“Well, Attila, it’s strange. There’s no argument there was a big explosion in Barupra in the middle of the night. With four American camps within a few miles, it’s hard to figure that no US troops heard that or asked about it.”
“I didn’t say nobody heard it. What I will tell you is that explosions around Eagle Base were nothin to talk about. Bosnia was the most heavily land-mined area on earth. The Serbs had done it to keep the Muslims from returning to their villages. Which generally worked. I mean, talk about a pathetic sight: These poor folks in rags come back to their houses after a couple years, and you got a whole family sometimes down on their knees, sticking pencils in the ground every three inches, delicate enough to be fucking Tinker Bell. And you know, as soon as they move back in, somebody steps on a square inch they missed, and the house is gone and half the folks in the family have no legs. Around here to this day, you don’t go walkin without someone can tell you what’s safe. And you better pay attention, too.” She looked from the road to be sure I grasped the warning.
“And land mines weren’t all,” Attila added. “Do you know what the main industry is around there?”
I told her I had no idea.
“Mining. Digging for stone. Coal. Salt. ‘Tuzla’ means ‘salt’ in Turkish. By 2004, they were trying to get back to business, which means people were all the time blowing these mountainsides to hell.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Safest time to do it. Everyone’s inside, sheltered from debris. The only thing I’d a done after an explosion from the direction of a coal mine would be cover my head.”
“And what did you think in the fall, when you finally learned that the Roma in Barupra were all gone?”
“Truth? What I thought was, Don’t let the door hit you in the ass. Those people were just always trouble. Capital T. Rhymes with P. And that stands for ‘puke.’”
“And it was okay if Kajevic killed four hundred of them?”
“Course not. But with the Roma, you never know what to believe. The only thing for sure is that whatever they’re tellin you isn’t true.”
I gave Attila a dim look and asked, “But as far as you know, no one from NATO investigated this rumored massacre?”
“That wasn’t our job no more. The Bosnians were back in charge.”
It was exactly as Esma said: Four hundred dead Gypsies were just four hundred fewer problems.
“Besides, you need to understand Bosnia, Boom. This was hell on earth. Even in 2004, there was still horrible shit being discovered every day—mass graves or bones washing up on riverbanks. I know what-all this sounds like when I talk about the Gypsies,” she said. “Having people hate you for no reason? That is my fuckin autobiography. But by 2004, me and just about everyone else was up to here with them in Barupra. I mean, I was around when they first got here in June ’99. You know that story?”
By now, I’d read reports. Like tens of thousands of other Roma in Kosovo, they had been driven from their homes, usually by the Albanians, who took them as Serb allies because they practiced the Serbian Orthodox faith. This particular group had been placed in a refugee camp in a town called Mitrovica in Kosovo, right after the NATO bombardment had forced the Serbs to retreat. Within days, the Albanians marched across the main bridge there, surrounded the camp, and set fire to it. Only the intervention of the US ambassador saved the Roma, who then begged the UN to move them close to the US bases in Bosnia, assuming—ironically—they would be safest there. Somehow the UN trucks carrying the Roma refugees arrived at a deserted US installation, Camp Bedrock, before their resettlement had been approved by US commanders.
“One day,” said Attila, “Camp Bedrock is this empty yellow rock, full of weeds and garbage, and the next day all these grimy-looking Gypsies are putting together their shabby-ass tent city. That’s what ‘Barupra’ means in Romany—‘Bedrock.’ Sorta. MPs come out and tell the Blue Hats—you know, the UN guys—Take them back where you got ’em. Like that was gonna work with the UN. Those dickless twerps are probably still driving around trying to find their way back to Kosovo.
“And you know,” Attila said, “your heart hurt for those folks. Run out of one country and livin like dirt in another? The kids especially, they all have these huge dark eyes.
“Merry was the commander here back then, and I was still in service, quartermastering, and he’s like, ‘Attila, see what you can do for these poor wretches.’ So I go over to CoroDyn, asking to find a few of them jobs. Mind you, eighty percent of the Bosnians have got no work. But these Gypsy motherfuckers are truly starving to death. And do you think they show up for work? They breeze in at noon for the eight a.m. shift and then tell you they don’t like paving roads or washing trucks.
“Don’t ask what’s wrong with me. Must be I got a heart bigger than my head, but once I come back from Stateside and was in charge of CoroDyn, and all those folks were still living so bad in Barupra, I decided to try it again. Gypsies all think they know cars like they know horses. So I said to a couple, Tell you what, you don’t want to wash the truck, how about you drive it? They liked that well enough. But they always showed up with a few kids. I could say no all I wanted. Guy’s there every morning with his thirteen-year-old and his ten-year-old, instead of sending them to school, and whenever I turn my back, he’s letting the little one drive a half-track. And if all that wasn’t enough, the bastards started stealing the equipment. You’d send a Gypsy out with a truck in the morning and that was the last you’d see of any of it, them and the truck and whatever was in it. I just had enough finally. I fired them all. God only knows how many millions in shit was missing.”
We were going up and down through the mountains, whizzing past open fields where the patchy snow weakly reflected the starlight, slowing periodically for the little villages in which there was almost always a tiny roadside restaurant with a Bavarian look, a steep shake roof and whitewashed sides.
“And by the way,” said Attila, “just so you understand, I got some great Roma folks that work for me to this day. Smart as hell, all of them. Maybe that’s how come the Roma have lasted this long, because they’re so fuckin clever. But the ones I hire, they’ve been to school, they wear watches, they speak the language. But them in Barupra? They didn’t want to leave the reservation, if you know what I mean.”
That was the last I heard. I fell asleep with my forehead against the frigid car window.
9.
The Blue Lamp
Attila shook me awake in Tuzla. “Hat up,” she said.
Down the curve of a street that bore the narrow dimensions of a road first built for carts, I could see the hotel sign. BLUE LAMP, it read, BOUTIQUE HOTEL. Attila walked ahead with my luggage. The cool night, in the high 40s if I’d done the conversion from Celsius correctly, refreshed me slightly. There was a small shop on the corner that looked to be a convenience store, and some young men in their close-fitting leather jackets milled in the doorway, waving cigarettes at one another and jiving the way young men always do. There was no other traffic. The tranquil domestic air of Tuzla was a testimonial to how wrong Hobbes had been. The natural state of man is peace.
Buzzed into the hotel lobby, Attila immediately got into laughing byplay in Bosnian with the young man and woman who were behind the front desk.
“They say I’m the king around here,” Attila told me. “You should be honored I’m carrying your luggage.” She gave me her card and told me to call if I needed anything.
As soon as Attila was gone, I detected a gesture from my right. Over my shoulder, there was a small lounge area with coffee tables and black leather armchairs. I was not surprised to see Goos with a beer glass in his hand, which he tipped in my direction. Once I had my room key, I plunged down beside him. The chair had the gleam and soft feel of the furniture in the embassy in DC. Leather, I took it, was a Bosnian thing.