Summer gave way to fall in the abrupt, unbeautiful way Zagreb always changed its seasons. The leaves turned only brown before falling, and the sky looked like it had been whitewashed with a dirty rag. Some days it felt cold enough to snow, but instead the clouds hung fat and heavy, releasing just enough drizzle to stop us from playing outside. My friends and I stayed in and grown-ups walked around donning frowns and black umbrellas.
After the bombing of the palace, Croatia had officially declared independence, inciting a flurry of modifications that called even the most mundane detail of our former lives into question. Pop singers famous across Yugoslavia recorded dual versions of their hits in both dialects; seemingly innocuous words like coffee had to be replaced with kava and kafa for Croatian and Serbian audiences. Even one’s greeting habits could be analyzed—a kiss on each cheek for hello was acceptable, three kisses too many, a custom in the Orthodox Church and therefore traitorous.
Luka and I navigated the breakdown of our language with more questions. “You think we’ll have to get new birth certificates now that Yugoslavia isn’t Yugoslavia anymore?” he said.
“Probably not. It was still Yugoslavia when we were born.”
“What about health cards? Passports?”
“Passports.” I mulled it over. “I guess we’ll need new passports when we win the war.”
“Tram passes?”
“Tram—who cares? We never buy passes.” I looked at him and he flashed a goofy smile.
“Gotcha.”
After a while I said, “When we get married, will it say our kids are Croatian or Bosnian on their birth certificates?”
Luka braked abruptly. “What?”
“When we get married—”
“What makes you think we’re getting married?”
I hadn’t thought about it, really; I had just assumed. “Because we’re best friends?”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Why not?”
“You have to be in love and stuff. You know.”
I considered it. “Well I love you,” I said. “I’ve known you forever.”
“You don’t know whether you’re in love until you’re a teenager and you kiss,” said Luka. “I mean we’ll have to wait and see, to test it.”
“Sure.”
“But you can’t say that kind of stuff at school. They make fun of me enough already.”
I hadn’t realized the boys were teasing Luka just like the girls were teasing me. “I won’t,” I said, embarrassed. I wished I hadn’t mentioned it and thought about making up some excuse to go home, but Luka swung his leg back over his bicycle and started off again, so I followed. We passed by a roadblock where some of the boys from our class were climbing the sandbags. Luka waved.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he said. “Have you seen the money?”
The government had already started producing new currency, also called dinar, but with an image of Zagreb Katedrala stamped on the back of every note, regardless of denomination. It was thrilling at first, to hold money that said “Republic of Croatia” in the bland typeface of an official country, exciting that the featured illustration was a place I could see from the back of my flat. But no one even knew how much a dinar was worth; the value fluctuated wildly from day to day, and certain stores with Serb owners, or just thrifty businessmen, wouldn’t accept it, worried the money might change again during the course of the war. A transaction of any substantial amount was carried out in deutsche marks.
My mother sent me to the butcher with a wad of new dinar and instructions to buy a bag of bones, and I watched as she made soup from the flavor of meat. She ladled out ever-shrinking portions, sometimes skipping meals completely herself, feigning headaches or student paperwork as excuses to leave the table. After dinner I was never full, but I was more adept at reading my parents’ faces than they gave me credit for so I kept quiet.
Petar and Marina still came over every weekend, with my mother and Marina pooling supplies to feed everyone at once. There was no longer money for wine or cigarettes, so we drank water and Petar chewed bubble gum and, when that ran out, his fingernails.