The Girl in the Film

by Eagar, Charlotte

  You were a great story. The News loved your story. And later the Herald learnt to love you too. You told me about going out at night to the wrecks of shelled houses; taking lead from the pipes to melt, stair-treads and beams to burn; sun-dried bricks from the old Turkish houses, which you watered back into mud to make the bullet moulds, into which you poured the molten lead. I wrote it all down. And as we talked, you dredged your English up from the back of your brain where you’d kept it for the last year or so of war.

  “It’s like Blue Peter,” I said: I wrote that down.

  “What is Blue Peter?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I was just talking to myself.” “Talk to me. I am here.” You sounded almost angry.

  “It was just a stupid joke.”

  “I like jokes. Tell me.”

  “I can’t explain…”

  “Yes, you can.” I looked up at you. Your face was set, and I felt butterflies of something leap in my stomach.

  “It’s a children’s television programme in England…” there was another loud crash outside. I swallowed. I even gave a little laugh.

  “Why you laugh?” You didn’t sound funny.

  “Because it’s so ridiculous; to talk about an English children’s television programme in the middle of a war.”

  “Tell me,” you said. “Like there was no war.”

  So I told you about pencil holders made out of loo paper rolls, coat-hanger advent calendars and shoe boxes turned into dollies’ beds. You said, rather sadly: “That is what all our life is now.” You were silent, but this time you weren’t looking at me. You were looking at some kind of past in your head. You said: “When we eat the pigeon, we pick out the pellets. Then we melt them down and use the lead again.” I didn’t say anything to that. I couldn’t think of what to say.

  It might have been nearly a minute before you took my hand.

  “Come,” you said, and pulled me to my feet. With your bad hand, you picked up the candle on the table.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got a torch,” I said. I was glad I had to disentangle my hand from yours to get the torch from my bag. You took it from me, and we crossed the hall and through the double doors you opened on the other side.

  You flashed the beam round the room: it was the classic Austro-

  Hungarian cube, high ceilinged, a cornice and a picture rail, three tall windows wide, a shrouded chandelier hanging over it all. In the corner, on an old-fashioned tiled stove, shepherdesses danced through fields of ceramic flowers. The moonlight was blurred through the plastic sheeting taped where the glass ought to have been. The walls were pale, some colour it was too dark to see, but I could see they were almost completely covered with pictures. I squinted through the gloom: landscapes, abstracts, portraits, anything.

  “Who’s that?” A Victorian lady glowered down above a door in the right-hand wall.

  “Grandmother of my mother,” you said.

  “She doesn’t look like a Muslim,” I blurted out.

  For a few seconds, you didn’t speak. And then you said: “She was

  Hrvat. She came from Austria a hundred years ago.”

  “Your mother’s Croat?”

  Another silence. Then you laughed. “My mother’s mother was Hrvat. Her father Serb.”

  “You’re a Serb!” I think I pulled back. I knew there had been Serbs in Sarajevo – before the war, the city had been thirty per cent Serb. But I didn’t think you just bumped into them. I didn’t think there were that many left.

  You laughed again. “No,” you said. “My father is Muslim.”

  “You’re mixed?” I couldn’t write it down as my book was in one hand and you had the other. But I didn’t think I was going to forget.

  “I am everything. Like Sarajevo.” You turned away. The moonbeams danced over a grand piano; behind it, a huge hole gaped into the street. Like the windows, it was taped up with plastic sheeting.

  You opened the doors beneath your great-great-grandmother. The room beyond was lined with books, but you could hardly get in for the detritus of war: dresses, a flowery bikini, a stiletto shoe, an ironing board, rigor-stiff, serpentine tangles of flexes, all bundled into cardboard boxes. A kettle, a toaster, a Magimix. It looked like a downmarket fence’s lair. Or the Generation Game conveyor belt, but after Blue Peter I couldn’t face explaining Bruce Forsyth too. Shrouding everything was a thick layer of dust, the gritty chunks thrown up by the artillery smashing the street outside.

  “My computer,” you said, and you kicked a box. A TV stood in one corner, as pointless as an idol in the British Museum. At its feet lay an electric guitar. You knelt and put your arm round its neck.

  “My guitar,” you said, about the same time as I said: “It’s an electric mass grave.”

  “Grave.” You nodded. “War killed them all. Like us.” Then you looked up at me anxiously: “No, not grave…They are not dead. They will work again, after war? Won’t they? Won’t they?” It nearly hurt, the way you gripped onto my hand.

  “Of course…The moment the electricity comes back. You’ll just plug them in.”

  “Maybe war lasts too long?”

  “They will work,” I said again, because you looked so sad. “They will.”

  “Maybe…” Then you glanced across the room and smiled. “This, this works in war.”

  On a desk, in the corner, stood a tangle of glass, at one end of which a tube drained into a huge plastic bin.

  “What is it?”

  “Is slivovic. Spirit. Alcohol.”

  “Are you making it?” You nodded. I went and touched the still.

  “Where did you get it from?”

  “From university. My father is professor. Granata hit his laboratory.”

  I leant on the desk to write, my flak jacket heavy and in the way.

  “What do you make it from?” I said, without looking up.

  “Fruit. We pick on frontline.” I carried on writing.

  “What does your mother do?”

  “Architect. She jokes how she have lot of work after the war.”

  I could hear you smiling but I didn’t look up as I asked: “What’s your name?”

  “Amir. Hadzibegovic, Amir.”

  I looked up then, and showed it to you: “Is that the right spelling?” You nodded.

  “And how old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight… How old are you?”

  It was like I’d tripped on a stair. I raised my head.

  “What?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Why?”

  “You ask me. I ask you.” You almost glared.

  “I’m twenty-six,” I said. But it felt strange telling him, as though he was seeing something private.

  “So, I am older. What’s your name?”

  “I’m sorry, I should have said,” this was more normal stuff. “My name’s Molly Taylor. I’m writing for the Evening News. It’s an English paper.”

  “I know Evening News,” you said. I must have looked slightly surprised, because you explained: “We know all the papers here now. We are journalism experts in Sarajevo. CNN, BBC, Reuters. All here. You want drink?” You picked up one of the glasses sitting on the desk, wiped the dust off with your shirt and dipped it in the liquid and handed it to me.

  “Slivovic.” You got yourself a glass. “Zivjeli,” you said, and raised your glass to me.

  I’ve always hated slivovic. Now I hate it more. Just the smell of it takes me straight back to you, to checkpoints in the snow. To drinking to false friendship with men in furry hats with cigarettes glued to their lips, so that they’ll kick the anti-tank mines out of the way and let you pass. Then it just tasted like the worst drink you ever drank on holiday. It was always the same dilemma: too slowly, you could taste it. Too fast, they poured you more.

  It would have been too rude not to drink your slivovic. “Zivjeli,” I sipped.

  “Is good, no?”

  “Yes, it’s good.” Or as good as I could possibly expect. Another shell cra
shed down.

  “Go back to kitchen. Is… safer. Yes?” You smiled as you produced the word. “Back of house safer.”

  “Much safer.” I smiled back. There was a warm fizz in my blood and the slivovic no longer tasted so bad. “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “Cigarette?” you gasped, as though I were offering gold.

  I gave you the choice of the Ronstons I’d bought in Split, and a packet of my duty-free Silk Cut. You went for the Balkan lung exterminators. Later you used to say you could never see the point of Silk Cut; too weak to smoke. We must have smoked about twenty and both got slightly drunk. You told me what you had done before the war: you’d been a travel agent, you said, down in Split. Your parents had wanted you to be a lawyer but you wanted to make a fortune and see the world.

  “Now all I ever see is the view on my frontline. Not even that now,” you pointed to your arm. I wrote some of it down, but the longer I stayed, the less I wrote; it didn’t seem to matter, I didn’t think I’d ever forget.

  You asked me why I was here, and I held my breath. Then I said, I just couldn’t imagine not wanting to be here. You laughed and said, you couldn’t imagine not wanting to get out. I said, what’s happening here is just so unfair. And you looked very sad, as though you couldn’t explain. You said, for some of you it was impossible to understand why it had happened. There had never been problems before.

  “How long you been in Sarajevo?”

  “I told you. This is my first day.”

  “First day! So… Am I your first Sarajevan?”

  “Not quite.” I told you about meeting the man in Tarcin three days ago, who’d asked us to take Mrs Selimovic her parcel. I didn’t even notice your guilty look when I mentioned her name. Then I told you about the men I’d met with Phil that afternoon: the brewery manager, the Muslim still making beer, and the man in the mortuary, with the heavy eyebrows, and the sadness carved into his face, who showed us in his candlelit office what he called the book of the dead, while behind him on the sofa a man wept into a woman’s breast, as she gently tried to stroke the grief from his hair. Phil called him the tallyman of the siege. He had given me the score for the week. You knew him too.

  “Everyone in Sarajevo knows Osman now.”

  “That’s what Osman said too.”

  “So, first day in Sarajevo…”

  “But not first day in Bosnia…” I told him about my job. I’d got fed up, I said, of having to write pieces about inflatable bikinis in London for the Daily Mail. You said, “No bikinis here.”

  You asked me if I were married, and I said, no. You asked me if I had a boyfriend. I thought briefly of Johnny, back in his bank, half a continent away; and suddenly, for the first time in weeks, I minded much less that he fucked that other girl the last time I’d been away, and then told me I was mainlining on someone else’s war. You asked about my parents, and I explained about Daddy being a diplomat, thousands of miles away, and my mother being dead.

  “So you are alone,” you smiled at me.

  “Oh no. I’ve got a brother. But he’s abroad too.” I didn’t explain he was currently mine-clearing in Afghanistan.

  Then you asked me how long I would be in Sarajevo.

  “I’m only here to write about the anniversary of the siege,” I laughed. “It’s my big break. But it’s just a few days. Sarajevo costs a fortune, you know.”

  You laughed: “I know,” you said. Neither of us mentioned the danger at all.

  “What were you doing,” I asked you, “when the war began?”

  You didn’t answer at first. I let the silence run. I knew by then that was the way to get someone to talk. I was disappointed when all you said was: “I wish we had music. I want to play you song.” You waved at the darkness. “I have cassette player but there is no power.”

  “I have batteries,” I said. “In my bag.”

  “Batteries!” You spoke as though I had said I carried something precious or exotic, like diamonds or pomegranates, or a model Ferrari.

  You took my torch and went back across the hall. I heard the sound of rummaging in the other room, then you came back with a ghetto blaster, coated with dust, and a tape.

  “This is my song,” you said, and put it on.

  “I came up from coast for few days, one year ago. War started and I could not get back.” You shrugged, and the tape gave its starting whir.

  “I did not want to leave, then, you understand.” You stared straight into my eyes. “We all had to help. But nobody thought it would be a year…” You stopped. You were staring at something far away. You took a drag of your cigarette. Then I heard you say:

  “First time I killed someone, I was so scared. He came towards me, he was across street. I was so scared,” you said again. “I shot until gun was empty. Thirty-six bullets.”

  Out of the tape recorder, Freddie Mercury sang: “Mama, just killed a man, put a gun against his head. Pulled my trigger now he’s dead. Mama, life had just begun, but now I’ve gone and thrown it all away…”

  “He was same age as me,” you said. “He could have been my friend.”

  In the silence after that I realised that the bombardment had stopped; it’s only when you haven’t heard a crash for a while that you know.

  “I’d better go back,” I said.

  “Stay here,” you put your hand on my arm. For a moment, I had this urge to stay with you. But I shook it off, as I shook off your arm. I couldn’t quite understand what was going on. Today was all too new, too strange for me.

  “I have to go.”

  “Do you have to really?”

  “Yes. I really do.” But I didn’t really, except it was all too much.

  “Where to? Where you stay?”

  There would be no point going to the Presidency now; they’d have left ages ago. “The Holiday Inn,” I said. I felt a thrill of pride as I said its name. Your face fell.

  “Why you stay there?” I didn’t know what to say. I mean, everyone stayed there, didn’t they?

  “Everyone stays there,” I said.

  “Is very dangerous,” you said. But I couldn’t see it would be more dangerous than here.

  “I have to go back. My friends will be worried about me.”

  “OK.” You seemed to accept that as an excuse. “My mother come back soon, now bombardment over…I hope she come back…she went to see friend…”

  I stared at you in shock and it was you who took my hand as if to console me. “Don’t worry. She come back. She not go far. Here…” You picked up the tape recorder and took the batteries out.

  “I don’t need them,” I said, and took my hand away.

  You stood there uncertain.

  “Keep them,” I said. “I’ve got lots of spares.”

  “Thank you,” you said, and stared down at them in your palm, as if they had been diamonds indeed.

  “So, goodbye…” I said.

  You looked up at me: “I see you again?”

  “I’m leaving on Tuesday.” I wasn’t sure, but I think I wanted to run away.

  “Today is Friday,” you said. We looked at each other. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what I wanted to say. And then I remembered with relief I’d need a photograph; and as we agreed for a photographer to come the next day, all the tensions seeped out of our farewell.

  It was as you shepherded me to the door, palm on my back, that you said, “How you go to Holiday?”

  “Walk.”

  “No.” You stopped. “It’s not safe to walk to Holiday Inn.”

  “I’ll run. I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ve got this.” I touched the front of the flak jacket with the arm I’d just picked up from under yours. I was still wearing it. I’d been wearing it all the time. “It’s not far.”

  “Is dark.”

  “At least the snipers can’t see me.”

  “Girls do not walk in dark. I come with you.”

  I felt terrified for you in a way I hadn’t for me. “That’s stupid.

&n
bsp; You’ll just have to come back.”

  “Is OK.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not OK. I’m fine on my own.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  You nodded. “OK. So. Tomorrow then.”

  “Tomorrow. With the photographer.”

  It was at the door you turned and said to me: “Tomorrow, you can stay. Stay for dinner. My mother is here. She cook pigeon.” I didn’t even hesitate. “I’d love to,” I said.

  And then of course you asked if I knew the way.

  “I came from the hotel,” I said, “but I was in a car.” I was suddenly afraid. What I did know is that it was novices like me who were always getting shot.

  “I show you.”

  “It’s fine…”

  “Come, I just show you. Don’t go down to Presidency – very bad. Hotel is over there,” you pointed over the main road at the end of your street, where a slice of empty dual carriageway showed at the end of the alley beyond. “Go here. At street, run. Snipers can see you. Over big road run very fast. Then go along street, maybe two hundred metres. Every time you cross roads, snipers can see you. Snipers are on mountain. Every time you see mountain, sniper can see you, so run. Go left, past hospital, down little hill. By white apartment buildings, downhill. You will see hotel. But run. Is very bad round hotel.”

  “I’ll run.”

  You kissed me on the cheek, but as we drew back, you said: “I come with you to end of street.”

  I couldn’t think of a reason to say no. Actually, I couldn’t think of anything to say as you held my arm.

  “Ice,” you said. “Is…”

  “Slippery.”

  “Slippery. Yes. But snipers can’t see here.”

  “Just shells.”

  You laughed. There was a silence again; the moonlight had cleaned the filthy snow on the road. And above the roofs, we could see a slice of sky. Ahead of us, beyond the two streets I had to cross, a street rambled up between low blocks of flats.

  “Look at the stars,” I said. “They are incredible. You never see stars like that in London anymore.”

  “No electricity.”

  We reached the road. You pulled us into the shadow of a house. A bullet cracked. The ragged blankets strung from the power lines above the road wafted in the breeze. There were the ubiquitous gym lockers, but they were too far down the road to be any use to me.