The Solace of Trees

by Robert Madrygin

  Josif quit pedaling and lowered his feet to the ground. Touching Amir’s shoulder, he pointed down the dirt road, holding his thumb and index finger close together to sign that they must be almost at their destination.

  “We must be close,” Josif said, trying to look hopeful. “That’s only one of the buses. We’ll catch up with the others soon.”

  “No,” Amir shook his head. “Let’s keep going straight.” The younger boy pointed ahead of them, away from the turnoff where the bus had come from, not really knowing why, some instinct within him reacting in alarm. “Let’s go that way.”

  Josif placed his hand gently on his young friend’s back to calm him. “Look, it’s OK. I promise you. It can’t be far to where the blue helmets are now. You’ll see. I’m glad we missed the bus. This was more fun anyway. You and me together. Wasn’t it?”

  Comforted, Amir saw the question in Josif’s eyes, unconsciously understanding the deeper query whose answer the older boy sought. Amir nodded his head in affirmation. Whatever the question’s words, he knew the answer was yes, the two of them were good friends.

  As Josif’s legs began pumping the pedals with renewed vigor toward the side road he was sure must lead to the UN camp, a thought came into his head. He might not have to leave his friend so soon after all. He had an idea how they might still be able to remain together, at least for a time. His imagination, flying, soon slowed. The road was narrowing, the gravel looser, rougher, and more potholed. This wasn’t right. The road should be bigger and better maintained, not like an abandoned country lane. Josif was sure the two vehicles had come from this way and that the other two buses must still lie ahead. Yet it looked as if the road ended at the clearing they had just come upon. Stopping, the boys dismounted, and Josif laid the bike down on the edge of what seemed to be an abandoned quarry. The older boy spied something at the far side of the open land. Foot tracks pressed down through the grass and headed in that direction. Josif signaled to Amir that they should go forward to investigate. The younger boy went no more than twenty meters when something became clear to him, something that still wasn’t clear to Josif.

  “No!” Amir shook his head vigorously and stopped in mid-track.

  “Come on,” Josif responded, his voice less than sure, his hand reaching out to take Amir’s arm.

  “No!” Amir shook his head yet even more emphatically and pulled his arm from Josif’s hand. The older boy looked into his friend’s eyes, something within him sensing that it wasn’t so much fear expressing itself in the younger boy’s face as some kind of terrible knowledge. Josif turned to proceed on his own. After about fifty meters the older boy began to understand Amir’s refusal to go forward…the distant colors, the shape of the formation becoming clearer. His legs took him closer and closer, some invisible force pulling him even though he knew he should turn and run, never see what lay in front of him.

  They numbered twenty or more. It was difficult to say exactly how many there were because the ditch into which they were piled hid most of them from view. The bus with the men and boys had been detoured and their journey ended in brutal fashion.

  Josif had never really believed the stories he had heard from Zoran and his friends, tales of disappearing buses and the things done to those trapped inside: knives drawn across throats and other brutal murders hard to believe possible. Yet the young teenager now understood that the stories he heard spoken in drunken swagger were not of minds speaking in idle boast but were real acts, the results of which he was now witness to. Looking onto the piled corpses—the faces of men and boys who a short time ago he’d seen gazing out the window of their bus—Josif was overcome by a sudden wave of nausea.

  Turning away from the death mound, Josif felt his knees go weak and was unsure he would be able to continue walking without lowering his body to the ground. He made his way as if in a trance toward Amir, who now came toward him. The sudden realization hit Josif that if his young friend had been on the bus, he would, at this very moment, be among the dead piled in the hole.

  “Did you see?” Josif asked, his eyes searching those of Amir’s. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know….” The older boy’s words slipped by Amir’s ears unheard.

  “Come, we must leave,” Amir said by way of a small turn of his head, hands pointing the way. Josif started to follow but paused as the younger boy’s steps began to lead away from the road they had entered on and instead headed in the direction of the woods.

  “Wait. Where are you going?”

  “This way, to the woods,” Amir answered, his arm pointing toward the trees.

  “But the bike,” Josif said. “We can’t leave the bike.” It took a few seconds for Josif to realize the disoriented state of his mind. He was worried that Sonja would be angered if they didn’t return the bike. Yet after what he had just seen, he suddenly understood the borrowed bicycle was as if nothing—only rusty, old lengths of metal welded together. It was all nothing. He felt like someone had reached into his body and pulled the life from within him and then thrown it into a dark, endless abyss. No, no, he could never go back to Zoran’s farm now.

  Abandoning the bike, Josif followed Amir into the woods. They had no more than entered into the tree line when the older boy heard the rumbling of a motor in the distance. He signaled Amir to wait. The sound of the engine grew stronger, and soon they saw a backhoe driving down the track they had just left, come to finish the soldiers’ work.

  The two boys passed the evening in the woods. Amir made a bed for them from what loose material he was able to gather from the forest floor, and the boys huddled close to share the warmth of their bodies against the chill of the night. They awoke the following morning at dawn, cold and hungry and thirsty, not knowing where they might go—only that it should be in the opposite direction from where they’d come.

  It was Amir, not Josif, who led their way through the forest. The boys exchanged no communication as to who should lead. They had simply and instinctually fallen into line with Amir in front.

  The two had been walking for a number of hours when Amir raised his right arm and signaled Josif to stop. The older boy looked at him questioningly but could see by the look on the younger boy’s face that the pause wasn’t a casual one. Amir pointed to their right, put a finger to his mouth, and squatted low. It was only after another few seconds that Josif finally heard a distant movement and saw figures moving through the trees to their north.

  There were three of them. Two younger men and one older. The younger appeared to be in their mid to late twenties. Neither they nor the older man carried weapons. Their shoulders were burdened by backpacks stretched full, and it was clear to Amir by the hesitant, cautious step of their gait that they were the hunted and not the hunters. Amir seemed content to watch and let them pass by; Josif, however, had already had enough of the woods.

  With Josif sitting behind him, Amir was unable to see the older boy’s mouth open and move. He knew only by virtue of their startled response that Josif had called out to the three men.

  “Hello-o-o,” Josif sang out once more. Amir turned around to see Josif standing with his arm in the air, waving in their direction. The demeanor of the frightened men quickly changed upon seeing that it was only a pair of young boys who had interrupted the quiet.

  “Shut up!” the taller of the two younger men hissed as they came close. “Are you crazy or just stupid? There are snipers all about here just waiting for idiots like you. Do you want to get us all killed?”

  Josif’s face flushed, and his eyes blinked and looked past the man as if in search of something behind him. The shorter of the young men glared at him. The older man held the palm of his right hand toward the ground, raising and lowering it in short brief strokes to calm his traveling companions. They were all on edge, their nerves anxious and worn thin. The taller man, who had spoken harshly to Josif, took a deep breath and closed his eyes for several seconds. Raising his eyelids, he looked to the older man and nodded, then continued walking onward through
the woods.

  Without anything being said, the two boys fell into line behind the three men. They walked for about an hour, until they came to a place where light flooded into the landscape along a wide horizontal break in the trees. Just beyond the tree line was a paved roadway. The men whispered among themselves, arguing about what to do. They sat waiting for what seemed an eternity, watching to see if there was anyone about. Finally, one of the younger men raised himself into a crouch. He nodded to his companions and then sprinted across the road. The two remaining men continued to wait. There was no movement anywhere. They rose and quickly crossed the road, the two boys right behind them.

  A short time later they came to a meadow. The men debated whether they should stop and rest before continuing on. Deciding to take a break, they opened their backpacks and began to pick through them for food. Ignoring the boys, the men shared what little they had with each other until the last few bites, when the older man finally looked toward Josif and Amir. He turned back to his companions and gave a brief nod of his head in the boys’ direction.

  “Here,” one of the younger men said, handing a few morsels to the boys without further word.

  The boys gratefully received the offering—a couple of pieces of pan-fried bread and a few slivers of raw onion—wolfing it down quickly from hand to mouth. Josif thanked the men and asked them where they were going.

  “Where do you think?” the shorter of the two younger men answered sarcastically. “The same place as you. Away from here, before we get killed.”

  Josif said nothing, his eyes opening just the slightest bit, as if trying to take in the import of the man’s words. Not knowing what else to do, he nodded his head as if in agreement and struggled to come up with something to say that might make sense.

  “Yes, we are trying to get away, too,” Josif responded to no one in particular.

  “Hey, you,” the taller of the young men said, turning to Amir, “pass me the pack next to you.”

  Amir was staring straight out in front of him. Josif nudged his young friend’s arm to get his attention, then pointed at the backpack and then at the man who had spoken. Amir didn’t understand. He could see the man was talking to him, saying something, but he wasn’t able to make out any of the words from the movement of his lips or mouth.

  “What are you staring at me for? Just give me the fucking pack, will you?” the man said.

  “I’ll get it for you,” Josif responded, quickly reaching over for the backpack and handing it to their newfound traveling companion.

  “What’s the matter with your brother?” the man asked with an annoyed look as he took the pack from Josif.

  “He can’t hear,” Josif answered. “He can’t speak, either.”

  “A deaf-mute?”

  Josif nodded. He didn’t bother to refute the labeling of Amir as his brother. He accepted the man’s labeling of the younger boy as his brother as if indeed it were true…as how it really was between them.

  The three men looked at each other with unspoken words. Traveling in enemy territory was dangerous enough without having the burden of a deaf-mute child on their hands.

  “Where’s your family, then?” the older man asked.

  Josif paused to think, but then just answered with the simple truth. His truth. There was no family anymore. No mother, no father. There was only him and his younger brother.

  “And your grandparents? Your aunts and uncles?”

  Josif thought about Zoran and Sonja.

  “No, there is only my brother and me. No one else. They are all gone.”

  “What are your names?” the older of the men asked, his compassion slipping past the barrier of his fear’s defense.

  “My name is Jusuf,” the older boy answered, using the Muslim form of his name, unsure of what the men’s reaction might be to the Serbian variation of his real given name. Nodding toward Amir, he spoke the first Muslim name that came to his mind, “My brother’s name is Muhamed.”

  After speaking, Josif looked at the ground, not wanting to make eye contact with any of the men. They in turn looked away, reading into the boy’s words their own experiences, their own losses. That the boys were orphans was not shocking news. The men didn’t need to know more. Didn’t want to know more. The men couldn’t afford to become involved. Self-preservation allowed no room for the indulgence of pity or the binding complexities of attachment. The three men rose, slung their backpacks over their shoulders, and began walking toward the woods at the far side of the meadow. They didn’t look back to see whether or not the boys followed.

  By day’s end, they had wandered close to an outpost where peacekeepers had been deployed by the United Nations in an effort to create a humanitarian corridor leading to an area protected from the war. About an hour remained before sunset. The day had been long and arduous. When they finally came within view of the UN camp, the men and boys could see that the main road leading to it had a Serb checkpoint blocking any direct approach. The three men argued about whether to simply take the road to the camp and brave the checkpoint, or find some other route in. Surely the Serbs wouldn’t do anything confrontational that might be seen by the UN observers, one of them had argued, to the cynical looks of the others.

  In the end they all agreed it would be best to find an alternative route in. They skirted the camp, to where a wooded hillside led almost all the way down to the outpost’s perimeter, leaving a distance of only a couple hundred meters without cover. The men made their way as quietly as they could. Unable to hear, Amir could nevertheless see by the way the men were walking that their feet would speak their presence to any who might be carefully listening.

  A quiet, peaceful scene from long ago appeared in Amir’s mind, the memory floating into his consciousness. He and his father were about to enter the woods behind their house, and his father was speaking. Amir could hear the words inside his head. His father was telling him about the secrets of the forest…saying that to understand them, one needed to be able to engage the depths of nature’s silence.

  “When you are on the hunt in the woods, everything you do must be done in silence,” he’d counseled the boy and then asked, “And do you know the most important thing of all to be done in silence?”

  “Is it to walk?”

  “No, son. The most important of all is to see in silence.” Asaf paused. “Do you understand?”

  Amir was quiet for a moment before responding. “No, Papa,” he answered truthfully.

  Asaf smiled, his heart warm with fatherly pride and love for his son. Amir couldn’t understand why his father would appear so pleased, when he had been unable to answer the question. Asaf’s hand came to rest gently on his son’s shoulder, his thought suddenly traveling back in time…to words his own father had once spoken to him as a child, to the Sufi aphorisms his father had been so fond of quoting.

  His mind returning to the present, Asaf looked down at the top of Amir’s head, the fine, dark-brown hair, and at the small, delicate round of shoulders yet to gain their form. He thought to repeat one of his father’s favorite sayings, but the boy was young. There would be time later, when Amir was older. Father and son continued quietly on in pursuit of the wild mushrooms they had promised to collect for Amir’s mother, Emina.

  Chapter 6

  The men sat at the forest’s edge for nearly half an hour before deciding to make their way down to the UN camp. They argued about whether to wait until it was dark or to cross the open land while there was still enough light for the peacekeepers to see them. The older man, Ismet, was afraid that in the black of night they might startle the sentries, causing the soldiers to fire on them.

  “What are they saying?” Amir asked Josif with his eyes.

  Josif shook his head and gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. “It’s not important,” his gesture spoke.

  As the sun began its final descent to the horizon, the men gathered together at the tree line and made ready to dash across the meadow that separated them from the UN out
post. There was a heavy silence as they waited one last minute before stepping out into the open and exposing their presence to any snipers that might be about. The men stood and adjusted their backpacks. Josif tapped Amir on the shoulder and pointed out past the wood’s edge to indicate the direction they were to go. Taking Amir’s hand in his, Josif followed the men as they began to make their way across the open field at a trot.

  Nearing the halfway mark, as they closed in on their destination, Amir could see smiles of relief breaking out on the faces of their traveling companions. He glanced toward Josif to see if he too was smiling. Josif’s eyes met his. “It’s OK,” they said, a wide grin shining on the older boy’s face. Feeling the courage of hope within Josif’s eyes, Amir responded in kind.

  One of the boys’ older traveling companions let out a laugh of relief and began to wave his right arm in the direction of the camp to signal the peacekeepers of their arrival. Josif felt the surge of adrenaline passing among them all as they drew close to the camp; the boy’s stride becoming light, he felt like a deer bounding through the high grass.

  Signaling his joy, Josif’s hand closed tighter around Amir’s, and with a bright grin he said something the younger boy couldn’t make out. Amir looked back with his eyebrows raised in question only to see his friend’s smile suddenly disappear, the older boy’s happy expression replaced by a look of astonished surprise that leapt out from his face as though some great thought or perhaps disturbing news had just entered his mind. At the same moment, Josif’s body jumped abruptly forward, lurching ahead and causing his hand to separate from Amir’s.