He drove until he spotted the reddish brown buildings and then pulled off to the side of the road. He tilted the map. The configuration of the buildings matched Atif’s drawing. He glanced up and down the road.
Movement.
He sat still, waiting for a vehicle, but nothing appeared. Switching lenses on his camera, he focused on the movement in the distance.
It was a cow walking beside a fence.
Mike laid the camera aside and drove in behind the abandoned buildings. He parked out of sight. Shouldering his camera bag, he walked into a meadow covered with high grass.
Overgrown? Already?
Mike watched his feet, brushing aside the grass as he walked. He studied the ground, flipping stones and rotted lumber until he found a brass casing.
Would they have left the brass?
He took a picture, pocketed the casing, and kept walking. Then his foot struck something metallic.
He froze.
Mines?
He leaned down and held the grass aside. An empty ammunition crate sat on its side. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
“I’m getting too old for this,” he said.
He took a picture and kept walking. The tall grass ended in clay, rock, and weeds. Empty magazines and dozens of brass casings littered the edge of the disturbed earth. The imprint of a bulldozer’s track covered the entire area. He took out his notebook.
About thirty metres wide. He looked up from his notes. More than a hundred long. Did the satellites miss this one?
He walked along the edge, taking pictures and inspecting shredded pieces of fabric, papers, and more casings. Then he stopped and lowered his camera.
A piece of shredded cloth fluttered like a flag from a short white pole in the middle of the disturbed ground. Mike stepped forward, his foot sinking in the loose earth. He drew back, wiping the clay from the bottom of his boot.
He changed lenses and focused on the flagpole. The cloth flipped around revealing that the white pole was really two.
An arm?
Mike shifted a few steps to his right and refocused on the pair of arm bones. The hand, still attached, hung parallel to the ground. The fingers were missing, but the skeletal thumb remained.
“Gotcha, you bastards.”
The wind brushed through the tall grass.
Birds sang. Grasshoppers chirped. The cow bellowed.
The shutter release clicked.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to express my gratitude to Rebecca Rose and the staff of Breakwater Books including Elisabeth de Mariaffi, my editor James Langer, and Rhonda Molloy for making this publication possible.
I’d like to thank Paul Butler who was there from the beginning and helped bring this novel to life. I’d also like to thank Marjorie Doyle and Michelle Butler Hallett for their mentorship and the Writer’s Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador for sponsoring the Mentorship Program. I also want to thank the Newfoundland and Labrador Credit Union for sponsoring the Fresh Fish Award and thank the three judges: Annamarie Beckel, Sue Goyette, and Craig Francis Power.
I’d like to express my appreciation to Memorial University’s Department of English and Donna Walsh for getting me started in the program. Thanks to Lisa Moore, Kathleen Winter, Marie Wadden, Mary Lewis, Nancy Pedri, Robert Finley, Lawrence Mathews, Jean Guthrie, Lynette Adams, Scott Bartlett, Matthew Daniels, Susan MacDonald, Leslie Vryenhoek, John Reiti, Zach Goudie, Mark Bath, Aimee Wall, Wanda Nolan, Heidi Wicks, Mary Pike, Danielle Tucker, Gavin Simms, Danny Bridger, Stephen Gosse, Sara Inkpen, Chris Hibbs, and Penny Moores.
A special thank you to all those who helped with various programs and readings and to those who offered information, translations, and editorial feedback: Susan Rendell, Debbie Hynes, Mary Dalton, Danielle Devereaux, Théa Morash, Marilyn Dumont (Athabasca U), Gill Eaton, Ruth Ryan, Lisa Ryan, Stephan Ryan, Hannah Heale, Kali Heale, Andrew Heale, Chris10a (Netherlands), Gasper Atelsek, Hafiz Cej, Chris Joy, Rik Taafe, Sherry McGarvie, and finally, an extra special thanks to OzT for taking care of the cats.
Thanks to The Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies for their comprehensive report on Srebrenica and to the following authors whose works have helped ensure a realistic depiction of the events in and around Srebrenica from July 11 to 16, 1995: David Rohde (End Game), Emir Suljagi (Postcards from the Grave), Sheri Fink, M.D. (War Hospital), Chuck Sudetic (Blood and Vengeance), Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both (Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime) and Nicholas Kent (Srebrenica).
And I’d like to thank Jacques Rioux for bringing Atif into my life.
LESLEYANNE RYAN was born and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland. A Canadian Armed Forces veteran, she served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia from October 1993 to April 1994. For her years in service, she received The Canadian Forces Decoration, United Nations Protection Force Medal, and the Canadian Peacekeeping Service Medal. Her writing has won four Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Awards, and in 2011, she won The Newfoundland and Labrador Credit Union’s Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers. Braco is her first novel.
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