The Girl in the Film

by Eagar, Charlotte

  “I never saw it before,” I said.

  “It’s a different kind of beauty,” said Valida. “It’s like seeing a beautiful woman with a scar down her face, and you wonder, that she can still be beautiful with that scar. Because she is, but she also repels you in a way.”

  “Are we the doctors who are treating her and we fall in love with her because we see the soul behind the scar?” said Phil.

  “Maybe you all fall in love with your handiwork. Or her dependence or her gratitude. Or your own heroism.” “Don’t say that!” I said.

  “She is right,” said Ed. I said, No! But he carried on. “The trick is not to care. It took me years to work that out. I mean, what the fuck does it matter to that waitress why I am here. I write her story. The world hears about it, I leave. Why should she mind if I’m motivated by some deep desire to do good or just because I happen to like a bit of an adventure and a break from my wife.” Valida snorted, and I cried: “Don’t!” again.

  “Are you all right?” said Ed.

  “Molly’s just had some news,” said Phil.

  “Sorry. I keep putting my foot in it all over the place today,” said

  Ed. So maybe he did notice things after all. “What’s up?” I told them what the Herald had said.

  “But this is good news,” said Ed. “Let me get this straight. They want you to come back to London, be on the desk. Proper job. Be a fireman. You’ll still travel.”

  “Yes, but anywhere. It won’t just be here.” “Does Amir know?” asked Valida. Her face had set.

  “Molly, that’s fantastic. You deserve it, really, I think you do,” then even Ed noticed that nobody else was looking pleased.

  I looked at Valida and shook my head.

  “Isn’t Ed right?” said Valida. “That’s what this was about, no? This war, for you. You made it up the next step. Congratulations.” But I didn’t think it had even been that simple right at the start. “Just make sure you tell Amir first. Don’t just leave, and not come back, like Henri did to me.”

  “Is it Amir?” said Ed. “Is that what it is?”

  I started to cry. I think I must have been tired; probably a little hung over. It was all too much. You. The pizza parlour, and the sniper barricades and the waitresses happy in their new jobs, and the sun shining, and coffee on the terrace. You. My new job. And you. I wished you were here. Except if you’d been here, you’d be so angry and sad. I kept saying sorry. Phil put his arm round me and Valida handed me some loo paper.

  “Good thing about Sarajevo, always have to have toilet paper in your bag.”

  I tried to laugh, but I just kept on crying.

  “There’ll be other boyfriends,” said Ed. “I know it doesn’t feel like this now, but there will be, believe me. And other stories.”

  “I don’t want another boyfriend. I don’t want another story. I want this one. Everything’s changing. Today. Everything. It’s like Aslan being on the move.” That’s when Phil made the remark about constipation, which did make me giggle.

  “What is Aslan?” said Valida and Ed did one of his lightning political diagnoses on Narnia.

  “It’s a Christian allegory: a land in perpetual winter because of an evil white queen. Aslan is their lion God. When he returns, he dies and is resurrected. He breaks the queen’s power; spring comes and everything thaws.”

  It was after Ed had paid the bill that Phil said to me:

  “If you really want to stay here with Amir, you could.”

  “Yes, you could,” said Ed, to my surprise; he was zipping up his money belt, pocketing the receipt, off to the loony bin. “You’d have to set up in a flat in town, but, by the looks of things today, that could be possible.”

  “We’re thinking of moving out of the Holiday Inn,” said Phil.

  “Shit, are you? That’ll make this place a lot less fun… But you see, Molly? It can be done. Hell, I’d hate it, but I’m an old man and I’m not in love. Tell the paper. You have to go back, otherwise they’ll just think you’ve flipped, but when they offer you the job, say: thanks, great, love to be staff, but want to be based in Sarajevo. You can be a fireman from here. The whole region’s going to go up in smoke again in six months’ time. Any fool can see that.” He was utterly oblivious to Valida’s reaction to his glib assessment of her little town’s peace. “They should go for it, but you have to keep the costs right down. Ask for some fancy title, Chief European Correspondent or something. But if you ask me, it would still be best for your career to go back to the desk.”

  “What do you want, Molly? What do you actually want?” said Valida.

  But I just wanted everything to stay as it was. You never think, when you read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you’ll be rooting for perpetual winter to return.

  It was in the car, on the way back to the hotel, after we dropped Ed and Aida off at the loony bin, that Valida asked me, “What did the shrink say?”

  I looked out of the window as we drove – past the honey coloured mosque, over the river, to the minarets crawling up the cliffs. Phil steered Miss Piggy down the road we would never have driven down two months ago, past where the bunch of soldiers were still manhandling the bullet-riddled bodies of the gym-locker barricades into the back of a four-ton truck. “He said you’d all go mad. After the war. And so would we.”

  I wandered sadly into Phil’s office, trying to work out what I could say to you. Valida was playing her eternal Gameboy by the window. Phil made me some tea. “The milk’s in the fridge,” he said.

  It was only after I’d opened the fridge, taken out the milk, between the plastic lumps of cheese, cans of Heineken, and bottles of Posip, and poured it into my tea, that it really hit home: until ten days ago, that fridge was just a table to put the candles on.

  “And storage,” said Phil. “Don’t knock my fridge. We used to keep the spare notebooks in there.”

  “And now, you can say, quite nonchalantly, the milk’s in the fridge. And this morning, Amir had a shower and complained that the water was cold.”

  Phil paused, before he said, “When Tim first showed me the fridge was working, I was like a child. I kept putting things in it and taking them out. I thought Valida would laugh at me, but she said she’d been just the same. She said, it was like playing dolls’ houses. And for the first evening, it was an indescribable pleasure just drinking cold beer. And now it’s normal again.”

  “Yeah,” I said sadly. “Everything seems to be working now.”

  The silence was broken by the local telephone. Phil picked it up and his shoulders went stiff. He said: “Hang on…” and walked with it over to the map on the wall.

  “How many?… When did it start?… Valida… Valida!”

  Valida put her Gameboy down. I put down my tea. Phil’s finger was on the bottom of the red circles in the eastern part of the map. Something was happening again. He mimed a pen and paper. Valida brought them to him and he mouthed to her “Ring General Divjak. I want to see him.” I pointed at my chest: “Me too.”

  “What is it, Phil? I have to tell them what it’s about!” I didn’t know either, but whatever it was, I wanted to be there.

  Phil waved her away. He put the phone down, looked at his watch, and dialled again. “What is it?” he just flapped his hand. Valida rolled her eyes at me, and I shrugged back at her.

  “Gary?” he’d obviously rung the UNPROFOR spokesman. “Just a quick one: just had a call from Ganic’s office… Gorazde… right…” And it was one of those “rights” that go on for some time, a kind of ryyyyyyee-yiiiiiite. “So you do… Thanks Gary… I’ve got to go now. I’ve got about ten minutes till we go on air.”

  I was bolt upright. “Tell me,” I said. He shook his head. “No time.” He rushed into the other room. Valida shrugged her shoulders and picked up the phone. In the other room we could hear swearings and rustlings and scribbling sounds. “Traffic, traffic. It’s Phil Kennedy in Sarajevo here. Can you put me through? I’ve got a piece for the three… Cheers, thanks a
lot… Hi, John? Oh, Brian. Brian; it’s Phil in Sarajevo… Great… yes… finally… no… the Serbs are moving again, just as we said… Gorazde… G…O…R…A… Z…D…E… in the east, the southern of the three Muslim enclaves on the right, those blobs, the bottom one… well, it’s what we’ve all been waiting for since the Serbs pulled their kit out of Sarajevo…if they continue, and they will, because they are never going to believe that anyone will stop them, then technically the UN ought to use air strikes… it’s a safe haven… no, the new general’s much more gung-ho… he’s brought the SAS in and everything… No, I can’t… because I can’t… because it’s completely surrounded by Serbs and they won’t let me in… yes, I’m sure… OK. I’ll go live…”

  Oh thank God, I thought, as I heard him read out his story about the shells crashing into the town of Gorazde, the tanks ploughing their way through the outlying villages, torching the houses, the panic-stricken refugees. Thank God. The Serbs are at it again. Now the Herald will have to let me stay.

  I was laughing when Phil came back into the room. “The war is over,” I said. “We can all go home…”

  “We can’t you know. The UN said the Serbs have shut the airport.”

  “Then I really can’t leave…” There was a sudden silence in the room as the power cut out.

  Valida said: “I’ll have to empty the fridge,” but she was laughing too.

  David Owen, Slobodan Milosevic and Thorwald Staltenberg go to hunt bear. They catch one, but it’s alive, and it’s too late to take it back to Belgrade. So they chain it to a tree and divide the night into three watches. Staltenberg takes the first, Owen the second and Slobo the third.

  At midnight, Staltenberg wakes up Owen and says, “The bear’s all yours.” The bear growls by its tree. At 4 a.m., Owen wakes up Slobo and says, “Over to you.” The bear grunts back.

  But at 8 a.m. when the others wake up, there’s no bear.

  “Where’s the bear, Slobo?” they ask.

  “What bear?”

  “Do you remember we went bear hunting yesterday?” said Owen.

  “Yes,” says Slobo.

  “And do you remember we caught a bear?” says Staltenberg.

  “Yes,” says Slobo.

  “And do you remember we agreed to tie it to a tree and watch over it all night?” “Yes,” says Slobo.

  “And it was there, when I woke you up at 4 a.m.,” says

  Owen.

  “Oh! Yes,” says Slobo.

  “So where’s the bear?” they both ask.

  And Slobo says: “What bear?”

  May 2000

  I went to Ingrid’s book launch last night: Kosovo: Too Much History. Her publishers sent it to me at work, with a note from her saying, “Wished you were there. Hope you can review this for me.” It was the classic, journalist’s it-was-horrible-and-I-was-there account, with a little bit of this-is-why-it-happened. My first thought was, that was quick: she must have written it at about 100 miles an hour. The next was, she’s written a book already, and she’s been in the Balkans much less time than me – she only took over from The Times guy at the end of 1994. Then I remembered that my war was five years old.

  I didn’t review it, because I don’t, and my magazine doesn’t care, but I read it at my desk – I’m allowed to read things at work. I got the mag to send a snapper. I said it would be full of famous journalists: Christiane Amanpour, her new man, and Martin Bell.

  Phil was there too. I hadn’t realised he was over. He’s based in Moscow now. It was lovely to see him.

  He looked round and said: “This is all right, isn’t it?” We were in one of those steak-and-kidney-pudding clubs just off St James’s, with heavy panelling, and marble halls, and horribly patterned carpets. I think Ingrid’s father was some kind of judge. Then there was a pause. Suddenly he said: “Oh look, there’s Jackson, do you know him?” But I wouldn’t have known him. I don’t know generals any more. Phil introduced me as an old Balkan hand. “Molly knew Hal in Sarajevo,” Phil said to Jackson.

  Jackson laughed. “Oh…Hal!” I said. I hadn’t thought about Hal for years.

  “Hal worked for the general in Kosovo,” said Phil.

  “We used to take them out to dinner,” I said. I could see Jez, the basement restaurant that had opened after the Sarajevo ceasefire, the candlelight, the greasy catch at the back of your nose from the paraffin lamps, the faint, ever-present whiff of pee; it opened after the phoney peace broke out. We went there a lot, before anywhere else opened. Phil liked to say, “I feel like eating subterranean tonight,” and flirt with Tanja, the sad-eyed waitress, an Aeroflot blonde, who’d bring steak and chips at 100DM a plate to people like us who could afford the food; black marketeers, the aid workers, and the like. Phil was thrilled to spot that the wine they served was the same as he’d drunk having dinner with the French general.

  I looked up to find Jackson cocking an eyebrow at me. I blushed.

  “Phil started it,” I said.

  I’d met Hal before – he’d been one of the clones who’d given Robert and me a lift into Sarajevo. Then he turned up at the briefing one morning, in the very early days of the Gorazde crisis, with a man who sported a drooping moustache that would have been all the rage at a Village People concert. Like the clone in the Land Rover, Moustache was exactly the same shape as Hal, which was a completely different shape to normal people. Phil thought they were SAS – he’d met a few in the Gulf, and the new general had commanded the Iranian embassy siege. He bet me I couldn’t find out. I said you’re on and walked over with: “Do you remember me?”

  “Have you been here since we left you?” he said, when I reminded him. And I said: “God no, I’d go mad.” Then I thought about it, and said, “Well, most of the time.”

  He agreed to a drink that night. You didn’t come. You were busy anyway, I think, but, anyway, talking to Hal with you wouldn’t work.

  I’d arranged to pick him up at the Residency. I’d been there a couple of times before; I’d started to come and talk to the UN head of civil affairs there once a week. It had been Robert’s idea. I’d rung him last time I was in London, after I’d been back for a few days; I suppose because I needed to talk to someone with whom I had something in common. He’d asked wistfully about Sarajevo, Valida and Phil. Then he’d asked me if I’d ever spoken to this man in the Residency who had one of those comic names you can’t really believe Russians can call their children. Igor, he was called; Igor Ivanov. When I said no, why on earth would he want to talk to me, Robert said, “People are dying to tell you things, if only you ask them.”

  I was so used to thinking of myself as the new girl, the young one, who could do moving descriptions of human misery, but didn’t really have a clue what was going on, I never really believed important people would talk to me.

  “But you’re not the new girl anymore,” Robert said.

  So I told Robert about the real journalist, the one I always used to think that one day, I would meet: someone who knew exactly what was happening, who had sources of information at his fingertips, which, for some reason, I imagined being spewed out of a printer. Someone who didn’t spend his time desperately gathering clues by trailing round the country, talking to the mad or the desperate in unlit offices that smelt faintly of pee and unwashed clothes, sipping tentatively at the glass of slivo thrust into his hand, taking notes on his knee in felt tip pens bought by the bushel at Heathrow, in books from the Croatian equivalent of WH Smith, while specks of dust danced in the faint sunbeams eking through the sandbags. But even as I said it, I could see what had happened. Robert snorted with laughter and said: “You are a real journalist. The nutters, the slivo, that’s real journalism.”

  Then he told me Igor was a colonel in the KGB, “But it’s secret,” he said. “No-one’s supposed to know.” So after that I had to meet Igor, just out of curiosity. And once I started going to the Residency, I realised it was full of bored, lonely men dying to talk. And when Igor got drunk he used to say: “One day Russ
ia, the Ukraine and Serbia will be one country stretching to the Mediterranean,” which might have been news to the Ukrainians and the Serbs, but gave a pretty good insight into why the Russians kept blocking military intervention in Bosnia in the UN.

  It was dark by the time I reached the gates and the frost on the pavement gleamed in the moonlight. The city was dark; the star-spangled velvet you get with no electricity. It was too early for curfew, yet the streets were deserted, even though there was now, with the ceasefire, little risk of being shot. For the first time in Sarajevo, walking on my own, at night, I was afraid of the kind of things that happen in a normal town. I wasn’t wearing my flak jacket because the evening felt too safe, and I was very glad I’d made that decision: I might have been mugged for it.

  The Residency lights were blazing away – the Residency was obviously even more “priority” than the hotel. The gate was manned by a group of UN Egyptians. They cat-called me, at first, and I suddenly felt like the blonde in the song, turning up at the barrack gates. The worm of embarrassment turned in my stomach but this was my job, and so I squashed the worm down. Hal told me to ask for the JCOs but when I asked around, no-one else in the hotel seemed to have heard of that particular serving of alphabet soup. It meant something to the Egyptians, though; when they finally rang in my request, it was with very different expressions that they waved me through.

  I walked up the drive towards a long low white house, its shrubbery brittle and naked beneath the winter moon. It looked almost English – The Laurels, with fake mullioned windows, sitting behind a hedge on one of the approach roads to Ascot. Through its brightly lit glass, I could see soldiers walking in and out of rooms, holding mugs. The Ascot façade had sprouted a two-storey moustache of portakabins – those white ones that always appear in the wake of the British Army. Sometimes I thought the cavalry must tow them behind their tanks. You can imagine an officer pointing at a map: “We are here. The enemy are there. Have you got your portakabin hitched on to your tow bar?” More portakabins lurked amongst the skeletons of the shrubs.