We arrived in Brčko fifteen minutes after the event ended. I slumped over the wheel, tired and frustrated at this failure, irritated at the change in plan and bizarre speed of it all. I had attended similar events and none had proceeded like this. Just as we wondered what to do, a convoy of cars from the event drove past. A colleague recognized us and stopped the convoy. Delighted to find a photographer on board, he took us all back to the event site for a photo shoot. Then everyone else boarded cars and left Brčko immediately. We promised that we would too after we ate lunch.
The city felt strangely deserted. Many shops and restaurants had closed even though it was only mid-afternoon. We found one place open near the local UN office. As we ate, we noticed stalls where vendors sold CDs.
“It’s my birthday,” Louise said.
“Well, I know just the present for you.”
We paid the bill and crossed over to the CD stalls. As we browsed, a blue truck nearly as long as the UN office parked directly in front of us. It shielded the building and blocked our access to the street.
“This is a little strange,” Louise said.
“Weird. We’re totally boxed in. This isn’t great for me. I’m claustrophobic.”
Louise selected her present, a CD titled “Girl Power.” I bought it, then we walked to the end of the truck. In the open back, we saw concrete barricades piled inside.
I heard the crackle of the radio, the call number for our Land Cruiser and ran to answer it, but the dispatcher couldn’t hear me call back.
“We’d better go,” I said to Louise.
“I wonder what’s going on?”
“I’d like to find out, but you know how it is — an order’s an order. We were supposed to be gone by two.”
At the junction that led to a big market, the Arizona, near Brčko, we heard the radio crackle again. I pulled into the market and radioed back.
“Have you left Brčko?” the dispatcher asked.
“Yes, we’re on our way back. What’s going on?” I received no information, just call-in instructions for the next designated checkpoint.
“How about a quick look around since we’re here?” I asked Louise. I had heard about the Arizona, set up for free trade but better known as a smuggling centre. We got out and wandered around the stalls — tabletops that teemed with cigarette cartons, CDs or liquor, makeshift canvas awnings that looked like sides of dismantled tents held up by warped wooden poles. The whole place had the ramshackle yet permanent look of a squatters’ camp. I suspected the arms that I had heard were for sale lay under sacks at the back. This strangely deserted place gave me the shivers. I wanted to leave. We reached Tuzla before dark, where we celebrated Louise’s birthday and spent the night with colleagues.
The next morning we heard that SFOR had deployed troops across the northeast. A local Serb leader tried to take over police stations and a television transmitter. Hundreds of SFOR Soldiers now patrolled the streets. In Brčko, shooting incidents occurred. All that tension made sense now.
At 9:30 a.m. we left for Sarajevo. SFOR helicopters circled overhead. We passed SFOR tanks on the road. They travelled toward Republika Srpska. As we drove south, this commotion receded. We wound our way along curvy mountain roads, veered onto the wrong side when our lane became blocked by boulders that had fallen from the steep mountainsides above and held our breath that we would not collide with oncoming traffic as we rounded a sharp bend, still forced onto the wrong side of the road. When we arrived in Sarajevo, I dropped Louise at her house and then drove to the office.
That evening I tuned into the BBC news to discover there was more trouble in Brčko. SFOR had used tear gas to disperse a crowd of about a thousand, one American soldier had been injured, and SFOR had evacuated unarmed UN police. A BBC reporter described an attack by a crowd on a bridge that led from Brčko into Croatia. One person had grabbed her microphone; a woman in the crowd had whacked the reporter across her legs with a wooden board. Then others joined in. Soldiers dragged the reporter to safety in a SFOR house. I thought of all the planks of wood in Grozny and Moldova, remembered my own microphone from radio days and felt grateful for the orders that had gotten me out of Brčko in time.
We organized many events for children or the elderly affected by war. Our office helped arrange a picnic for pensioners from Goražde, a city so badly damaged that it looked as though fighters had extracted vengeance from the buildings as well as the people. Shells had blown the roofs off many houses. Birds nested in holes in the walls. Almost no structure remained intact. Our organization financed mobile teams to patch houses, but some were so badly destroyed that they remained beyond repair. A lot of people relied on charity for a place to live. For many, this picnic was their first trip to the countryside in six years.
I drove five kilometres to the picnic site, past more destruction, over a bridge and down a riverbank; most of the countryside was mined. A windy road, little more than a muddy bog, led to the site, which was situated on a safe patch of land.
I worked with colleagues. We stretched a long blanket out in a clearing by the riverbank. Men sliced lamb on a tree stump. We placed it on plates with cheese, bread and vegetables. “This’ll be the first meat for them in a long time,” a colleague from Goražde said.
Soon more colleagues arrived with pensioners. We helped them down to the blanket. They ringed the edge of it and grew excited by all the food. Some people did not have strong enough teeth to chew the meat, no matter how finely we cut it. When they had finished their meals, the pensioners lingered in the warm summer sun, watched bathers splash in the river, made new friends, gossiped and marvelled at the beauty of the countryside. My throat felt tight — it took so little to make them happy. One man described how grenades had blown up members of his family. A son survived. He lived in Sarajevo and could not afford the bus fare to visit Goražde. When we had to go, no one wanted to leave.
I drove three picnickers home, a couple and a single woman. The couple lived in a house, damaged but still habitable; the woman, in a refugee centre located in the front wing of the local elementary school. When we reached the centre, a little girl in a crumpled, dusty dress, her face smeared with dirt, approached us. A beggar, I thought at first, but the woman whom I had driven home introduced me to seven-year-old Alicia and told me that she lived in the centre with her mute mother. Alicia was so excited to meet a foreigner that she insisted on giving me a tour. It was hard not to feel depressed as I walked through the doors.
Alicia and her mother lived in the gymnasium with the other refugees. Each had a single wooden bed; twenty-three ringed the gymnasium wall. Ragged bundles of belongings stacked on top of one another stood alongside the beds. Beside, on the floor, lay plates of leftover macaroni. An old man, still in bed, beckoned me over.
I introduced myself.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said. “May I make a request through you?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I said.
“Now this is a request, not a complaint,” he insisted. “We’re grateful for the food, but potatoes and macaroni day after day, it’s a bit monotonous. Could we have something different to eat?” Alicia tugged my hand. She wanted to continue the tour. I told the man I would inquire on his behalf.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked Alicia as she skipped along beside me across the gymnasium floor.