Nearly twenty years ago, I spent a few meaningful days in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina during a several week sojourn through the Balkans. I later spit out the piece republished below. Just a few days from now, I’ll be in the country again. I’m hoping it’s as fruitful of an experience, if less soaked in tragedy and flavored in youthful exuberance.
The man sat at the table and drank brandy. I sat nearby with my kava. It was not quite 7 A.M. and we were the first customers at a café near the bus station in Split, Croatia. I had a ticket to Sarajevo in my pocket; my pack was lying on the ground at my feet. I watched the man as he drank, wearily lifting the glass of slivovitz to his mouth. His eyes were blank, staring at the nothing in the distance. His hand, not clutching the glass, twitched at his side. He raised it to order another. There was some discussion about money. He was annoyed and flung some change on the table like: fuck you, I have enough. Around his neck hung a pen decorated with the American flag; Old Glory as cross as writing implement made lazy arcs in the air each time he shifted, impatiently waiting for his drink. When the waitress brought it to him, he was quiet again, still. She flipped on the TV that hung in the corner. A cartoon horse appeared on the screen speaking British-accented English. We both watched silently. I finished my own drink, set my own change on the table, and stood to leave.
The bus ride in was not quite like anything I have ever seen, different than abject poverty, different than a war-blazed barren field. Life tried to go on, but couldn’t. Half the buildings didn’t have roofs, blown out windows like broken asymmetrical mouths exposed windswept and wasted interiors. Pockmarked bullet holes on the walls of — everything. The occasional white spackled spot all the more glaring for its brightness and futility. Singed, blackened roofs still. A goat chewed dry grass and shit as a torn-out bus seat, lost and alone, watched from a nearby field. What people there were looked on passively, too tired to show even disinterest. I felt sick; my stomach hurt and head ached; my nose was stuffed and my bad ear popped and spat uncomfortably in the shifting altitude. Everything was right and beautiful. Another layer of convention being stripped away and replaced with actual experience. The art of the moment was exhilarating.
Sarajevo is a blistered town. One walks along and comes across gutted buildings, bombed holes in the midst of regularity, burned out shells masquerading in the otherwise hive of motion and life. Bullet holes and shrapnel scars still riddle here, as they did in the countryside, but halfway, seeming almost fantastic. Crazy people abound, crippled nuts drooling along in wheelchairs, man-children and amputees crawling on the ground begging for change. A 12-year old drug dealer in a red T-shirt casually chatted with an old man running the newspaper stand in between his hawking of produkt.
Miki too, that loveable old cuss, proprietor of the Konak Pension (under construction), who hijacked us away, into a cab and away, in a frantic and harrying pace away, as I laughed and laughed. The two other tourists on the bus — a young American guy traveling with his even younger brother; he’d been teaching English in Kosovo on a year in between finishing his undergrad at Penn and going back for Harvard Law — had asked me if I wanted to find a place with them (more like help them find a place). I said sure, not minding some company for a bit, and under no obligation to guide them further. As impressed as I was about his Kosovo trip, I think Harvard Law was a little unsure here, in Sarajevo, and my ease translated to him as some knowledge that did not exist. I had no idea where I was going to stay and planned to just wing it, if they wanted to tag along, fine. We walked out and talked to a few people, none of whom seemed particularly promising, and decided to hop a cab into the center of town before being accosted by Miki. He was crazy and chattering and toothless and I liked him instantly. I looked at the other two, their eyes protesting, and said, “C’mon guys, let’s go.” They glanced around and, deciding it was a better option than staying, acquiesced and hopped in the cab with Miki and me, peppering him with questions about his establishment.
“No problem, no problem,” said Miki. “I am Miki, I will take care of you.”
Sure you will Miki, I thought. I had no faith in Miki, was just along for the ride, but the guys were getting antsy, and Miki was getting pissed, so I interjected with, “Don’t worry man, I trust you.”
He gave me a huge grin and turned to the other two excitedly, “Yes, yes, you see. This man, this man he trusts me!”
From that moment, and through the rest of my time in Sarajevo, Miki was all smiles with me, though I witnessed some unpleasantness — one such exchange with my future Japanese roomie would have been hysterical had it not been so earnest with its bastardized English epithets: Japanese guy, “Yu are cheatah! Fuk yu! Fuk yu!” and Miki’s response, “I make trouble for Jah-po-nese peeples who say these things!” — I knew that behind his laugh, behind his toothless grin, it was all hard capability; the flash had been removed from Miki’s eyes and replaced by something opaque. I don’t know what it was exactly, what he saw or if he even saw anything, but I could imagine; the Balkans War, as I guess all wars are, was foul and atrocious; the level of sadistic depravity these people inflicted on each other grotesque and devastating; Miki’s was a psychic damage well beyond unlearning.
My room at the Konak Pension was bare, white, and altogether fine. I dropped my bag, ditched the kids — I saw them sparingly in Sarajevo; there was something about their presence, familiar accents, that unsettled me from who I wanted to be — no one — we would catch up a week later back in Croatia — and went for a walk.
The old city is set in the opening of a valley, roads lead up into the mountains and unused ski resorts; the black diamond runs complete with the additionally extreme obstacle of landmines. A choked river chugs along the length of the city splitting it in half, on one side the high hills where the Serb snipers used to sit taking potshots at pedestrians, some even former friends and family members. Everyone still walked briskly. I sat by the river and watched men fish off cement embankments, throwing out their lines by hand and rolling them back up onto plastic Coke bottles as spools. The water was shallow and dirty, trash and brown river grass grew from the floor. I watched a few times during the week. I never saw anyone catch anything.
Sarajevo was colder; the sky was overcast, a nice change from the heat and sun of coastal Split. I sat on a bench and felt the city move around me. It seemed as if for the first time in months my own life was taking on significance. It stopped being just a loose collection of experiences and scenes, words and colors to be used later in a drawing or a story. More than a clever anecdote, it felt like there was intrinsic value. I felt purposeful. Sarajevo! It was as if it would make me a better person somehow. There had been a great war. People had suffered horribly. People had died. There was significance. And there I sat, feeling it, being it. I was full of shit.
The first few days I just hung out, soaked atmosphere. I had all the time in the world. I found a great, cheap, English bookstore. They had a special on classics, like two bucks a pop. I bought Conrad, Joyce, and the first of many books on the Balkans I’ve come to read since, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War by Peter Maas. I went thrifting Bosnia-style, digging through the bargain bin with old kerchief-wrapped ladies confused by my presence. I bought and smoked cartons of black-market Marlboros and carried a few the rest of the way. I bought a T-shirt, Volim te Sarajevo, I Love Sarajevo, and I did. And I watched the men play chess.
In the shadow of the husk of what was once the Olympic building, the pride of Sarajevo, host of the ’84 games, the men played. In the park, on the pedestrian mall, across from the overflowing cemetery where tombstones propped up like so many spare bishops and rooks, the men played. I saw at least three, and there were likely more, set-ups for lawn chess, or cement chess I guess, huge plastic pieces pulled by the decrepit old and young alike over a mosaic etched into the sidewalk. Spectators hovered on the edges of the board, sometimes equally distributed, sometimes weighted to one side favoring the presumed victor. Jumping in, dragging pieces, kicking them, punching them, shouting suggestions, moves, combinations of moves: Dobro! Dobro! The endless commentary perhaps watering down what was almost always unfailingly poor play. Queens out too fast like New York City’s Washington Square Park but without skill. Every match’s finale a tedious four-on-four endgame. Yet the crowd loved it, always watching and cheering. One gent I was particularly fond of limped like half his body was paralyzed, wore no belt and tucked his short-sleeve button-up shirt into his boxer shorts. He had a majestic nose, a winner’s nose, this huge thing that bent from its midpoint covered with long stringy grey hairs. But he was no good either.
After a few such days I hopped the Number 1 Tram for a straight shot out of town. I wanted to view the ‘burbs, to see if the desolation extended out, and there was a museum. A tunnel was burrowed just outside of town, a way to get supplies and people through the years-long siege. I got directions from Miki; he instructed me the Number 1 went all the way. I sat on the tram and watched the city move past, the famous Holiday Inn where the foreign journalists stayed, but never on the side of the hotel facing the Serb infested hills. It was shot to bits. Mostly trees and a small highway after that. I sat for a long time and waited.
Here I am forced to admit that I had yet to pay for public transportation during my spring and summer in honor-system-loving Europe. I got busted once in Italy, played dumb and got off. But when the Bosnian Transit Police hopped on board they had a very different vibe than their largely mellow Italian brethren.
A bruiser of a man asked for my ticket, a stocky beast with a rotting hole where his left front tooth used to be; his broken nose and scarred face betrayed his former life. When he demanded my ticket I feigned ignorance: I am a silly American tourist! You know, the people who bombed Belgrade and saved your ass from the whole ethnic cleansing deal (if a little late in the game).
He wasn’t feeling the gratitude and launched in with, “Dokument! Passport! Penalti!”
I said I left it back at the hostel, which was true. This did not please him.
More yelling at me, mostly of the “Penalti!” variety. Some of the other passengers began to take interest and even my side, but he would not waver. I was pretty blasé about the whole deal until “Get off the bus!” when I was roughly pulled off the tram.
Far from the city we stood under a concrete overpass surrounded by large grassy fields. By this time his partner had taken over, the good cop. While Scarface glared, good cop explained to me simply that this wasn’t a good situation; that we were going to have to work something out. I stared around at the empty landscape. The situation was far more dramatic than it should have been. Pulled off the tram in the middle of nowhere, two cops, one good, one bad. It was a bus ticket! There had to be something more going on. Were they going to rape me? They didn’t look the type. Kill me for sport? It was a distinct possibility. They looked at each other, seemingly weighing their options, before coming to some sort of agreement. Bad cop looked at me. “Twenty dollars,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “No problem,” quickly handing over the cash. They thanked me graciously and I crossed the tracks to wait for the next tram back to the city. I saw a Bosnian couple get busted on the ride home. They got off. Apparently it was Amerikanski, penalti. Bosniak, ne penalti. I never did make it out to the museum.
After that I started bumping into people, accidentally knocked over a shop display; I’d lost my Sarajevo Zen. My oneness evaporated, a crisp twenty handed over by a stupid tourist. I still watched the chess, but it wasn’t the same. The perpetual bad moves irritated me in a way they hadn’t before. There was nothing heroic in the men fishing; they were wasting their time. I read about the war and it horrified me. My awestruck wonder had been replaced by a terrible sadness. It is a small city and its streets I had walked dozens of times by then. It was the repetition that did it, I think. How many times could I see the same hollow roofless building, the same Sarajevo Flower (mortar indentations left unrepaired, only accentuated with red concrete) without acknowledging the horror necessitated to create it? My waiter’s face at the café took on new meaning. I questioned him in my mind: What have you seen? Your children strangled with bare hands? Your wife raped and her throat slit? How can you possibly bring yourself to serve me, to wipe this table clean? His pain was written on every crooked undulation of his face. It was in everything, the coffee, the games, the way life grudgingly went on. How could they continue? I wondered. How could they do anything?
Originally published in The Rattling Wall #2