wife who was carrying a small child in her arms.

  “My daughter is only six weeks old, she needs to go home.”

  A soldier stepped forward and head butted him on the bridge of the nose. There was a loud ‘pop’ and the man collapsed in a heap onto the ground. A few of the women screamed out but the man said nothing more.

  The soldier took a step backwards.

  “I said no talking.”

  The man was helped to his feet as his wife offered him a handkerchief to stem the flow of blood and soon afterwards we were on the march.

  There were around a thousand villagers and we were tightly packed into a group overseen by about one hundred and fifty soldiers with rifles and machine guns. I clung to my mother as Agi walked alongside us. It was a slow progress as we were tightly packed together and yet the soldiers kept shouting at us telling us to hurry. One man shouted that he couldn’t walk any faster and he was knocked to the ground with a rifle butt in his back. It was terrifying and I tried not to think of what was waiting for us when we got to wherever it was they were taking us. The fact that they were taking the entire village made me fear the worst. It was clear they didn’t want any witnesses to whatever it was they were going to do. The names of the massacres at Gospic and Dalj and Vukovar burrowed into my brain even though I tried my hardest to blot out the images I’d seen from the TV reports.

  We walked uphill and the tightness in my calf muscles was unbearable and of course it was getting colder as we climbed ever higher. I became aware of a commotion up ahead and I recognised a familiar voice. It was my Uncle Demir who stood with my Auntie Naxhia and her little boy, my cousin Amir. It appeared Uncle Demir was refusing to move and when we saw him he had blood pouring from the corner of his eye where one of the soldiers had clearly hit him.

  “I am waiting for my brother.”

  He was pleading to the soldier.

  “Is that not too much to ask?”

  The soldier was urging him forward but at that moment he spotted us.

  “There he is, there he is,” he shouted, “I will move now, don’t worry I will move now.”

  This seemed to placate the soldier and as my father and Uncle Demir embraced briefly, we were on the move again. I was still holding onto my mother for dear life but homed in on my father and his brother’s whispers. They were both strangely calm, unlike me, and my heart was beating so loud I was convinced the soldiers could hear it.

  “What do you think is happening?” my father said.

  “I fear the worst.” Uncle Demir said. “It’s not looking good brother.”

  “Shut up you mother fuckers,” one of the soldiers bellowed and it was all quiet again.

  I stared at the soldier who had yelled. His face was covered from the mouth down. His hair was unkempt and he was unshaven with a pock marked face. Not the smart, well groomed, normal looking military type. Father had said that half the Serbian army were made up from released prisoners and mercenaries, battle hardened vicious men, desensitised and lacking compassion.

  We were walking up the main road leading through the mountains to Kosovo. The road was narrowing as it wound its way in between two mountains and I recalled picnicking there in the summertime. The grass was always greener and softer than the grass in the village and there was a waterfall too, a waterfall we’d play in and stand under until we were numb with the cold. It was an altogether different scene to the memories I had of this beautiful place. Now it was dark and grey and eerie and a few flakes of snow began to fall. The soldiers ordered us to stop and I was shaken from my pleasant thoughts. I could sense a small panic building as once again I became aware of a conversation between my father and his brother.

  “Shush brother,” Demir said, “you are the clever one, a doctor, but when it comes to trading and business deals I am streets ahead of you. Let me do what I must do.”

  My father was begging my Uncle Axhi to stay with us as was Auntie Naxhia but he was having none of it. Uncle Demir had singled out one of the soldiers and had walked straight up to him. I remember bursting into tears thinking I’d never see my uncle again and yet I listened carefully to the conversation that I could clearly make out from the stunned and silent crowd. My father had leaned against a tree and was shaking his head, tears running down his face.

  “You, boss man, what’s the deal here?” Uncle Axhi said.

  The man was holding a walkie-talkie and I think that’s why Uncle Demir had singled him out.

  “There’s no deal you stupid bastard, now get out of my face before I stick a knife in you.”

  Quick as a flash Uncle Demir responded.

  “Of course there’s a deal, now what is it because whatever it is I can give you more.”

  The man took a step forward and I feared the worst as I closed my eyes tight.

  “The deal is we kill you all,” he said. “Call it what you like, a massacre, ethnic-cleansing, whatever, you are all going to die. That’s the fucking deal.”

  The man hadn’t attempted to lower his voice and every word was perfectly audible in the still night air. People started to panic at this point and there were whispers of bravado amongst the young men and adults but most of the people were crying, frozen in fear as they felt their worst nightmares were about to come true. The walkie-talkie burst into life and in plain Serbian the words that filtered through the airwaves chilled me to the bone.

  “Do it. Do it now.”

  It was so loud. I think most people heard it and the panic rose to a new level as the man Uncle Demir was talking to pulled his rifle from his shoulder.

  “Wait!” Uncle Demir said. “If that’s your boss tell him we have a deal. I’ll pay you double whatever it is you’re being paid. I have enough money to buy you all off.”

  The other soldiers were herding us like sheep, pushing us together in lines, pointing their guns at us and hitting or kicking anyone who failed to move quick enough. It appeared the boss soldier wasn’t listening but Uncle Demir wasn’t giving up.

  “They’ll hunt you down and you’ll be tried as war criminals. NATO never gives up and they’ll get you one day.”

  The boss soldier was strangely curious now and it seemed Uncle Demir had no intention of quitting.

  “They’re still hunting Nazis to this day, is that what you want? Take my money and live in peace for the rest of your lives.”

  Uncle Axhi spoke at a ferocious rate talking about trials and executions at a place called Nuremburg.

  “You’ve seen the trials on TV, the old black and white footage of the men in the dock.”

  “Shut the fuck up big mouth.”

  I fully expected the sound of a shot because Uncle Axhi wasn’t slowing down but the soldier seemed to hesitate for a moment. And then he stared at my uncle and held up a hand in front of his face. My uncle stopped speaking and the soldier slung his rifle back onto his shoulder and reached for his walkie-talkie. To everyone’s amazement he relayed Uncle Demir’s request to the man on the other end and he appeared to listen. There followed several minutes of intense negotiations and then my uncle walked over to us and said he was leaving. He said they had a deal and he was going home to give them everything he had. I thought he was crazy. If these men were mercenaries and ex-prisoners then they would take whatever he had and still kill him. That’s what happened in every American gangster movie I’d ever watched.

  “I’m going with you Demir,” my mother announced.

  He was shaking his head, the soldiers were shaking their heads but Nani was having none of it. I didn’t want her to leave me and Agi and Auntie Naxhia didn’t want her to go either, but she insisted and in the end everyone gave in... even the soldiers. Nani had the most determined streak in her and father often said she would get anything she wanted if she put her m
ind to it. Nani and Uncle Demir climbed aboard a vehicle with three or four soldiers and it disappeared into the darkness.

  I buried myself into my father’s coat and cried.

  “Hush my child,” he said. “it might just work. Don’t you know your Uncle Demir is one of the richest farmers in the Balkans?”

  “He is?”

  “Yes.”

  My father nodded.

  I had never been so thirsty in my life and yet it didn’t make sense because it was cold, not hot and I had drank plenty of water with my evening meal. Father said it was the fear, the adrenalin. I looked at my watch. Uncle Demir and my mother had been gone for forty minutes now and I convinced myself we would never see them again. People were sitting on the ground, some looked resigned to their fate and Amir clung to my auntie as he shivered in the cold air. Even my father had become disillusioned, muttering under his breath that his brother should have stayed with his family and at least we would have all died together. That wasn’t like Agi and I scolded him. He looked at me, smiled and then gently stroked my face.

  I was cold and the thirst bothered me, I still didn’t understand it. I looked up into the canopy of the forest, the night stars peeked through the light cloud cover and everything looked so beautiful. I thought it was a nice place to die.

  An hour had passed and as each minute ticked by I sensed it had been a brave but hopeless cause that Uncle Demir had pursued. Suddenly I was startled by a scream and then another and was aware of people stirring and some starting to stand. I looked at Auntie Naxhia who had started to cry again and to my horror I noticed that the soldiers were walking towards us.

  If it was possible, the mass huddle grew ever tighter as everyone pushed together trying to put distance between themselves and the soldier’s guns. The boss soldier with the walkie-talkie moved to the front and spoke, or rather barked out an order.

  “You will wait here twenty minutes. If you move in that twenty minutes you will be shot.”

  He told us he would position soldiers in the forest and down the road to Veliki Trnovac and anyone who disobeyed his instructions would be killed. Within a minute every single soldier had disappeared leaving us cold, tired and confused. No one could understand what was happening, it didn’t make any sense.

  “They will bomb us from the air,” one man said. “They bombed a market that way and killed hundreds.”

  But no, that didn’t make sense I thought. If they wanted to kill us then they would have to kill us all so that no one could point the finger of blame. Uncle Demir had been right, they never stopped hunting war criminals and if they tried to bomb us then everyone would scatter immediately and many people would escape the carnage no matter how accurate the bombs were.

  I think we stayed there for about ten minutes and then the hysteria rose to panic level. The wind played tricks on us and I was convinced I heard the drone of aircraft even though they never came. So slowly but surely we made our way back down the mountain... over one thousand men, women and children from the town of Veliki Trnovac, one thousand men, women and children from babes in arms to men and women in their nineties who for nearly two hours were convinced they were about to be massacred at any minute by a Serb Army Death Squad. I trembled with fear as I took each step, scanning the trees for the soldiers in hiding, waiting for the sound of the crack of a rifle, searing pain and then nothingness.

  But there was no one in the small copses, no soldiers hiding behind bends or crouching behind garden walls. They had gone.

  I knew by the time we had reached Uncle Demir’s house that miraculously the soldiers had somehow kept their word. We found my uncle and my mother sitting on the garden wall. They had their head in their hands and were clearly crying. As we shouted over to them they looked up in astonishment and then the tears of pain were replaced with tears of joy and they were smiling and running towards us.

  My mother was crying like a baby as she held me.

  “We thought you were dead ciki, we thought you were dead,” she repeated over and over again.

  We found out that Nani and my uncle had been sitting on that wall for over thirty minutes and just like our neighbours at the top of the mountain, as each minute ticked by they had been convinced that the soldiers had reneged on the deal.

  We watched the relieved town folk of Veliki Trnovac troop by us for several minutes, their faces painted a mixture of emotions. Yes there were faces still lined with fear and uncertainty but on the whole they were visibly relieved that the town of Veliki Trnovac hadn’t become another statistic in this ridiculous war. After the last family had passed us by we turned and walked towards Uncle Demir’s house where he promised us a warm fire and some hot drinks.

  Sitting around the big wooden dining table Uncle Demir relayed everything that had happened.

  “I sensed we would all be killed anyway but it was still worth a chance. I knew how much money I had and I knew it would impress the greedy bastards.”

  It was the first time I had heard Uncle Demir swear. No one seemed too troubled, not even my father who normally frowned on anyone who swore, especially girls.

  He continued.

  “I had millions of dinar locked in safes in the house and we started there. I emptied everything out but sensed it wasn’t quite enough so I started digging up the gold in the garden.”

  “You have gold in the garden Uncle Axhi?” I asked.

  He looked at me and smiled.

  “Had, Laura... I had gold in the garden.”

  “What did I tell you? He is the richest farmer in the Balkans,” my father said.

  “Correction brother,” my uncle said, “I was the richest farmer in the Balkans.”

  He paused and took a drink from a steaming hot coffee cup.

  “All the while I talked to them about war criminals and how there would be nowhere to hide and that the money I was about to give them would set each individual up for life, so why not enjoy it living in peace without looking over your shoulder every five minutes.”

  My mother interjected. She said she’d never seen so much money and gold in her life.

  “I sensed I was getting through to some of the bastards and the more gold I pulled out of the ground the more of them came over to my way of thinking. Soon they were arguing amongst themselves, some were for killing us but most listened to reason.”

  Uncle Demir looked at my father.

  “I told you I was the one when it came to talking, didn’t I brother?”

  My father grinned. It was so nice to see his smile again.

  “You did Demir... you did. Perhaps one day they will write a book about you. It would be entitled Veliki Trnovac, the massacre that never was.”

  Uncle Demir took more coffee on board and continued.

  “One of the soldiers was on his walkie-talkie almost constantly and he was giving the boss man details of exactly how much there was. There came a point when they all knew just how much they would be getting, and yes, they realised just what it would buy after the war.”

  Uncle Demir said every soldier would be able to buy a small farm with a house and the boss man would be rich beyond his wildest dreams.

  We talked long into the night and watched as the sun came up over the Beli Breg mountains. It was then time to go home. As we stood in the doorway my uncle and my father embraced and my father started to weep.

  “What is it brother?” Uncle Demir said. “We are alive and healthy, you should be happy not crying like a schoolgirl.”

  “But you have lost everything Demir, you have given it all away.”

  “And it was worth it,” he said, “for I have saved the whole village and as you say they will write a book about me and I will be as famous as Mr Schindler in Schindler’s List when they make my movie and who knows I might even play the starring role.”

  It was a
much-needed injection of humour and we all laughed, even my father.

  “I have my house and my farm and I still have my dear family and my health. I want for nothing more.”

  Father dried his tears and wrapped his arms around Nani and me as we walked out into the cold and started to make our way to the garden gate. As we were half way down the garden path my uncle called out.

  “Hey brother.”

  We turned around.

  “You don’t think I gave the silly bastards all of my gold do you?”

  My father stuttered.

  “Yes... I... I thought-”

  Uncle Axhi was laughing.

  “If you believe that my brother, then you are as stupid as those soldiers.”

  Death of a Hero

  The rest of the day was a blur and although we talked a little about the events of the previous evening, most of the day was spent in silence with my father deep in thought, sitting at the kitchen table smoking and drinking copious amounts of Turkish tea. Several times he buried his head in his hands and let out a deep sigh and then looked at me with a forlorn look in his eyes. I couldn’t remember ever seeing that look before.

  “What is it Agi?” I asked on numerous occasions, but he’d refuse to answer me, shaking his head and returning his face to his hands.

  In the end I stopped asking.

  Although I was physically exhausted, that evening sleep was hard to come by and when the sun peeked through the open curtains the following morning I felt as if I hadn’t gone to bed. I almost crawled out from under the duvet and I so wanted to stay there but at the same time I had an urge to get dressed and go out for a walk. I needed fresh air, I needed to walk through the grass and see the mountain again, I wanted to feel the wind and somehow realise that I was truly alive and not part of a dream.

  My parents were sitting at the kitchen table and offered me some breakfast and tea but I refused. When I told them I was going out for a walk they looked worried but nevertheless didn’t stand in my way.