Sarajevo Marlboro (5 page)

My grandmother's death was the last pure sadness of my innocent childhood. The darkness of my teenage years owed something to adolescent moodiness, and in that respect it was kind of private, but otherwise I like to think my doom-and-gloom phase was just a sign of things to come, like the approaching cataclysm – a time of numberless deaths and prolonged sufferings. There was no point in getting used to the bereavement, since war made a habit of death without sadness. Public displays of grief seldom occur nowadays, but when they do they are full of tears and inconsolable wailing – and it happens quite unexpectedly. The more trivial the cause of hysteria, the more difficult it becomes to control the wide-spread sobbing. That's why melodramatic films, silly love stories and the deaths of animals on the road are things I prefer to avoid.

Many gallons of my funeral booze were consumed in the early months of the war. The bottles had stayed in the pantry for years, but with the first sip their contents began to course through our veins faster than the blood that only a miracle left unspilt.

My grandmother's ring has not been stolen yet. In fact it remains on the ground, like half a memory. The other half is several feet below – with my grandfather, who died and was buried several years earlier, before the mortuary introduced its new code of practice
vis-à-vis
jewelry.

In the old days the street-traders used to carry wicker baskets laden with produce as they climbed up Šepetarovac on their way to Bjelav stores and the shops on Pothrastovina. The same thing happened for centuries – the reward for getting up the hill was a drink from the water fountain at the top. Not only did the pedlars regard the fountain as a source of refreshment; it was a source of encouragement too, always renewing a hope that one day the hill would be flattened by the tramp of their boots. Nobody remembered exactly when the fountain was built – it was a long time ago, during the Ottoman Empire – but it was generally accepted that the local pasha had been responsible for the project, which he had undertaken for two reasons: in order to help the people of Sarajevo and also to improve his chances of being treated
favorably in the afterlife. Over the years the fountain never dried up, even after the street-traders were replaced by juggernauts and there was only the name itself – roughly translated, “Å epetarovac” means “Basket Street” – to keep alive the memory of the old-fashioned peddlers.

Mr. Ivo lived at the bottom of Å epetarovac nearly all his life, but in the eyes of everybody, including Mr. Ivo himself, he continued to be the Gentleman from Dubrovnik. The roses in his garden were more fragrant and colorful than anybody else's. His flagstone path was always neat, and his small talk was invariably perfect in terms of decorum: not over-familiar like the common people's, not too distant like the nouveaux riches'.

After the Chetnik bombing of Dubrovnik in the early autumn of 1991, Mr. Ivo suddenly bought five hens and a cock and dug up the roses in his garden. By accident, in the course of rearranging what used to be the flowerbed, he uncovered an old blocked-up well. In no time Mr. Ivo reopened the shaft and rebuilt the well using flat white stones. His neighbors had a pretty good idea of what he was doing but, even so, they were reluctant to believe that anybody could be such a pessimist, or that a gentleman like Mr. Ivo could suddenly metamorphose into a muddy laborer or peasant, the kind of person who was able to put up with the stink of chickens.

“Who cares?” said Mr. Ivo. “If the war spreads, heaven forbid, I'm well prepared. If it doesn't, so what? I had a lot of fun digging up my
garden. I've grown roses for thirty years, surely you don't expect me to die without getting to know the difference between them and chickens?”

At the beginning of the war Mr. Ivo produced an excellent yield of tomatoes and lettuces, and when the water shortages began, he was able to use the cold clear water from his well. It didn't take long for the neighbors to imagine that the clucking in Mr. Ivo's garden was the singing of birds of paradise, an irresistible sound that brings you out of the world of shadows and into the light of day.

“A gentleman is a gentleman, and riff-raff's riff-raff, whatever happens,” they said. “Until yesterday we watched Mr. Ivo among his roses and thought to ourselves, ‘You see, he's a gent from Dubrovnik.' Never mind that today he's knee-deep in chicken shit – he's still a gent!”

One day, because the water pipes had been dry for almost a fortnight, and even the drinking fountain at the top of Šepetarovac had dried up, a handful of neighbors carrying buckets knocked on Mr. Ivo's window for the first time. He agreed to draw water for them and, of course, they spread the good word around the neighborhood. The next day fifty people gathered in front of Mr. Ivo's house. Nobody was denied a bucket of water – until another fifty, then a hundred, came knocking on Mr. Ivo's door.

The Gentleman from Dubrovnik had a simple rule: his neighbors were not allowed to help themselves to water, in case they dirtied the well. After a few days, Mr. Ivo hung up a notice on his door: “Dear
neighbors,” it read, “the well is open from ten to midday and from four to six in the evening. I am not in a position to serve you at other times.” The next morning a long and surprisingly disciplined queue formed outside Mr. Ivo's house. He let in three water-carriers at a time. Nobody complained, and there were no raised voices. A code of behavior was observed as in a mosque or a church. The rowdy element was upbraided by Mr. Ivo or by others in the line. “You've come to draw water,” they were told. “This isn't a pub!” And so they were instructed to behave accordingly.

At times of heavy shelling, or on days when the fierce south winds were blowing, the Gentleman from Dubrovnik sometimes became irritable. Usually, on such occasions, people standing in line tried to cheer Mr. Ivo up with quizzical looks, polite questions or tiny gestures. Sometimes it worked, but often Mr. Ivo behaved like a cruel aristocrat. He would shower people with sarcastic comments, unnecessary warnings and even insults. But he never withheld water from any of his neighbors.

Whenever the south winds and the Serb attacks receded, the gentleman became his old self again. He never lost his dignity, even when leaning over the well, or when sweat was dripping off his face, or when he felt a bit weak and had to sit down for ten minutes.

Now and again the main water supply in the city was restored, which meant that Mr. Ivo could breathe a sigh of relief. On days like that, nobody gave the Gentleman from Dubrovnik a second thought,
and nobody knocked on his door – which is how it should be: leave the poor man alone to have a rest from his nonstop visitors. Don't forget that you'll have to go back there sooner or later, at which time you'll thank your lucky stars that you don't have to walk to the city water pump by the brewery, which is often shelled by the Chetniks.

On Christmas Eve Mr. Ivo announced that he wouldn't be working the next day because it was a holiday, and for that reason he intended to stay at the well until midnight. The following day the water-carriers brought Mr. Ivo lots of presents and cakes and pies, baklavas and jars of yoghurt made from milk powder, not to mention bundles of ground coffee. One young man somehow managed to get hold of a packet of Croatian cigarettes, which especially touched Mr. Ivo.

The day after Christmas was just like any other. At one end of the garden was a long line of men, women and children holding buckets; at the other end was Mr. Ivo staring into the well, whose clear water represented for this particular neighborhood all of the goodness in the world. The Gentleman from Dubrovnik would fill every bucket – and then it was time to climb up Šepetarovac again.

Every day when I drag the water up the hill I remember Christ on his way to Calvary. I wonder if Calvary was uphill all the way, or if it was perhaps uphill only here and there, with flat or even downhill stretches in between, the way my mother used to say it was about a Muslim woman – giving her something else to worry about?

“I know what the speed of light is,

but we haven't learned about the speed of darkness yet.”

Dino from Zenica, twelve years old,

temporarily at school in Zagreb

You should go to Africa maybe, where love never dies; it's like a fairy tale. You know how the story goes: by chance, two people meet and fall in love, they get married, have children and live happily ever after, or, at any rate, until death finally casts them asunder. This is a cliché most of us believe in from puberty onwards; it doesn't take account of reality. Young girls read about the cliché in romantic novels. Parents make hopeful plans with a view to their children having fairy-tale
lives. But real life isn't a cliché, and that's why it almost never works out the way you imagine. But don't look back in anger or you'll only end up thinking love is God's idea of a joke.

Elena was a young ambitious woman from Zagreb. She came to Sarajevo to study for a degree that was unavailable back home, even though she could have taken a dozen similar courses there. At first she hated the way the city tram drivers always made a special detour on Baščaršija in order to buy a pastry. She was driven crazy by the Sarajevans who talked too loud and made spiteful jokes. The pungent smells of the city also bothered her. Nor could she stand the young men who insisted on telling their whole life story to her, only to be crudely familiar the next time she met them. But Sarajevo was a city that didn't require people to change the habits of a lifetime – it could even put up with people's contempt – and so Elena quickly grew accustomed to its local oddities. Pretty soon she began to derive pleasure from the way so many people lived on top of one another without making a fuss about their differences. The trivial but immediate quality of this pleasure brought to her mind the atmosphere of a station waiting-room on a platform from which trains depart to heaven and hell.

Zlaja, who was older than Elena, had not yet graduated from the school of journalism. He was the eternal student type, the son of a wealthy and respected Bosnian family. His upbringing smacked of liberal Islam and stuffy Viennese gentility. The local wags used to joke
that even the flies in Zlaja's house were upper class – they buzzed around wearing tailcoats.

As a rule, decadence goes hand in hand with laziness. In this respect, Zlaja was no exception. Always urbane, and with a taste for drink, he spent most of his time in cafés dreaming up endless projects that would guarantee his future. Needless to say, his schemes were always completely unrealistic. The more time he wasted, and the more the situation in Bosnia deteriorated, the more Zlaja yielded to his fantasies. Most bouts followed a similar pattern: after the first drink he would embark on a tall story about a fabulous new business, a sure thing. Around midnight the new business usually merged with other businesses whose success was equally assured; and by sunrise Zlaja had created a giant multinational. His plans ranged from launching a daily newspaper that would sell a hundred thousand copies, to producing a special kind of tea for pregnant women that would predetermine the sex of the unborn child. (If the experiment failed, and the unfortunate parents got a child of the wrong sex, the manufacturers would refund the money.) In any case, according to the law of probability, you were bound to come up trumps fifty per cent of the time, so the product couldn't fail to bring in lots of dough.

This plan failed, of course, just like all the others, because Zlaja came up with a newer and brighter idea. People who were unacustomed to café society often tired of these interminable discussions, but most of Zlaja's cronies were also self-deluding Walter Mitty
characters who thoroughly enjoyed spending the whole night in his company. He was intelligent and well-educated, after all, and seldom talked nonsense even when he was completely drunk.

Nobody knows for sure how Elena met Zlaja, but according to the most reliable version she just happened to walk into a café as Zlaja was holding forth. It was love at first sight. Later, when they went for a romantic stroll around town, she just melted into his arms as soon as he began to tell her stories in that somewhat incongruously laidback way of his. It has to be said that Zlaja's storytelling operated at the same level of unreality as most of his business plans, and yet it was very effective in terms of courtship because Zlaja had the knack of talking about things we boring and rational types long to discuss, but don't know how.

When they started living together, everybody just assumed that one of them would have to change. Zlaja would ruin Elena – or Elena would be the making of Zlaja. Either she would discover the pleasures of drinking, daydreaming and loafing about, or he would slowly become neat, ambitious and calculating. As time went on, they continued to love each other as much as ever, but there were no personality changes. Indeed the two of them were brought closer together by all the things that in other relationships would probably have led to conflict or bad feeling or separation. Elena was happy and successful. Zlaja was happy and unrealistic. Often she accompanied him on his drinking bouts but only when there was a gap in her busy schedule. By
the same token, he delighted in her success and used to give her plenty of career advice, with the result that she began to figure increasingly in his plans.

The war, however, ruined Elena's ambitions and Zlaja's dreams. As a couple, they hadn't reckoned on the non-stop shellings; it couldn't be ignored or avoided; it destroyed real as well as imaginary worlds. Death bulked large not only in people's dreams but also in their dayto-day lives, and perhaps that is why the bombardment was especially upsetting for people like Zlaja and Elena who were cocooned in a world of their own, not wanting to question the state of things, and having in some ways an unusual approach to life. A month into the war Zlaja managed to persuade Elena to leave “infernal Sarajevo” and go to Zagreb. Yet he stayed behind, for he did not believe that all was lost. He still hoped to make a go of things, the sort of things that were possible only in Sarajevo. No other city, Zlaja felt, could sustain the fragile world inside his head.