Robert said: “Well this is it. Whatever you do, don’t turn right. That’s where the Serbs are.”
The two UN soldiers and I all looked to the right. The flats on our flank were toy-town red, mauve and blue; through their dustings of snow, the great grey splash marks of shrapnel looked the more obscene, as though someone had burnt a child. One building towered over the rest, or half of it did; the other half had been peeled off and lay dangling above the remains of a warehouse below. Behind them, the mountains reared up to the clouds.
It was as if some aesthete, with a grudge against modern architecture, had set about achieving his fantasy with a tank. To either side was a row of greyish flats, some warehouses, office blocks, and garages; the stuff you see in any modern town. Except the roofs gaped, girders poked up to the grey clouds, walls ended in craters of broken concrete, festooned with the black trails of downed power cables. And the grey spring snow leeched the colour from it all.
“Is this Sniper Alley?” I asked. But Robert said, “No, it’s the airport road. The frontline’s gone behind that little hill. But I’d still drive fast.”
“You know this place?” said the other clone, the driver.
“A bit,” Robert said.
“Could you give us the tour?”
But Robert didn’t speak, he just sat and stared out of the window, till I said: “What’s that?” And waved towards the toy-town flats to our right.
“That’s Dobrinje,” he muttered. We waited, then he added, “It was completely cut off for the first part of the war.” As he spoke, it was as though his engine had warmed up. “The phones still worked then, so every day I used to ring this woman up who lived there. Now, it’s linked up by that little road, but it’s still basically a peninsula, pointing into the Serbs’ territory. You can get shot on every side. Half of it is actually held by the Serbs. The woman I used to speak to said that she could hear the Serb soldiers talking through the wall of her apartment.” He stopped. Then he said: “I was going to try and see how she was for my piece this week, but I suppose we don’t have time.”
“How long have you spent here?” asked the blond twin again.
When Robert spoke again his voice had lost its colour: “Before the war, this was my favourite town in Yugoslavia.”
Friends who covered Grozny or “shock and awe” in Baghdad said that in comparison Sarajevo was nothing – and it’s true, I suppose. The UN no-fly zone was imposed quite early on in the war, so the Serbs did very little aerial bombardment. Shelling makes a much smaller mess. But it still looked pretty bad. I’d seen it on the news before, but it’s not the same. What makes it so macabre is the intent. Earthquakes look worse, but the thing about an earthquake is that nobody did it on purpose to someone else.
I tried to keep it out of my face but Robert suddenly said: “Of course, you’ve never seen this before.”
I said: “No.” I was about to say that I’d seen other things. But then I stopped. The other things didn’t seem the same.
Robert didn’t say much for the rest of the trip. Just, at one point, when we passed some graffiti that said: “Welcome to Hell.” He said, “This is where Sniper Alley starts. The frontline runs right beside us here.” And we all turned to look to the right again.
I never asked you what Sniper Alley was really called. It must have had some self-important name – “Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism” – something like that; big and leading to a better future. It was always just Sniper Alley to me.
The buildings to either side had changed. Against the backdrop of the mountains rose cement stacks of flats; every now and then, the stucco grace of Austria-Hungary. All of them, ripped by the war: a pistachio plaster column, its capital smashed into a deep grey scar; blackened roof beams poking up through the snow like spider’s legs; and all with their windows boarded with planks.
“That’s Grbavica,” Robert suddenly said, pointing to our right. “Over the river. That’s where the Serbs are. Those white blocks of flats. Just across the bridge.”
Only Robert could tell there was a river in the way, because he was seeing where it was before the war. There must have been a bridge, but a huge lorry, slewed across the gap between the buildings, blocked the view. Its tyres were as flat as tyres in a cartoon. Snow had drifted on the earth piled up round its wheels and on the mines lying fatly to either side. Between the lorry and the buildings to right and left, mattresses were stacked, a row of gym lockers stood, punched through with holes and, strung across from either side, blankets were draped over ropes. They were riddled with bullet holes, and their edges trailed down into the razor wire and mines. “That’s the Bridge of Brotherhood and Unity,” said Robert. I was too scared then to laugh at the inappropriateness of the name.
The flats beyond looked just like the flats here: the same concrete layers of people, the same blackened shell-holes. They were so close, we’d have seen someone staring out of a window smile, except that all the windows, like the ones on our side, were boarded up.
The next junction was exactly the same: the makeshift barricades, the tattered blankets blocking out the line of sight. It was all very different from the war I had seen so far: the blackened villages, burnt-out farms and half-mad skeletons in camps; refugees in their hundreds lying head to toe in school gyms, places people fled from and to. Not places where people were trapped and had to live.
Then I heard Robert say: “We’re here.”
I gawped. I couldn’t believe I was finally here. It was like my first day at Oxford, when it seemed utterly unreal that I finally belonged in this honey-coloured quad. Just like Oxford, it was all new to me, but familiar, as I had seen every view in the papers or on TV, except in real life it was worse. The road had opened up into one of those seventies municipal spaces. There was a piazza, with a lifeless fountain whose parapet was traced with strange score marks in the snow. Behind it, to our left, tower blocks, their windows boarded up, and the same pale-ringed blackened holes smashed into their sides; opposite them, over Sniper Alley, the wreck of the Bosnian Parliament, fifteen storeys or so of charred cement. On the near side of the fountain square was a long green building, or at least its shell, all blackened stucco and burnt-out roof. It was a while before I discovered that the Serbs couldn’t be blamed for that – it had been used as an ammunition factory, and suffered an industrial accident early in the war.
Bang in the middle was an egg-yolk-yellow lump, like a multi-storey child’s toy. It looked as if it had been dropped by a spaceship into the centre of town, but no-one who’d watched the news for the last year would have needed to read the words “Holiday Inn” looped along one side.
The top half was just a black mass of holes: the hole to hotel ratio weighted heavily towards holes. Apart from the shrapnel scars and the bullet holes, the lower storeys were relatively unscathed, except the restaurant at the front looked as if it had been attacked by a tank.
Beyond the hotel stretched away several hundred yards of empty snow, ending at a pair of the tower blocks on the other side; the UNIS towers, I later learned, the twin glass skyscrapers just beyond the hotel, which were burnt out so spectacularly in the early days of the war that I think the photograph made the cover of Time. From their windows, the remains of slatted vertical blinds flailed in the wind, like the fingers of the blind reaching out for help; and from everywhere the dirty snow leeched the last remnants of life.
The combat twins were staring at the hotel too. “I’m glad I’m not sleeping in that,” said the dark one.
“How do you get in and out?” asked the blond. “There’s no cover.”
I said: “It’s where everybody stays.”
At the same time Robert said: “There isn’t anywhere else anymore.”
The snipers’ bullets cracked across the grass, as we screeched round to the back of the hotel. We’d hardly had time to thank the soldiers, before an armoured Land Rover appeared and a man got out who, like the buildings, looked a bit worse than he did on the televisio
n. Like the buildings, too, his face bore the marks of war – not scars, just brown eyes sunken from lack of sleep, and scuffed blond hair. He bounced at Robert with a hug and a “Robert! How are you, mate!”
The far door opened, and a girl got out; a beauty, with thick white skin, the sort novelists call alabaster, and black, springy hair, cut into a modern version of an Ava Gardner bob. She looked like Snow White, but much more chic. She wore bright red lipstick, a dark hat on her head, and her flak jacket was worn over a smart tweed coat; the flak jacket and her clumpy boots were the only similarities between her clothes and mine.
“Robert!” Big smile; she brushed her lips over his cheek, hardly halting her sweep to the door. “You came back. Sarajevo is not fashionable at the moment, everyone has gone to Tuzla.” Her voice was Bond Girl Slav. I didn’t even warrant a hello.
Robert stared at the door after she had gone through. “The beautiful Valida.”
“She’s still taken though,” said the man.
Robert blushed: “Shut up, let a man have his dreams.” Then he turned to me and said: “Have you met Molly? And,” he turned to introduce the combat clones, except of course, we didn’t know either of their names.
Instead of filling in the gap left by Robert saying: “This is Phil Kennedy,” and Phil sticking out his hand, the blond twin just shook it and said, “Phil Kennedy, you were in the Gulf?” Then he said to Robert, “What’s the best way into town from here?” Robert pointed on down the grey road, but Phil broke in with: “I’d go the back way, up, behind the hotel. It’s safer.” He pointed up behind the hotel, where a road led up a little hill between some blocks of flats. Laced across it were rows of grey metal gym lockers, interspersed with blankets draped from ropes.
“I thought there was a ceasefire,” said the dark twin.
“Quaint Sarajevo rules,” said Phil. “Snipers don’t count in ceasefires…”
“It doesn’t make any difference to them, their car is armoured,” said Robert, in a querulous voice.
“No it’s not,” chorused Phil and the clones at once. Phil hit the Land Rover – it rang tinnily back. Robert went white. The dark twin looked at me: “Are you sure you want to stay?” “Oh yes,” I said.
“Maybe see you around,” he said, and left. I stood in the yard watching until their car swerved behind the first row of lockers, envying them being a pair. It was only later I realised they’d never said their names.
Phil was perfectly polite, but went straight back to Robert. I hung behind them, feeling shy. I thought Robert wouldn’t need me anymore. I followed them over the rutted ice to a small door, into a cold dark room, smelling of cigarettes and, slightly, pee. Later I would discover that most of Sarajevo smelt slightly of pee. I was here to cover the first anniversary of the plumbing failing, as well as everything else. The windows were boarded up, and thick grains of dust danced in the rays of light sneaking through at the corners. The rotting carpet stuck to my feet; it reminded me of temping at the Independent. In the far corner, by another door, three Bosnian soldiers and a dark-eyed girl sat smoking beside a metal detector.
“Is that thing working?” asked Robert.
“Dream on. There’s no power,” said Phil. “It’s just for show.” The tallest of the soldiers, with sad, gaunt eyes, made a great play of shining his torch onto our passes. Even Phil’s, though he must only have left the hotel an hour ago.
We passed through a door. A vast atrium, seven or eight storeys high, opened up; four bulging pillars soared into the shadows of the roof. The architect had obviously had ambition to rise above his medium; or maybe to him, the hotel was socio-realist sculpture: the walls were raw concrete and naked brick, and the predominant lines were curved. Down the centre hung an enormous chandelier, bulbous and modern, the type that communists always seemed to install, as if it would light up their new world. It was dead, of course, and, as I saw when I went upstairs, covered with chunks of plaster dust. A rocket had crashed through fifth floor a few months ago, Phil explained: “I think the manager must have been late with his bribe.”
The grey walls were striped and, as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, the stripes materialised into galleries. To my left, some sad-eyed men sat drinking small cups of coffee at a horseshoe-shaped bar, where a sad-eyed waiter was polishing glasses dressed, despite the war, in immaculate black tie.
The light came from the right, pouring in over an Astroturf carpet dotted with purple toadstool seats. The whole length of the hotel must once have been glass, two storeys high. Instead now plastic sheeting hung in huge folds, like the curtains on a stage, and glued in position by the ubiquitous white sticky tape with its cheery blue UN logos that was stuck everywhere. It seems odd that the UN needed to advertise their failure, by running their logo through nearly every former window in Sarajevo. It made the whole country look as if it was just being kept together by them; I suppose it was. Beyond the blur of the plastic hung huge shards of glass, like the ruins of an ice queen’s palace; they also glittered on what must once have been the turning circle of the hotel; and beyond that slept the fountain we had seen from the road. Since the windows had been broken – a shell? A lucky shot? God knows how long ago – it had obviously not been safe enough to get out front and clean up.
Robert and Phil were standing at Reception, where the plastic met up with the naked brick walls. Robert handed his passport to a middle-aged woman who took it in her gloved hands, her orange lips, above her scarf, screwed into a sour smile of recognition, woolly hat nodding up and down. Her desk, so close to where the glass walls had been, looked both cold and dangerous. I wondered why they hadn’t moved it; perhaps the key slots behind were too convenient? Or perhaps she’d decided to sit it out until forced to leave, like people who stay in their village until they hear the tanks up the road.
“Is it good to be home?” asked Phil.
“This is not my home,” said Robert. “I’m not as sad as you.” Then he turned round and looked for me.
I was hovering two yards behind. He walked me over to one of the mushrooms.
“Molly,” he said, very quietly. “I don’t want to be rude or to make this difficult.” And I remember thinking, oh shit, this is like being chucked, but with Phil here, why would he need to hang out with me anymore? So I wasn’t expecting Robert to say: “How much money have you got left? Do you want to share a room?” My face froze and I blushed, but he quickly said: “Don’t worry. I’ve a girlfriend in Belgrade.” I blushed even more, but he went on: “This place costs a bomb and the Herald is always whining about money. Besides,” he added, before I could speak, “I hate being here. It’s much less miserable if you’re with someone else. And I owe you for picking up the combat clones.”
Phil made a face when we checked in but surprisingly, it wasn’t the eyebrow-raising kind I’d thought he’d make. Instead, he said: “Sharing a room in Sarajevo can be kind of gross.” I nodded, but actually I had no idea of what he meant, but I know that you’d agree with him. But, of course, you had no choice but to put up with that kind of gross. It was just as gross when you were at home.
It was later that afternoon that I met you.
I suppose it was a stupid decision to get out of the car, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met you at all. I’d been out with Phil and Robert, clanking from interview to interview in Phil’s BBC armoured car. Phil didn’t even react when we heard a bullet crack.
Robert was outraged: “I thought you said there was a ceasefire!” he said again. But Robert was always being outraged by things. To be fair, in the last few years, he’d seen a lot of outrageous stuff go on.
“I told you. Sarajevo tradition,” said Phil. “Ceasefires don’t include snipers. You should know that: you’ve just spent too long in Belgrade.”
Robert said: “Oh God. I think I’ve blanked it all out.”
“The ceasefire’s bound to end soon anyway. It’s lasted four days. That’s nearly a record.”
“That’s what those Bosnian soldi
ers said when we came in,” I said.
“Really?” said Phil.
But Robert snorted and said, “What on earth do they know?”
I was trotting down the street when the ceasefire broke, trying to look as if I knew what I was about. But the street was completely empty except for me, and strung between the walls on either side of the Presidency, the ragged blankets of the sniper barricades fluttered on their washing lines. I ran downhill towards it, keeping to the side of the road, to try and keep out of the sight of the snipers on the snow-covered peaks rising beyond the river behind. I’d insisted that I get out and go back: we’d delivered Mrs Selimovic her parcel earlier that day, before setting off on our round of interviews with politicians and generals, the Muslim manager of the brewery, and the man who ran the mortuary, who of course, then, I didn’t know at all, little thought I would get to know so well. She lived in one of those Austro-Hungarian blocks, up the hill to the right, looking down towards the Presidency. After Mrs Selimovic had unpacked the oil, and the eggs, and the strange orange spice, and cried over the photographs of grandchildren she said she hadn’t seen for a year, and could hardly see now in the gloom of her flat, she’d asked us, a little shyly, if we could take a letter back. At least, she asked Robert, as he had to do all the translating – Phil had given Valida the afternoon off, and he hardly spoke a word of the language himself which surprised me, although I didn’t then either, so I don’t know why it should have done. We’d said yes to the letter. Phil had even given her a pen, but later on, at the end of our day, Robert said he just didn’t have time to pick it up; he had too much to do: “I’ve got enough material now anyway.” But I thought we shouldn’t leave anyone waiting, if we’d said we’d come back, particularly not an old woman on her own.
It was dusk by the time I managed to get away; I had to spend half an hour looking at photographs of Mrs Selimovic’s fat happy life before the war. I didn’t know enough Serbo-Croat to leave politely. It didn’t matter so much. Phil and Robert were waiting at the Presidency – they were interviewing some politician and I could get the stuff off them. I knew where it was – Phil had pointed it out earlier on: raspberry and custard stripes.
The Girl in the Film Page 5