Little Bastards in Springtime (13 page)

S
OME
kids were killed playing in the court of their apartment building, so we’re not allowed to go out anymore, but no one is watching so I can do what I want.

Sometimes when it’s safe, when I’m up visiting Mama, I lean over the balcony railing and stare at the city. It’s still there, but it looks like a drunk man who’s fallen down a few times on his way home from the bar. Fallen down and scraped some skin, bruised a knee, blackened an eye, shattered a bone or two. He looks bloody and dishevelled and disoriented and everyone wonders how his body can take all that abuse. But he manages to get up the next day and get drunk all over again. The thing is, people still go out, they’re still running from one place to another, even if they sometimes get hit, even if they sometimes get killed. You have to, Baka says, or everyone would starve to death safely in their own homes. Sometimes you have to risk everything for all time to get what you need in the moment.

When Mama’s not out finding food, she sits on a mattress in the hallway with papers spread all around her, everything from her filing cabinet and Papa’s filing cabinet, from the closets and boxes under their bed. Sometimes she just sits and stares at them all, sometimes she reads through each page carefully, going over the same one for hours like she’s in a trance. None of it matters, she says, except a few for the future. Sheet music for us, our report cards, passports, that’s it. When Mama’s sorted a pile, she gives it to me to take downstairs to burn in the stove. She says, make sure Aisha and Berina are warm, never let them get cold. When she’s not looking at papers, Mama sleeps, even if it’s daytime. She sleeps and sleeps, without moving or making any sound at all, and I sit beside her if she lets me and cut up
National Geographic
magazines and glue photos together into collages that look pretty good. I stick them up on the walls but the tape doesn’t hold. They slide to the floor and land in piles of plaster dust. Everything in the apartment is covered in fine powder. Even the piano,
which Mama never touches anymore; she’s done with it. Just an ordinary piece of furniture now, it’s pushed into a corner, random stuff dumped on top. I don’t touch it either, Mama hates the sound, but sometimes my fingers itch for it.

B
ERINA
is asleep, her head lying on Aisha’s lap. Aisha is reading a book and writing down words on a piece of paper. I squat down next to her.

“What are you doing?”

“Homework,” Aisha says, without lifting her head.

“Why? No one’s going to look at it.”

“Yes, they will. One day. I’m doing Berina’s for her too.”

“No, they won’t, they don’t care about that stuff anymore.”

“Yes, they do.”

“No, they don’t.” I stare at Aisha, and she turns away from me and keeps writing words on the ragged piece of paper.

“Let her do her good work,” Baka says. She’s playing solitaire on her suitcase. “All three of you must go back to school soon. War schools are opening up, just like during my war.”

I leave the basement and go upstairs to see if the old men are there. There are just two left, Mr. Ibrahimovic and Mr. Beganovic. They look depressed and sick. They hunch their shoulders over their sagging stomachs and chew empty air with their flabby jaws.

“Papa is dead and Dušan is missing,” I tell them.

“Poor boy.” Their faces don’t change expression. “Poor, poor boy.”

“He wanted to save the city,” I say. “He wrote articles about politics and history, he had notebooks full of notes.” When I say this I feel terrible, it doesn’t describe him at all. “He was
good with little machines,” I add. “Like hair dryers, electric can openers, drills, cameras. He could fix them all.”

“Is that so?” says Mr. Beganovic.

“Yes, and he was always looking for an ashtray.”

“Is that so?” Mr. Beganovic repeats.

“Where can I go to look for my brother?” I ask.

“You shouldn’t go out there,” Mr. Ibrahimovic says. “It’s not good today.”

“But if it was a good day, where would I go?”

“I don’t think you can look for him, Jevrem. If they don’t know where he is, you will never be able to find him. It’s a big war out there. A big war, with big money, big weapons, big stakes. People in Bonn, Washington, London, Paris, and so on are watching. They’re not just watching, they’re pulling strings.”

“And we’re doing the dance,” Mr. Beganovic says, picking at fluff on his vest.

“The dance called falling-down-dead,” says Mr. Ibrahimovic.

Outside, the yard is empty. The kids who are allowed out are scrounging for fuel and wood, carrying water, waiting in lines, begging at the hotel, playing in ruined buildings. Clouds are scudding by, grazing the tops of apartment buildings. Shells are landing not too far away. I can see a plume of smoke rising just beyond the next building. Then I see Nezira, Pero, and Mahmud running out the side door, along the crumbling pathway. They’re probably not meant to be out, but they’re going to see what happened anyway, to see if they can find the tails of exploded grenades to collect. I head toward them, trying to catch up with my fastest sprint.

Another shell hits, very close. I’m not running anymore, I’m on my hands and knees, staring at scraggly grass and lumps of earth. Then I’m standing at the corner of the building. There
is a big hole in the middle of the parking lot, sand underneath the stone, black earth underneath sand. Nezira is jumping up and down shrieking.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

“Look,” Nezira shrieks. “Look.”

There are two strange lumps next to the car. Then I notice a head. And a foot.

“It’s Galib and Konstantin,” she cries, “from the other building.”

They’re moaning, writhing. Some parts of their bodies are moving, other parts are still as stone. I walk closer, and can see all of Galib’s teeth on one side, and a bit of his jaw. One of his arms has come off. His belly button is full of blood. Konstantin’s legs are crushed below the knees. I can see splinters of bone. His Puma track pants are completely ruined, and his running shoes too. He was very proud of those, relatives in England sent them to him, he couldn’t live without them. They’re both covered in dirt, like they’re already buried.

“Do something.” Nezira grabs me by the shoulder and shakes hard. “
Do something. Do something.
”

Pero and Mahmud are running around in circles, their arms outstretched like they’re pretending to be birds, like they’re playing some kind of strange flying game.

Konstantin is twisting his head from side to side.
Help
, he’s saying.
Help me.
I want to do something, something must be done, it has to end. So I crouch down, pick up a piece of paving stone, grit my teeth, raise my arms above his head. From a far distance, I hear adults shouting on balconies. I hear a siren. Then the world goes soft and dark and my body turns into air.

I wake on Mama’s mattress in the hallway, my head in her lap. She’s stroking my hair in a strange way,
you’re safe, you’re
safe, you’re safe
, she says. My sisters are up in the apartment, which is unusual. They stare at me with bottomless eyes.

“What’s wrong with him?” Aisha asks. “Do something to fix him.”

“I had a strange dream,” I say.

“It’s all a strange dream,” Mama whispers. “It’s all a terrible dream.”

‡ ‡ ‡

A
ISHA AND
I
RUN ALL THE WAY TO OUR WAR
school in the basement of the house on Marije Bursac Street, zigzagging and hugging walls along open stretches. Mama said okay without even thinking about it for a minute after I told her that Baka told me to tell her that we had to go, that otherwise our brains would begin to rot. She said, yes, yes, Jevrem—but I’m not sure she really heard what I was asking. Berina can’t come, she’s too weak.

Whenever you’re out, always make sure something is between you and rooftops, windows in buildings, anything two or three floors up, Baka says. Look for the shields that the soldiers have built, out of buses and cars piled up and other city wreckage. Never stand still. She keeps on trying to sound like a tough old partisan, but sometimes she can’t even stand up from her chair in the basement. She wants to take us to school, but her bones hurt, and so does her chest, her lungs, her heart.

The room is stuffy and dark. All the students in the rows behind the first fall asleep soon after class starts. There are only four rows. Nezira sits in the front row and points her face at the teacher. She says she can sleep with her eyes open, like I
do sometimes too. Aisha sits next to her, but she’s alert, back straight, eyes wide. She knows the answers to all the questions, she does the exercises and tests twice, once for herself and once for Berina. Zakir sits next to me. He has an eye infection that looks terrible. He keeps touching it with his dirty fingers, then leaning over and putting his hand on my shoulder while he whispers into my neck. And at the back of the room, Papa sometimes stands in the door listening to the lesson with his head tilted to one side, his chin resting in one palm the way he does. Whenever I look back at him, he steps into the hallway so I won’t be distracted. So I face forward properly and pay attention.

The teacher doesn’t ever get a good night’s sleep. Some days she doesn’t have anything to eat. She hates living with her husband’s parents now that her husband is dead. She feels sad they didn’t have a baby. She feels tormented they didn’t leave together the way he wanted. She looks at their photo albums every night. She tells us these things every morning when class starts, then writes some words on the small homemade blackboard and tells us to copy them. The lessons have no beginning, middle, or end, her words are as tired as the men who sit in the lobby. Baka says I should be polite to her, it’s hard to be a teacher even in good times. She’s probably not getting paid.

We add up fractions.

We take apart sentences, looking for verbs or nouns or adjectives.

We study the festivals and traditions of the Masai tribe in Kenya. Our teacher once went there. Her husband was an anthropologist.

‡

N
EZIRA
and I sit side by side in the first-floor stairwell after school. There’s a lot we could do, like search for useful things, because Mama doesn’t keep track of me anymore, she’s too tired all the time, like someone put a spell on her. But we’re tired too, so we’re taking a break. The door is open a crack. Outside, it’s a sunny day and flowers are blooming like it’s a normal spring in a normal year. Inside, the light is dim, the steps smell of pee. Nezira’s looking at me and I know what she sees. I’m thin as a twig, and so is she. I didn’t know how little time it takes for a city to empty of food, for people to get hungry and cold, to feel desperate to eat, to feel shaky and fragile and panicked. It takes only a few days, really, if you think about it, no trucks coming in on the highways, no trucks stopping in the markets, in front of the shops; if you think about skipping one meal, how it puts you in a terrible mood, then another meal, then another one, how soon you feel really ill and weak, how quickly the fat ones get thinner, the thin ones get skinny.

And then those days drag on and turn into a week, into two weeks, and three weeks, and you feel nauseous and hollow, just like Baka told me, then desperate, and you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have the energy, there are no words. Your mind stretches and stretches because it doesn’t know when being hungry will end, and the mind doesn’t like that, not at all. You want to eat anything, grass maybe, drink your own blood from your veins. You curse the smugglers who lurk in your lobby, who could get you food if you had the money. You hate their evil guts. And then there are more days, and more. And it feels like forever.
But the human body can survive on very few calories, don’t you worry, Jevrem
, Papa tells me.
Baka and her comrades did it, you only have to persuade your mind that it’s okay, that you will live.
I see him getting into the elevator every time
I’m in the hallway of our building. The door opens, he goes in, the door shuts. He tells me things I need to know. He whispers them right into my mind.

We’re a fine pair, Nezira and me, like the animals in the zoo, no one there to feed them, no one to let them go. I lean over and kiss her on the mouth. Her lips are dry and hot, her breath tastes of earth. She lets me. I kiss her harder. She doesn’t seem to mind, or at least she doesn’t stop me. She doesn’t move at all.

SPRING 1997

When the Smoke Clears, Here I Am

I
LOOK OUT OF THE KITCHEN WINDOW AT BRANCHES
moving in the dusk. April has made the garden green, but it’s raining ice pellets. Welcome to Toronto. I try to remember when spring came at home. It’s absurd that I can’t, it’s only been a year since we left, but that year feels longer than the whole freaking four-year siege, which just kind of went on and on bitch-slapping us until we all got numb and time stopped moving forward. Suddenly, I desperately want a cigarette. Behind me, Mama moves slowly between sink and stove; Aisha whisks plates and cutlery around like a circus performer.

Baka shuffles up to me. She says, “Why don’t you boys do some good for once?” I look down at her, she’s so tiny and frail these days it makes me crazy. She says it again. She knows I’m not really paying attention even though I’m looking her right in the face. She’s been nagging me like this for months.
Why don’t you do some good for once?
With that pained look of hers. Sometimes it washes over me, and sometimes it makes me angry. I sit at the table and stare at my fork like I’ve never seen one before. Or a spoon, or plate, or glass. Everything glows eerily in the dim overhead light, a single sixty-watt bulb covered by a dusty paper shade. Sometimes, the table gets smaller and
smaller until it’s a tiny circle the size of a bottle cap. Mama, Aisha, Baka, Milan, and Iva, maybe some distant relative or family friend, cling to its edge like strange little creatures, slugs maybe.

Baka thinks I’m a smart boy who fell in with the wrong crowd. But she’s wrong, I’m the wrong crowd, and the others, those poor fucking bastards, fell in with me.