I looked around at the people.
In 1991, 1992, 1999, they were young.
And they were athletes, like the ones competing in the Olympics that started that day.
But today, they are disabled, some have lost a leg, some a foot, some still have shrapnel in their bodies.
They put rifles in their arms.
Today, the youth get coffins packed with 25 years of their parents’ lives, over 130 thousand dead, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and refugees, millions whose lives were permanently damaged by wars, transition, theft, crime, misery, all the misfortunes that go with it. They’ve packed it all up and made young people the pall-bearers, made that coffin the only truth the young people can pray to, having to carry it for the rest of their lives, all the while feeling guilty because their backs and heads ache, and because they see no other future than to either leave and go as far away as possible or keep carrying that coffin on their backs for the rest of their lives, lives that have just started.
They told them that carrying that coffin is a national honour, that it is the only way to be worthy of their illustrious ancestors and their righteous struggle. To carry that coffin, suffocating in the heavy scent of frankincense.
Where were you, mum?
In Bosnia.
Do they have shops over there that we don’t have?
No, but I didn’t go to the shops, I went to the graveyards.
Did you inhale the scent of those souls buried there? – my daughter asked when I returned from Prijedor and Novi Grad, where I went with war veterans from different armies to honour the victims.
It is only the depressions in the overgrown grass that give any indication of human remains having been left under a thin layer of soil, in the endless fields by the Sava river, by a place called Jasenovac. The sun was shining, it was a bright summer day, 5 August, and I was driving along the highway towards Zagreb, looking at the opposite lane, the one along which 21 years ago destitute people walked or drove their tractors, forever leaving their homes.
The same sun beat down on me as we walked through the forest towards Hrastova Glavica, a natural pit into which the bodies of 124 residents of Prijedor, 122 Bosniaks and 2 Croats, were thrown. They had been driven there in buses, from Omarska and Keraterm, where they had been held in detention camps since May. They say they were each given a cigarette and lead in groups of three to the pit where they were shot. Hand grenades were also found in it pit, presumably for those who continued to show signs of life, to finish them off, to amplify the evil.
The cigarette they were given has been tormenting me for days, it’s all I think about, as I watch the smoke rising off the tip of my own cigarette.
What were they thinking as they took their final drags, knowing there was nothing beyond it apart from the pit and death? What were their final thoughts, was it rage at their killers, or sorrow over parting with life, was it a sense of relief that comes with finality, after months of torture and constant uncertainty? Did they take slow drags of the cigarette, inhaling the last scent of their brief lives, or was it a quick and forceful drag, an attempt to take as much from what little life they had left? Who were they thinking about? About themselves, regretting to see their lives end, about their loved ones, regretting that they would never touch them again, about their killers, regretting that they had not recognised them sooner, but lived with them as with all other neighbours? And did even those who never smoked before light that cigarette?
What goes through a man’s head as he smokes his last cigarette before death?
What is the killer thinking as he gives that last cigarette before death to his victim? Is it a way to show that there is still something human in him, something that understands another, or is it just a way to demonstrate the arrogance of power, having weapons to dispense life and death, and even last cigarettes?
The clouds covered the sun and gave way to a thin summer drizzle as we walked around the places where Serbs fleeing Operation Storm in Croatia were killed. We threw the wreaths into the river and they flowed down with it, like human fates. The Una River was muted and rapid. A woman was talking about what had happened there. A few people were milling about, as if we were at a dress-rehearsal, as if it were not all genuine, emotions were repeated, sighs of terrible, terrible. The candle in my hand was not burning, the wind would blow it out as soon as a flame appeared. Is this a sign, I wondered? Still, at Stupine, the place where refugees from Croatia were killed when their convoy was bombed, the flame burned. I read the names of the three people that were killed, and beneath it says “… while four children and four women from there families were seriously wounded.”
What happened to them later? Where are those women and children today? Are they here among us? My gaze drifted over the gathering, some people had dressed up, those must be the politicians, they wear their suits and ties even on Saturday, some were in mourning, wearing black, a few women and youths. I tried to read in their faces whether they had been wounded here, at this place. I couldn’t. They all had the same brittle gaze and taut lips.
The frankincense had a strange scent, somehow warm and soft, cajoling. I took deep breaths, the pole with the flag flying high screeched in the win, a light rain fell on the cross, and an empty train went by at no more than walking pace.
If we could, if we only could load all the invisible coffins onto that train, so that our souls, those here on earth and those up in heaven, could find rest and final peace.
So that we could take them off the backs of children.
The coffins.
