It was dusk and a mist arose from the valley and covered up the distant scene.
The commander laid out his plan. One half of the troops would go around the mountain, and the other would attack directly from this side, in two hours.
Haris and his companions walked gingerly for fear of stepping on mines even if the scouts had no trouble beforehand. Not only would the mine hurt whoever stepped on it, but it would also reveal the Muslim position.
They approached the upper edge of the camp. Haris tried to control his breath, to enjoy the aroma of plum trees and roasted lamb flesh, which wafted on the mists, but there was no enjoyment in his breath and no self-control. His heart pounded into his lungs and interrupted his breath, and it skipped beats, and accelerated in a rush, syncopating a strange rhythm he hadn’t experienced in a long while, of pure fear. The mist probably made it safer to advance than clear air would, but it added the invisibility and unknowability. No meditation and no mantra could slow his heart now.
All of a sudden, bullets splashed the mud around him, startling him. Guns right next to him fired back into the mist, to where the shots resounded.
“Forward, for Bosnia and Allah!” the commander shouted.
Haris fired into the sounds, and crouched on the ground, and then crawled forward, with mud freezing his elbows and knees, which he didn’t mind, nor did he mind sharp stones scraping him since his fear acted as an anesthetic.
They kept shooting and getting closer and closer to the fire, and suddenly, there were men upon them, and they hit one another with rifle butts, bayonets, knives, and fired from close range, and even wrestled to strangle one another.
Shrieks, and swearwords, and prayers, and mothers’ and fathers’ names mingled with bullets and blood and urine. The two companies of soldiers fell upon each other, as though a medieval battle were being fought, or even an ancient one. The crusaders, however, had used shields and armor as had the ancient Greeks and Persians, and here, bayonets and knives and steel fell directly on skulls, flesh, and bones, which cracked, opened, and poured out marrow.
Haris jabbed a rushing silhouette with his bayonet, straining to spear him. The man fell back and shouted at him, “Fuck your sunshine!” Haris couldn’t tell the man’s features in the dark, but he couldn’t relent; the large silhouette wiggling on the ground—and kicking and nearly breaking Haris’s shin—could rise and throw him down unless he kept pressing. And so, not even quite sure that he had his point at the right spot on the man’s body, or even whether it was on the man’s body, Haris leaned into the dark. He pushed, but the bayonet wouldn’t pierce the man, and so he threw his body on the rifle butt and felt the resistance of the abdomen finally give, and the bayonet sank into the fallen man’s rib cage. That sinking of the knife, for a brief moment a triumphant slide, suffused him with revulsion. He left the bayonet in the body of strange groans amidst which emerged one more oath, “Your Serbian mother!” And then the man gurgled blood in his throat, and so these were the last words, with which he didn’t exhale but asphyxiated.
The throat of the already dead man still gurgled. Did Haris get one of his own? Would a Serb swear like that? Yes, he could. But wouldn’t a Muslim, thinking that Haris was a Serb, be more likely to swear like that? And would it be less horrible if the man indeed was a Serb rather than a Muslim?
At that moment he was hit over the head with a stone, and the dank mist of the battle slope lifted to be replaced by warmth spreading through his head. When he came to, white clouds swiftly drifted a dozen yards above him. Haris stood up; he could barely keep his balance. Each step he took hurt his head, wobbling his brain.
He tripped over a corpse with a cracked skull and the brain hanging out of it and quivering and collecting pine needles from the ground. He felt his brain quivering the same needle-pricked way; he touched his right temple, and his fingertips slid through a tepid gluey wetness.
He crawled to the edge of a rock and looked on—down below him lay scattered cattle bones and one rusty tank. He crawled into the camp, and found more corpses of his comrades, from both contingents. He concluded that the two sections hadn’t attacked the Serbs, but each other. Where were his live comrades? What if he were the only survivor?
The thought horrified him, but it also appealed to him. If the mountain belonged to hawks, wolves, boar, and foxes, and he were the only human being around, he’d be free to roam, to drink from clean brooks, never to speak again, never to exchange lies and friendly fire of one kind or another; then he could indeed be spiritual. He remembered one of his favorite suttas, which he had learned near the felled park, to pass the time, in Sarajevo, years before:
“Having abandoned the practicing of violence toward all objects, not doing violence to any one of them, let one wish not for children. Why wish for a friend? Let one walk alone like a rhinoceros.”
He had always loved solitude, and so even amidst the busy city, he hadn’t formed strong attachments—at least not to people, but to cafés, yes. The few girlfriends he’d had eventually abandoned him upon realizing that he wasn’t the marrying kind, and so for years he hadn’t been with any women although he occasionally lusted. But up here on the mountain, he wouldn’t be bothered by lust either. If he were absolutely alone, he could be a good Buddhist; he could meditate well.
But he wouldn’t be alone on the mountain. He’d be in the company of a hundred corpses whose ghosts would scrutinize him and molest him in his dreams. He had gruesomely killed a man, and his karma couldn’t bring him freedom from pain, let alone nirvana. One side of his face went numb, and an ear buzzed. He had a concussion, no doubt, but were some of his arteries severed if the dura mater cracked? If so, he might even want a hospital, but who would trust one in these conditions? A concussion while people were dying would receive the lowest priority, and the hospitals were so shoddy…. No, better to die like a wildcat, in hiding, alone. Even outdoor domestic cats usually managed to die out of sight, to bother nobody and not to be bothered by anybody, as though they had attained enlightenment, so why couldn’t he?
He limped into the camp, into the debris of CD players, TV sets, cases of empty beer bottles, boots. He found a walkie-talkie. When he flipped it on, it crackled; the batteries were good. He slid the walkie-talkie into his pants pocket.
In the crates of empty beer bottles he found a full one. He pinched the tip between two rocks trying to pry the cap open. The glass cracked. He poured the beer into his aluminum container. Maybe he’d drink some glass.
At the upper rocky edge of the camp, a dozen brown ravens greedily pecked at a man’s entrails. Several people from his unit appeared behind them, backlit by the morning orange sun, and walked around the corpse, and the ravens ignored them and kept feasting.
“What a relief to see you,” said Haris.
“I thought you were dead,” said Hasan, who had a black eye.
“What are you doing here?” Mirzo, another soldier, whose neck was bandaged, said. “Why are you alone?”
“I wonder about that, too.”
He stood up and as he straightened his body, he felt a sharp pain around his lower ribs. Did I break them when I jumped on the butt of the rifle?
“It’s peculiar there are no Serbs,” Haris said.
“Yes, peculiar,” the commander enunciated.
Hasan tilted each empty bottle for a few old drops and made sucking noises.
“Stop it, disgusting slob,” the sergeant said. “Aren’t you scared of their germs? Just imagine all those Serbian mouths slobbering over the bottles; it’s like kissing them.”
“I’ll kiss bottles anytime,” Hasan answered. “And germs, I am sure I already have them; they have nothing new to offer to me. And if your spittle is made of beer, I’ll kiss you, what the hell.”
“Watch your tongue!” the sergeant said, and then addressed Haris, “What’s your theory, Haris?”
“Look at them, they are still eating.” Haris pointed toward two ravens who played a tug of war with a stretch of th
e long intestines. The intestines glowed crimson with the sun shining through them.
But he was the only one noticing. His comrades surrounded him and stared at him.
“You aren’t answering my question, soldier,” the commander said. “Somebody must have told them what we were up to.”
“Maybe the scouts?” Hasan said. “They were there ahead of us all and they could have told them.”
“The scouts are dead,” the commander objected.
“That doesn’t mean they didn’t inform the Serbs.”
“If they had, they would have known better than to go along with us and die….”
“Who could have predicted we’d kill our own?” Haris said.
Haris didn’t know what to do with his hands, and he scratched a stone-cut on his forearm. He put his hands into his pockets.
The commander looked Haris up and down. “How come your pockets bulge so much? Empty your pockets!”
Do I have to take this? Haris thought. I guess that’s how the military system works: on obedience, not resistance, almost like Tao. He emptied his pockets. The walkie-talkie fell into the grass.
“Who do you need to talk to?” the commander asked.
“I don’t need to.”
The sergeant ejected green spittle through his yellow teeth. “I heard him talking to himself; he was ratting on us. He hid in a thicket!”
“That’s a jump to conclusions. I found the walkie-talkie here at their campground, and naturally, I picked it up. Wouldn’t you?”
“And who were you talking with under the trees?” the sergeant asked.
“Oh, those were just yoga mantras.”
“Mattress?” the commander combed his beard with his long fingers. “You mean you slept under the trees?”
“No, mantras, you know, Hindu and Buddhist incantations, short prayers.”
They were deafened because a Phantom jet flew low over them.
“Rich bastards, drop your bombs or go home!” Hasan shouted.
“Let’s see who he’s hooked up with.” The commander flipped on the walkie-talkie, and said, “Hey, man, where are you? Over.”
“You sound strange. You got drunk? Over.”
“I wish. What about you? You got any beer?”
“No, just a lot of whores, plum brandy, and white wine.”
“Okay, let’s exchange some, I got lots of whiskey from those UN bozos. Bozo booze. Where are you now?”
“What do you think? Over.”
“Oh, of course. I’ll stop by tomorrow.”
The commander flipped off the walkie-talkie.
“So, that’s your partner? You warned them, and now they are down, all the way in the valley, probably getting a reinforcement to hunt us. I think it’s time to move out of this place.”
“But how could we? This is such a good strategic location,” said the sergeant.
They didn’t walk far—two hundred yards away from the campsite, where most of their dead lay.
Two soldiers tied Haris to a tree and the commander said: “Convince me you didn’t do us in. Think up something, make a good story. You have an hour. If your story’s no good, we’ll bury you alive with those whose deaths you have caused.”
At least half of the company had survived. Gradually they appeared from the woods, and from behind the rocks, and they joined in the digging efforts, and some of them bandaged each other, and a couple tended to a man who was dying from many knife wounds, while several stood on guard.
They used shovels from the Serb trenches and fought through the stony land, digging next to the pines and cedars. Haris smelled smoke from so much metal hitting rock and sparking up. They collected wristwatches and wallets, which they combed for German marks; they gathered tobacco and cigarettes. They placed four bodies in each hole. Several men kept glancing at Haris darkly, and later, they threw soiled stones at him. One stone struck Haris in the ribs. Mirzo, when passing by Haris, spat into his face. The sergeant slapped Haris, hitting him above the ear, where he’d been struck down with a rock. Flashes of green light appeared before Haris’s eyes, like northern lights filtered through leaves, and his vision oscillated. He couldn’t keep his head up, and he let it slump and rested his chin on his sternum. The rope cut into his wrists.
In the meanwhile, men prayed and read from the Koran. Several men wailed, some wept silently, others frowned and paced, and one man, apparently out of his mind, would now and then bellow with laughter, until Hasan bloodied his nose. From then on the man whimpered and sniffled.
The burials went on with somber dignity.
The fact that nearly half the company was being buried was a tragedy, but at the same time, the occasion was a triumph of sorts. The company now controlled the mountain ridge and the river valley roads. It was to be expected to have some losses, and that the losses came from friendly fire could not annul the fact that they did control the mountain from which they could strafe the land and several roads.
Haris’s hands, tied to the branches above him, tingled from the lack of circulation. His woolen pants itched him, and the sweating around his groins irritated him, and the more helpless he was to do anything about it, the greater the itching, and he thought that he’d give a finger or two if he could just properly scratch the damned irritation. How far from meditation this is, he thought; if he had meditated better, he would have been able to control his state better—he may have strolled in the battlefield, invisible, intangible, and even if struck down, he would have had the good sense to die rather than to come back to life with a concussion to go through the strange resurrection cum crucifixion. He found support for his sensation of guilt in this recalled verse, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.” He could not recall what evil thought he’d had, but was sure he’d had one. He thought about the verse again, and the wheel that follows the foot of the ox kept turning and returning—to the ox. Now, what did the oxen think that was evil, to be burned on a spit? He licked his cracked lips and his throat hurt from dryness.
The grisly commander walked up to him. “Hey, are you Orthodox, Catholic, or Muslim?”
“I am a Buddhist.”
“That’s a good one.” The commander smiled the way many do upon hearing a joke that’s cute but not quite funny. “What were you raised as?”
“An atheist, of course. Weren’t you?”
“What was your parents’ religion?”
“They were Muslims. But they never went to the mosque.”
“Well, then, you are a Muslim.”
“No, Buddhist, as I said.”
“You swallow fire, walk on nails, put your feet behind your neck, or do whatever they do?”
“I don’t mean it as a religion, but as a nation.”
“Come on.”
“Could I have a glass of water? I’m dying of thirst.”
“Buddhist nation, you say, here?”
“You can be Muslim or Christian anywhere, why not Buddhist?”
“You are making fun of Muslims being a nation in our country? I see, there’s a Serb lurking in you. That’s what they like to do.”
“Don’t I have freedom of choice of religion and nation?”
“Nobody does. That’s fate. And how the hell could you become something so bizarre?”
“Not that I like being a Buddhist, but in my formative years, I read that nonsense and so that’s how I think and who I am.”
“Well, if you don’t like it, change it, be a good Muslim.”
“Can’t. You said one cannot change.”
“But you did—just drop your act. I don’t find it a good story.”
“I wouldn’t mind changing, but I became Muslim in my formative years, late teens, early twenties, the most philosophical years of our lives. Remember in the sixties there were books all over Sarajevo about herb healing,
meditation, Buddhism, Hinduism, astral projection, and so on. All that stuff came from Belgrade. They already planned to distract us, get us to fantasize and talk in cafés every night till dawn, while they went to military academies and studied engineering or started smuggling goods from Italy or joined the mafia. You think they read that stuff in Belgrade? No way.”
“You are crazy!”
“You call me crazy. You have a better explanation for what’s going on?”
“Well, you got a point, but that doesn’t mean that any nonsense should make sense. Plus, your giving me this theory about Serb conspiracies won’t convince me that you aren’t working for Serbs.”
The sergeant lit a cigarette and began re-creating his personal cloud, but the commander said, “No smoking.”
“What’s wrong with smoking now? The Koran says nothing against it.”
“The tree might catch on fire.”
“In this weather? If it did, it might be a good way to deal with this devil.”
“In any weather—look at the rosin oozing from the bark. That burns like petrol. By the way, don’t talk back to your superiors.”
The sergeant huffed out a blue streak and trampled his cigarette under his boot.
“Well, that was nice, but you used up your time.” The commander petted the white sides of his beard. “You could have convinced us that you didn’t betray us. All right, try it in five, six sentences.”
“Why would I convince you of anything? If that’s what you believe, go ahead, believe.”
“It’s a shame. Now that you have talked about your odd religion, I can see that you could easily do all sorts of unpredictable things; therefore I believe that you turned us in. Sergeant, what do you think?”
“I agree with you.”
The commander then addressed Hasan, who stood with his arms crossed. His black eye was even more swollen than before, and it shut.
“Soldier, how about you?”
“I have no idea.”
“But you heard him talking stealthily under the trees?” said the sergeant.
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