‘Wake up, boy! It’s stone dead. It was already dead when I was in school.’
Another time we had to read Goldsmith’s Treasure, a thick novel from the nineteenth century, and write an essay about it. I flipped through, skimmed a few pages and put it down. It was too bloody heavy. It did not spark my interest.
‘Have you read that crap?’ I asked Horvat before the lesson.
‘Of course, man. What do you think? I’ve got Šenoa in the palm of my hand!’
‘Tell me, tell me!’ I said. ‘What’s it about?’
It was a love story about two young people whose families had a running feud. The goldsmith’s daughter loved this guy, but her father wanted her to marry someone else. In the end the despairing girl committed suicide. Ended up being a victim of the stupidity and lack of flexibility by the adults. That was how I understood it anyway, from Horvat’s summary. ‘The hatred and pride of the adults destroys the happiness of the young couple. Contradicting the story’s happy ending.’ I later wrote.
It was a simple assignment. You had to choose a character from the book and write a profile. I went for the main character, the wretched girl, and I wrote, and I rubbed out, and I rewrote: about her love, her innocence and her purity. About the harsh environment that surrounded her, and the idiocy of the adults ‘which renders the realisation of her most humble dreams and desires impossible.’ It filled more than two pages.
When we were due to have our essays returned to us, I chose not show up to class that day. Fabio, who was into punk, had money on him, so we went down to Zagrebačka Street and played pinball. Fabio raved about a place called Ukulele, the only place in town where heavies, punks, grungers and other freaks could assemble.
‘There, they play real music,’ he said. ‘No commercial rubbish. There are no pop dudes, no pop chicks. You should come.’
‘I don’t have money for shit, man! I’d have to rob a bank to go.’
After the final token and the final flashing message, GAME OVER! GAME OVER! Fabio headed home and I took the bus back to Majbule.
The next morning I discovered that Rožac was so enthusiastic about my essay that she had read it out in class.
‘She was praising you to the skies,’ Horvat said. ‘She wants your body.’
‘Shit! She can’t have it. Not until I’ve read that fucking book!’
After school, I roamed the city, studied shop windows and went to the library. I flicked through the pages of greasy atlases and read about the population, geology and climate of Sweden until hunger forced me to take the bus home.
Back at the camp I was met with the empty places where my friends and I had hung out, plenty of wry looks and a cold portion of potatoes that needed re-heating. In town it was possible to disappear in the crowd. My forehead was not stamped: Bosnian, refugee, Muslim. In the camp it was a different story. Everyone knew who and what I was.
I threw down my school bag, filled the gaping hole in my stomach and glided down the stairs to the beach. Normally it was deserted. The fascists kept to the restaurant, the TV room and the terrace between D1 and D2.
I skimmed stones by the pier, annoyed with what was happening. I thought about Neno. The old void that ‘the Swedes’ had filled for a while had grown. No one could fill it and no one could get my mind off it. The people around me did not resemble him much, but their voices, bodies and clothes did. He was always somewhere, just never all in one piece. I caught myself walking and talking like him, using his expressions, his slang. I sat in his favourite position: hands in pockets and legs partially outstretched. We did not have a single picture of him, not a single recording. Even if we’d had a VHS – where would I have watched it? In the TV room? In front of everyone while the chain-smoking men played cards at the table and the women crocheted with one eye on the screen?
No way. Some underwear, a black jacket with a yellow pack of Čunga Lunga chewing gum in one of the pockets, that was all we had left of him. It was his old Spitfire jacket with a broken zipper on the left sleeve and an orange satin lining. Back when he used to go to football matches, he would turn the jacket inside out.
Folded up inside a plastic bag, the jacket now lay at the very back of the shelf above the clothes rack. Mum had put it there on Dad’s express wish.
One day when I had gone to try it on and discovered it was no longer hanging up.
‘Why’s it in the bag?’ I asked Mum and Dad at dinner.
Mum said it was probably for the best. Dad said nothing. He slurped down the thin broth, scraping the bottom of his plate.
Once in a while I lay on my bed and faced the wall. Pretended to be asleep. Other times I wrote in one of the notebooks I had picked up from Caritas one time. I often wrote about things that happened in the camp, matter-of-factly and chronologically, often in note form. I regularly reread the various passages, preparing myself for the day when Nedim Pozder Neno, my biggest hero, would be released. I looked forward to telling him about everything that had happened in the time he had been away. I wanted that day to come so damn much, and for that very reason I nearly shat myself out of fear that it would never happen.
Whenever my daydreaming got the upper hand, I thought about ‘the Swedes’ and our farfetched dreams for the summer. I was seriously afraid of a new punishment from above.
Okay, God, or fate or whoever is pulling the strings up there. Fine, let him lose both legs, I thought. Fine by me. As long as he comes out of this alive. Or allow him to make it out in one piece and have me lose something instead. Let me get run over one of these days or break my nose or get hit by one of the bullets Ivka’s husband Ivan fires into the air on the beach every time he gets drunk. I’ve always wondered what happens to those bullets. Do they make it all the way up to you as intended, or do they turn back and fall into the big, dark sea. Do we have a deal?
No reply.
Nothing.
No letter. No phone call. No speeding car with the accelerator floored as I slowly crossed the street.
SWEDEN
Loads of letters arrived from Sweden. Brimming with optimism and energy. The brothers were doing well, making new friends. The refugee camps were better, the people nicer. Amar’s were the most positive:
‘Just wait till I get the hang of this weird language! I’ll be chatting up Swedish girls like a real James Bond … And if anyone asks where in Sweden I am, just tell them I’m up by that screw at the top of the globe. All that’s missing are the penguins!’
He could not believe it when I wrote that Vlado and Robi kept avoiding me. That they looked away whenever I spoke to them. Samir wrote back, ‘Fuck those morons!’, went into great detail about his new experiences and sent me the lyrics to my favourite songs. According to Amar, Sweden was total paradise because of something called a music library. You could just go in and borrow any cassette tape. Absolutely free. Everything from the softest pop to the heaviest metal.
‘And they’ve got songbooks for most bands. I’m thinking of getting myself a guitar. Acoustic.’
Music library? Free? Heavy metal, too?
That same day I tried to convince Mum and Dad that we should move to Sweden too.
‘Out of the question.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s one thing that you dragged me away from my home,’ Dad said. ‘Now I’m supposed to move to the ends of the earth?’
Mum elaborated:
‘It’s not for us. Traipsing around the world at our age. You have to pay for the papers, run all over Zagreb, queue up. Where are we supposed to get all that money from?’
‘You could just borrow some from Uncle.’
‘Over my dead body,’ Dad shouted. ‘Never!’
‘Why not?’
‘I am not going to borrow money from him. And certainly not for a trip I don’t even want to make.’
‘And what would we do there?’ Mum said. ‘We’re old, we don’t speak the language or anything.’
They wanted to go back. To the ‘hearth and home of our anc
estors’, as the newsreaders called it on television. Even though they knew perfectly well that it was no longer a hearth and home but a burnt-out ruin, they could not accept losing everything they had worked so hard for their entire lives: the house, the garden, the two-year-old car.
‘There are people who have lost far more than us,’ I said. ‘Is there another reason you won’t leave?’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Dad said. ‘When you were born, the house was already standing. We had to save up for each and every brick. We’ve been building it for years. It’s ours!’
‘Fine, but what about me? Do I have to return to those ruins, too? Just thinking of that town makes me ill. Have you forgotten what those fascists did to us?’
‘If you knew of all the things I’ve had to put up with in my life, then those two bloody days in the hands of the Chetniks would look very different to you.’
I snapped at him in annoyance:
‘Why can’t we just leave like everyone else? Besides, you couldn’t go home now if you were related to God himself! Maybe the Swedes can help us arrange an exchange for Neno. We can write to their king, to their politicians, to the Red Cross.’
They could only smile. They shook their heads and went on like a broken record: they wanted to go home.
‘Listen Emir. We realise you are sad because your friends have left,’ Dad said. ‘But do not overdo it. You are only a child. You will live with us until you’ve finished school and get a job. After that, you can do as you like.’
‘I hate that school!’
‘It is the only one. Once the war is over, there will be plenty to do. Renovating, repairing and that sort of thing. People will return to their homes. You will see.’
‘But wouldn’t it be better to wait somewhere safe till we can go home, a place where we’ll be left alone? At least in Sweden no one would bother us. What difference does it make whether we return home from here or from there. It just means a slightly longer trip.’
‘There are good people here, too,’ Mum said. ‘Ivka, Ivan and Kaća’s mother. As for those troublemakers, you have to learn to ignore them. Scoundrels like that, they don’t need war as an excuse to give you a hard time. Just keep quiet and mind your own business. This too will pass.’
I kept quiet. What else could I do? Pack my things in secret and run away from Majbule? How? Where would I go? I had no passport, no money and no clue where Neno was. Of all the things needed to make that kind of trip, the only thing I had was the will and the urge to travel. If Neno had been somewhere safe, it would have been a different matter entirely. I could have just called him up and asked for help.
It was a couple of days before Neno’s birthday and it was already noticeable in the room. An odd atmosphere of wary silence and deep sighs.
‘Oh, well …’ they murmured with distant looks in their eyes, whenever I tried to get a reaction out of them.
One day at lunch, I tried again. I gave them the entire spiel about civilised Sweden, the country where – according to Amar – even neo-Nazis liked Bosnians. Dad did not say a thing, instead he took me aside after lunch.
‘I have to tell you something.’
‘What? What now? What have I done?’
‘Let’s just find somewhere to sit down.’
We stood in the middle of the path and looked around. Not a single table was free on the terrace so we headed towards the bungalows to get away from all the people.
‘There’s something I neglected to tell you,’ Dad said.
‘Neglected to tell me? When?’
‘You know that I call around asking people for news.’
‘Yes. About Neno. And the others.’
‘Exactly. You remember when I was given confirmation that they were in a concentration camp in Banja Luka.’
‘Yes, you told us that.’
‘But that was not all. I also heard that Neno was dead.’
‘DAD!’
‘Take it easy, it was not true! It was just a rumour. There was a mix-up.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘I’ll spare you the details.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Apparently the Serbs had forced them to crawl into no-man’s-land and drag the casualties back to the trenches. They came under fire from the other side and were killed by our own people. Him, Zaim and two others. But it was all just a rumour. It was a mix-up. He and Zaim were not among the dead. But that’s not the point. The point is that …’
‘What?’
‘That I … Do you not realise what it has been like for me? From the time I heard that until I was able to confirm that it was not true? And you sit there talking about Sweden? Do you not grasp what is happening around you?’
That was a real slap in the face. I felt bad. Sweden without Neno? I realised the chances of that were unlikely. That I’d probably never make it there. But it did not keep me from dreaming about it every day.
There was a lot of time for dreaming. Those days, the only person I spoke to other than Kaća was Igor, or rather he spoke to me. But Igor was spending less and less time at the camp. Duty called. The homeland needed its soldiers. When he came ‘home’ on leave, the first thing he did was lock himself in his room for several days. Then he went out and got drunk, talked incessantly about women and very rarely about music. I started to avoid him when he had been drinking.
Kaća had inherited some of Damir’s cassettes and I assumed the role of faithful borrower. I fast-forwarded and rewound the tapes, listening to the songs until I knew them by heart.
‘Okay, Kaćenka. Name any track out of all that Nirvana nonsense, and I’ll sing it for you!’
She named a song and I began to mimic it, first the tune and then the lyrics. Any words I didn’t know, I just made them up.
‘Well? What do you think?’
Kaća yawned.
‘You’re the biggest nerd I’ve ever met! You’ll be a virgin till you’re thirty if you go on like this!’
It was on one of these days that I first listened to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and ‘The Wall’ in their entirety. As soon as Mum and Dad left the room, I threw myself onto the bed, stared up at the yellowed ceiling or at one particular, carefully selected crack in the wall. I practised looking up at the ceiling without blinking. The image grew more and more blurred, but I kept lying there, counting the seconds, holding my eyes open. Until the Japanese mono speaker emitted the dramatic guitar solo that coursed through my body, Gilmour concluded his refrain with the words, ‘I have become comfortably numb.’
I had no idea what that meant.
UNCLE’S VISIT
On one of those Pink Floyd days, we received an unexpected phone call. Sergio, the receptionist knocked on the door.
‘Telephone!’
That was the most ambiguous word in the whole world. Telephone. Was there news about Neno? Good news? Bad news? Maybe we would finally hear from Aunt Lamija, who had ended up in Sarajevo. Mum worried about her, shed tears for her. Her husband had been wounded at the start of the war.
I went down and picked up the phone.
‘Emir, is that you?’
Uncle’s voice sounded more serious than usual, asking if he could come round tomorrow. He had something important to tell us.
‘About Neno?’ I wanted to ask, but did not dare.
We hung up.
I had agreed to meet Kaća but had to cancel. She was meant to trim my hair. But I had other things to worry about now. I had sweaty palms for the rest of the day and I did not go anywhere near my homework.
‘Did he mention what he wanted to talk to us about?’ Dad asked.
‘No. Just that he’ll be here tomorrow.’
‘All right, let’s keep it between the two of us. The only thing Mum needs to know is that he’s coming to visit.’
I waited in front of reception for my uncle. He arrived driving his metallic blue Hyundai.
He was not alone.
Sat next to him was an older blonde woman with curl
y hair, a long face and large dangly earrings. Had it not been for the old cloth bag filled with presents on her lap, it could be argued that she looked one hundred percent chic.
This woman must know something, I thought, as she held out her hand, introducing herself as Ana. I got the impression that she knew everything. About Neno, about me, about Mum and Dad and the entire situation.
Uncle and I kissed each other on the cheek, he smelt of cologne. He had recently dyed his hair. It shone black in the sun.
‘I hardly recognised you,’ he said. ‘Your hair’s getting long.’
‘Yeah, I was actually meant to get a trim today.’
‘What are your mum and dad up to?’
‘They’ve gone for a walk on the peninsula. They’re foraging for asparagus.’
‘Why?’
‘Mum chops them up and adds them to scrambled eggs. At the neighbour’s. They’ve got a hot plate.’
‘Is the food here that bad?’
‘Don’t ask. Dad says: “If only I were able to control what passes through my intestines, now that everything else is decided for me.”’
‘You’d think he’d be happy having food served to him.’
‘He was in the beginning. But after fourteen days, the “holiday” was over.’
Instead of going directly up to the room, we set out to find Mum and Dad. It had been a long drive, they told me, and they would like to stretch their legs a bit. They left the cloth bag with presents in the car.
Uncle thought the bay was idyllic but was disgusted with the poor state of the camp.
‘In the West,’ he said in an almost religious tone, ‘the buildings would have been kept up. There, they wouldn’t just neglect them.’
Ana smiled. Maybe they were together? He had been married twice in two different countries, but returned home divorced ‘on nostalgic grounds’. My uncle was bloody cool. He looked a lot younger than Dad, even though they were almost the same age.
‘We’re on our way to Ljubljana,’ he said. ‘That’s where Ana’s from.’
Ana nodded:
‘I’m sure you can tell from my accent.’
Ukulele Jam Page 11