Pretty Birds

by Scott Simon

  Amela dropped her forehead against her and Jackie’s entwined hands and fingers.

  “We can bring you out through this tunnel,” said Jackie, just above the hiss of the light. “It’s eight hundred yards long, and you’ll have to crawl for every inch of it—it’s not even four feet high. But we can bring you out, put you on a truck, and get you near Bihac.”

  Bihac, Amela remembered. Where Irena’s brother and other Bosnians were trying to get to from London, Chicago, Manchester, Cleveland, Detroit, and Toronto.

  “A girl as good as you,” said Jackie softly into her shoulder, “can do a lot of damage—a lot of good—in a place like that.”

  THEY STOOD IN the lantern light just in front of the tunnel. Amela had her pack over her left shoulder, puffy with a spare set of blue jeans, socks, panties, and a black T-shirt, three packs of tampons, a box of bullets, a toothbrush, and a small, round bar of French carnation-scented soap that Jackie said Jacobo had sent along personally. Zoran settled a rifle over the shoulder of her right arm.

  Jackie took hold of Amela’s right shoulder and left a light kiss on her neck, just above the leather gun strap. “Amie,” she said softly. “I promise you, Amie, at the end there is a sign that would make you and your friend smile.”

  Two soldiers lifted her by the arms, like a child being swung between her parents, into the top hole of the tunnel.

  AMELA BLINKED. HER first impression was that the underworld blazed with light. Every few feet a small oil fire flickered and flared from inside a tin can. The throttled smoke left black ghosts scorched on the top of the tunnel. The smoldering oil singed Amela’s nostrils.

  She began to crawl. Water covered her feet and knees, her wrists and hands. After about a hundred yards, the tunnel deepened inexplicably—one of the diggers must have hit an electric cable, a pipe, or a pocket of water—and when Amela unsuspectingly crawled forward she lurched into a swell of cold brown water that rose over her elbows and splashed against her chin. It tasted of rust and worms. Occasionally, a shell crashed overhead and shook the tunnel. The walls shivered and the earth bled more water over the tunnel floor.

  She crawled into the wall at the end. Fresh red bricks and a large, silvery electric bulb, blaring light. A couple of spikes of torchlight played over her eyes and chin.

  “Amie?” A young man’s voice called out.

  “I am. I’m here,” Amela called up into the lights.

  “Reach for the sky, darling, and we’ll bring you up.”

  Four arms reached down and waggled like spider’s legs. She handed up her rifle. Then the pack on her back, sodden with water and heavy as a bag of nails. Amela finally held up her own arms and was hoisted up into a dark room by two curly-haired men wearing blue jeans and red T-shirts under unzipped light black jackets. One man’s shirt said MANCHESTER UNITED, the other CHICAGO BULLS.

  “Nice shirt, Amie,” said one. “Vlade, he is the greatest. You are an athlete, too, Amie?”

  “I was.”

  “Slithering through that tunnel is not for grandmas,” he said. “You are still a great player.”

  “We have been waiting for you,” said the other man. “You do not need two more made-up names to remember for people you will never see again. We will walk with you up into the mountains tonight, and meet a truck that will take you—wherever.”

  When Amela could look around, she saw that she had climbed up into a small room of a private home. The men led her into the next room, where three men were sprawled on a brown sofa. A television had been wired into a car battery, and they were watching a football match between Milan AC and Ajax Amsterdam. One of Amela’s escorts shined his light on an old woman with a black scarf folded over her head. She was sitting on a stool, and holding out a glass of water.

  “Hey, Amie, this is Grandma Sida,” he explained. “It is her home. She is the grandmother here. She greets everyone, and goes back to her television.”

  Amela nodded and wordlessly took the glass from Grandma Sida’s hand. She took one gulp, then another, a deeper swallow. She tasted mud in her mouth, then gulped twice more to try to wash away the taste of the tunnel. She handed the glass back to the old woman and leaned down to kiss the back of her hand.

  Amela and the men walked out of the house and into a field. The runway lights had been turned out hours ago, before starlight lifted up the overgrown green and yellow grasses that rustled lightly, like soft, sleeping breaths.

  “Hey, Amie,” said one of her companions. “Jackie said to show you this.”

  He shined a light onto a small white sign that had been nailed on a stick and planted in Grandma Sida’s backyard. The sign read:

  PARIS 3,765 KM

  Amela laughed out loud for the first time, her first girlish giggle since Irena had last made her laugh.

  “Jackie said she wanted to make you laugh,” said the man with the light. He began to shake with laughter himself, so that the sign seemed to blink off and on.

  “Hey, Amie. Are you going to Paris? Take me with you.”

  Amela looked across the swells of grass and into the stony blue shoulders of Mount Igman. She would walk over the fields and the hills to the other side of the mountain, and find the ride that would take her to Bihac, and the place in which, she was suddenly quite certain, she was going to give her life.

  You may keep Sarajevo. You have earned it.

  —SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, PRESIDENT OF SERBIA,

  TO ALIJA IZETBEGOVIC, PRESIDENT OF BOSNIA,

  AT THE 1995 TALKS IN DAYTON, OHIO, THAT DIVIDED BOSNIA.

  Milosevic is now on trial for war crimes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful to so many who offered their counsel, cautions, and recollections:

  Dr. Wesley Bayles of the Georgetown Veterinary Hospital; Peter Breslow of NPR News; the staff of the Periodical Research Centre of the British Museum; Hamo Cimic of Sarajevo; Chief Terrance W. Gainer of the U.S. Capitol Police; Tom Gjelten of NPR News; Laura Hillenbrand; the staff of the photo archives of London’s Imperial War Museum; Lika Job; Avi Kotkowsky of El Paso, Texas; the Lincoln Park Zoo; Elvis Mitchell; Julia Mitric, now of Sacramento; Lawrence K. Morgan of the U.S. Capitol Police; Dr. Lee Morgan of the Georgetown Veterinary Hospital; Jim Naydar; Dika Redzic of Sarajevo; Edouard Richard (my father-in-law); Dr. Pam Schraeger of the Friendship Hospital for Animals; Matthew Scully; Jerry Smith of the U.S. Capitol Police; Dr. Stanley Tempchin; Alphonse Vinh of NPR; Dr. Ronald Warren of Massachusetts General Hospital; Rabbi Daniel Zemel of Temple Micah; and Fahrudin Zilkic, who will one day write his own book about the years he devoted to defending his remarkable city.

  Any mistakes are mine alone.

  Lily Linton made it possible for much of this volume to be written under the gaze of Picasso’s goat. This is the third book I have produced under the watchful goad of Kee Malesky, who could improve the text on a cereal box.

  I have tried to contain this story within the timeline and confines of real-life events. But this is a novel, not a history or journalism. I have invented a few streets and buildings. I have also permitted myself to put words in the mouths of a few real personages, including Radovan Karadzic and Osama Bin Laden. However, their remarks are based on statements they made before much of the world paid notice.

  Suada Kapic presides over a remarkable enterprise in Sarajevo called FAMA, which works to preserve the history of the longest siege of the twentieth century and keep those lessons vital. In a world beset by urgent causes, I hope that at least some readers might be moved to offer FAMA support to continue its work.

  My time as a reporter in Sarajevo was spent in partnership with my longtime recording engineer and friend Manoli Wetherell. Sarajevo deepened our friendship. No doubt many of the feelings that I brought to this book began in her durable heart.

  The Millic and Tedic families of Sarajevo took us into their homes and hearts in 1993 and 1994. This book, whatever else it might be, is a small repayment for their kindness and courage.

  I ta
lked over many of the themes in this story in the spring of 2003 with my friend Elizabeth Neufer of the Boston Globe, on a long, daunting ride from Amman to Baghdad. Elizabeth did not make it home. The human-rights reporting she helped to advance lives on in her influence as a journalist and friend to so many.

  I owe Jonathan Lazear abiding thanks for believing in this book and bringing it to the best publisher in America, Dan Menaker at Random House. Stephanie Higgs put extraordinary work and care into the manuscript.

  Many of the characters in this story voice contempt for the role of the United Nations in Bosnia. I share that disdain. But I do not forget (and Sarajevans dont) that 166 French, British, Canadian, and other U.N. soldiers lost their lives in Bosnia between 1992 and 1996. Their sacrifice is also part of Sarajevos legacy.

  I had intended that the thanks I owe my wife, Caroline Richard Simon, be embodied in the books dedication (we had missed meeting in 1993—its a long story—because I was in Sarajevo). But Caroline came to feel so deeply about the city and its people that she insisted the dedication be to them—a request that bears out her brilliant sensitivity in all things. Caroline named almost every character in this story. I cannot put an adequate name on the love I hold for her.

  We pray that our new daughter, Elise Sylvie Simon, will grow up in a world swept clean of the menace that destroyed so many in Bosnia. But we would feel blessed to have a child who faces up to his or her human responsibilities with the courage and poise of Sarajevans.

  The city is smaller and grimmer today. The wounds of war are raw. But, despite its losses, Sarajevo remains an outpost of diversity, civility, culture, and even joy. Its struggle was costly, valuable, brave, and just.

  SSS

  London

  October 2004

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SCOTT SIMON is the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. He has covered ten wars, from El Salvador to Iraq, and has won every major award in broadcasting, including the Peabody and the Emmy. He has hosted many public television programs, and is a frequent essayist for newspapers and television. His memoir, Home and Away, rose to the top of the Los Angeles Times nonfiction bestseller list. His next book, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, was named a Barnes & Noble Sports Book of the Year. He lives with his wife, Caroline, and their daughter, Elise.

  ALSO BY SCOTT SIMON

  Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan

  Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2005 by Scott Simon

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and colophon are registered

  trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Simon, Scott.

  Pretty birds : a novel / Scott Simon.

  p. cm.

  1. Sarajevo (Bosnia and Hercegovina)—Fiction. 2. Yugoslav War, 1991–1995—Fiction. 3. Women soldiers—Fiction. 4. Teenage girls—Fiction. 5. Muslim girls—Fiction. 6. Snipers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.I5626P74 2005

  813′.6—dc22 2004061432

  Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

  Title page image by Marcie Jan Bronstein/nonstøck

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-463-0

  v3.0