“Eldin’s old enough to take the train to see a game with a friend,” counters my father.
“Keka, stop,” she says.
That’s Dad’s nickname. He’s the owner of Fitness Keka, the best gym in town. To him, sports are serious business. He’s in great shape. Whenever we’re out walking around, guys stop to talk to him and ask advice. People call him “the unofficial mayor of Brčko.” It makes my chest swell with pride.
Sometimes, during volleyball games at his gym, I help out the players with him, holding the cold spray to numb their pulled muscles and other injuries. After the game, I wait for my dad in the locker room. Once, the guys were goofing around, hoisting me up on their shoulders. My head felt so dizzy I was sure it would fall off, but I didn’t want to scream put me down ’cause they’d think I was a wimp.
Mom raises her voice. “This is not the time for Eldin to travel so far.”
“Your mother’s a worrywart,” Dad tells us, smiling.
Eldin nods, happy to have Dad on his side, as usual.
“Keka, the climate’s changing,” she replies. There’s a line between her eyebrows, like she’s frowning with her whole face.
I look out the window. It’s sunny, so I’m not sure what the weather has to do with anything.
“He’ll be fine. Stop being a nervous Nellie.” Dad has the final word.
“You leave me the phone number of Tomo’s parents and his cousin,” Mom tells Eldin, looking annoyed.
Eldin grins in victory. My mouth droops. I’m so jealous. He always gets to go everywhere and do everything with his buddies, just ’cause he’s older.
After three helpings of rice pudding for dessert, I go to my room to try to forget my brother, the big-shot showoff. I draw a picture of Lena, the sun and birds floating above her long hair. I’ll give it to her for her birthday on Monday and ask if I can walk her home from school.
As I’m getting ready for bed, I hear Mom and Dad arguing. My parents hardly ever fight. I put my ear to the door, hoping to figure out what’s going on.
“It won’t affect us, Adisa. This is our home, everyone here likes us,” Dad is saying.
“When trouble is walking by, don’t offer it a seat,” Mom says loudly. “We have to get out of here fast.”
Get out of here? But why? Where would we go? Who would I play with at recess? I wouldn’t be any good on another fudbal team without Vik. And what about Lena?
“You’re in denial,” Mom tells Dad. I’m not sure where Denial is, but it sounds scary. Especially the way she says it, stretching out the last sound so it hums, giving me the shivers.
Two
The next morning, Eldin writes down some numbers on the pad by the phone as Mom hands him a brown bag with a salami and cheese sandwich inside. “Be careful. Don’t drink or mouth off. If anyone bothers you, run the other way,” she says, kissing his cheek before he leaves.
That evening when we turn on the TV to catch the game, I look for Eldin in the stands. But it’s too crowded. When his team, the Croatian Outlaws, lose to the Serbians, the spectators boo. After a Serbian player pumps his fist in the air, Croatian athletes chase him into the locker room. Fans charge the field. It’s a mob scene. Someone burns the Yugoslavian flag as the Serb team waves a red, blue, and white one with a two-headed eagle and cross, the kind they’ve been waving at political rallies on TV. I’ve never seen chaos like this at a game. It freaks me out a little, knowing my brother is there. The broadcast ends, and Dad turns off the TV. I can’t sit still, and pace around the living room.
Mom’s getting scared too. “Why did you let Eldin go?” she keeps asking Dad at dinner. She phones Tomo’s house and his cousin’s, but nobody picks up. She opens our curtains to look down the street. Dad turns on the TV again to watch the news.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, trying to chill her out and stay calm myself. “Fights break out at games between crazy fans all the time.” Then the newscaster says the National Army just bombed a train station in Bijeljina, with a hundred casualties and “bodies blown everywhere.”
I’m stunned. Bijeljina is only about sixty miles from Brčko. It’s where we have our karate practice. The bottom of my feet feel cold. I picture a zombie movie where people are walking around without arms, legs, or heads. But Bijeljina wasn’t on Eldin’s way. I don’t believe that our soldiers would hurt their own people. It must have been a foreign army.
“What if Eldin can’t get home now?” Mom screams at Dad. “Or if he got rerouted there? I told you he shouldn’t have gone!”
The tips of my fingers are tingling. I chew on my thumbnail. Dad goes outside, and I trail behind him. Our neighbor Hasan comes up to Dad and says “Did you hear? Houses near the train station were set on fire with gasoline. Government tanks are in the streets!”
Eldin can be mean, but he’s still my brother. He’s the one who takes me swimming and to karate, who shares his comic books and frightens off kids who threaten me. What if he was at that station? Then who’ll protect me?
I usually go to bed by nine, but tonight nobody cares. It’s late when I go to sleep.
* * *
I wake up the next morning to hear Mom clanging dishes around the kitchen. When I come in, she’s making breakfast for Dad, slamming his plate of eggs down on the table. They both look like they haven’t slept at all. Dad turns on the TV and radio for more news, but there’s nothing new. Mom pours me cereal, but nobody is hungry. We sit on the living room couch all afternoon as Mom keeps calling the numbers Eldin left.
“Why isn’t anyone picking up?” she yells. “Are they in a hospital or jail?”
“They’re on the train back,” Dad says quietly. “I’m sure he’ll be home soon.”
My knees are bouncing, and I keep checking the door. It isn’t until after eight that Eldin finally walks in. His face is dirty, his hair floppy.
“Where have you been?” Mom cries, hugging him tight.
“Yeah, where were you?” I ask, relieved and tired, not telling him I’m glad he’s back.
Dad touches Eldin’s arm. “What happened?”
“I’m fine,” he says, pulling away.
“We were terrified. Why are you so late?” Mom demands.
“There was a freaking riot after the game last night!” Eldin says in an excited voice. “The police broke it up with tear gas. Guys ripped the seats right off the stands and tossed them like Frisbees. I got caught in it ’cause I was wearing an Outlaw scarf. Tomo got hit in the back with a stick, and I almost got smashed in the head. A bunch of people wound up in the hospital with broken bones. You wouldn’t believe it—they went nuts! The whole brawl was caught on tape, and now the government’s going after only the Croatian fans. It was insane. All the trains and buses were running late today, with cops everywhere.”
Man, I wish I could have been there.
“Is Tomo okay?” Dad asks, and Eldin nods.
“You could have gotten hurt. Or arrested!” Mom yells. The vein in her neck is bulging.
I don’t understand why, since Eldin’s Bosnian, not Croatian, and didn’t do anything wrong.
“From today on, you’ll watch sports from the couch,” Mom decrees.
My shoulders slump. No fair! Now I’ll never get to see a live match, one of my dreams.
Eldin makes a face. “Don’t overreact. You know how crazy the fans get.”
“Didn’t you hear about the train station?” Dad asks.
“They said the trains were backed up for hours, so I took the bus. It’s not a big deal, Dad.”
Mom’s words come out in a rush. “You didn’t hear that there was a bombing—and fires, too?”
“What? Where?”
“Bijeljina,” Dad says.
“That’s less than an hour from here.” Eldin sounds shocked.
I want to hear more about the game and the bomb so I can tell my friends how my brother was really close to all the trouble.
But of course, that’s when Mom turns to me and insists, “G
o to bed, you have school tomorrow.”
* * *
The next night before dinner, Eldin returns home from karate practice looking freaked out and breathless.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asks.
“I heard that masked men went door to door in Bijeljina, ordering Muslim families out of their homes,” Eldin says, his face pale. “Everyone’s saying it was paramilitary Serbs.”
I pull at his sleeve, a lump in my throat. “What does paramilitary mean?”
“Guerrillas,” Eldin explains. I think of King Kong banging his chest with his fists.
Mom looks as confused as I am.
“Enemy soldiers, not with the army,” Eldin goes on. “They made everyone kneel down; then they fired. Seventy people shot dead.”
Mom’s mouth opens. She turns to Dad. “We have to get out of here now, Keka.”
My throat tightens as I stare up at my father. “Do we?”
“No. They won’t hurt us,” Dad promises.
“How do you know?” Mom snaps. “It’s only one hour away! Those people were shot in cold blood.” She puts her arm around me, but it makes me feel worse.
“We’re not political. We don’t wave our flag,” Dad says. “I have lots of friends in this town. Nobody would hurt us. I’ll go talk to the police chief.”
That night, I can’t sleep. I stare at the ceiling fan. “Why did they kill all those people?” I finally ask my brother in the dark.
“The Croatians want independence,” Eldin answers. “The Serbs don’t want Bosnians to leave either.”
He’s actually speaking to me without insults. Things must be way worse than I thought. “Why?” I press.
“Everyone’s divided politically—the Christian Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslims from Bosnia, like us,” he reminds me.
“But there’s Bosnian Christians too,” I say.
“The Christians don’t want to be associated with anyone Muslim anymore.”
“Dad says the Yugoslavian army’s supposed to protect us all.”
“Now it’s run by the Serbs, and they hate us,” Eldin says.
“Vik’s a Serb, and he doesn’t hate me!”
My brother’s quiet for a minute. Then he says, “Don’t be so sure.”
He’s wrong. He doesn’t understand that Vik and I are blood brothers forever. So what if Vik paints Easter eggs at an Orthodox church and has a Christmas tree? Eldin’s Catholic classmates go to midnight mass and fly a red and white flag. My Muslim relatives cook a feast on Ramadan and wave a green flag. Nobody ever cared what color flag we had before.
“On Republic Day, Mr. Miran had us pledge allegiance to our country that unites all Yugoslavs,” I remind Eldin.
“Well, the Serbs who control the army want to rule the whole country, and some Croats and Bosnian Muslims just declared independence from Yugoslavia,” my brother explains.
“What are we gonna do?” I ask, my voice getting squeaky at the thought of having to move away.
“Keep our heads down, I guess,” Eldin says. “Go to sleep.”
* * *
I bring Lena’s birthday picture to school on Monday, but her seat is empty. I keep turning around to look for her during class. She never shows.
Later my brother tells me that her older sister didn’t come to school either. Some Muslim families are going to stay with relatives in other cities and countries, he adds. But Lena wouldn’t leave without telling me. Would she?
The next day, when she’s not in class again, I get up the courage to ask Mr. Miran where she is.
“Just do your work,” he growls.
That night, when we’re choosing teams for a pickup fudbal game outside our building, Marko and Vik put Huso and me with our Croat neighbor, Leon.
“Only Serbs on our side today,” Marko announces.
What? I can’t believe they don’t want me on their team. After I scored the winning goal at recess and won the game? That doesn’t make any sense.
At dinner, Mom tells Dad, “I’ve seen strange men in dark uniforms lurking around. My brother and Maksida are sending their kids to stay with her relatives in Vienna. There’s room for us to go too.”
“Milošević’s a power-hungry psycho. No one takes him seriously,” Dad argues.
“You saw his stupid new flag with the eagles?” Eldin asks.
Milošević is Orthodox Christian, like Vik. Suddenly I remember seeing Vik, Marko, and their dad at a Serbian rally in town, waving that same eagle flag. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
The phone rings, and I get to it first. “Hey, Kenan, we got new slingshots,” Vik says, as if nothing happened this afternoon. “Want to go shoot some pigeons with us?”
Usually only Marko and his posse go bird hunting. I hate the thought of hurting any animals. But this has to be a sign that the conflict is blowing over, like Dad says. Hope balloons in my chest. Maybe no one is taking this seriously after all. “Hey, Mom. Can I go play with Viktor and his brother?”
“Stay close by,” Dad tells me.
“I’m visiting Majka Emina tonight, to make sure she’s okay,” Mom adds. “You should come.”
“I’ll call her instead,” I promise.
Mom has a big, close family. We see her mom and her brother and sister, my Uncle Ahmet and Aunt Bisera, every weekend. This is my chance to straighten everything out with the guys.
Mom sighs. “Don’t go far,” she repeats. “And be careful.”
Vik comes by with Marko and Ivan, Marko’s best buddy, who asks Eldin to flex his muscles for them. As usual Eldin loves the attention and takes off his shirt to reveal his arm bulges. He works out every day with weights to get those huge, dumb muscles.
“Great biceps, Triangle.” Ivan uses the nickname he’s given Eldin for his wide shoulders. Then he nods at me. “Let’s go.”
Ivan’s a bossy jerk who gets in everyone’s face and likes to bully people. I breathe through my mouth when he’s around, because he smells gross. Vik thinks so too, and it’s worse for him because Ivan’s at their house all the time. Huso told me that Ivan’s dad beat him with a belt once, after he got busted for ripping off someone’s bike.
Ivan leads us to the dark basement in a nearby building we call the Catacombs. It’s where he stashes everything he steals—and he steals a lot: bike parts, marbles, candy, cigarettes. He hands us slingshots he’s made from tree branches and strips of old truck tires.
I’m nervous as we walk the two blocks to the railroad tracks near school to collect round rocks for ammo. Pigeons roam the rail yard. Vik, Marko, and Ivan aim their stones at the birds, hitting a few and laughing. I fake giving it a try, missing on purpose. As soon as we get near, the birds fly away. I’m secretly glad.
“Don’t be a wuss, Bugs,” Ivan says, watching me closely.
“I’m not a wuss.” I spot a pigeon who strays from his flock. I stay quiet, creeping closer, and aim at his wing to show Ivan I can do it. I pull back the strip of tire and let the rock fly.
It makes a soft thud when it hits the pigeon, sounding like something broke.
“Good shot! You nailed him,” Marko says, punching my shoulder too hard.
The bird stumbles like he’s drunk. Then he flies sideways to the top of the building. I might throw up, but I don’t want the others to know. I feel dizzy, praying the pigeon is okay. What would Lena think?
I act like it’s no big deal as I watch Ivan load up his slingshot and aim at another one. He misses, and he’s so annoyed I’ve outshot him that he throws rocks on the ground. I think of the hurt pigeon swaying on the building’s ledge.
I swear I’ll never shoot any other living thing again.
When it gets dark, we head back. On the way, we see a mangy dog I’m about to pet when Ivan kicks its face. It whimpers and runs away. “Why did you do that?” I ask. I feel like crying and taking the dog home with me.
“Shut up, Bugs,” Ivan snarls.
I put my head down and walk faster to get away from him, so he doesn
’t kick me too. I’ve never been so relieved to get home. I walk up the stairs to our apartment and creep toward my room. The slingshot is still in my pocket. Before I can stash it, Dad sees.
“What’s that?” He points.
“This? Um, it’s Ivan’s. We were shooting cans down the street.”
“Stay away from that kid,” Dad says. “He’s bad news. We don’t need another problem right now.”
I don’t get why bad things are happening to us when we haven’t done anything wrong.
Three
“What? That can’t be true,” Mom says into the phone later that week. Her mouth opens and she’s shaking her head as she hangs up. “The army burned down Vukovar,” she tells us slowly, as if she doesn’t believe it. “Djilla says busloads of survivors escaped, and they’re in the park.”
Djilla is her coworker. Vukovar is a Croatian city not far from us. I don’t understand what they escaped from. Mom rushes to the window, and I follow. We look down to see a crowd gathering in the park right across the street, getting off a bus and sitting together on benches.
“Those poor people. Let’s go help,” she tells me and Eldin, spinning around our apartment.
My mother likes to do charity; she’s always helping whoever she can. For the first time, I want to join her. Maybe I can also make a difference.
Dad’s at his gym. I think we should call to ask him too, but Mom’s in a hurry. She and Eldin pull old jackets from the hall closet and take cash from the drawer where we keep extra money. As I put on my coat, I grab my favorite blue sweatshirt with the fudbal logo, thinking someone might need it more than me. On the way out, I fill my canteen at the kitchen faucet in case anyone’s thirsty.
Before we head to the park, we go to the grocery, where Mom buys a twenty-four-pack of cold bottled water, loaves of bread, aspirin, and baby supplies. We carry it all to the boulevard, where there’s a long row of parked white buses. The wheels are caked with mud, their sides pocked with dents. The windows have been cracked by bullets. Who would shoot at buses filled with passengers?
World in Between Page 2