“And the light shone in the darkness” by Mark Thomas
‘And the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it’ -
Vukovar poster, propaganda campaign against the siege of Sarajevo…
In the coffee shop at the edge of the old Ottoman bazaar there is a vast array of glittering cakes with creamy fillings and dusted with icing sugar, the coffee is strong and staff clear away ashtrays regularly. The people who frequent the coffee shop are not tourists, some are old men dressed in brown and grey suits who wear caps that have been atop their heads ever since Tito first ruled over Yugoslavia. There are young Muslim women wearing colourful headscarves with two adorable children in pushchairs, feeding the children chunks of cake as they chat around the table. I am reminded that even babies weren’t safe during the siege of Sarajevo, targeted by the sadistic snipers secreted in the hills, and shot in their pushchairs. A serious faced young man, dark hair, dark eyes, a dark countenance of brooding violent energy, emerges and patrols past the coffee shop wearing the uniform of the Bosnian armed forces, laden with a heavy looking assault rifle.
He was a young boy with features like canvas stretched over tight string, bones jutting from under the flesh turning it white. Sitting in a rocking chair, hollow eyes widening with fright as the explosives stream down into the surrounding city, Izudin mskes a silent prayer to his mother’s God. It had been a moment of sheer terror as a shell screamed down, bursting in a flash against the front wall, carving out a huge rose flower pattern of shrapnel damage, with a rumble threatening to tear the house asunder. Pieces of slate from the roof were sheared away, and the plasterwork inside cracked from the ceiling to the floors. He sat bolt upright and clasped his hands over his head. He closed his eyes and felt like he was submerged in water being dragged along by a wave. Opening his eyes again he felt his heart’s manic beating, and painful whining in his ears. More shells detonate in the surrounding streets, leaving dark rose flowers carved into the pavements and tarmac.
Instinctively Izudin knew that the house had been hit. Cold air blasted through the shattered windows. The little ones were screaming in the next room but Izudin only heard the throbbing blood inside his own skull. The family had been deprived of electricity for months, a supply from tapped generators at a nearby police station. Now the force of the explosion had blown out all the candles and there was only darkness. Ornaments tumbled and shelves of books slumped from the wall. Plates, crockery and glasses lay smashed glittering like tiny jewels on the carpet, reflecting the light from the hand made stove that by some strange luck had not been overturned. A noxious smell hung in the air, a mixture of plaster dust, burnt plastic and smashed slate.
The boy looked up to see his mother staring back at him. She was holding his sister wrapping her right arm tight around her tiny shoulders. There was silence in the room, outside the wind howled with the sounds of war booming through the city like thunder rolling along the valley. A great wave of relief spread out inside him, emanating from his chest. It was time to be brave… Men have to be brave to protect their mothers and sisters.
‘Are we leaving?’ he asked, his tone was serious. He could not hear his own voice. The girl glanced up at their mother letting stuttering sobs escape as she hyperventilated. The woman saw her daughter’s face drawn with lines of shock, her delicate bone structure visible beneath pale skin that seemed translucent like thin pastry glowing in the light from a candle she had salvaged. She looked like a ghost child. The ground shook.
‘Does this mean we have to leave? We should go to a shelter’
It would be difficult to find a shelter in the dark, even at night snipers were alert, the sniper’s scope only needs a single light source, a single star in a pitch black sky is enough to illuminate a man well enough to put his head between the crosshairs. In the daytime the way would be visible, but not necessarily any safer. Inside the large underground shelters there were spaces for about seventy families. Shelters were dark and dismal.
However it is safer to be underground when so much ordnance is being fired. A mortar had torn through the roof of a neighbouring house and embedded itself in the floor, the family fled and refused to enter the house until a soldier had made the shell safe. As they waited outside the house for the operation to be carried out, a sniper’s bullet whipped overhead, and they rushed inside to find their soldier standing triumphantly with the dud shell clasped in one hand and a fuming cigarette in the other.
Izudin looks at his mother with bright tears of terror in his dark eyes.
‘No, we stay here for the night… They won’t hit us again. We’ll go to the shelter when we know we can at least see where we are going… Are you alright Izudin?’
‘I’m scared’
As the soldier melts into the crowd advancing toward the mosques that dominate the city with the call to prayer, I picture him as a small child dusted with the fragments of war torn Sarajevo, clutching his weapon, searching the peaceful summery streets for vengeance, with nothing but his memories as shifting targets to be annihilated every day. He goes home to twist small wraps of heroin into his hidden pockets, smokes a little, smokes a cigarette or two, heading out into gloomy streets selling dust to traumatised addicts with nervous disorders, stumbling past the rose like scar with dust burning his sinuses, memories beginning to surface again calling to be doused with cheap alcohol.
The siege has held its deathly grip on Sarajevo’s citizens to this day, a day where Izudin drank slightly too much booze, plunged slightly too much dope into his veins and fell into a deep coma. When his sister found Izudin he had blood foam around his lips from his strained, damaged lungs and a syringe hanging from his arm. On a side table next to the bed where he lay was Izudin’s 9mm Beretta, with a single round chambered, ready to fire and fifteen more ready to follow in semi automatic jolts. Izudin’s sister weighs the gun in her palm and slips it into her jacket, retrieving his cigarettes from his shirt pocket, leaving her brother’s corpse in the silent house and walking up a sun kissed hill lined with Soviet era cars to a Bosnian military cemetery. On an outcrop overlooking the city, perched above the cemetery, Maida aims the gun up at the clouds and grits her teeth. Her fingers clutch the gun tight, squeeze down on the trigger, a single shot rings out in honour of a lost generation, as the bullet streaks across the city sirens start to wail. Walking back down the hill taking drags from her cigarette, as police cars race up the hill to the cemetry, Maida’s tears roll down her cheeks. The war has taken everything away from some people, now Maida decides to take something for herself, her freedom. Inside the house where her brother lies dead, Maida begins to pack her essential possessions into a rucksack, her guitar into its case and smokes another cigarette. Her plan is to leave Bosnia despite the strict Visa conditions and head to Paris. Two years later she will find herself in a minimalist apartment with her son Izudin in her lap, her hands shaking, tears rolling down her cheeks. The fireworks are blowing up all around for Bastille day, Izudin cooing at the loud noises, while Maida cries, as the shells begin to fall and the memories explode from her heart.
Words by Mark Thomas, Photo by Shane Connolly