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While I Wait: A Journey of Recovery

“Memories of Life in a Besieged City”

Tag Archives: psychology

August 30, 2011 Hungry In Sarajevo

Hungry! That’s what we were. Three years of starvation etched a deep scar in my soul, one that still hurts and burns occasionally. I try not to think of those days often, for the sake of my sanity. Those memories of hopelessness make me shudder with pain. As the assault on the city intensified, so the siege began to deliver on its promise. The city was cut off completely, surrounded by powerful artillery, snipers and land mines on the surrounding hills and mountains. The Yugoslav Army cut off all electricity which was not to be turned on for years to come. The Sarajevo valley,known for its rich supplies of fresh mountain water, was now dry. Lacking electricity, the pumping stations could not deliver water into homes, and we were left to scramble however we could to find daily sources of this life-sustaining liquid.

Within the few months the city ran out of food. Grocery stores were robbed of the last supplies of goods, and people’s personal supplies were not enough to sustain regular meal patterns. People began to empty out their fridges and  freezers because all the food began to rot. The smell of roasted meat briefly permeated the air as Sarajevan’s were forced to use up all of the previously stored food. Neighbors shared copious amounts of meat, milk and eggs so that they would not be wasted. Olja,Adisa, Vedran and I , friends from kindergarten, sat and shared our knowledge of starvation picked up in numerous WWII movies.

“Well, we have two bottles of oil,” Olja said, “that should be enough to keep us for a while.”

“You know there will be potatoes, Vedran said. Somehow in all the Partizan movies, people ate potatoes during the war.”

Relieved,  I proclaimed victory as potatoes were my favorite food, and laughed, “In fact, I could eat potatoes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and a dessert. I am all set, guys.”

One word was avoided in all households, a word that made almost everyone uneasy with fear and concern. Winter.  Long, brutally cold and generous in snow and ice, as only winters in the mountains can be, the first winter of war was fast approaching. Anxious and fearful, we seemed to run frantically around the city,  appearing to be in control of the chaos. However, deep inside us, in that secret place hidden from all including ourselves, the place that we seldom acknowledge for we know that the truth is spoken there, we knew that our situation was hopeless. Trapped in a box without holes poked for air or dishes left out with food and water, we were expected to die.

But we did not! The city provided each household with a specific ration of bread made from small amounts of flour and large proportion of chaff.  Each member of the household was allowed to buy a one-third of the loaf. For the three of us at home that worked out to less than a very small loaf per day, or roughly three small slices per person. As the war dragged on this would seem like a feast.

People pressed into long lines often stretching for blocks to receive this ration, hugging the walls of the buildings nervously hoping that snipers wouldn’t detect the activity. If detected we knew to expect sniper fire quickly followed by artillery rounds.

In the late fall we began to receive humanitarian aid  shipped into the city via UN convoys. At first excited that we might eat a potato or a piece of fruit, we soon realized that this aid was not enough to ward off hunger pains and certainly was not nutritional by any means. The first distribution of humanitarian aid ranks as one of the most exciting and disappointing events of my life. Eagerly standing in line we waited for the basement door of the building next to ours to open, signaling the begining of the food distribution.

The line was moving slowly so neighbors began to speculate what kind of food we were  going to receive. Every once in a while Olja and I would chime in with our hopes of receiving potatoes or sugar. Older women  shared recipes and memories of traditional Bosnian food, heavy on stews ,vegetables and meat.  As the first recipients passed with small bags we all enquired about the rations.

“Are they generous? Do they include eggs and milk? Are there any cigarettes?” we would ask.

As the line reduced, we entered the musty, concrete basement. Among bicycles, tools and old furniture there was a long table and a couple of crates with seating pillows. An old Fifties metal scale graced the table, while sacks of flour and beans rested gently against its legs.

The presidents of the two building’s board as well as a local official were in charge of distribution. Ismet, our family friend and neighbor, was one of the men in charge. Tall and gregarious, always ready with a witty remark or a hilarious joke, he filled our childhood memories with great fun.

“Oooo..The sisters are here!” he said pointing to Olja and I, “And they are not fighting! Quickly, distribute this food to folks before an unforeseen storm comes upon us and blows us all away!”

“With all respect Ismet, shut up and distribute the food,” Olja stood her ground, keeping in their tradition of teasing with each other.

Grinning widely, Ismet proceeded to call out the types of food and the amounts that each household was to receive. We learned that each block had earlier received a list of households and the appropriated rations of several food categories. We were to receive following, which was to last the three of us a month:

1/2 a liter of oil

½ kg of rice or macaroni pasta

½ kg of lentil or beans

1/3 kg of flour (if there was any)

1kg of chaff

1 can of Mackerel

1 can of unidentified, ground meat-like substance

1 package of Feta cheese

1 bar of smelly brown soap for laundry

1 American military Lunch packet (every once in a while)

“Bon Appetite,” said Ismet, “and see you in 30-some days!”

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August 23, 2011 AND THERE WAS LOVE

Once upon a time there was a neighborhood in Sarajevo, the capitol of Bosnia, where most of its inhabitants lived in apartment buildings. While drab, soviet-style apartment blocks occupied a majority of the newer part of the city, this little enclave was a bit special (or so many thought.)  Nested on the slope of a hill, surrounded by lush vegetation and the abandoned gardens of long gone privately owned houses, this community cherished the outdoors. The children swarmed among overgrown patches of plum trees, climbed on apple trees and chanced on dares to jump from the highest branches. In summer, girls and boys raced their bikes, exploring the dark and mysterious woods on a neighboring hill. The girls had an especially dangerous game of dare, charging downhill on their beloved bikes, jumping high in the air over a deep ditch to land upon the narrow flat roof of an abandoned garage. In the winter, kids would race their sleds down a treacherously steep hill stopping short of an uncovered concrete hole that seemed as old as the surrounding mountains. Everything it seemed was done on a dare, like the “The Trail of Death” as they dubbed the toughest challenges, becoming regular afterschool rituals, each of children defending their records on daily basis, either physically or verbally.

“Haustorchad” or building dwellers is what the kids growing up in houses called them. And though the Haustorchad fought often, many formed bonds as deep as any blood relative. Their households became extended families and parents could rely that their children were safe no matter where they were.  During the school year, the best students tutored those who struggled in exchange for a yummy lunch or a piece of some delicious homemade cake. Winter and summer vacations were spent skiing in the mountains surrounding the city or traveling to the Adriatic coast to swim and lounge in sun upon some pebbled stretch of beach. Invariably they could hardly wait to come home and swap stories and show off well-earned sunburns. Life was great and carefree in this little area, or the kids thought.

And then suddenly, or so it seemed, war came to the neighborhood and the city. Many people from the neighborhood left. Others came from far away, chased out of their homes, running to save their lives. In the beginning the, “haustorchad” could not leave their buildings at all. Buildings often shared a single bomb shelter. Trapped by the fighting outside, the kids turned a small area into their play room. They painted murals on the uneven, concrete walls, and played music on a portable, battery-powered radio. They brought books and board games, but once the electricity was shut off they and everyone else were plunged into darkness.

In the darkness children reminisced of their past. They shared memories of food and events. They sang favorite songs together, teased each other and gossiped about kids in other buildings. Soon, they grew tired and stopped talking much. They sat together in the dark with the grown-ups, waiting for the war to stop.

But the War did not stop and starvation, thirst and defiance drew people out of the shelters. Kids began using their bikes and sleigh to lug water and scraps of wood for heat. As always, they foraged in groups. In winter they waited in long lines for water and bread, forcing each other to move and prevent serious frostbite. In summer, they collected rainwater, helping each other carry 50 gallon barrels up-stairs to their flats. They shared information and the last bits of food, looking out for each other while quarrelling all along. Some kids traded their bikes for guns, while others suffered the ultimate fate at the hands of snipers and guns surrounding the city.

Eventually, the War stopped. The kids grew up and many left the neighborhood, and the country altogether. And while many chose not to look back, some decided to reflect and understand just how much of the place where they grew up still remained in their heart. What they found was not just a memory of childhood bond, but a deep connection to the spirits of their culture and ancestry. They, at long last, found love.

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July 30, 2011 Rebirth Rendered in Thunder: PTSD and I

Copyright W.C.Turck 2008“Boom!” A crackling detonation followed by a rumbling sound in the distance jolts me from a deep sleep. Disoriented and ready to dive under my bed for shelter, I jump up, my head almost colliding with the wood floor. Trying to regain balance, I hold with one hand to the metal railing of the bed. Still dazed, I begin to survey the room, taking stock of objects barely visible in the dark , lit only by the diffused light from a lamp  outside. Where am I, the thought echoes through my brain, leaving me unsettled? I panic, lost briefly in the space where nothing makes sense and memories do not exist. It is just me and a vast prairie of emptiness.

“Boom!” Another loud sound, followed by a burst of light radiating through the semi-closed, white blinds propels me forward. I begin to run. I run away from the terror-laden sound, my feet heavy and filled with concrete allowing for infinitely small steps that seem to lead nowhere. I run, cold and shivering suspended in a vacuum where nothing but the confines of the body and physical reactions exist. “I” am not there. The smell of fire permeates the air, the sound of explosions mingles with the blinding light streaming intermitted amid the rhythm of blood rushing through arteries; clogging  my ears with a hissing sound. I run for hours, or so I think.

When it happens, I can’t be sure. Slowly, as if someone moves a dusty curtain, weighed down by a billion moments of amnesia, inch by inch the image of my soul is revealed. I stand  facing the window, my bare feet soothed by the coolness of the floor. I turn my head to the right, locking my gaze on the painting that hangs above the antique, wood dresser. Even though obscured by dark, I know its subject and the light brush strokes of the watercolor by heart. I know the story of my grandfather who purchased the painting of the villa on the coast of Adriatic, hoping to keep fond memories of his youth. I know the story of the dresser. I remember the day my husband dragged the heavy wooden piece home with the triumphal pride of a successful hunter etched on his face.I know that if I reach under one of its legs I am sure to find a rusty nail poking-out ever so slightly, catching the threads of the mop each time I clean.

Comforted by the familiar, memories and stories of the past safely tucked in the far recesses of my brain; I slowly walk back to bed and sit down. Propping my back with extra pillows I listen to the howling of the wind from a thunderstorm unleashed on Chicago. With each thunder-clap I flinch as the loud sounds resembles the sounds of detonations.

How is it that these same sounds offered a pocket of safety for us during the war? We slept through them, lulled by the knowledge that during bad storms snipers and heavy artillery were mostly silenced. Nature and its power offered us a reprieve from fight, allowing us to catch a breath and experience the sense of safety, even just briefly.

As I watch the last flickers of lightening diffuse through the blinds I feel my lips curl in a smile. Each time the flash-backs erase my memories, I cease to exit. And when they come back, even the bad ones I welcome them eagerly as they all make up my soul and that which connects me to life. Calmed by the storm, I slowly drift into sleep, hugging the pieces of my wounded self  as closely as I can.

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June 8, 2011 The Day Mama Was Wounded:Part Two

Copyright W.C.Turck 1994

      The exact order of the events that followed my sister’s frantic attempts to reach Mama is obscured by the intensity of my emotion. As I approached the door to our apartment I briefly stopped, holding onto the memory of the night prior as if it were a life preserver. “This is just like last night when Mama was roughed up a bit by explosion. She‘ll be fine,” I kept repeating to myself as I timidly entered the living room. Olja was already there, standing by the dining table, her screams piercing my brain and my soul. I felt my gut drop and bile rise in my stomach as I watched her pacing back and forth; disoriented and yelling “She’s dead! She’s dead!”

 Quickly, one of the neighbors brought a chair and we sat Olja down, unsuccessful in our attempts to quell her screams. Somehow, the only thing replaying in my mind was the thought of those ubiquitous scenes from many war movies where a hysterical person is brought back to calmness with a good slap on the face. So I did it! I slapped her once, twice, perhaps even few times more. She stopped for a moment and then continued where she had left of, only until someone else followed my example. Over the years, this story would morph into a neighborhood legend, where Olja, always tough and ready for a fist-fight, was on a receiving edge of a revengeful slapping by a mob of children whom she terrified with her dangerous presence. However, the truth was that in the overall chaos we needed to calm her quickly so that we could attend to Mama without panic, and this seemed to work.

   I left Olja to the comforting hands of my friends and, taking a deep breath, I entered the room filled with dust. The walls were scarred by shrapnel holes, all varied in size from deeply grooved, dinner- plate sized holes, to tiny nicks sprayed almost in a liquid fashion. The glass from the windows mixed with Mamas fine porcelain covered the floor and the furniture. As I looked around, each movement became excruciatingly slow, and sounds seemed to diffuse through the room, as if I were under the water, hearing but not understanding. It seemed as if my eyes and my brain absorbed an extraordinary amount of visual and very specific information. I looked at the shapes of shrapnel holes and thought of objects they resembled; a one looked like a fat man, whose belly protruded over his pants while another resembled an apple tree with a really wide trunk.

 Absorbing all of this within a few seconds, I looked down to the floor by the dining table and there was Mama, laying on her stomach, her legs folded at a weird angle as if she were a marionette doll, waiting for her puppeteer to pull the strings and bring her back to life. The wood floor was soaked in a large pool of blood that seemed to increase in size as the time passed. “Mama!” I cried soundless, my dry lips becoming sealed. I knelt in the puddle next to her, gingerly touching her head not knowing if I should try to move her. At first there was no movement and then, after what seemed to be an eternity, she moved her head to me and said, “Tell them to get a fucking car so I can go to the Hospital.”

Being a true Sarajevan, whose pragmatism took precedence over all other guiding forces, Mama directed what needed to be done; all the while squeezing my knee assuring me that everything was going to be just fine. Later on, we would all fondly remember my friend Tarik and his insistence on tying Mama’s leg to “stop the bleeding,” not knowing that she was wounded in the back; Olja and her hysteria; the masses of neighbors that kept coming in and out of our home, clueless as to what needed to be done, and the bumpy ride to the hospital where Mama stated that “if grenade did not kill her, this car ride would definitely finish the job!” 

To be continued…

Copyright Ana Turck

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April 20, 2011 Protests Turn Deadly

Copyright W.C.Turck 2009

Sarajevo Parliament

It is strange how some faces seem to become etched in our memories, serving as a reminder, a visual representation of the events that have passed. For me, the face of protests in Sarajevo  that ushered the war in 1992 belongs permanently to the man for whom the intensity of his emotions became more than he could bear. Being only sixteen years old I did not fully understand the nature of these emotions, but in his face I saw pain, sadness, anger and devastation. As we marched with our arms interlocked, a middle-aged man began to yell at the military barracks. “You will not shoot at us…You will not kill us like cowards…Get out so that we can see your faces,” he shouted. “Here, I am unarmed,” the man yelled as he tore off his shirt, ripping the sleeves and grabbing at the buttons. Purple faced with sweat pouring down his body, he fought the protestors who tried to calm him down. Agitated and scared by the strength of his raw feelings I edged closer to Mom. What could have caused such a pain that this kind of a public display seemed a natural progression, I wondered?

As we passed military barracks I saw soldiers of JNA (Yugoslavian Army) in windows and on the roof. Most of them were peaking from the corners of the windows and all that I could think was how magnificent this moment was and how great it would be if they joined us in solidarity with the anti-war protest. At that moment I still believed that the shootings of civilian protesters a few nights prior were just accidental, individual actions of the few, made in the overall confusion of the events. I was young and naïve enough to believe the official military statements to be true.

We walked towards the Parliament building where Sarajevans from other side of the city were to meet us and continue our demands for peace and governmental accountability. The events of the few weeks earlier have left Bosnia and Hercegovina in a state of complete anarchy since three major political parties that made the government broke apart in, what seemed to be a permanent state of animosity.

At the Parliament, the masses of people descended onto a small square in front of the long, Soviet-style building. Kids climbed trees surrounding the building to witness unfolding history. Protesters overtook walls and the windows of the nearby apartment complex. Sarajevans, tired of the government’s contempt for its people and eager to break down militia-run ad hoc barricades and restore their city, demanded accountability and subservience of public officials.“We want peace!” some chanted; “Down with the government!” others cried; “We want pot!” some youths chuckled.

Enveloped in excitement and singing, I felt a myriad of emotions with an intensity I never felt before. Pride, excitement, love and resistance filled me, bringing tears to my eyes. I could see that Mom, Olja and my friends whom we met there, were all unified in these feelings. Looking back, I realize that this was the exact moment of my liberation. Here, I became an integral part of something bigger than myself. I tapped into the power of humanity.

  There was a sudden surge of energy as everyone shouted in unison, “Here they come, here they come.” Several trucks arrived with men in blue uniforms, white helmets and blackened faces, carrying signs reading “Brotherhood and Unity.” Through tears Mom said that things would be okay now that the miners had arrived. She said “Miners don’t have anything to lose and when they join the fight it’s all or nothing.” I felt relief at their arrival. We were not alone now.

Most of us stood in front of the Parliament, chanting and singing, unsure of what supposed to happen next. Some people succeeded in entering the building, reclaiming it as their own. Suddenly, I heard an unfamiliar sound, gentle almost as the sound of a bee’s wing brushing against the hair…with heat! As soon as this thought entered my consciousness, I realized that it was the hissing of the bullets as they passed by my head.

Someone screamed “They are shooting from the Holiday Inn!”  There was panic everywhere. Mom screamed trying to keep us from being separated by stampede of frightened and confused people. People crouched behind a wall and we joined them there. Mom covered us with her body to shield us from bullets, waiting for a moment when we could escape. During a brief lull, gripping each other’s hands, we sprinted up the street pushing through people fleeing for cover. Later, we learned that right after we left the military opened fire from the barracks, killing among others, a fifteen year old. Further events of the day became a part of our family lore. We had to get to our car which was parked by the military barracks. Mom’s Peugot Diana, with its bad muffler, scared neighborhood militiamen. Thinking that a tank was approaching, they hid behind a wall of our neighborhood grocery store. Jets roared overhead, shattering windows and giving us a preview of what was yet to come.

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April 15, 2011 Echoes Of A Dark Past: Sarajevo Politics As Usual

 

Copyright W.C.Turck 2004Months and weeks leading into the war were tense. Venomous nationalist discourse overtook public and private spheres with fervor. I was an Art Student in Sarajevo, trying to make a sense of my sixteen year old existence, navigating the treacherous landscape of puberty and hoping that the bigotry and hate would end soon. However, my hopes for a peaceful agony of a teenage life were crushed. Our national dysfunction permeated every aspect of society and life.

I often found myself listening to arguments about fundamentalist ideologies advocating superiority of one religion and nationality over another, in odd moments such as still-life drawing classes. At “Dedo’s,” our art café, I overheard converging discussions about the atrocities from the centuries past. Here, I drank long sips of luscious, unfiltered Turkish coffee, surrounded by images of Ottoman Turcks impaling Serb severed heads on sticks, and Muslims being bludgeoned by the Chetniks, a group of fundamentalist Serbs, during the WWII. These kinds of discussions were unavoidable.

To be clear, those fomenting the ethnic and nationalist rhetoric were a very small minority, but their constant message filtered through skewed historical perspectives, chaotic politics and a struggling economy tore at “Brotherhood and Unity” fostered by Yugoslavia’s long dead leader Josip Broz Tito. Growing up in the fifties and sixties, my parents believed in the message of “Unity.”  Not unlike many Sarajevans of their generation, they denounced the practices of segregation based on one’s religious background, and entered into a mixed marriage, a type of institution hailed as a perfect model of nation –building  in Tito’s socialist Yugoslavia. This is not to say that my parents’ marriage was a form of political activism. I still prefer to believe that there was some love involved in their first union. However, the political and social environment they grew up in allowed for opportunities and gave social acceptance to the mixing of religions. So my father’s Orthodox Christian background joined my mother’s Catholic/atheist heritage (my grandfather was a Communist.) In Yugoslavia, religion and nationality were often used interchangeably, but my parents always insisted on a separation of the two since, after all, they lived in a multiethnic society. They asserted that it was their full right to declare themselves as Bosnians.

Growing up with these sensibilities, I found myself unprepared for the rise of ultra Nationalism and the progression of public discourse towards ethnic homogeneity, and calls for ethnic cleansing during the late eighties and early nineties. First time I became aware of the problematic nature of my multi-ethnic background, was in 1991. I was listening to a radio talk-show following the start of war in Croatia. Many of the  calls received called for the isolation or destruction of “unclean and polluted” members of the society, since they were seen as the traitors of their various ethnic groups. While most callers were guarded and somewhat diplomatic in how they expressed these views, there were a few who outright called for violence and murder. I distinctly remember a woman who stated that the unborn children of mixed marriages should be “cut out of their mothers’ wombs.” What I did not fully understand at that time was that I was witnessing an evolution of my society towards war and genocide.

The constant humming of divisionism fractured Sarajevo at every level, boiling to a poisoned national election that culminated in barricades with armed men all around the city. Sarajevo was at a breaking point.

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April 5, 2011 Rememberance

Copyright W.C.Turck 1994

Sarajevo Library 1994

There are moments in my life when I regret not keeping a journal; the kind whose pages are filled with mundane details, only seldom interrupted by fragments of insightful thought. At the beginning of the war, in my early teens, I tried this exercise in self-awareness. Quickly, I faltered after realizing that the journal turned into lists of meals, obsessive ramblings about unrequited love and frustrations over schoolwork. Realizing the ordinary nature of my teen angst, I stopped writing and turned to reading instead.

During the war I refused to write; partly due to my inability to focus on anything more than survival, but also as a form of resistance to the conditions of my life. I refused to be just another person writing a war journal and creating an iconography of a horrific existence. Committing the words to a journal would sharpen the picture of the events in progress, eliminating the safety offered by the foggy, unfocused immediate experiences of war.

After the war I wanted to escape and forget. I wanted to distance myself from anything that reminded me of those terrible days and years. Keeping a journal was not an option since words would keep me alive and all I wanted to do was to disappear.

Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that I do not posses a primary document, other than my memory and the memories of others close to me that help me recount the Bosnian war. There is a part of me that regrets not having this first account of the events past, filtered through the soul of a sixteen year old, whose sensitivity created a fertile ground for drama. As I am trying to piece together the emotionally charged anti-war protests and the quickly unfolding events of the first attacks on the city, I am reminded  that there is more to history than factual accounts of events. There is the emotional memory, colored by one’s soul and the promise of healing.

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March 30, 2011 Under Attack :Part 2

…. Mama opened the front door and disappeared in the crowd of neighbors that were streaming into Chima’s

Copyright W.C.Turck 1993

Sarajevo 1993

apartment. There, the kitchen and living room picture windows offered the perfect panoramic view of the city and Hum. Several neighbors elbowed each other as they battled for a perfect place, kneeling on the back rest of an oversized sofa covered in brown and beige flowers. The air in the room was still, charged with an unspoken worry and fear that we all  shared.

Someone’s hand grabbed my elbow. Jasmin, my neighbor and a close family friend motioned for me to join him and a group of neighbors standing near the window.  Though his apartment was next to Chima’s and he could have seen the same events from his window, he chose to join the crowd of spectators. Somehow, chaos and confusion seemed to bring us closer together. We all began to gravitate toward each other, either for the sake of orientation in an unknown situation or for the comfort and assurance of shared experience.

Standing next to each other, Jasmin, Olja and I watched as the Yugoslav army jets circled around Hum, dropping large bombs from their bellies. Hum’s woods were on fire and several houses crumbled as the bombs reached them, leaving large craters filled with the debris. Because of their size and the destruction they left, we called these airborne bombs “Krmace” or “Pigs.” While our building complex sat on a hill opposite to Hum offering us a safe distance from the events that were happening just a mile away, we still felt the earth shake. At the bottom of the hill, just to the left of the TV relay now engulfed in flames, stood the Sarajevo Tobacco Factory. With its entrance hugging the railroad tracks, this hundred and some year old building represented one of the essential pieces of infrastructure, employing hundreds of workers and generating a significant income for the city and the state. Now, the building bore a brunt of a fire assault.

 We watched as incendiary rounds traced a straight line across the city towards the factory. One red bullet at the time, in a row of twelve or so slammed into the building, causing fire where they landed.

Suddenly, the same kind of  bullet rows intersected the one aiming at the factory, and followed a downward  trajectory towards the Presidential Building, the Electrical Distribution Building and the towers housing the Unis insurance company. Within a few minutes the city was on fire. We watched in awe, mesmerized by the beautiful symmetry of deadly bullets darting towards the heart of the city. I felt as if we had stepped into some war video game, overloaded with visual and sound effects. My city was burning and all I could do is stand and watch as it slowly disappeared in the fast approaching night. Pressing my face to the window to  escape the glare of my reflection I continued to watch the dance of bullets, now creating a surreal road map on the landscape of air, feeling the cold spring breeze on my forehead through the glass. Every so often, the picture blurred as my silent, unsolicited tears accumulated after the choking grip of the heavy sadness that washed through my body, ebbing and flowing in the rhythm of the fire.

I am not sure how long we stood there, silent and stunned. The sound of sirens brought us back to reality, signaling that we had to turn the lights off for the mandatory blackout of the city. We left a few remaining neighbors at Chima’s and returned to our hallway in silence. After a brief negotiation with Mama, Olja and I retrieved to our bedroom where we pushed our beds together in hopes of falling asleep quickly. Soon Mama joined us and in hushed voices we recounted the events of the day until late into the night. Comforted by each others’ presence and giggles, we slowly drifted into sleep as we created a list of all possible ways to do everyday chores without standing up. Mama was the captain of the ship and we were to move only on her orders.

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March 30, 2011 No Escape

Copyright W.C.Turck 1993

Sarajevo 1993

I have been doing a sort of archeology of war in order to piece myself together and heal. Frequently, I come back to defining points in my war experience where I truly felt the impossibility of my existence and the fear and panic they caused. For the most part, my life under the siege followed the ebb and flow of everyday chores, people I had to see, homework that needed to be done and daily scavenging trips for food, water and firewood. We created a routine partially due to the necessity, but mostly because it gave us a sense of normalcy. If we stuck to our regimented life we could claim some control over our lives, avoiding the full impact of the impossibility of our existence.

My reading habits changed. I read and reread only two books through the entire war. I came back to The Gulag Archipelago every so often, but I became obsessed with a book detailing life during the siege of Leningrad during World War Two. I absorbed the horrifying living conditions of Leningrad and was amazed to see how the struggle of its residents to survive mirrored mine. Despite the familiarity, every time I finished the book, I closed it with a sigh, saying “Poor people, horrible things they had to go through.” Mom would look at me in disbelief, shake her head and say “Those poor people are you.”

This inability to experience the full tragedy of my condition was something I shared with my friends. We stood in lines for bread, in muddy trenches to fill canisters with trickling water from a contaminated well, or rummaging through bombed out factories and houses for wood and anything we could burn for heat. We undertook these tasks without the feelings of degradation and entrapment often associated with fighting for survival.

One autumn evening, during the first year of war, my best friend stormed into our house terribly excited. She discovered that following the previous night’s shelling there was an abundance of plastic crates at the destroyed Coca Cola Factory. I dressed in the obligatory five layer outfit, and stuffed hand-me-down boots with paper, since it was muddy and cold and I had overgrown my own.

We ran several miles down the windy streets, through narrow passages between apartment buildings and steep stairs that separated neighborhoods. Across the train tracks stood the blackened factory’s skeletal frame. Inside I could see old women, men and children tearing through debris. Some adventurous kids climbed on what used to be a roof and were trying to pry off semi-charred wooden beams of the steel frame. My friend dragged me inside towards a small pile of crates. “Stack them up” she said, “They’re easier to carry this way.” It felt like stealing someone else’s property. I kept waiting for someone of authority to come in and chase us away.

As I knelt on the ground to lift the crates I glanced at my friend. Our eyes met and in that moment I saw myself. I stood up and looked around. As if from some apocalyptic movie, the scene around me was surreal. The scent of gun powder was layered with a suffocating smell of charred plastic that someone burned in a barrel nearby. People were frantically pilfering everything that they could carry. I looked at my friend dressed in mismatched, oversized clothes, with scuffed, mud-filled shoes. Her face was smudged, covered with the filmy soot rising from the fire, and her nails and hands were black from mud and ash. I felt bile rising in my throat and tears blurred my vision. She was me! As if pushed over the edge into a black hole without anything to anchor and orient myself, I felt insignificant and powerless. Unable to speak, I dropped the crates and left for home, weeping.

We often go through life settled in our routines devoid of any reflection, and only in rare moments of clarity are we allowed glimpses of our true existence. What we feel in those instances of recognition may vary, but the surge of raw emotions is so overpowering, almost impossible to bear. So much so, that we quickly wrap ourselves in a security blanket woven of everyday chores and automatic responses.

Wars follow these same rules of unseeing and recognition, with the difference that pivotal moments of clarity are far more frequent and that pain is amplified with the understanding that there is no escape, not now and certainly not in future.

First Published in Imagine2050

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March 28, 2011 Under Attack

Copyright W.C.Turck 2009

Hum

I place words on a blank page timidly, as if not to disturb the thought that is slowly pushing through my memory. I hear a train pass by in the distance, and the sound of a loud base coming from a car parked outside creates vibrations in my body. My fingers are kissing the letter keys, quickly touching them and then surely pulling away, preserving a strange sense of calmness; a feeling that always catches me by surprise. I keep thinking of my first full day of war and how the chaos and fear mixed with the excitement. Radio and TV were continuously transmitting the destruction of the city. Sitting on our pink Persian living room rug, inherited after one of Grandma’s numerous redecorating adventures, Olja and I watched silently as Yugoslav Army tanks rolled through the city on the way to the surrounding mountains. There were detonations and sounds of a barrage somewhere near, as the low flying military jets broke the sound barrier every few minutes.

Our building was brimming with people too nervous to settle down and too afraid to venture outside for the fear of being killed by a stray bullet or something worse. Throughout the city the Serbian sympathizers, dubbed the Fifth Column, used snipers from either their own apartments or the building rooftops, holding civilians as hostages and preventing them from organizing. We spent most of the morning and the early afternoon sitting on the floor as Mama ordered us not to stand-up for the fear of being hit by a stray bullet. Later on we would laugh at the naiveté with which we entered the war and Mama’s insistence that we crawl on our stomachs to get to the bathroom was evoked for entertainment on a weekly basis. As jets flew over our rooftop, we were herded into the windowless, square hallway. Sitting mostly in silence on the cold, tiled floor, Mama, Olja and I tried, unsuccessfully, to gage by the sounds where the battle was happening. Each detonation seemed immediate and deadly.

In the early evening, the phone rang as there was a commotion outside of our apartment door. Crawling into the living room, Olja reached for the phone that sat on the book shelf and dragged it to the hallway. After a few short sentences, she slammed the receiver down and began to get up as she reached for the door handle.

 “Quickly, that was Jasmin. He wants us to go next door to Chima’s so we can see the airplanes dropping bombs on Hum,” She barked out as she hastily jumped into her slippers, already half-way to the neighbor’s door.

 My heartbeat sped- up, creating a suffocating pressure in my forehead and making me feel lightheaded. Hum was the hill that housed numerous neighborhoods and a TV relay, and was intricately woven into our childhood memories. While in most geographically flat areas its height would be perceived as a mountain, for us living in a valley surrounded by steep peaks of five to seven thousand feet, Hum was a promise, a taste of what could be found in depths of those gargantuan mountains surrounding the city.  We climbed its steep residential streets in order to get to the pristine woods sitting right under the relay. Both, the familiar and the wilderness, this hill helped us get A’s in our Biology class due to its abundant flora. Our herbariums, white pages marked with Latin and common names of plants, were filled with specimens carefully pressed after many explorations to Hum’s muddy brooks and grassy meadows.

This hill was instrumental in our understanding of WWII since several German tanks, rusted and corroded over the fifty years, sat on its top, overlooking the city. Every year, on the week preceding the anniversary of victory over Fascism and the liberation of the city from the Nazis, our History department would organize a school trip to the tanks. There, we would meet WWII veterans who, rightfully proud of their service wove long, seemingly never- ending stories of heroism that came so naturally to the mountain-hardened Sarajevans. We loved these trips, mainly for the opportunity to use the tanks as creepy, semi-dangerous monkey bars, escaping the daily grind of school and our jaded Chemistry teacher. Despite our appearance of disinterest in their stories, somehow we still retained some of the information shared so enthusiastically by the elders.

Hum was the witness to my first public humiliation when I, at seven years old, decided to cross the railroad tracks and explore that looming mountain ahead of me. After being lost for several hours, unsuccessfully navigating its ad-hoc streets and old narrow stairs I peed in my pants and collapsed on the sidewalk, crying the tears of fear. A friend and a foe, this hill morphed into a personality, a living creature with an intelligence and emotions of its own.

“I can’t believe it,” I yelled out as I raced Mama to the door. “That’s our hill! What are those poor people to do now?”

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