War Hospital

by Sheri Fink

  “Let’s all go to Potočari,” someone suggests. “We’re all medical staff; they won’t hurt us.” A person who agrees adds that they should find the Dutch surgeon who knows them and ask for his protection.

  Someone else argues that only women should seek shelter with the Dutch and men should go through the forest and attempt to hike to other Bosnian government–held territory. But another person points out that the Serbs have shelled Camp Bravo, which suggests that the United Nations can’t protect them and that everyone should go through the forest.

  Fatima speaks up. “Nobody can protect anybody,” she asserts, strident. She remembers being trapped in Bratunac in the early days of the war. If she goes to Potočari and the Chetniks come, she’ll be in their hands and nobody will help her. “I would rather kill myself than be raped by Chetniks,” she declares. She believes the Serbs consider doctors war criminals for treating their enemy’s soldiers.

  Outside the windows, below them on the main road before the hospital, a wave of humanity surges north ahead of the Serb advance into the town. The medical workers have not yet decided on a plan when they realize that whether they set their sights on free territory or on the Dutch compound in Potočari, it is clearly time for everyone to shove off from Srebrenica.

  Ilijaz and the other surgical staff members tear off their bloody hospital scrubs, littering the floor. After seventy-two hours of working without stopping to wash or change, they are so filthy and sweaty they can smell themselves. Ilijaz pulls on a white T-shirt and the cheap imitation Levi’s blue jeans that a Lithuanian anesthesiologist gave him two years ago. He throws a denim shirt over his shoulders and thrusts his feet into military boots. He ties together the laces of his Reebok athletic shoes, a gift from an MSF gynecologist, and slings them around his neck.

  Into a large backpack, Fatima jams bandages, infusions, analgetics, a change of underwear, and tampons, because she’s expecting her period. She packed some bags of belongings several days ago and stored them in the hospital. Now, faced with an imminent overland journey, most of the items seem unimportant to her. She keeps some gold and a few of her and Ilijaz’s photographs, then goes next door to her apartment to drop off the other things and advise her mother to prepare to leave Srebrenica, too.

  Naim Salkić, the dark-haired operating room instrument technician who has become Ilijaz’s closest friend, crams anesthetics, first-aid kits, gauze, and bags of glucose solution into a medical bag. His cousin, the anesthetist nicknamed “the professor,” packs other bags with analgetics, antibiotics, bandages, iodine, tourniquets, and infusions that can expand blood volume in case of hemorrhage.

  Avdo, the hospital director, is one of the few medical workers who’ve not been constantly around the hospital these past few days. Now he appears wearing military trousers and a shirt. He carries his diploma, personal documents, three family photo albums, salt, and sugar. He stuffs his pockets with multivitamins. At forty-eight, he is one of the older men about to undertake the journey.

  On Ilijaz’s way back to the post office, he sees his lover, nurse Hajra outside. They kiss one another in silence, then part. At the post office Ilijaz asks around among the military leaders to find out the plan for breaking through to free territory. The first man he asks just shrugs. The next man he asks shrugs, too. A third. A fourth. Ilijaz feels like he’s just been killed. There’s obviously no plan. He doesn’t know what to do.

  At 1:30 P.M., Fatima and the professor treat a new patient whose buttock was injured by a tank round. They pour iodine on the wound and wrap it tightly with an abdominal bandage. He seems to be the last patient. They are the last to leave the hospital.

  Other hospital workers and their families stand out front in the blaring July sun. As if in a dream, Ilijaz starts floating north on the main road with his two brothers, Fatima, and friends and colleagues beside him. Crowds of other Srebrenicans fill the road. An old woman, head covered with a scarf, walks bent beneath an overstuffed backpack. A young boy wears a winter coat in the July heat. Long hair streams down the backs of two girls and shimmers in the sun with each step. Thoughts reel through Ilijaz’s head as he walks:

  It’s unreal. It’s not really happening. We’ll be back tomorrow…

  After about 100 yards, they reach the town gas station, where a small road turns off from the main road, runs by an old graveyard, and continues southwest toward the only part of the enclave not within the vision of the Serb army, the only area still under control of Srebrenica’s soldiers. Hundreds of men ahead of them are turning left onto this road. This is the decision point. The main road leads north to the U.N. base in Potočari.

  Ilijaz’s brother Hamid, forty-one years old with a wife and children announces, at this intersection, “I can’t go to the forest.” He has a stomachache and is “lost with fear.”

  “I’m going to Potočari,” he says. He’ll seek protection with the U.N. forces.

  Please let’s stick together.

  Ilijaz thinks it, but does not say it. As when he was a little boy and he’d been truly upset, his words stick in his throat and he cannot speak.

  Maybe the Dutch really will protect everybody. We have only a theoretical chance of survival if we go to the forest. Maybe my brother will survive to take care of the family.

  Maybe going toward Potočari is a better choice for all of them…

  A grenade explodes somewhere in the direction of Potočari. Ilijaz stands still. A century passes. His brother turns away without a word and joins the masses surging toward the U.N. base.

  Dark-haired Naim grabs Ilijaz’s arm and yanks him hard to the left toward the small road that heads southwest.

  “Come on,” he says. “We’re going there and once it gets dark we’ll think of what to do.” Ilijaz lets himself be led.

  “Yes,” Ilijaz says dreamily, “when we get a little further from the city, when we find a relatively safe place, we’ll sit down and discuss whether to continue walking through the night. If we judge that it’s silly to continue on this road, we’ll come back to Potočari, all of us.” And so all of them turn left here—Ilijaz, Fatima, and the three other Srebrenica doctors; Naim, the professor, and most of the other male nurses and hospital technicians, including Boro’s old friend Sadik; a female nurse named Ajka Avdic from Osmaće, with whom Ilijaz treated his first patients; a few other women who’d served as fighters; and, both before and after them, dozens of others from the hospital and thousands and thousands of fighters and civilians, most of them men and boys afraid of giving themselves up to the Chetniks.

  * * *

  ADVANCING SERB FORCES ENTER THE CITY from the south. At 2:07 P.M., one of the victorious soldiers hangs a flag over a bakery at the southern end of town. The entire remaining population of Srebrenica flees northward, U.N. blue helmets mingling among them, retreating from the blocking positions on foot and by armored personnel carrier. Srebrenica has fallen without a single bomb dropped by NATO, without a single shot fired by U.N. forces directly at Serb forces. The Dutchbat commander has issued multiple NATO air support requests, all turned down at various points in the U.N. labyrinth.

  * * *

  FOR MUCH OF THE OFFENSIVE, boyish, sandy-haired Dr. Boro Lazić, in his role as medical chief of the šekovići Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, has been stationed in a village called Jasenova south of Srebrenica, near the site of the destroyed water treatment plant. Without much resistance from the Srebrenica forces and none from the Dutch U.N. battalion, there have been few casualties, and Boro has had an easy job. When victory comes for the Bosnian Serb army, his unit begins to follow the vanguard into Srebrenica. He rides in his ambulance, a passenger car, along the hilly, winding roads beneath a blue sky. He can’t see too far ahead of him, but at times he catches sight of Srebrenica soldiers and civilians fleeing northward.

  He’s been warned to expect NATO air strikes, but so far the sky is quiet, at least as far as he can tell amidst the sound of rumbling trucks and whooping soldiers. In the early af
ternoon, just as his ambulance nears the main Srebrenica-Skelani road, the sound of jets rips the air. The convoy halts. The driver of a truck carrying a three-barrel grenade launcher in its bed, a perfect target, pulls up beside Boro’s ambulance. Stupid guy! Boro thinks and he leaps out of the ambulance and runs for cover from the F-16s circling overhead.

  Boro throws himself to the ground and clasps his hands over his head. Bombs explode with a terrifying force, bouncing his body and showering him with soil. He jumps to his feet. Smoke and dirt hang thick in the air all around him, and he makes out the crater of one bomb that burrowed into the sylvan hillside above him. The crescendo of an approaching jet spurs him to take cover again. He braces himself. More over-flights occur, each one heightening his fright. A Serb surface-to-air artillery battery thunders back. In only a few minutes, though, the air quiets and Boro takes stock. A few cars and a tank have been damaged. No one around him is injured.

  * * *

  ILIJAZ AND HIS GROUP are on a hillside when the planes streak over Srebrenica and circle. Grabbing a pair of binoculars, Ilijaz tries to get a view of the bombings.

  Strong air strikes will change everything!

  Several explosions thunder in the distance. Then silence. Smoke pours from a hillside, but as it clears, Ilijaz and the others see an untouched tank atop the hill and soldiers walking around it. Eventually Ilijaz’s group resumes walking. They stop at a stream.

  “Those were probably just scout planes, going to investigate the terrain,” someone says. Any minute, the escadrille.

  It never comes.

  Somewhere to the south, a Serbian tank, intact, belches another shell, and then another, into Srebrenica.

  * * *

  THE VOICE OF GENERAL RATKO MLADIĆ, commander of the Bosnian Serb army, breaks into the U.N. radio frequency. Using equipment stolen from a captured Dutchbat observation post, he issues a stern warning: If NATO continues its use of air power, the Serb army will shell Srebrenica and the Dutch U.N. compound and will kill the thirty Dutchbat soldiers in Serb custody. Around the same time, the Netherlands minister of defense telephones the U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Yasushi Akashi, requesting that close air support be discontinued because of the proximity of the Serb soldiers to the Dutch troops. Akashi doesn’t need to be persuaded—he passes the message to NATO and the air action is halted. The U.N. Protection Force commander, Janvier, agrees with the decision.

  * * *

  MSF STAFF MEMBERS Christina Schmitz and Dr. Daniel O’Brien are standing outside the bunker watching the sky as the fighter planes drop their bombs. When the strikes stop and Serb shelling resumes from the mountains, they run to Srebenica Hospital to see how many patients are left and whether any new ones have arrived. They see a long stream of people moving north on the main road.

  Realizing the population is almost gone, they decide to leave, too. Christina still figures they’ll be back by tomorrow. She locks the door to the bunker, gathers some of MSF’s valuables, and then prepares to move twenty or so patients to U.N. Bravo base. She and Daniel have one pickup truck and two Land Cruisers at their disposal. Not everybody fits.

  After dropping off the first load, Christina heads back toward the hospital for the last few elderly patients, driving slowly against the stream of villagers running northward carrying screaming babies and bags in their arms. Somewhere between the base and the hospital, she comes face to face with Dutch U.N. soldiers in vehicles and on foot, retreating from their blocking positions. They’ve been driving the population ahead of them like shepherds driving a flock of sheep away from a pack of wolves. Behind them are the encroaching Serbs. Christina can’t see them, but she can feel them coming. The Dutch advise her not cross their line. Exhausted and hot, she agrees to give up temporarily on her plan to return to the hospital, turning her car instead toward Potočari. One U.N. truck stalls in front of her car, and she watches the flushed, overburdened Srebrenicans use the opportunity to scramble aboard from the hot, dusty road. They look as if they’d kill each other just to get on the truck and rest for the two-and-a-half mile trek.

  Christina is tired, too, and incredibly tense. She feels her heart racing. I’m going to die, Christina thinks, of exhaustion. Of the horror of all of this.

  When Christina arrives at the Dutch compound, a converted battery factory building, Daniel is already there, working at a makeshift care unit set up in a dark corridor by the Dutch.

  Where are the local doctors? Christina wonders. She has no idea what’s become of Ilijaz, Fatima, and the others. Around sixty-five patients have arrived, mostly war wounded, many untreated since being wounded again by shelling at the B Company. They lie on stretchers with closed fractures, open fractures, arm fractures, wrist fractures, concussions, and deep wounds.

  The Dutch soldiers have gone on a shelling “red alert,” ordered to their barracks wearing their helmets and vests. Because air strikes haven’t taken out the Serb weapons on the north ridge of the enclave, near Potočari, the U.N. military observers fear that the U.N. compound is a “very easy target.” Of the entire Dutch medical team, only one, surgeon Gerry Kramer, is ignoring the bunker alert and helping treat patients. Telling his superiors to “kiss my ass,” he gathers supplies from the Dutch hospital and brings them into the factory building for the use of the population.

  The building teems with roughly 5,000 people, and U.N. soldiers have stopped letting anyone else besides mothers with babies inside. Shafts of sunlight pour into the building, lighting up dust. A flush-cheeked woman in a red sweater ties up her hair, and a little boy holds tightly to his white stuffed animal. The place is hot, smelly, full of the odors of sweat, urine, and feces, the sounds of babies crying and people moaning. The clamor of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of voices mingle together. The air is visible, hazy. Dutch soldiers wearing powder-blue hard hats try to direct the crowds. People hold their belongings close and keep their jackets on them in spite of the heat.

  Christina uses the car radio to request more supplies from Belgrade and then walks around the grounds near the U.N. compound. Crowds of people, perhaps 20,000–30,000, stretch as far as her eyes can see, hovering around the destroyed buildings and factories, on driveways, between trees and inside numerous discarded, skeletonized vehicles.

  Babies cry. The elderly stand panting. People jostle back and forth, one foot to the other, looking beseechingly toward the U.N. base, shivering in spite of the beating sun at the continuous clamor of shelling.

  MSF, alerted by Christina’s updates, releases a public statement: “MSF appeals for an immediate ceasefire, respect for the immunity of civilian populations, and humanitarian access to populations in danger.”

  * * *

  FOR AN HOUR OR SO AFTER THE AIR STRIKES, Dr. Boro Lazić waits with his medical team and two escorts in a line of Serb military vehicles just off the Srebrenica-Skelani road. Then burly, strapping Bosnian Serb General Mladić arrives, tough and dangerous, rumored to beat up soldiers and even officers if things aren’t going the way he likes. Boro has met him before. He admires and respects the man for his bravery and his skills as an officer and commander. Mladić, wearing a dark camouflage shirt with matching pants stuffed into his combat boots, struts up to Boro’s medical car and peers inside.

  “Who’s in charge of such a neat ambulance?” he asks. Boro identifies himself and the brigade to which he belongs.

  “This is better than the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade,” Mladić flatters him.

  The general continues in a car on the main road toward Srebrenica. It is a fine day for him. A day of victory. A day of revenge against Bosnian Muslims, who symbolize the Turks who defeated the Serbs 600 years ago and established their empire on Serbian soil.

  Mladić sits in the passenger seat, his Chetnik-style hat on the dashboard before him. The car curves along a dusty dirt road bordered by green grass and trees that throw long shadows. Reaching Srebrenica just after 4 P.M., the general gets out of his car and strides down a sh
aded city street to survey his fiefdom. Burnt-out buildings stretch along the road before him, the ones to his right lit by the afternoon sun. He stops beside a windowless building and looks around.

  “Take down that Muslim street sign!” he orders the men near him, lifting a bare, meaty forearm and pointing across the street with his right hand. A .35 Heckler submachine gun extends from his left fist, below the rolled sleeves of his military shirt, and a set of large, black binoculars hangs around his thick neck.

  “Selmanagić Reuf Street!” He reads the name of the World War II Partisan hero in a mocking tone. “Take it down! Hajde.” His brows furrow beneath his broad, hairless forehead and his voice turns into a fierce yell. “Climb up, man! Do I have to tell you ten times?”

  Men ring him, some smoking cigarettes. They carry their hardhats in their hands and wear white bands around their upper left arms to identify themselves as Serbs.

  The camera follows Mladić to a point near the town square. A smile opens up on his face as an officer walks up to shake his hand, embracing him by slinging his hand, holding a walkie-talkie, over his right shoulder, and kissing him in the Serb Orthodox manner, three times, like the trinity—left cheek, right cheek, left cheek.

  “The eleventh of July,” the man says, “Congratulations.” This is not just any day. Mladić has taken his victory on the eve of Petrovdan, the day of St. Peter the Apostle, the patron saint of the ruling Bosnian Serb political party, the SDA. The holiday also marks the two-year anniversary of the Srebrenicans’ humiliating attack on the Serb village of Zalazje.