Rose of Sarajevo (11 page)

“We can’t just spring on them,” Burhan said. “People have lives. We’ll let them know ahead of time next time we come. That way they’ll be expecting us. I’ll jot down those phone numbers.”

“Do that,” Raziyanım said. “After all, they’re
your
relatives.”

What a funny world we live in
, Burhan thought to himself. His wife shared a surname and a bloodline with people living in this city, people he’d never met or seen. People had gone their own way— their homelands, languages, and customs were different now—and yet they were still bound together the way all the strands in a thickly woven braid belong to the same head of hair. They might no longer have anything in common. Then again, they might.

The following day, Nimeta left her family in Istanbul and went to Ankara, where she had an appointment scheduled with both the prime minister and the foreign minister. She also wanted to find out how the locals felt about UN forces being sent to Bosnia. The state television channel, TRT, had provided her with a cameraman and a translator. They began stopping people scurrying amid the snow flurries in Kızılay Square so that Nimeta could ask her questions. The first person she stopped was an elderly woman.

“Bosnia? Ah, Bosni
a . . .
Of course it’s very important to us. We have a lot of Bosnians around here. The place is full of them. My neighbor’s son-in-law is a Bosnian.” As she walked off she added, “God help them.”

“Bosnians and Turks are one and the same. Aren’t we all Muslims? They’re our brothers,” said the next person, flashing a gold tooth and waving at the camera.

An elderly man in spectacles said, “Ottoman troops used to come from Bosnia. And there was that grand vizier from Bosni
a . . .
Sokollu something or other. We like Bosnians. I think our soldiers should go and protect them.”

A young man spit his cigarette butt onto the ground. “That’s all we need right now—Bosnians!” he snorted. “As if the Cyprus problem isn’t bad enough, now we’ve got to go and get mixed up in the Balkans. Then we’ll be blamed for anything that goes wrong in Bosnia for the next fifty years.”

“Are you saying you oppose the participation of Turkish troops in a UN peace force?” Nimeta asked him.

“I’m against it, yeah. Turkish soldiers should protect Turkey. What business have they got over there?” He lit a fresh cigarette and strode off.

A girl rushing to catch her bus paused just long enough to say, “Who? Bosnians? What do I care! They can do whatever they like.”

Raziyanım’s hoped-for visit to Bursa, one of the former Ottoman capitals, was not to be. Burhan and Nimeta had hastily packed their bags and returned with the family to Sarajevo, promising their children that they would one day return to this chaotic, muddy, noisy, vibrant, inscrutable, and enchanting city, where the well dressed and impoverished rubbed shoulders, where timeless beauty was being disfigured by ramshackle development.

Although Nimeta and Burhan would have liked to enjoy a romantic night out on the shores of the Bosphorus, they hadn’t even been able to do that. Ivan had called Nimeta back to Sarajevo because something major was happening. This wasn’t the time for holidays; it was time to make some critical decisions.

At a meeting in Brussels, Genscher, Germany’s foreign minister, had informed his shocked EU counterparts that he planned to recognize Croatia’s independence whether they chose to do so or not. Although Carrington repeatedly pointed out that such recognition would lead to disaster and torpedo his peacemaking efforts, Germany stood firm. America, for its part, shared Carrington’s view but thought the issue should be resolved by the countries of Europe.

On December 17, the EU announced that any republics wishing to break away from Yugoslavia should apply to do so by December 24. The day after Nimeta returned to work, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina all applied to have their independence recognized.

Nimeta was handing around the pistachios and
lokum
she’d brought back from Istanbul. She had just put two bottles of
raki
on Ivan’s desk.

“Let’s open those up and toast our application,” Ivan said.

“Are you crazy? Drink
raki
at this hour?”

“People can do whatever they like today. The moment of truth is fast approaching,” he said, handing around generously filled glasses of raki.

“Wait! You can’t drink it like that. You need to add water,” Nimeta said, and darted around the room with a pitcher of water. Then she made a phone call. “Burhan, we’re having a celebration with the
raki
I brought. Why don’t you come over?”

“Don’t drink on an empty stomach, especially at this hour,” he warned her—but he soon hopped in the car and drove down to Nimeta’s office. By the time he got there, everyone was completely plastered and singing
sevdalinkas
at the top of their lungs.

“Hey, so you decided to join us, Burhan!” Ivan shouted. “This might be the last time we enjoy getting drunk together. Get over here, man.”

Everyone knew that the Bosnian bid for independence would come at a heavy price; the Serb and Croat majority regions were certain to insist on forming their own Serbian and Croatian states.

Milošević had long since drawn up a map partitioning not only Bosnia but Sarajevo as well, and Tudjman had done his own calculations. To make matters worse, there was Milan Babić, a loose cannon and the leader of the Krajina Serbs, a self-proclaimed entity within Croatia. A monster created by Milošević but no longer under his control, Milan Babić also had his eye on Bosnia. If Bosnia succeeded in gaining independence, the new state would stand between Krajina and Serbia, the rump Yugoslavia Serbia—but Babić wanted Krajina and Serbia to share a common border.

The European Union recognized Croatia’s and Slovenia’s independence on January 15, 1992, thereby bringing an end to the war in Croatia.

That evening, the news presenter on TV screens across Sarajevo looked decidedly grim.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ivan asked. “He looks like he’s reading off a list of casualties, not news about independence. Send him a note, would you?”

“How do you expect him to look?” Mate replied. “He knows as well as we do what’s going to happen next. Now that the army’s finished in Croatia, they’ve started deploying to Bosnia. Following UN orders, they’re withdrawing troops, artillery units, and heavy weapons from Croatia and sending them to Bosnia.”

“Even worse,” added Sonya, “we’ve turned over our local forces’ weapons as a sign of goodwill. Our president thinks that by proving he supports peace, he can stop war.”

“Don’t keep blaming Izetbegović,” Ivan said. “Didn’t the federal army respond by confiscating the Serbian paramilitaries’ weapons?”

“Did you really fall for that?” Sonya asked.

“What does it matter if Ivan fell for it or not?” Mate chimed in. “Izetbegović fell for it, and that’s all that matters.”

“What you idiots don’t seem to understand is that the president had no choice but to believe it,” Ivan said. “He’s a statesman. His primary duty is to avoid war. It’s as simple as that.”

Izetbegović was indeed doing his best to avert war, but there was no way to avoid a referendum. The vote on Bosnian independence was held on February 29 and March 1. Radovan Karadžić ordered the Bosnian Serbs to boycott it. For good measure, he also set up barricades at all points of entry to the self-declared autonomous Serb regions to ensure that no ballot boxes got in. For two days, planes belonging to the federal army buzzed the skies above Bosnia, raining down pamphlets urging the populace to boycott the referendum. Despite this overwhelming pressure, many of the Serbs in the big cities were known to have voted for independence anyway.

When Radovan Karadžić learned that Bosnia and Herzegovina had applied to the EU for independence, he remarked, “It’ll be a stillbirth. There’s no way we’ll let a Muslim bastard of a country be born in these lands.”

This infant marked for death was about to be born. With the referendum, the wheel of fortune would now spin for the Bosnians, and everyone expected it to stop at “war.”

And that’s exactly what happened. One cold March day, a hoodlum upset by all the Serbian flags hanging at the main marketplace had one drink too many, burst into a church wedding ceremony, and fired his gun, killing the father of the Serbian bride and wounding a priest. It was a tragic but isolated incident. A lengthy prison sentence or execution could have been the end of it, but Karadžić smelled an opportunity and took full advantage of it.

Some of them wore black ski masks, while others had pulled nylon stockings over their heads. Other than their gleaming eyes, their features were completely concealed. All of them were armed. Though they looked like a bunch of gangsters on the way to rob a bank, they were in fact a group of highly trained soldiers acting with incredible discipline and speed. Over the course of a few hours on March 2, 1992, they transformed Sarajevo into a labyrinth of barricades.

General Kukanjac, the commander of the Sarajevo army units, watched in horror from the barracks in the district of Bistrik. Even he was opposed to using the YNA forces under his command to partition Sarajevo. Kukanjac tried to arrange a meeting between Karadžić and Izetbegović so that they could hammer out an agreement, but Karadžić refused to visit the presidential residence, and Izetbegović naturally objected to the Holiday Inn. They finally met at the television station. After heaping accusations upon each other, the leaders succeeded in postponing the outbreak of war in divided Sarajevo for a month.

APRIL 5, 1992

Not only Muslims but members of all of the many religious and ethnic groups living in Bosnia turned out for the “Don’t Divide Bosnia” protest march.

Though the peace rally began with just a few people in the western part of Sarajevo, people from every neighborhood, street, and building joined the swelling throng as the group worked its way toward the city center. Carrying photos of Tito and Yugoslavian flags, their numbers and their conviction growing with each step as they protested the shameful partitioning of their beautiful city, the city’s inhabitants turned out in force that day. The crowd was composed of men and women, Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats, Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Jews who had been living together in harmony side by side, just as their ancestors had done for centuries. As they marched, swept along by this display of unity, they dared to believe at that moment, deep in their hearts, that war would never break out in their tiny country.

These people had been living together for five hundred years. By the end of the Tito era, this intermingling had become such a part of daily life that it was as though all ethnic and religious differences had been erased. A child became best friends with the child living next door, no matter his or her background. Alija and Boris and Janko played together in the same gardens and courtyards and went to the same schools; Serbian women married Muslim men, and Muslims married Catholics without a second thought; friendships, collegial relationships, and partnerships were formed across all religious and ethnic lines. And the people of Bosnia were enriched by this multitude of faiths and races.

Of course, there were some objections to this effortless commingling. No country is completely free of those who would prefer to keep people separate. Even in countries with the most homogenous of populations, there will always be some who feel compelled to condemn, envy, and attack others, whether for belonging to a different political party or merely for supporting a rival football club. But Bosnia had from the outset been perhaps the only region in Europe whose varied inhabitants had managed to coexist more or less peacefully even in times of war. It was a distinction that made Bosnians proud.

And so they marched, these people of Bosnia, in a spirit of proud solidarity, determined to show a certain Montenegrin peasant that they wouldn’t stand for the barricades he’d thrown up across Sarajevo.

Nimeta and her Serbian colleague Sonya were arm in arm; Ibo and his Jewish colleague were shoulder to shoulder. Milos was unable to join them, because he would be covering the demonstration on the evening news and was therefore up at the front of the convoy. Except for a skeleton staff manning the office, everyone from the television station was there, marching.

None of them took Radovan Karadžić’s threats seriously. Those Bosnians who were old enough to remember Karadžić’s arrival in Sarajevo still regarded him as an awkward villager with a rustic accent and pointy shoes. Among Bosniak families who had been attending universities for generations, Karadžić enjoyed a modicum of respect for being the first person in his family to get a higher education, but he was still considered to be too much of a peasant to be taken seriously. However, a lot of water had flowed under the bridge since Karadžić’s arrival in Bosnia. He was now ready to avenge all those years in which he’d been scorned, ridiculed, and—worst of all—ignored.

The crowd in front of parliament chanting “Don’t divide Bosnia” and singing peace songs had begun surging toward the barricade on the other side of the Vrbana Bridge. The marchers intended to cross the bridge into the neighborhood of Grbavica in an effort to show that the entire city still belonged to all of them. Their intentions pure, armed with nothing but flags and banners, they were unwittingly edging closer and closer to the police academy, which had been surrounded by heavily armed Serbian militants the night before. In short, they were marching straight into the arms of those who hated them most.

When a single gunshot rang out, everyone kept marching, as nobody believed that a group of unarmed civilians would be fired upon. But when a few more shots were heard, all hell broke loose. A hand grenade was tossed right into the middle of the marchers. Suada, a twenty-one-year-old medical student, was struck in the chest and collapsed to the ground.

Because her hometown was under siege by the Serbs, Suada had come to Sarajevo to study medicine. She would have graduated as a doctor that May. Though she could have chosen not to join the rally that day—Suada was from Dubrovnik, after all—she too couldn’t bear for the city she’d grown to love to be carved up. She’d been singing, her blond hair blowing in the wind, when that red carnation burst forth on her breast.