“Five years,” she said. So she moved here as a toddler. She had really known no other home.
She showed me a classroom that looked like a dormitory. I smelled fresh paint. I asked a workman about the gym accommodation.
“Temporary,” he said, “just till we’ve painted here. This one’s for the men.”
“Come see where my mother and I sleep,” Alicia said. She hopped toward the classroom next door. I followed her into a cluttered hallway. Shards of glass lay scattered across the floor. In the bathroom, I tested the faucet. Only cold water trickled out, the basin was ringed with grime, the floor coated in dirt. Everything was scaled to a child’s size. Elderly residents had to stoop down to use basins designed for people about four feet tall.
Not all the elderly were as vulnerable. Soon after I had toured the refugee centre, Louise and I visited a beneficiary whose house had been repaired by one of the mobile teams. We travelled from Sarajevo through villages, along secondary roads. These deteriorated into trails and two kilometres from our destination became impassable ruts. Louise and I parked the Land Cruiser, loaded provisions for the woman we would visit into backpacks and hiked a trail up the mountain through pine forest, fallen needles underfoot, all sounds hushed. Soon we reached a small house in a clearing. We stopped for directions, and as we made inquiries, a small woman with the shrivelled face of an apple doll appeared. I guessed that she was in her late seventies.
“Here I am,” she said. She introduced herself as Božena and grinned a partially toothless grin. “You missed the turn. Follow me.” At least, this is what I thought she said. She bounded down the path, headscarf flapping, skirt swooshing. We straggled behind, our relative youth put to shame by this geriatric dynamo.
Božena turned onto a barely visible path that branched off from the main trail. We walked a short distance and then reached her house. A colleague from a local organization who spoke both languages had already arrived and translated for us.
“She wants to show you her house,” our colleague said. Božena pointed out restored walls; new glass panes filled the window frames. We saw patches on the roof. All this work had been done by our mobile teams. Božena clasped her hands together as if in prayer.
Now that it had been repaired, her house looked inviting. Fire burned in a cast-iron stove, smoke puffed out the chimney. We complimented Božena on her lovely home. She beamed again and then led us to the garden.
“She says she wants to show you where she slept during the war,” our colleague told us.
“Was there actually fighting here?” I asked. Our colleague translated, waited for a reply and then said, “none here, though you can see the damage from what happened close by. A group of soldiers came once. She was in the forest and heard them before she reached home, so she hid until they left. They took all the food. After that she wouldn’t sleep in the house, because she was afraid they might come back.”
I saw a vegetable patch in the garden and scrubby ground behind. We walked beyond this and through tall grass that concealed a small door in a hillock. Božena opened the door. We peered at a dark space not even big enough for a coffin.
“She slept here?” Božena nodded and mimed how she curled up in a ball to fit inside.
“Even in winter?” Božena nodded vigorously and held up two fingers.
“Through two winters?” More translation and then vigorous nodding. That a woman in her seventies had physically survived such conditions seemed remarkable, but to psychologically survive and emerge cheerful spoke of even greater strength. When I grew old, I wanted to be like that.
The hills that ringed Sarajevo and towns nearby were always a draw. Work often took me into remote mountainous regions. In our free time, Sydney and I also ventured out into them. On most winter weekends we skied near Pale, in Republika Srpska, which was a short drive from Sarajevo and close to paths where we had walked the summer before. Sydney had a job now. Our circle of friends had expanded to include some of his colleagues. We often had their company on the hills. A popular weekend ski spot before the war for Sarajevans, few crossed the line now to ski here again.
We drove up in the Land Cruiser, four-wheel drive engaged, sometimes still sliding backwards and sideways down icy roads near the resort. On those occasions, I pumped on breaks that did not even help slow us down. The Land Cruiser would stop with a gentle thud when we hit a snowbank. Men always appeared from somewhere and helped push us back on the road; we reciprocated when we passed others in the same predicament. There was no automobile association but we could always count on help from strangers. Old World courtesy prevailed even after all the atrocities of war.
Despite economic deprivations, the resort maintained its own dated charm. The dining room had wood panelling and wood chairs. The waitresses were sometimes surly, sometimes not. The restaurant was never full, so we could always linger over lunch. The resort had a pool, which was almost as much an attraction for me as the hills. Sometimes after lunch I stayed indoors for a swim, though it took courage to jump into the pool. A tall windowed wall along one side of the pool deck looked out onto a snowy landscape dotted with pine trees. The pool water was as cold as snow. There was no evidence of any heater that worked, but I loved to swim and after several minutes always managed to take the plunge. My breath was taken away by the iciness of the water, but I always felt happy to swim again.
Sydney preferred the hills. We would ski together in the morning, separate after lunch and then meet at the end of the day, return our tall, thin rental skis, then drive back down into Sarajevo to meet friends for dinner and relax before the work week began again. I missed the freedom of journalism but slowly acclimatized to office life and enjoyed the company of new colleagues, especially on road trips, when there was time for more than office talk and a chance to get to know one another.
In the spring Senad and I travelled to Switzerland for a workshop. We took a taxi together to the Sarajevo airport, past those devastated neighbourhoods swaddled in mine tape.
“I served there,” Senad said. He had never spoken of his war experiences.
“It’s hard to believe that anyone ever lived in those houses or walked along those streets,” I replied.
“Sooosan, what hell.”
Once we were settled in the departure lounge, Senad talked non-stop. His memories of war had been triggered. A student, not a soldier when the fighting began, he had the disposition of a thoughtful academic, not someone inclined toward the military.
“My parents, even I, did not think it would be possible for neighbours to turn against neighbours,” he said. “We watched the Serbs gather on the hilltops, we saw the guns pulled into place, but we still didn’t believe they would shoot at us.”
“And…” I prompted.
“Even when we heard the first shots, my parents and I still sat in our living room. Then it started to get really bad and we went down to the basement,” he said.
“After a few weeks, I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t take it any longer, waiting for them to arrive, to smash in the door of our house, to kill us.” Senad decided to leave home and join the fighters.
“Anything was better than just to sit there, waiting,” he said. I listened as he described the informal militia set up to defend the city, how he walked to join his unit and dodged snipers along the way. I had so many questions but did not want to interrupt this unburdening, so I just stayed quiet.
He described the area where he fought as one half controlled by Bosniacs, the other half, by Serbs. The front line was a main street that separated the two sides.
“Sometimes we had to drive along that road to move supplies and people,” Senad said.