Rose of Sarajevo (16 page)

Burhan didn’t come home that night or the next. Or ever.

Nimeta went to Burhan’s office early the next morning. He hadn’t come to work, and nobody knew where he was. When she got to work, she tried to reach her husband’s relatives in Travnik, but she was unable to get through. On the spur of the moment, she even called his old office and the construction site in Knin, but nobody knew anything. Finally, she turned to her boss.

“Ivan, I’m terrified something’s happened to my husband. What if he’s been shot or stabbed in a dark street?”

She started to cry.

“It’s easy enough to find out, Nimeta,” Ivan said. “I’ll have them call the hospitals and police stations. We’ll find out everything we need to know by this evening. Stay calm and get to work on the interview you’re doing with MacKenzie. I want you to fire off some tough questions. He’s the person most to blame for not lifting the arms embargo.”

“Ivan, I’m sorry. Could you give that assignment to someone else?”

“We can’t allow our personal lives to interfere with our work. Now that’s the end of it.”

Nimeta slammed the door on her way out. Sleep deprived, exhausted, and guilt ridden, she shuffled over to her desk and pulled out the file on MacKenzie. She didn’t think she could think straight without a coffee but knew the stash she kept in her locked drawer was gone. At least she had a couple of packs of cigarettes left over from a carton an English colleague had given her. She lit a cigarette. When these two packs were gone, what on earth would she do?

Lewis MacKenzie, a Canadian, was the commander of the UN’s peacekeeping force in Sarajevo. Even during the bloodiest days of war, he’d failed to grasp the severity of the Bosniaks’ situation. In his eyes, Izetbegović was an unreasonable politician who was seeking to get the UN forces embroiled in a hot war and who was paranoid enough to believe that the Serbs and Croats planned to do nothing less than wipe Bosnia from the map. Trained for war, MacKenzie was inept when it came to political maneuvering. He’d badly botched things when Izetbegović was kidnapped, wasn’t particularly fond of either the Muslim Bosniaks or their Muslim president, and was known to rue the day he’d been posted to Sarajevo. Rumors had been circulating that MacKenzie had even been receiving funds from Serbian-American lobbyists.

Nimeta had been jumping through hoops to land an interview with MacKenzie. Now she had to prepare a series of pointed questions that would lead to other, more penetrating ones. It always happened this way. Every time God presented her with a spoonful of benevolence, she got poked in the eye with the handle.

She started working simultaneously on her questions and on a list of places Burhan could be. He didn’t have that many close friends. Slumped across from an ashtray now brimming with butts and ashes and distracted by other thoughts, Nimeta eventually completed a rough outline of her interview questions. She hadn’t even taken a break for lunch. The latest round of reports had arrived from the police stations and hospitals. Burhan had not been wounded or killed within the municipal boundaries of Sarajevo.

When Sonya screamed, Nimeta was in the middle of translating an article from a British newspaper. She sprang up and ran over to Sonya’s desk. Mate had grabbed Sonya by the waist, while Muša tried to restrain her flailing limbs. She was crying and screaming so violently that nobody could understand what she was saying.

As others came running in from another department, Nimeta leaned against the wall for support.

“Has she gone mad?” Ibo asked.

“She’s about to,” someone said. “Snipers just opened fire on a busload of children in front of the
Oslobo
đ
enje
newspaper offices. They’re all dead.”

Nimeta sank to the floor and retched. Sonya fainted. They laid her out on a desk, and Ivan administered a few short, sharp slaps to her cheeks.

From where she lay in her own puddle of vomit on the floor, Nimeta could hear Ibo say, “Sonya, the bus belonged to an orphanage. The children were all preschoolers. Nothing’s happened to your child. Do you hear me? Hey, Sony
a . . .
”

The next day Nimeta took a few photographs of Burhan with her and went to visit the city hospitals and police stations. She was unable to find out anything. When she got home that evening, Fiko was waiting for her in the window.

“I haven’t been able to find him, Fiko,” she said.

“Look harder; you’re the one who lost him,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I know what happened. Dad left because of you!”

Nimeta’s hand rose in the air to strike her son, but she was able to restrain herself. They stared at each other for a moment. Nimeta lowered her hand, and Fiko stalked off to his room and slammed the door behind him.

Nimeta was only able to keep Burhan’s disappearance from Raziyanım for a week. Fiko had told his grandmother all about the fight.

“Be grateful your husband didn’t kill you,” she said. “There’s no point being sorry now. You should have thought about it earlier.”

“But Mother, we’re not the first couple to have a fight.”

“Your father and I never argued.”

“That’s because nobody dares pick a fight with you. You’re always right.”

“And furthermore I never deceived my husband, never had to hang my head in shame in front of him.”

“What are you talking about? Anyone listening to you would think I’d cheated on Burhan.”

“I can see right inside my children’s hearts and minds, Nimeta. I’ve always been able to,” she said, fixing her hard hazel eyes on Nimeta.

She truly could. But for some reason, she always did it to Nimeta, not Raif. Whenever Nimeta had done anything wrong, her mother had always found out. Whenever she had a crush on a boy, her mother sensed it. She’d been questioned and cornered and badgered all her life.

Nimeta said nothing. She was exhausted, upset, distraught. Burhan had been missing for a week, and she’d begun to think that it really was all her fault. She needed a sympathetic ear and missed Mirsada more than ever. She just wanted to speak to her childhood friend, the only person who would understand her right now. But Mirsada had disappeared, just like her husband. Private lives were not immune from the destruction of war.

Day after day, Nimeta stopped by Burhan’s office, hoping he’d gone in to work. Every night she set the table and waited. But Burhan never came.

Could God have inflicted a harsher punishment? Fiko wasn’t speaking to her, and Hana had soon picked up on the tension between mother and son. Thankfully, Hana had befriended a girl named Zlata at school. Zlata was a bit older than Hana, an intelligent girl and a good influence. Even Raziyanım approved of her. Zlata was keeping a diary chronicling daily life in Sarajevo, and Hana was one of her faithful readers. On some days Hana even joined in with some of her own experiences. She asked to visit Zlata every day after school. Normally, Nimeta would have insisted that the kids come straight home after school, but she was pleased that Hana had interests that got her out of the house during those difficult days.

Having tried everything else, Nimeta decided one day to put a missing person ad in the paper. She included her name and those of her children. The tiny ad began running in
Oslobođenje
every day.

When she got home a few days later, she found an envelope stuck in the front door. Her name was written on the envelope, but there was no stamp. She tore it open before entering the house and, with trembling fingers, unfolded the sheet of paper inside. On it was written: “Burhan is alive. He’s fighting up on the mountain behind the Jewish Cemetery.” There was no signature, and the writing wasn’t in her husband’s hand.

At work the next day she tried in vain to find someone who would take her up to the Jewish Cemetery. Nobody wanted to travel through the wide-open streets, exposed to Serbian bullets and bombs. They looked at her like she was crazy. Ivan was no different from the others. She thought of Mirsada and sighed, knowing that everything would be different if she were there. Where oh where was her friend?

If Mirsada were in her shoes, Nimeta knew she’d go up to the Jewish Cemetery all alone if she had to. Nimeta made up her mind. She’d go tonight. She’d do whatever it took to find Burhan. She couldn’t take the accusatory looks in her son’s eyes and the nagging voice of her own conscience a moment longer, not now that she knew where Burhan was.

Nimeta waited for nightfall. Once the children were in bed, she exchanged her skirt for a pair of jeans. She left a note on the table by the front door and made sure she had her papers allowing her to break the nighttime curfew. She pulled on a sweater and slipped into her son’s basketball shoes. She was just stepping out the door when she turned back to get a flashlight. As she rummaged through the drawers, she turned up toys, envelopes, letters, and pictures. There was a photo of Hana—her first—in her father’s arms in the delivery room. For some reason Nimeta put it in her pocket. She found the flashlight at last, made sure it was working, and stuffed the contents of the drawers back inside. It had been drizzling since morning. She stuck Fiko’s cap on her head, pushed her hair up under it, and left the house.

The city was deathly quiet as she walked down Ciglane. The streets were deserted. Winding back behind the church, she emerged in front of the parliament building. Spotting a group of men farther up the street, she huddled in the doorway of an apartment building until she could no longer hear their voices. Then she started scurrying toward Suada Bridge, which had been renamed after the young medical student who had been the first victim of the Bosnian War.

Nimeta had just begun crossing the bridge when someone shouted, “Halt!” She wasn’t sure whether to make a run for it or not. Then she heard a round being loaded.
I’m about to become the second victim on this bridge
, she thought, and stopped in her tracks.

“Don’t move. Turn around and put your hands on your head.”

She did as she was told and listened to the sound of approaching footsteps. The night was so quiet that she could hear the wheezing breath of the person coming up behind her. The barrel of a gun poked her in the back. A pair of hands patted her down from her underarms to her heels. When the hands were done with her back, they moved to her front, hesitating a moment on her breasts.

“It’s a woman,” a man’s voice said.

The hands kept patting. The flashlight was pulled out of her pocket and examined.

“Turn around!” the voice said.

She was facing two armed men.

“Who are you? What are you looking for out here at night?”

“I’m a broadcast journalist. I need to get to the station immediately.”

She began to reach into her pocket for her ID card, but one of the men pointed his gun at her chest.

“Move again and I’ll shoot.”

“I was going to show you my ID card.”

“Shut up!”

While the first man kept a gun pointed at her chest, the other one thrust his hand into her pockets. He found and examined her ID card and curfew permit, using her flashlight.

“Okay, put the gun down,” he told the first man. “Nimeta Hanım, were you looking to meet your maker out on the streets like this tonight?”

“People die during the day too,” Nimeta said.

“We’ll take you as far as the TV station,” the other one said. “The streets are dangerous after dark.”

“I think they’re safer. At least snipers can’t see us,” Nimeta said. “Don’t worry. I can go alone. I’m used to it.”

The TV station was actually nowhere near where she wanted to go. She’d have to give these guys the slip.

“Do what you like,” the first man said, “but I’d use the backstreets and stay away from the riverbank.”

Nimeta thanked them, followed a street to a boulevard, and waited for a few minutes. Then she turned heel and didn’t stop running until she’d crossed the bridge. On the opposite riverbank she crept along, staying close to the buildings. She’d just reached a run-down neighborhood when it started drizzling. As she was walking up the hill toward some two-story homes, the rain grew heavier, until it was a torrent. She thanked God for sending anyone who might have been loitering on balconies and in courtyards back into the shelter of their homes. Plowing through the mud, she started climbing a steep incline. There wasn’t a soul around. She crawled under and clambered over fences, moving from garden to garden, going higher and higher. When her feet slipped in the mud, she grabbed hold of bushes and branches and pulled herself up. The gurgling streams of water and pouring rain ensured that no one heard her. When she finally reached the Jewish Cemetery, her sweater and jeans were torn, her nails broken, and her hands blackened. She looked as though she’d been dipped in mud.

Located exactly halfway between the Serbian and Bosniak military positions, the Jewish Cemetery was a woeful place of huddled ancient tombstones, many of which were crazily aslant. Nimeta couldn’t help but feel that the tombstones were gazing at the ground, ashamed perhaps that the three Abrahamic faiths had so often been misinterpreted to inspire bloodshed, whether by Jew, Christian, or Muslim.

She sank down onto a stone. The rain was letting up, and the moonlight filtered through the ragged clouds, illuminating the freshly washed city below. Nimeta could see the Miljacka River glistening in spots as it snaked through the heart of Sarajevo. She gazed to the right and made out the ruins of the post office, the theater, and the law school. When her eyes landed on the School of Engineering, she began to recall images of her youth—a youth that felt as though it had been a thousand years ago.

She saw herself emerging through the gate of the Law School and walking briskly along the riverbank on Kulin Ban Avenue, before she broke into a run, her long blond hair trailing behind her. She crossed Cumuriye Bridge and entered the old town. She was on her way to meet Burhan. First, they went fishing a little farther up the river. Then, holding each other close, they walked to Alifakovac, where they kissed for hours in the open air, along with dozens of other young couples. It was a kind of lover’s lane, a place where nobody leered or disturbed anyone else; a place where couples touched lips, warm and secure in their love, the way Nimeta and Burhan had once been. She and her husband had spent a lifetime together in this city nestled at the foot of the mountains. She had never upset him, never hurt him. She’d always loved him, the husband she’d finally pushed toward his death.