The loudspeaker announced a half-hour delay on the flight to Sarajevo and Osman heaved a sigh of relief because the redhead didn’t open her eyes. If she’d opened them he’d have had to stop staring. The corners of her mouth twitched, invisible muscles in her cheeks playing with her, and she frowned in rhythm, God only knows what rhythm, but it definitely wasn’t country. Osman again remembered Mary Kentucky, good old Mary, who was sure to be sitting at the kitchen table weeping. She would never see this because she doesn’t have the right eyes, doesn’t matter that she’s a woman, she doesn’t have eyes that could see a redhead about to set off for Sarajevo, a woman who would today be the most beautiful in the city, and tomorrow and every other day too, maybe forever, the redhead in Sarajevo, beneath the white roofs of a city that was in flames the last time he saw it, and beneath which he, Osman, would never again set foot, not even today because he’d take a bus straight to Zenica, or ever again because that’s the way he wanted it, such was his fate and his passport, American, and he needed to act accordingly, his loyalties clear when the government recommended American citizens not travel someplace because of a war. He was already sure the redhead was from Sarajevo and was going home. The beautiful and irregular face isn’t one for other cities, that’s how it seemed to Osman; such a face can only be Sarajevan.
The voice from the loudspeaker announced the flight and Osman thought: time to go, beautiful. The redhead opened her eyes, catching his glance with her green eyes and reaching for her little suitcase. If she’d only known what he was thinking she’d have said something reproving, but she didn’t say anything, she just left. Though he didn’t need it anymore Osman took out his passport, and then his plane ticket; the most important stage in his journey was over. Everything that happened from now on would be just the orderly closure of duties life had set down for him.
His dead father was waiting for him in Zenica. He was laid out on the red floor of the house, surrounded by women with their heads covered, all kneeling, quietly speaking the words of a prayer. Osman stopped and immediately wanted to take a step backward, but he thought: hey, c’mon, that’s my father, I’m his son, and he moved forward. The women didn’t interrupt their prayer, I can’t go in now, he stepped back, banging into the door, a whispered sorry escaping his lips. Luckily there was no one there except his dead father and the women at prayer, and perhaps God.
Without tears he buried his father. He lowered the coffin into the grave with the hand closest to his heart, trying to remain as invisible as possible as the priest bade farewell to the deceased. Later a few people he didn’t know offered him their hands and left without having looked him in the eye. He returned again to his father’s house, which smelled of winter, old shoes, and Preference cards. He sat on the sofa, held his face in his hands, and long and slow dragged his fingers down toward his chin. When his middle fingers made it to the jawline, it was all over.
He locked the house and left the keys with a neighbor. The house needed to be sold, but he didn’t know how you went about this sort of thing anymore, and didn’t actually care about the money. He couldn’t go back to Alabama with money in his pocket. If he’d already renounced his former life, he couldn’t now return to his new one with earnings from his father’s death. Hamid, the neighbor, asked what he was supposed to be guarding the house from, and until when. Osman said he didn’t know, Hamid shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing much to be said or debated; silence is probably best when you don’t know what more to say.
Passing by the stadium Osman heard the voices from the bingo hall. There was a time when the Zenica bingo hall was the biggest in Yugoslavia. Every first of the month the miners and railway workers would come and burn through their pay packets in a matter of hours. Osman went in and bought three cards: one for him, one for the redhead, and one for fate. He ordered a double rakia, sat at a table, took out a pen, and rolled up the sleeves of his suit jacket. If one of the three cards comes up trumps, he’ll tear up his plane ticket, throw his passport in the Bosna, and go back to Sarajevo and find the redhead. He’ll never think of his brother and Mary Kentucky again. That’s what he decided, convinced it was his human and divine right, that no one could stop him and that he wasn’t doing anything wrong because it was all up to chance, and chance is neither good nor evil, chance can’t put you in the dock, just like no one can indict a man who accidentally gets in the way of a bullet, leaving behind a widow and three kids.
The fatso caller drew the balls from the barrel and read out the numbers. Osman’s own card and the card of fate remained unmarked, but the redhead’s numbers kept coming up. Osman felt a booming in his head, the kind of excitement you feel before a final spectacular jump, he was already in love, the redhead wasn’t only the most beautiful woman in the airport waiting area, now she was his. He imagined his arrival in Sarajevo, knocking on her door and their embrace, one she would welcome as perfectly normal, because without a word or a memory she would know who he was, why he had come, and what he was meant to be in her life. He’d crossed all the numbers on her card bar one, but the caller didn’t call it out. The next one wasn’t hers either, nor the one after that, nor the third, fourth, fifth, six, or seventh. . Osman reconciled himself to his bad luck as fast as he had accepted the good, the excitement disappearing from his stomach, which was already stone cold, like it had been over his father’s grave. He waited for someone to finally shout bingo!
Bingo! shouted an old man in a beret who looked like Zaim Muzaferija and got up to meet fatso, the caller. Congratulations Mustafa, with a hearty swing fatso shook the old man’s hand. The old man smiled sheepishly as if his luck had all been a set-up. Osman crumpled the card up and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.
Darkness had already fallen over Zenica. He headed toward the bus station kicking a can in front of him. The can rang hollow on the asphalt, and Osman felt like a fifteen-year-old who still believed it was possible to cheat his own life but couldn’t remember how. Maybe a man needs to be careful not to let life cheat him. What would happen, for example, if tomorrow — actually, the day after tomorrow — he turned up at Mary Kentucky’s house and caught her in bed with Omer.
If it were possible to believe something like that, if only for a moment, a moment as fleeting as the flap of a hummingbird’s wings, Osman would never return to Alabama. But as things stood, his brother’s present was going to be a marked card from the Zenica bingo hall with just one number missing, an inconspicuous seven that Osman will remember for just a short time, before it disappears along with the flame that burns and leaves no trace.