Deep Black

69

The air was crisp outside, just cold enough to see a little vapour as we breathed. We were going to need coats.

We picked our way across the wide dual carriageway that used to be Snipers’ Alley. Traffic careered along the outside, and trams moved fast down the middle. Instead of turning left to the city centre, we were going to cut straight on down to the river, less than two hundred metres from the hotel.

Some of the trams rattling past looked as though they were left over from the war. Jerry read my thoughts. ‘Least they don’t have to be dragged along by trucks, these days.’

We passed the burnt-out shell of the parliament building I’d been looking at from the hotel. The underground car park was obviously still usable: two policemen were on stag at the entrance, checking cars in and out.

Nearer the river, we found ourselves among older, grander, more lavish Hungarian-style buildings. They were still inhabited, but had taken a fearsome pounding. The other side of the Miljacka, less than forty metres away, was where the Serb front line had penetrated this part of the city; even the wired glass protecting the balconies was still splattered with strike marks. Lumps of grey plaster had been blown away, exposing the brickwork beneath.

As far as I could tell, the only difference between then and now in this part of town was that the roads were no longer covered with rubble, or blocked off by trucks and sheets of corrugated iron to provide cover from sniper fire. I remembered seeing four wooden cargo containers at the bottom of this very road, piled on top of each other to create a screen. The Serbs still took random potshots into the woodwork, and occasionally managed to drop the odd pedestrian who just happened to be legging it behind.

Every bit of the city had been a danger zone. Bridges and crossroads were particularly vulnerable if you were on foot, and it paid to be a sprinter – but at least you knew what you had to do. In other parts of town, you were never sure whether to walk fast or slow. Were you going to walk into a mortar round as it impacted, or was it going to land on your head anyway because you weren’t moving fast enough? Signs saying ‘WATCH OUT – SNIPER’ had been painted on pieces of cardboard or UNHCR plastic sheeting, or just chalked on the walls. To a lot of Sarajevans, and me, UNPROFOR’s most important role was providing APCs to shield us from sniper fire as we crossed the street.

I felt myself break into a smile as we passed another bunch of fucked-up buildings facing the river. One night some madman had painted a big yellow Smiley face on the wall, and ‘Don’t worry, be happy!’ underneath. It got annihilated the following day. I was never sure if that meant the Serbs had got the joke or not.

Walking beside me, Jerry also seemed to have disappeared into the past again, back to the days he’d spent dodging from one piece of cover to another as he tried to get a photograph to pay the bills.

We hit the river by the Vrbana bridge, and everything looked familiar except the little monument that had been erected exactly halfway across it. Jerry pointed at the bunches of fresh flowers arranged below it. ‘I was here when it happened.’

He leaned his shoulder against the glass panel of a brand-new bus shelter, behind which a poster told us that if we bought a bottle of Coca-Cola Light, we could win an Audi.

‘Romeo and Juliet?’

‘Fucking nightmare, man. I was with Jason before the enclaves blew up. We were just cruising, looking for something different to shoot. But everywhere you went in Sarajevo was the same, wasn’t it? We decided to check out the front line a bit before going back to the hotel.

‘There was a stand-off, city guys against a group of Serbs just over there. This Serb tank appeared from nowhere and started firing. We ended up with the city guys. Next thing I knew, one was yelling at us to get our cameras. He was pointing at a young couple running towards the far side of the bridge.

‘They got the guy first. The girl was just wounded, and I got a shot as she crawled across to his body and put an arm round him before she died. Turned out she was Muslim, he was Serb . . .’ He had the sort of expression I probably showed every time I caught myself thinking about Zina or Kelly. ‘Fucked up or what, man? It was the first time I ever cried doing this shit. First time I ever wanted to put down my camera and pick up a gun.’

It was business as usual these days. Cars crossed the bridge, people walked around with bags of shopping. On the steep rising ground immediately the other side of the river, all the roofs were shiny, and all the mosques had new minarets. There seemed to be one every two hundred metres or so. It was easy to spot a Muslim house: its roof was pyramidal while the rest were gabled. Satellite dishes sprouted from just about every wall; these guys must have been as keen on The Simpsons as the Iraqis.

Just to the right of the bridge, flags of every description fluttered over a new steel and glass building. I pointed it out to Jerry. ‘That must be where our friend the general takes his meetings about meetings. I wonder how Paddy puts up with him.’ The Right Honourable Lord Ashdown was the UN’s High Representative in Bosnia. It was the sort of title you only expected to find in Gilbert and Sullivan, but in effect he ran the country.

We turned left and followed the river towards the city centre, but we hadn’t gone far when there was the dull thud of an explosion up on the high ground.

Everyone in the street looked up. A small plume of grey smoke floated above a square of trees, surrounded by rooftops. Two old women coming towards us, weighed down with carrier-bags, tutted to each other as if this was an everyday annoyance.

‘What do you reckon, Nick? A mine?’

‘Had to be.’

When the Serbs withdrew, they left hundreds of thousands of the little fuckers in their wake. There was no need for Keep Off the Grass signs in Bosnia.