Most of the village sat along a single street, the homes unvarying in style and size. Exposed cinder block was the prevailing fa?ade in those mountains, chosen to say “we are sturdy and permanent.” But the gray brick appeared perpetually unfinished, blurting out instead “we are poor.” Now riddled with shell fragments, the pockmarked houses looked even more dismal. Beyond them, uneven plots of farmland sprawled along the valley, a collage of mottled greens and browns, singed fields of wheat and corn. At the traffic circle were the school the ?etniks had commandeered and the Catholic church, which, likely because it was missing a wall, they had left alone. There was also a post office and a market, though neither functioned, not the way they should. An armored truck delivered UN flour, milk powder, and vegetable fat to the post office (no one could say for sure whether they’d seen actual Peacekeepers in person) and depending on the week—whether or not the ?etniks were around—either we got it or we didn’t.
In the shelter, seeing everyone at once, I noticed that the villagers had uniformed up in various shades of olive. They studied my bloodied T-shirt with equal interest. Some people had uniforms with Hungarian writing stamped on them, leftovers from their revolution decades earlier, but most just wore any combination of green they could put together. Afterward, when we returned to her house, Drenka offered me the smallest green attire she had—a T-shirt and cargo pants with a patch over the knee, which her son had outgrown.
“Now that you’re going outside,” she said. Reluctantly I surrendered my own clothes to her for washing. I wanted to tell her not to get rid of them. She seemed to understand, or else she didn’t want to be wasteful; she didn’t throw them out.
Outside, I learned about running. Not the bouncy, pleasurable kind I’d done while playing football or tag with my friends, but a streamlined, adrenaline-injected version of my normal stride. Once I started I ran everywhere—to the water pump, to the post office for UN food, to the underground shelter. When one was maneuvering from house to bomb shelter, it might at first seem logical to travel in as straight a line as possible, to take the quickest way. But I always ran in a haphazard zigzag—believing I could upset the statistical probabilities of hitting a land mine by forging an incoherent path, believing, in the egocentric mind-set of all children, that I was the main target. I was afraid one of the soldiers had seen me pretending to die in the forest and now, spotting me alive and well, was out to finish what he’d started. After a while, though, I noticed that others were running in crooked lines, too. When the ?etniks climbed to the rooftop of the school and sprayed bullets along the road, it was clear we were justified in our self-centeredness. Somewhere in the dead space between house and shelter civilians became soldiers.
—
A few days after the chickens’ demise, Drenka’s son talked to me for the first time.
“I’m Damir.” I’d known his name already, but this was the first time he’d addressed me directly, and I nodded as if he’d told me something new. “You can come with me if you like.” He handed me a khaki sweatshirt and a camouflage cap, then walked out the door without checking to see whether I was coming. The shirt was huge and smelled sweaty, but I pulled it on anyway. Over the weeks I’d come to like Damir, the confident way he marched around the house, the excited chatter about his “safe house,” which, I was piecing together, was not the same as the shelter. Could he be inviting me there? Pressing the hat down hard on my head, I followed him into the street. He ducked down an alley and through the side door of a house perforated with bullet holes.
The Safe House had once been just a regular house, though no one ever spoke of whose it was or what had happened to them. Inside, my eyes watered; the rooms were dim, shutters drawn, and the whole place was cloaked in a nicotine haze. Damir was talking to the front door guards, and I hung as close to him as I could without being a nuisance, studying the house as my vision cleared. On the walls were pictures of well-oiled topless women and the deep-browed, prominent-nosed face even I recognized as General Ante Gotovina, whose likeness was fast becoming the logo of the Croatian resistance. Ultranationalist slogans were spray-painted on every smooth surface: walls, doors, countertops—za dom, spremni—for the home, ready. The furniture was smashed, save for one red leather chair in the middle of the kitchen, which no one ever sat in. Gotovina’s Chair, we called it.
I followed Damir up the stairs to the top floor, a single large room that seemed inexplicably bright until I realized a chunk of the roof was missing.
“Wait here,” he said, and I got nervous. I watched Damir approach an ancient man with glasses so thick the lenses protruded from their frames. They spoke in low voices while I stood in the doorway. Despite the winter chill, just as noticeable inside because of the missing roof, the man wore only jeans and a sleeveless undershirt that revealed dry, scabbed arms. The man looked over at me as Damir talked, then raised a hand in my direction and motioned for me to come. I heard his knees crunch as he bent down to my eye level.
“What’s your name there?” he said.