Mandić did not look well. He was unshaven, unshorn and he had large bags under his eyes. Not at all like the confident and stern Mandić from history lessons.
The few people who still had petrol, stood by their cars on the far side of the crossing. The column of cars stretched all the way to the bridge, but the cars were facing the wrong direction. We were not going to be exchanged with the Serbs who lived on the other side of the river, as Adi had hoped. We were being transported further from the front, deeper into Serbian territory.
‘Right into the lion’s den,’ Dad said. ‘I’m such an idiot. Never should have listened to any of you.’
He had not wanted to leave. Neno, Mum and I managed to talk him into it at the last moment. He wanted to stay and ‘guard the house’, like his cousin Zijo, who lived in a village three kilometres upriver. Only after Neno revealed that Zijo had been considering escaping across the river did Dad drop the idea. He smashed a few watering cans and spat on the front of the house.
‘Wish I’d never built you!’ he said to the house.
The buses were supposed to arrive at nine, but by three o’clock we still had not seen a single one.
‘They’re waiting for it to get dark,’ Dad said. ‘I knew it! I told you so. Right into the lion’s den.’
The buses arrived around four and the few soldiers guarding the crossing post received reinforcements. One of the new arrivals I will never forget. Not particularly tall but quite well-built. Dark hair. With clear brown eyes and feminine features. They called him Chinaman.
He was the driver of our bus, the first in the column and the fullest. It reeked of people who had not seen running water for a long time.
Dad and I sat together; he took the window seat, I took the aisle. Mum and Neno were in front of us. Neno’s hair was unnaturally short. Mum had cut it so as not to ‘provoke the army’. I don’t remember ever seeing him with such short hair. It was as though a part of him had already disappeared along with his dark curls.
He cleared his throat. From where I sat, I could see him brushing the non-existent locks of hair off his forehead from force of habit.
The bus stopped near the outskirts of Nedođ.
A burly man in camouflage walked behind the bus and entered through the back door.
‘Identity check!’
He pushed his way down the aisle carrying a plastic folder and some papers. Everyone pulled out their identity cards, waiting for him to inspect them.
Mum handed him our cards. He stood pressed against my right shoulder. Before his folder and papers obstructed my view, I noticed that he had a moustache and a double chin. He held the papers to the right of my head and his gaze shifted between them and our ID cards.
Without thinking, my gaze settled on the typewritten list on the back page. I only managed to read two names before my neck began to ache: Muharem Sokolović and Osman Hodžić. Osman was active in the Islamic PDA party and a candidate for a place on the town council. Dad had a running feud with him, and because of his surname, always mockingly called him Hodžica, the little imam. He had not been seen since the first shot of the war.
And then: SMACK!
‘WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT, NOSE PRINCE? EH?’
Everything around me was spinning. My left cheek was blazing but I grabbed my neck instead.
I muttered a confused ‘Nothing,’ and turned to Dad. His eyes shifted between me and Double-chin.
Then his gaze suddenly fell to his knees.
Double-chin shouted ‘EYES FRONT’ before adding a few rude comments about my ‘big-nosed mum’. I was too shaken to react. Everything in front of me blurred. Dad said nothing. What was he waiting for? I blinked rapidly in an effort to hold back the tears.
‘Leave him alone. He’s just a kid,’ Neno said in a gentle and pleading tone.
‘SHUT YOUR MOUTH BEFORE YOU GET SOME TOO! EYES FRONT!’
Neno obeyed.
Double-chin handed the ID cards back to Mum and said in a completely different tone:
‘Here you are!’
As though nothing had happened! Like a polite ticket inspector on a completely different bus.
I looked down as Dad’s knee accidentally brushed mine. There was a bluish thread resting on his trousers, no more than three centimetres long.
It irritated me to no end, but I did not move it. Instead I moved my knee.
‘Why would you look at those papers?’ Dad whispered. ‘What’s the matter with you? Take it easy.’
I did not answer. I just looked at him with my bottom lip between my teeth.
We were held there for quite some time. The stench and the heat were unbearable. It was still heavy and stifling. There were people standing in the aisle, almost on top of each other. Adi’s dad dabbed his forehead further up the bus. He and Adi were wearing far too many clothes, clearly they had wanted to take as much with them as possible.
Suddenly the engine stopped rumbling. The front door opened with a snorting noise.
‘ALL THE MEN OUTSIDE!’
I recognised Chinaman’s voice.
Dad got up and moved past me. Neno slipped past Mum. She turned to me and said:
‘Stay here.’
I nodded. Had not even considered going.
When the aisle had thinned out a little, an older woman in the seat across from me began to mutter a prayer. It may have calmed her down, but not me. A searing knot began to form in my stomach as I listened to her whimpering.
Adi gave me a blank look as he moved to a seat next to his mum.
‘WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?’ Chinaman shouted at him.
Adi straightened up in his seat:
‘But … but I’m only fourteen.’
‘I didn’t ask how old you were! Outside!’
At the same time he spotted me and nodded:
‘You too! What are you, men or pussies? Both of you out before I rip off your trousers!’
So this was the summer of ’92, the summer that Adi and I had been looking forward to so much. We would be fifteen, finally be finished with primary school and we could start going into town. I was going to learn how to drive, impress Nina with Neno at my side as both passenger and driving instructor. He would finally be back home. Dad was going to enjoy his hard-earned retirement.
Instead, when the summer finally arrived, Dad, Neno, me, Adi, his dad and brother and some twenty others, all stood with our hands behind our backs, our foreheads pressed against a wall, waiting to be shot. The world had shrunk. All that remained of it could be counted on one hand: the cool, damp odour of the wall, the Chetniks’ voices several metres behind us and the sight of a triangular piece of mortar hanging from a crack in the wall, right in front of my nose.
The stone surface of the wall grated against my face. The grey rubble of the foundation slipped a little under my feet.
I’ve only made it to fourteen years and ten months, I thought. We’re done for and I haven’t even turned fifteen.
My turd had long since hardened inside me. I no longer felt the need to go. I did not feel anything. While they had led us through a few deserted streets towards the wall, I had thought of Mum still sitting on the bus. Now I thought of nothing. There was no past, no future and no one to complain to about anything. I would not even make it to fifteen. That was a fact, nothing more.
We were allowed to turn around and sit on the ground. I fiddled with the hole in my worn-out Adidas trainers, but my index finger was numb.
Adi’s dad raised his hand. He asked the soldiers to spare Adi.
‘He’s only a child,’ he said.
One of the soldiers grabbed Adi by the arm and dragged him away.
Dad put his hand up:
‘My son is also only fourteen.’
I looked at him and hissed through my teeth:
‘What the hell are you doing? I don’t want to go!’
Adi and I were placed somewhere between the centre spot and the penalty area, some fifty metres from the low pavilion by the entrance
to the football pitch where the others waited. I said nothing to him and he said nothing to me. We sat on the grass, hugging our legs, silent and motionless. Our eyes were glued to the twenty men who stood lined up against the wall of the pavilion. The four or five soldiers who stood in front of the men were not the same as those who had stopped us at the entrance to town. Chinaman and Double-chin were gone.
From this distance we could no longer hear what the soldiers said. They probably carried on with the same speech one of them had given while Adi and I were still sat there. Something about why Serbs and Muslims could no longer live side by side. Something about how everything used to be and how it would be from now on.
The one speaking had not sounded drunk, but several of those around him appeared rather agitated and not entirely sober. The one who had led Adi and I away stank of booze.
We waited for them to shoot. But they did not shoot. They prolonged the séance. Ordered some men to stand up, turn round, then sit down again. Neno was up once, Mandić twice. Actually I had always thought that Mandić was a Serb. Apparently he was a Croat. Otherwise he would have raised his hand and said something long ago.
My back was dripping with sweat. My underwear was wedged between my buttocks. At one point I saw myself walking back and sitting down between Neno and Dad. But I did not budge from the spot.
Behind the goal and the tall wire fencing I spotted a bald, bare-chested man. He turned the tap on in his garden, swatted at a fly and washed his face. Oddly the first thing that passed through my mind was: they’ve got water here. The next: can he not see a thing? He was no more than thirty metres from the men and the wall but at no point did he look at them.
Then the sound of an engine was heard. The nose of a dusty bus poked out at the bottom of the street that ran alongside the football ground. It was our bus, the first in the column, and again I thought of Mum.
The other buses followed behind and parked along the fenced-in ground. The men began to stand, brushing the dust off their trousers. The soldiers assumed a more informal stance and walked towards the buses. It was like seeing a meeting or a performance end.
Adi stood up. I wanted to say something to him but I did not know what. He nodded towards the men who were walking towards us. I stood up and followed in silence.
We spent that night in a school. The gymnasium and the toilets looked the same as at the school Adi and I went to.
The following day, we waited from morning till night for them to tell us what was going to happen. Mandić, my history teacher, was acting as some kind of negotiator. It had been decided that we were not going to continue towards Banja Luka, but instead turn south. We were all going to be turned over to our people, just not to those in our hometown.
When at long last we boarded the buses and drove from Nedođ, the lousy town was enveloped in the incipient twilight. Even though I still knew nothing of prisoner exchanges, let alone those that took place in the night, it felt like a step forward. Finally something was happening. At least we were on the move now.
In the pitch black, on a road in the middle of nowhere, the bus stopped, and again all the men were ordered off. I stood up with Neno and Dad, but the old man pushed me back into my seat saying:
‘Take care of Mum!’
‘But … I …’
I should be with the men, I wanted to say, but he would not let me speak:
‘Stay here and take care of her!’
The bus engine rumbled away. A woman was wailing, another fainted, the curtains were drawn. There was little light in the bus. On the other side of the glass I could hear footsteps, indistinct shouts and the occasional vehicle.
I leant my forehead against the headrest in front of me. Mum was in the same position. We waited and waited. I locked my eyes shut and in the darkness, yellow circles began to spread like ripples in a pond. I thought I was going to throw up. But nothing came. My stomach just cramped up and I got dizzy.
The engine continued to idle. The voices outside grew alternately louder and quieter as a gentle summer rain began to patter against the windows.
Maybe they’re butchering them with knives, I thought. Or are they using silencers? Maybe it’s already over.
When the men boarded the bus again, their clothes were wet. They moved slowly and nobody said a word. Their faces were indistinguishable in the darkness.
We were taken to the meeting hall of a village I had never heard of. We were locked inside. I fell asleep quickly but awoke only a few hours later.
In the middle of the room, there was a yawning gap in the crowd of people. The roof was leaking and a puddle had formed there. We had slept on the concrete floor to the left of the entrance – Dad, Mum, Neno and I. Now we sat against the wall, staring across the room, saying nothing. I ate a dry Petit Beurre which Mum had somehow got hold of. As I chewed, I noticed a lack of strength in my jaw.
Adi and his family must have been among the first to come in last night, when we were herded into the meeting hall like cattle. That must be why they slept on the stage, in front of some tall cardboard staging depicting a green forest. Hanging on the wall above the stage, a milky-white banner with glittery writing: HAPPY NEW YEAR 1992. In the corner on the right, there was a Marshall speaker resting on a chair.
‘When’s the concert starting?’ I asked Neno, pointing to the stage.
He turned his head to me and said quietly and dryly, almost lethargically:
‘Shut up.’
I got up to go and chat with Adi, but Mum grabbed me by the sleeve:
‘Where are you going?’
‘To see Adi.’
‘Stay here. We must not be separated.’
‘Just for a bit.’
‘Stay here, my love, do as I tell you.’
I sat back down.
The door handle rattled. A wave of silence descended upon the room. A soldier walked in and kicked Dad’s outstretched legs. He stopped where everyone could see him and shouted:
‘Milan Mandić! Where is he?’
Mandić got up and raised his hand.
‘They want to talk to you!’
Mandić picked up his thin jacket from the floor, said something to his wife and left with the soldier. The door closed and was locked once again.
My gaze caught an old man with white hair to the left of Mandić’s wife. He was frail, wearing a beret and a grey suit jacket. As Mandić was moving towards the door, the old man’s mug transformed into a funny, ape-like grimace. Nobody around him reacted, and for a brief moment I thought it was just something I had imagined. The grimace continued to mark his face, and his head kept bobbing up and down in short, sharp movements.
It was not until his daughter or daughter-in-law put her arm around his shoulder that I realised the man was crying.
‘Look at old monkey-face over there,’ I said. ‘He’s bloody-well done for.’
Dad gave me his death stare:
‘What’s the matter with you? Was that smack you got yesterday not enough?’
‘Yeah.’
And you still wouldn’t have raised a finger even if I’d got a thousand, I thought.
When they opened the door again everyone was ordered outside. It was spitting with rain. The gravel in the yard seemed slimy rather than wet as it crunched under our feet.
Some five or six soldiers stood in the middle of the yard. They split us up into groups, motioning sharply and shouting, ‘Women to the right, men to the left!’ I wanted to give Mum Neno’s leather bag, but her hands were already full.
‘It’s all right,’ Dad said to her. ‘It’s all right.’
Once we were on the left side of the yard, Dad moved between me and Neno. There was an arched metal gate, halfway open, in the two-metre-high wall behind us. Through the gate I could make out a building at the back of the adjoining yard. The buses were parked along the street on the far side of the yard, behind the women. I was confused by that: had we not come in through that gate last night?
As soon as everyone
was outside the meeting hall, we were ordered to empty our pockets. Everything except for our documents was to be placed on the ground.
My pockets were empty. Dad and Neno threw their wallets down.
‘Boys under eighteen, over with the women!’
Myself, Adi and several others did as were told. All of the bags were left at the men’s feet. The unfurled wallets were scattered around the bags like a flock of dead, black birds.
‘It’s all right,’ I said to Mum when we made eye contact. ‘I’m right here.’
In the ensuing minutes I kept my eyes on Dad and Neno, as they watched each other listlessly, motionless. Everything around me faded into the drizzle and the morning fog, and even when they led my history teacher, Mandić, and a handful of other men across the yard, I did not pay it much attention. Mandić’s face was bruised and one of the men behind him was missing an arm. They lined them up. Only later did I realise that those men had not been with us from the beginning. Nobody had seen them before.
‘Men over fifty-five to the left!’
Dad and Neno were separated. The old, white-haired man who had broken down in tears earlier, collapsed. Adi’s dad helped him up. He said something along the lines of ‘Spare this man, he’s old and ill.’ One of the soldiers took a short run-up and kicked Adi’s dad in the stomach:
‘STAY OUT OF IT!’
I scanned for Adi and his mum, but I could not make them out behind a group of wailing and sobbing women.
The yard simmered like a square pot. The soldiers in camouflage and olive-grey uniforms ran around in a frenzy, shouting at the men and the women and at one another. I held Mum by the arm. My face grew moist from the dank drizzle. My gaze shifted between Neno and Dad, now standing in separate rows. A clean-shaven soldier with thick lips checked the older men’s identity cards. He shouted out their names and dates of birth. Another, who was at least a head shorter than Baby-face, followed at his heels carrying a thick A4 notebook. The notebook had a hard, brownish cover and the little fellow sneezed as he jotted down the names and dates that were called out.
Ukulele Jam Page 13