Nowhere Man

4. Translated by Jozef Pronek

SARAJEVO, DECEMBER 1995

Dear Jozef!

Here I am writing you. Maybe you thought I am dead, but I am not. It is hard here, but we are happy that war is over. How are you? How is America? When are you going to come back?

I am little sad. Yesterday I remembered when I saw horse near Koševo and I think about it all the time. I don’t know, I must tell you some things. This horse was walking on street, free, and five minutes ago there was granading, everywhere dust and pieces of glass. I was guarding hospital and horse was standing in front of the big window that didn’t break and he was looking himself, like in the mirror. He turned to one side, he turned to another side and he was thinking, Look how beautiful I am. He was turning and he was liking himself. Then the shell rocked and explosion broke the window and horse run away. He was beautiful, big eyes, pretty face, he was white and high, with black tail. He ran away like those horses in American films.

I never used gun in this war. I was working in the hospital helping people dying. Sometimes I would go to the line and they give me the gun, but I never used the gun. I was waiting in the dark, and you look in the dark and you know Chetniks are there and maybe they are watching you. One time I was with my friend Jasmin (you don’t know him) and we are talking and I see red full stop on his forehead and one secund later his head explodes like pomegrante. That second when I see it but I cannot say nothing, because the death is very fast, that second is the worst second of my life. I was on Žu, also. I don’t know if you know where is Žu, but many people died there. I saw many bad things. It is hard to sleep. I saw bad things on our side. One time, I talked to one man who was our sniper and his position was on Hotel Bristol. And everyday he watched this soldier meet his woman. She would come from home and he would come from his position and they kiss and hold hands. Then she goes home and he goes back to his unit. This sniper man said that he thinks it is nice, you know, this love, so he watches them everyday. He can kill them, but it is nice, love. The woman was pretty. But one day she comes and stands little far away and he can see the soldier standing at normal place and she tells him with her hand to come to her, and he says no and then she calls him and then he comes to her. And the sniper man kills him. He tells me, if woman can tell him what he must do, he cannot live, so he killed him. And you know what is worst, I thought it is funny, we laughed like crazy. We were little crazy then, Chetniks killed us all the time. You didn’t see nothing until you see when grenade hits line for water. People have to wait, because that is only water they can have, and they know Chetniks are watching and then the grenade rocks and you see brains and stomach and spine, children, women, all dead, small pieces of meat.

But I talk too much. See I don’t know what about can I talk. War is everything to me. I want to talk about something different, but I didn’t see no movies, no music, no books. No, I read one book, from our childhood: Heroes of Pavlo’s Street. You know that book, about boys who build the fortress and they fight other boys. When I went on Treskavica I brought the book with me. You don’t know Treskavica. We grew up in Sarajevo, we are children of asphalt. You cannot imagine Treskavica. That mountain is so wild, it is nothing: stones and cliffs and canyons and holes and three million years old. Human foot did not go there for hundred years. Last battle of the war was on Treskavica, I don’t know if you know that. Bosses were in Dayton, talking like friends and we had to go and fight for that desert. And you know what I did. I had to carry wounded and dead. Us six, we had to carry one stretcher and change, with one wounded man. Sometimes this wounded man has no legs, just bleeding and they give him morphine. But we have to carry him six hours over the stones and the cliffs and over canyons and if we slip we fall into abyss. After two hours morphine stops to help and his pain is back and he is throwing himself around like little pig and he is hitting us with his hands in the head, like we are gulity for his pain. Sometimes he dies, and we like that, because we don’t have to hurry. We sit down and smoke and somebody has some alcohol. But wounded man has his friend or brother following us and he says, If he dies I kill you and he makes us run, we have to run down the hill so steep and so high you get vertigo. We run six hours, we think we will die. Treskavica is very far away from everything. Sometimes we run for six hours to take this man to the hospital and he died after five minutes and we didn’t know. It was crazy. I saw a horse kill himself on Treskavica. We carried this man which had to hold his stomach with hand so it doesn’t fall out. He was screaming all the time, and we must run. But we ran by one unite, they had camp nearby the edge of one cliff — you look down, and it is just one big deep hole in the earth. This man died finally, so we stop to have little water and we are sitting there, we cannot breath. It is so high there is not air. We see their horse, who carried their munition, very skinny and hungry and sad. The horse goes slowly to the edge, we think he wants some grass there. Some soldiers yell, Come back! But he walks slowly and then he stops on the edge. We watch him three meters away. He turns around, looks at us directly in our eyes, like person, big, wet eyes and then just jumps — hop! He just jumps and we can hear remote echo of his body hitting stones. I never saw anything so much sad.

I am sorry I talk too much. We in Sarajevo have nobody to talk, just each other, nobody wants to listen to these stories. I cannot talk more. You talk now. I am waiting for your letter. You must write me. Send me one book, I can read little English language, maybe one detective novel, maybe something about children. See I’m little crazy. Write me.

Yours.

Mirza

P.S. Happy New Year!