Braco (2 page)

TUESDAY:
ATIF STAVIC

ATIF STAVIC WOKE
to hands shaking his shoulder. His head rolled from side to side. He tensed and sucked in air like a newborn.

“Please,” a woman's voice said. “You'll hurt her.”

Atif rubbed his eyes. “What?”

The young woman held a scarf tight around her pale face and pointed. Atif raised his head. His feet had pinned a little girl against the rusted metal railing at the foot of the bed. She moaned, holding her hands to a blood soaked cloth wrapped around her head. Atif jerked his feet back and sat up, drawing his knees close to his chest.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.”

“I know,” the woman replied. “You were dreaming.”

It was a dream?

Atif looked around. A bright sun lit the room through a cracked window high on the aging concrete wall next to him. The light flickered as legs rushed by in both directions. Across the room, three children shared another bed. Injured and dying people carpeted the floor: groaning, crying, talking. The stench of urine and vomit mingled with antiseptic and infection. Atif's stomach churned. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

Was the dream real?

His head pounded in rhythm with the beating of his heart and he fought the growing nausea. The memories formed in a haze.

They had played two on two using a wrecked Lada tipped on its side as a goal. Jovan and Ramo had paired up against Atif and Ramo's little brother, Dani. Excited that the older boys had invited him to play, Dani paced back and forth between the front to rear axle of the wreck with his arms held wide enough to hug an elephant. He had not been able to stop a single shot. Atif played near the goal to help him.

Jovan and Ramo advanced, passing the ball between them. Dani stayed close to the car.

“Come out,” Atif had said. “You can't stop a ball if your back is up against the drive shaft.”

The boy took a step forward, his arms still up. Atif looked back as Ramo made a clumsy attempt at a back pass to Jovan.

He thinks he's Elvir Bolic.

Jovan bounced the ball back to Ramo, who made a chip shot. The ball took flight and sailed high. Atif turned as Dani's short frame rose in the air, his fingertips scraping the bottom of the ball. It bounced on the car and disappeared from sight.

“Thirty-two to nothing,” Ramo said.

“That wasn't in,” Atif replied. “That was over the goal.”

Jovan laughed.

“Fine. Thirty-one nothing.”

“I'll get the ball,” Dani said.

Atif spun around. “What? No. I'll get it.”

He plucked the boy off the transmission, scaled the wreck, and ran after the ball as it skipped over rocks and garbage in the gutter across the street. He picked it up and stood still, scanning the hills for movement.

The snipers can see the street.

But the hills are quiet.

Atif faced the alley and held the grimy ball over his head, ready to throw it back.

His memory blurred.

Why didn't I hear the shell?

“Bad dreams?”

Atif looked to his right. A young soldier sat slumped in a chair next to the bed, his eyes fixed on the far wall. His name, Omar Pasic, was scribbled on a scrap of paper pinned to the heavy bandages wrapped around his gut. A cigarette hung between his fingers. The long ash threatened to drop.

“No.” Atif turned away. “I wasn't dreaming.”

“Don't worry about it. We all get them.”

The door opened, striking a leg stretched out in its path. A female voice yelped. A nurse glanced inside and left, leaving the door open. People moved back and forth in the dim light of the corridor, pushing and shouting. The nurse returned, shoving a gurney into the room across the hall. The door to the room slammed shut, its faceplate swinging from a single nail. Atif tilted his head and read the word on the plate: morgue. A man backed into the morgue, cradling his injured arm. A woman followed a doctor down the corridor.

“Mama?”

“She's here, somewhere,” the soldier said. Atif turned. “She's trying to find a doctor. Wants to make sure it's okay for you to leave.”

“Leave? Why?”

The soldier lifted his arm and looked at the cigarette, then crushed it against the wall. The ash left a black scar on the peeling white paint.

“You don't know?”

“Know what?”

“Chetniks are coming. The tanks are just outside the town. They'll be here in a few hours.”

Panic stabbed Atif's chest. He thought back, struggling to remember, but his memory stopped at the alley. Ramo and Jovan laughing. Dani's bright blue eyes staring out from behind the wrecked car. Then nothing.

“I don't remember. Where'd they come from?”

“They're coming up from Skelani,” the soldier said. “I heard there were twenty thousand troops. We never stood a chance.”

“But the UN, the Dutch.”

“The bastards don't care about us. They promised us air strikes. They warned us last night to evacuate our front lines. They said there would be massive air strikes. A zone of death they called it.” The soldier paused, pulling in a laboured breath. “And what did we get? Nothing! Not a single aircraft showed up and the Chetniks walked in and took our trenches.”

Atif swallowed, his throat sticking. He tried to formulate a thought through the shellfire in his head. The Dutch had hundreds of peacekeepers in the area. The UN had sent them to protect the town, but Atif knew a few hundred Dutch could do little against the Serbs without air strikes.

Unless.

“Maybe the planes didn't come because the blue helmets are bringing in more troops,” he said.

The soldier laughed and the laugh degenerated into a fit of coughing.

“There are no troops coming.” He wiped blood trickling from his mouth. “They don't give a damn. To them, one Dutch life is worth more than fifty thousand Muslims.”

“That's not true!”

“Believe what you want,” the soldier said. His head settled back and his eyes focused on the far wall. “If you were smart, you'd follow the men.”

“What are you talking about? Follow what men?”

As the soldier opened his mouth to respond, a familiar voice drew Atif's attention to the door. His mother stood in the hall, speaking to a doctor. She was wearing a white blouse and a long dark skirt and she had his sneakers in her hand. Atif glanced at her feet. She wore her walking shoes.

“Mama.”

The doctor left and his mother stepped inside, bringing her hand to her nose for a moment. She slipped through the minefield of injured and dying and laid Atif's sneakers on the bed.

“You can leave,” she said, handing him a bottle of water. “Drink some.”

Atif drank while his mother pushed the sneakers on his feet and tied the laces. He capped the bottle.

“Where's Tihana?”

“She's waiting at the house with Ina and the twins. They should be packed by the time we get there.”

Ina and her twin seventeen-year-old daughters had shared the same house in Srebrenica with Atif's family for three years. Ina worked as a nurse in the hospital.

And she's not here now?

“Why? Where are we going?”

“Potocari. We're going to the Dutch base.”

“But he told me the Dutch weren't going to help us,” Atif said, motioning over his shoulder with his thumb.

“Everyone is going there. They'll protect us.”

Atif turned to the soldier.

“See, I told you.”

The soldier's head slumped forward.

“Mama?”

She finished tying his laces.

“Should we call the doctor?”

“We have to go.” She took his hand. “Now.”

Atif slid off the bed and followed his mother to the door, glancing back. Two women had claimed his spot on the bed. Behind them, the soldier remained motionless.

Atif's mother pulled him into the corridor. A gauntlet of injured people lined the hallway on stretchers, beds, and the floor. An old woman stopped a nurse, blocking the hallway.

“My husband needs help.”

Atif followed the woman's finger to a man curled up on the floor. Bandages hid his face.

“We're starting an evacuation,” the nurse said. “You have to take him to the Dutch base in Potocari.”

“Potocari. That's five kilometres. I can't carry him that far.”

“I don't know what to tell you. You'll have to wait to see if the Dutch can transport him.”

The nurse sidestepped the old woman and shouldered her way through a growing traffic jam. Atif followed his mother as she picked a way for them through the hall and up the stairs to the main entrance. They walked through the doorway and stepped into a brilliant sun. Atif winced, turning away from the bright light. Spots clouded his vision and sweat rolled through his eyes. He wiped his forehead, his fingers brushing something on his right temple. Gauze and medical tape. He counted eight bumps under the gauze.

Stitches?

His mother wrapped an arm around his shoulder and they walked down the driveway. Atif blinked his vision clear. Thousands of men, women, and children clogged the main road flowing east like a raging river that could not be stopped. No one could move west against the torrent. Men carried children on their shoulders and women carried bags. A donkey struggled to pull a cart filled with wounded. Two men pushed a wheelbarrow with a television in it. Soldiers walked in groups.

Have they all given up?

A pillar of dirt and debris rose up suddenly behind the houses across the street. The report punched the air an instant later.

Whomp!

The sound always reminded Atif of ice sliding off a roof onto a bed of fluffy snow. A sharp but muffled sound of air trying to escape. A sound that meant death.

Atif's knees failed him. He slid towards the pavement, dragging his mother down with him.

“We can't go down there.”

“It's okay, Atif. They're not shelling the road. That's why we have to move now. We'll be safe in Potocari.”

A second shell struck a parking lot, driving shards of concrete, rock, and mud into the air. Atif climbed to his feet, staring at the twin columns of dust drifting between the houses. He clamped his arms like tongs around his mother as they joined the river of refugees. People pushed, not caring who they knocked down in their panic to get away from the town and the encroaching Serbs. Sweat clouded Atif's vision again.

They approached the small Dutch compound called Bravo within minutes. White trucks sat parked in the motor pool. Blue helmets scurried between them, carrying equipment and stretchers. A truck roared to life and moved forward. Peacekeepers hefted stretchers into the back.

A cloud puffed up behind the trucks, the report following a moment later. Atif and his mother ducked with the rest of the crowd. He looked back. A second pillar of dirt sprouted behind the camp.

“They're shelling the blue helmets. What's going on, Mama?”

She pulled him forward. “We have to hurry, Atif. The soldiers are saying the tanks are in the town.”

Atif watched the camp, hoping to glimpse a familiar face. The peacekeepers ran back and forth between the buildings and trucks carrying boxes, packs, and blankets. Sentries watched the crowd. A woman approached the wire fence and spoke to a peacekeeper on the other side. He stepped inside a bunker and returned, tossing a bottle of water over the fence.

A line of peacekeepers stretched across the main gate.

“Go to Potocari,” one of the Dutch shouted in English. A truck idled behind him.

Atif turned away and spotted the top half of their house across the street. The white concrete face was pitted from shrapnel. The second-story balcony had no rail and was piled with split firewood. Thick clear plastic covered the windows and a hole in the roof had been repaired with scrap lumber.

Atif's mother fought against the current of refugees and they emerged on the shoulder of the road. The front lawn had been converted into a vegetable garden and now swarmed with people digging up the potatoes and carrots. Atif released his mother and ran into the yard.

“What are you doing?” he asked a man, tugging on his shirt. The man ignored him. “Those are our carrots. Get away.”

“Leave him alone, Atif.”

He looked up. Ina stood in the doorway dressed in jeans and a flowered blouse. She ran her hand through her short black hair and pointed inside.

“We have all that we can carry,” she said. “Come get your pack.”

“But it's ours.”

His mother took him by the shoulders and directed him up the steps. “Go get your pack. We have to go.”