ld be of interest to no one, though the poem ended well. Oh muse, it said in closing, instead of giving words, give of yourself, and fear not, heaven will not forget you. Thoughts of poetry amid a raging war can serve as a haven for those who long for a respite, but not for those who rise up in defense of their homeland, can they? Ah, here he had to stop, for none of us could be certain that we were, indeed, still in our homeland. Since we’ve joined a continental union, the question of defense of the fatherland is, at the very least, questionable; any person from around here could be dispatched to anywhere within the continental union, always hoping to find ways to hear about the only place within the union that feels right. Perhaps this sounds artificial and complicated, but it is what it is. In this effort to unite everyone, many see a nostalgic call to revive the old European empires. Europe can only be great as an allied empire, they say, and the commander goes along with this cheerfully. Outside awaits a different reality, but he now, somehow, feels better. So when a soldier comes up, grenade in hand, at first he smiles and only later reacts to the shouts of warning, wrestles the grenade away, and, in the same motion, heaves it far into a field. After this he’s instantly drenched in sweat and he doesn’t immediately register the muffled pistol shot with which, right behind him, the soldier-bomber takes his own life. How could this happen, wondered the commander, how could someone who was an ordinary, regular soldier, summoned to pay his debt to his country, turn into a machine primed to destroy others because he cannot muster the strength to destroy himself? Amid applause from the soldiers he leaned over and brought his ear to the soldier’s blood-smeared lips. “Sorry,” moaned the soldier, barely audible, “sorry.” The commander smoothed the soldier’s hair, felt his eyes fill with tears, and knew this was the very last moment he could straighten up, display a disapproving scowl as criticism of a suicidal practice that turns the helplessness of an individual or organization into a massacre of innocent civilians, among whom, this being the greatest paradox of all, there were sure to be those who believed in the same things as did the crazed suicide bomber. The commander straightened up and the applause grew to frenzied chants; the commander began to cry, but fine, now they all perceived his sobs as tears of joy, which, thought the commander, was preposterous. Sobs are sobs, there is no great variation here, especially if his was a case of depression. The commander believed that over the last few years he’d been suffering from serious depression, and the fact that many of the symptoms were identical to symptoms for Parkinson’s made him all the more depressed. But now was not the time for tales of medical woes, a war was on and health was hardly their primary concern, though it’s silly to ignore the fact that such a time did have merit as far as reducing the physical mass of population, which over the last decades had been trending toward continual growth. The lofty language of politics and statistics was bone-chilling, the soldiers were right to rebel. Command language should be simple, accessible, so that everyone can understand it equally, yet always still a little mysterious. A language with no mystery is not much of a language. Language conquers by speaking to our longing to be conquered, which the language they heard over our radio station had no hand in, or better said, mouth in, for one’s language relies on the mouth, and some nose, a little throat. And belly, too, one must admit, especially in the case of Japanese, though that may simply be how it sounds for those of us who speak no Japanese. Watch any film by Akira Kurosawa, and you’ll see all the actors pulling their words up from somewhere deep inside, especially if they need to voice dark thoughts; they sound as if they already know they’ll have no energy for much else afterwards. Most often they don’t, like Beckett’s creations, instead they merely dream of a place where they’ll be tranquil and nibble at parsnips while perching on a barrel or a rubbish bin or a little mound where grows (or, perhaps, dies) a scraggly tree. The commander glanced at his watch and thought Mladen and his escort must be so far away by now that the forest around them was arranging its shadows. He wondered whether they’d be able to find anything or whether this war would be remembered as a comedy of errors, for how could their position be described differently: they knew nothing of their location, they hadn’t been assigned a main task, and it all seemed to be designed to pick them off, one by one: none of their communications systems worked, the food supplies were dwindling, and then autumn would come, sooner or later, and winter. But he didn’t dare consider that horror, there were plenty of other horrors demanding his attention as insistently as household pets. The commander, one might readily say, was a war veteran. He’d fought with several armies under several flags, and had even been in the United Nations Blue Helmets. He could no longer remember whether that was in Lebanon or Gaza, or was it Cyprus? But it had been interesting, he’d earned a lot and stowed his earnings in a savings account, purchased beautiful Persian carpets, tried hashish, and picked up one disease after another in whorehouses where they, apparently, were not overly concerned about regulation hygiene. The commander even now was fond of recalling those big doe-shaped eyes of the thirteen-year-old girls who gazed at him, and sometimes—only once, said the commander—boys who were younger still, but his reverie was interrupted by soldiers howling at his door. “What’s this?” roared the commander when he pulled open the door. “What’s the racket? Fuck every one of your mothers! Doesn’t this say as clear as the nose on your face that I’m sleeping, or have you all forgotten how to read?” He pointed to a piece of paper taped to his door, which said: “Sleeping! Do not disturb!” But the soldiers were far too excited so they ignored him, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him out. And there, by the checkpoint, the commander was finally able to understand what they were shouting. “People,” they barked, “people are coming!” And sure enough, coming up the slope toward the checkpoint were people in a single-file column, long and straggling, so its end, its tail, was still deep in the woods. The commander clutched his head and wracked his brain to recall where he’d left the instructions for the handling of refugees and procedures for asylum petitions. The only thing he could remember was that somewhere toward the beginning it said the host country was obliged to secure unhindered communication for asylum-seekers, which meant, in other words, that they’d need to find an interpreter. But, for which language? worried the commander, and then quickly splashed his face with lotion, combed his hair, donned his black-rimmed glasses, and then settled his cap in such a way that the visor partially shaded his eyes. This was because, like many other men, the commander fancied himself the master of a fatal gaze others could not resist, especially if the gaze came after a long pause, with the slow removal of his glasses. The people in line, meanwhile, trudged up the steep road, and we could soon see that though men were walking out in front, most of those following them were women, children, and the elderly. Nevertheless, the soldiers took up positions around the barrier and trained their weapons on the crowd. You never know when some crazy suicide bomber might burst out with explosives strapped on and pockets full of hand grenades, and it might be a man or a woman, or even a child, or an elderly woman, the appearance of sheer innocence. If this happens the soldier mustn’t hesitate, best to shoot first and later ask questions about the supposedly different intentions of the person you suspect. For instance, it’s summer yet someone’s walking toward you wearing a buttoned-up raincoat or there are bulges on his clothes as he walks toward a car where political leaders are seated—in such situations there’s no waiting, shoot first, ask questions later. If this turns out to be a mistake, the security forces will never be wrong. It’ll be the suspect at fault, who refused to respect regulations. So our snipers scaled nearby trees while the soldiers who were out in front of the checkpoint put on protective gear and helmets. This is when the men leading the procession stepped forward and walked over to the checkpoint, while the rest waited at a distance of some twenty paces. Silence ruled, only disturbed by the thud of the footsteps of those leading the column, and then they stopped, and, as someone remarked, there were no sounds for a few moments but the buzzing of bees. There’s a whole other story to be told about the bees, or wasps, actually; the buzzing had come from wasps. We’d seen bees on field flowers and clover, but they’d do whatever it was they had to do on the flower and then fly back to their hives where the boss was waiting. Beekeepers are watchful, perhaps overly so, but that’s how parents behave, and we all remember those moments of anxiety, when, unable to quell misgivings, parents pace back and forth in front of the house, torn between the urge to punish their child and to fling themselves on the kid and lavish it with love. The wasps, of course, have no boss and no one’s glad to see them. They are, however, fair-minded and if you don’t touch them they’ll leave you alone. But woe to him who pokes their nest, and there were wasps’ nests all around us, in the trees, eaves, latrine, even under the seats of our chairs. And there were moments during a meal outside the dining hall when you couldn’t bring a spoon to your mouth without a wasp clinging to it, even clusters of them. So in the silence—the only sound the buzzing of the wasps—those at the head of the procession, the three men and three women, slowly approached the barrier at the checkpoint. In fact, one of the women was wearing trousers so, as the other two women were in dresses so long they nearly brushed the ground, many at first thought that it was