War Hospital

by Sheri Fink

  Mladić poses in the shady square in front of Ilijaz’s apartment building, which is lit in the background. Could he possibly have chosen this spot because it borders the site of yesterday’s grisly rocket attack? Is his intelligence good enough to know that this is also where Srebrenica’s intellectuals, Ilijaz’s linden tree club, used to meet? He speaks to the camera.

  “Here we are, on July 11, 1995 in Serbian Srebrenica, just before a great Serb holy day,” he says, stiff-faced, barely moving his lips. He looks down and then slightly off to the distance through squinted eyelids. “We give this town to the Serb nation. Remember the uprising against the Turks. The time has come to take revenge against the Muslims.”

  * * *

  NOT LONG AFTER, Boro rolls slowly through Srebrenica in his ambulance in a procession of army vehicles. He passes damaged buildings, burnt houses, and eerily abandoned streets littered with cast-off belongings, dead animals, and, here and there, human corpses. The city his troops have conquered looks horrible to Boro, but all around him, victorious soldiers are celebrating—singing, hugging, and carelessly discharging bursts of gunfire. The only wounded person Boro has to treat the whole day seems to be a victim of such friendly fire.

  Boro, too, is excited, mainly because the offensive is finally over and he’ll get to go home soon. When his ambulance draws near the hospital, so recently abandoned by Ilijaz and his colleagues, he gets out. The building appears undamaged by the recent shelling. He enters it with the ambulance driver and a few soldiers. A few elderly people cringe beside the entrance. Boro goes upstairs to look around, walking first to the surgical ward. It looks to him as if the Muslims, working hard, left in a great, panicked haste. The surgery table is covered with blood and bandages. Still, he’s impressed at how much more well-equipped the operating theater appears now than when he saw it two years ago during the evacuations. He walks up and down the hallways of the two patient floors, peeking into every room. Closets are open. Sheets and blankets litter the floors.

  His mind flashes back to his trip here in 1993, giving him an unexpected pang of nostalgia. He recalls, with pity, the doctors and nurses whom he met. They must be fleeing toward Tuzla, he figures, and the thought of their fear saddens him.

  Boro takes nothing from the hospital except some bandages, which he uses to tie the door handles shut in an effort to protect the building from marauding, victorious soldiers. He continues northward in his ambulance on the main road, stopping at the abandoned U.N. Bravo Company base across from the soccer pitch an hour or so before nightfall.

  Boro and his team find the base well stocked with modern medical supplies and equipment. Obviously these are of no use to the Dutch now, so Boro and his buddies decide to do a little “evacuating” themselves. They stay until dark, gathering supplies, medicines, food, boots, and uniforms and loading them into their truck. Boro even finds some sleeping bags to take for himself and his team.

  They go back out. The streets are filled with joyful looters stuffing their cars and tractors. At a partially constructed church nearby, Boro ties a bandage to a bell and rings it in celebration of Serbian Srebrenica. He hears that a car is headed toward his hometown and decides to jump in and make a quick visit with his wife and children. As he heads north past Potočari, the site of the U.N. soldiers’ base, Boro looks out the window and sees the thousands of Srebrenicans massed around both sides of the street. Muslims, mostly women and children. His car does not stop.

  28

  HEGIRA

  AFTER WALKING A MILE OR TWO, Ilijaz’s group catches up with Srebrenica’s civilian authorities and military commanders, including Ramiz, in the small village of Kutlić. Ilijaz, calmer now, suggests the large group of about 10,000, mainly men, several thousand soldiers, head toward Žepa. The distance through Serb territory is short and they should be able to break through it relatively easily. Since the group left Srebrenica completely unprepared for a long journey, nearby Žepa, though also enclosed, will be a good place to get organized and plan next steps.

  Everyone seems to agree, but they set another meeting point a few miles farther west, sending couriers to alert others. Ilijaz rejoins the medical staff, explains the plan, and eventually they start walking west, but must change direction at the sound of rocket fire. Fear deepens with the darkness. Then, around 9 or 10 at night, word spreads that Žepa, too, has fallen. The escape plan has to change.

  Ilijaz’s group arrives in šušnjari, one of the last areas still under control of the Srebrenica forces. A meeting of Srebrenica’s brigade commanders is under way. Major Ibro Dudić, a friend whom Ilijaz respects, explains the latest plan. The thousands of Srebrenicans gathering here will form a line and walk northwest roughly fifty miles through Serb territory toward Tuzla, passing Konjević Polje and Cerska, near Zvornik. Military units, their commanders communicating by way of Motorola walkie-talkies, will take various positions in the column, with civilians interspersed among them for protection. Scouts, some elite soldiers, and the brigade from Cerska, most familiar with the terrain, will lead the line.

  Major Dudić’s brigade is slotted for somewhere near the middle of the line, but he warns Ilijaz not to accompany him.

  “If the Chetniks think strategically,” he says, “they’ll fire in the middle… I’d like you to be with me, but as a friend, I’m advising you to stick as much as possible toward the beginning of the line.”

  Ilijaz agrees and informs Ramiz, the overall commander, that the medical staff and their family members will join the line near its front. Ilijaz’s core group of about fifteen close friends, colleagues, and family members—including all five hospital physicians and most of the operating room nurses and technicians—make a solemn pledge to stick together.

  The night is chilly and clear with a full moon. Ilijaz’s feet are already hurting, so he pulls off the military boots and puts on tennis shoes. While the other medical staff rest in the valley, he focuses on building his fighting unit.

  If this huge group breaks up, we have to have people around us we can trust. Some strong guys, guys with weapons, guys who won’t desert us.

  Someone informs Ilijaz’s group that they should form up into a line and that they will start moving at 1 A.M. on July 12. But 1 A.M. passes and 2 A.M. passes and still there is no signal to move.

  I don’t like this at all. A line has got to be the worst way of moving and this route must be the most dangerous, longest one imaginable. But there’s no point in asking questions…

  At last they start moving one by one through the forest on soggy ground, halting whenever someone ahead wearing poor shoes slips, or a cow or a provision-laden horse on the path refuses to budge. By the time they reach Buljim, a nearly treeless plateau that marks the enclave’s northwest border and the beginning of their journey through enemy territory, day is breaking. Ilijaz thinks of all the patients he’s treated who’ve been injured in the minefields they’re about to cross, of all the amputations he’s done, and all the people who’ve died here.

  If I cross Buljim and nothing happens then I might have a chance…

  For safety, each person steps in the tracks of the person ahead. They hold hands, Ilijaz, then Fatima, then her brother and the others, walking in silence except for an occasional message whispered down the line: “Careful here,” “Please, absolute quiet.”

  The group passes into enemy territory, apparently unseen, descending a steep hill and entering a dense forest of thick, tall beech trees. As morning breaks, Ilijaz hears shooting behind their backs. At first it sounds far away, nothing to worry about. Then he hears grenade explosions.

  Something’s going on with the last part of the line.

  Ilijaz’s group continues away from the sounds as fast as they can on uneven ground, up and down hills, covering fewer than two miles in an hour. The pathless hills rise in endless undulations, blanketed with trees. Fatima looks up at a hill that seems to rise straight into the sky and wonders how they’ll ever have the energy to get to Tuzla. Around 11 A.M.
they reach a designated stopping point in a forest between a hill and a valley. They sit down, exhausted and feet swollen, near others who are already sleeping. A major asphalt road lies ahead, and they must wait until nightfall to cross it.

  Ilijaz asks around and discovers they’re between two Serb towns. Between two fires, he thinks. One is Kravica, where Srebrenica soldiers made their punishing Orthodox Christmas attack in January 1993. “This spot doesn’t feel safe,” Ilijaz tells the others and gets up to find Ramiz and suggest that armed units be placed around them while they rest here.

  Before long, a breathless messenger arrives to announce that the back of the line has been shelled. Ilijaz watches Ramiz and another commander digest the news. They don’t trust that it’s anything serious. It sounds like an incident, they say, not a major attack. They tell the man to quiet down, to avoid panicking the population.

  The messenger stares at them in disbelief. For a moment, Ilijaz is sure he’s going to try to kill them. But when the man speaks again, it is in a quiet, deliberate voice.

  “OK, you don’t need to believe me,” he says. “I’m going back to my people, my soldiers, to die with them. And you will be guilty for everything that’s about to happen.”

  Ilijaz doesn’t know whom to believe, but the sound of shelling in the distance and the sight of wounded people beginning to arrive sway him toward the messenger. This is war, not a game. From now on, he’s going to be very suspicious of the commanders. He’s going to look out for his own group rather than trusting that others have their best interest in mind.

  Twenty or so injured appear, carried in the arms of others or on improvised stretchers made of uniforms stretched between two logs. Ilijaz and the other medical workers place bandages and give analgetics until the time, after sunset, that their turn comes to proceed.

  They walk about a third of a mile, climbing to the top of a small, treeless hill covered with tall fern that rises above their heads. Then explosions begin around them, seeming to come from every direction. Ilijaz can’t orient himself enough to figure out where the fire is coming from. He thinks he hears all kinds of weapons—grenades, zolja rockets, infantry weapons. Gunfire slices the tips of the ferns.

  “I’m hit!” yells the hospital locksmith, holding a gushing water bottle.

  “It’s just the water bottle. Throw it away,” someone tells him.

  The line scatters. Ilijaz notices trenches running along the length of the hilltop. He scrambles into the shallow depression of an old Austro-Hungarian-style trench now overgrown with grass and thorns. He waits, but the storm of fire is unending.

  It’s not safe to stay here. We should get down the hill as soon as possible.

  Ilijaz stands up and calls to his group.

  “Go, whatever happens.”

  They run through the tall fern, then curl up and roll down the hill, falling into some bushes. The remains of a couple of burned houses nearby don’t seem to offer much chance of protection. They keep moving until they reach a small riverbank that provides some cover. They look around. Five of the medical technicians who started out with them this evening are missing.

  Somehow a messenger, a former postal worker, finds his way to Ilijaz with a walkie-talkie and a message from Major Ibro Dudić.

  “He has a lot of dead and injured people, and he’s asking if there’s a way you could come help him.”

  Ibro is a friend. Many of Ilijaz’s relatives are traveling in his group, including his brother-in-law.

  “What should we do, Naim?” Ilijaz asks his best friend, the medical technician.

  “We’re going back,” says Naim, whose father is behind.

  Then the ear-splitting booms start up again. They stand and wait, not knowing what else to do. Amplified voices echo up the mountains, Serbs calling for their surrender. Ilijaz isn’t going back to help. For the first time in the war, someone’s asking for his assistance, and he isn’t even able to try.

  A Srebrenica soldier Ilijaz knows only as “Big Ears” appears above them on the hill.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks. “Don’t you know the Chetniks are right behind you?”

  He guides them farther west to a path the first part of the line has taken that runs between some burned houses toward the asphalt road they have to cross. There, Ilijaz’s group and some of the injured for whom they cared the previous day rest and wait out the shelling. Eventually, it seems safe enough to follow a trail toward the main road, but as they climb a hill in the moonlight, Serb forces aim anti-aircraft gunfire at them.

  A hospital worker, Dževad Begić, takes hits to the fleshy part of both legs, but they can’t stop to examine him until they reach the foot of the hill. They treat his minor wounds and carry on, taking turns helping him walk. They know that they are heading for a raised section of the road that runs over the Jadar River so that they can cross beneath it, but a walk that should take two hours stretches through the night.

  We are not going straight, we are making half-circles, turns…

  It is nearly light outside on Thursday, July 13, when they reach the main road. With no overpass in sight, they decide to sprint across the road rather than cross under it. Ilijaz makes it to the other side, runs about 100 yards farther, and barrels straight into the Jadar River, which he expects from experience to wet him to his knees. The familiar river emanates miles to the southeast, from beneath the hill of his childhood, Kragljivoda. But July has been rainy, and icy-cold water cuts him at his waist; his tennis shoes bob up from the bottom. He grabs hold of some ground on the riverbank to prevent himself from being swept away.

  Even the river is trying to kill me.

  Everywhere around him people are splashing into the water. Men carrying injured people lose their balance, their charges crashing into the river and screaming as the current takes them. Ilijaz scrambles back out.

  “Hold on to each other’s hands!” he tells his group.

  They begin to cross.

  “Hey, your pictures!” someone yells to Ilijaz, who turns back to see photographs of himself floating away. The man who’d offered to carry Fatima’s heavy backpack must have dropped the bag into the river upstream.

  The area after the river is quiet, and the worst seems to be behind them. After some time, they stumble into swampland. Ilijaz takes his turn supporting the injured medical technician, and as he does, the man’s eyes bug out and a strange expression overtakes his face.

  “Just leave me here,” the technician pleads. “I want to lie down. I can’t go on.”

  Ilijaz and the others talk to him, tease him, try to keep him conscious.

  “Come on, you’re just pulling our leg, making all this up,” they jibe. “You’re actually fine.”

  “God I wish Ramo was here with his truck,” the injured man says, in a voice tinged with silliness, of the driver of Srebrenica’s bread delivery truck. “It would go so fast. I wish he would come and pick me up!”

  They make headway northwest toward Cerska. Infected with a terrible thirst, they bend to drink greedily from every stream they pass, not caring about the quality of the water. In the late morning, they climb their next goal, thickly forested Udrč Mountain, 3,419 feet high, where the head of the column has gathered since dawn. They stop to rest on a plateau.

  Hunger gnaws at Ilijaz. This is his third day of walking without having had a proper meal, and he wishes he’d thought to take something with him. Fatima runs her finger around the edge of her tennis shoes, trying to make them more comfortable, afraid to take them off because it would take too long to put them back on. The lost backpack with her and Ilijaz’s photographs also contained infusions, medications, and her clean socks. All she has now is the loaf of bread her mother packed into her brother’s bag, thinking the trip would last two days, but it is saturated with spilled water and powdered juice mix. Thankfully, the others convinced her not to toss it away. Everyone shares small pieces of it, and they lighten the mood by calling it “cake.”

  Ilijaz asks
some brigade commanders about last night’s attack, but they seem unaware of it, having been out of communication with the back of the column. Their walkie-talkies weren’t compatible. They rely on news coming from each new group to arrive on the mountain, and it grows more and more disturbing. The attack was a major one. Over time, the stream of arrivals peters to a trickle. Then it stops altogether.

  The gathering on Udrč Mountain is noticeably smaller than the one the night before. Perhaps only 2,000–3,000 people of the original 10,000 are here. Ilijaz is afraid to try to count. For the first time, he and the others realize how many people have been left behind.

  Ilijaz tries to sleep awhile, then gets up and walks around the groupings of people, gleaning information. It surprises him to come across many who seem to be hallucinating, eyes widening and fantasy overtaking them, possessed like pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s a mystery. Ilijaz can’t understand what could cause so many men to go out of their minds. Sure, they are exhausted, hungry and frightened, but perhaps there is something more. A group of men began hallucinating not long after a shell fell near them on the mountainside and discharged a thick, yellow smoke that slowly spread sideways. They’re sure that the Serbs are firing at them with chemical weapons. Others insist that the water they drank with such gusto was poisoned.

  Some of those hallucinating have become aggressive and confused, killing themselves or giving themselves up to Serbs; others remain passive, expressing things for which they seem to be wishing such as: “I’m going to my room to lie down”; “My child is outside and I need to call him in”; “My wife needs to come in for coffee.” Ilijaz hands out Valium, vitamins, and lies to the frightened people, telling them the pills will calm them and take away their visions.

  When Ilijaz gets back to his own group, they are gathered around one of the medical technicians. Upright, pale, and wide-eyed, he also appears to be hallucinating.