Imagine a Kafkaesque police tale set in the Balkans against the atmospheric backdrop of genocidal terror. Then imagine Your Humble Narrator encountered head on the foreign police state and making a critical success in his fast talk skill check to befuddle and intimidate two Republika Srpska policemen.
O my Brothers... (and Sisters, too!) ...and Sisters, too...
There was me, in Potočari, with my devotchka droog, Sıdıka, who participated in this scenario which would have been bleakly hilarious had it not been so potentially dreadful. I would have laughed at the moment, as I am wont to do in aburdist po-lice situations, had Sıdıka not been (literally, far more than figuratively) a little beyond the edge of terrified hysteria. (Due to the nature of her being Bosnia Muslim and the police being Bosnian Serbs, and the balance of emotion between those two entities being, at best, spiteful, and at worst ... Srebrenican.)
The RS -- ironically enough in cyrillic, PC -- came up as I was still in one building and Sıdıka waited just inside the pushed apart, padlocked fence gate. I hurried out and the cops demanded, in Serbian, to know what I was doing and to show them my ID. I handed over my international student card rather than my passport. Sıdıka showed them her BiH card. One cop spoke some English and told me I was trespassing. I played dumb and said there was no sign saying so (since it was lying face down in the dirt and gravel, I know this because I looked at it and took a photo of it), and we both skipped over discussing the fact that the gate to the fence surrounding the building was padlocked.
He asked was I was doing in the building, and I motioned with my camera... "Takin' pictures," I said with a deliberate tinge of Southern accent. he asked if I'd been in the other buildings between this one and the memorial a few kilometers back down the road.
When I said I hadn't, the cop was staring at my camera and I knew I'd just trapped myself. Given the circumstances, I didn't think I could keep him from taking my camera... legally nor physically.
When the other cop suggested, in Serbian, they take us both into custody (or something to that effect) Sıdıka offered a quick interpretation with her voice wavering beneath the tides of fear swelling within her.
That, O my Brothers, and Sisters, too, was when Your Humble Narrator tossed his metaphysical percentile dice to roll a critical success and dazzled the cops with International verbal dexterity and baffled them with good ol' fashioned American bullshit. Neither of which pulled Sıdıka back from dangling into the abysmal voice of transference déjà vu (see previous comment concerning Muslim-Bosnian Serb relations and Srebrenica) with this RS-uniformed cop while the Westerner stands by to witness.
Or, in this case, does a little soft-shoe shuffle dance fast talk à la Mr. Bojangles in A Clockwork Orange routine.
"She has been hired to accompany me in Republika Srpska and act as my translator and interpreter. I cannot be left unaccompanied by her so long as i am here. I'm traveling on a Fellowship Grant from the University of North Carolina in Wilmington which makes her an employee of the University--" here I quickly pointed at the laminated green card in the cop's hand (with which most European officials of museums, train stations, and legal establishments are familiar) "--so separating her from me would mean a breech of contract with the University and would, by necessity, involve the United States Department of Secretary of State and Ms. Hillery Clinton..."
Being the Fourth of July, I did my best to channel the voice of the Framers of the Constitution, as well as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet (a curiously French word to indicate something at the heart of modern Americanism). And, if there is one place left on earth where the proper name of Clinton invokes memories of actual destruction and death
As I was speaking, when I stepped forawrd to point at my ID card, I had also consciously/unconsciously stepped between the cops and Sıdıka.
The two cops withdrew a couple of meters to consider my verbal effulgence, understandably skeptical of everything in my claim except, perhaps, the bullshit. But they talked it over in Serbian -- Sıdıka offering no direct interpretation due to her drowning in fear -- but it wasn't difficult to figure out what they were saying. Copspeak is the same the world over.
+ Forget her, she's not worth the hassle.When they came back over, the one who spoke some English demanded my camera.
- What about him?
+ He's full of shit.
-Yup.
+ But he's got a point on the University thing. We don't want trouble with some American know-it-alls. Schools are different over there. They like to sue each other.
- Yup.
+ But he was trespassing.
- Yup.
+ And I hate these snobby American kids.
- Me too.
+ Let's fuck with him a little.
- Yup.
I refused.
He said it could have evidence of criminal activity and needed to be checked. If there was nothing incriminating on it, we would be free to go. He demanded it again.
I had been attempting, while he was demanding things of me, to remove the camera's memory card. However, one of the user-unfriendly features of the Sony DSC H5 camera is that the memory card is not easy nor quick to remove. I hadn't gotten it out when he reached over to take the camera from me. The compartment where the card was also houses the twin batteries so when he took the camera, the batteries fell out. He picked them up and dropped them back in -- getting them positioned correctly on the first try. Most digital cameras are similar enough that the cop didn't take long to figure out how to scroll through the photos and, sure enough, evidence of entry into other buildings, and the Serbian equivalent of the Keep Out sign I had ignored, yet photographed.
I had returned to Srebrenica for two reasons. One was that Sıdıka had family there and had never been. Fear and pain had kept her from it. She said she'd go if I went with her. She felt safe with me.
I also went to conduct a photo essay to list the names of the dead. My own version of a necronomicon.
In the mythology created by H. P. Lovecraft, copies of the dreaded Necronomicon -- Al-Azif -- were systematically destroyed throughout history by the Catholic Church (and, curiously, by any right-minded occultist), so that by the 20th Century, only a half-doyen copies survived.
My images to name the dead were, in this 21st Century, systematically deleted with the press of a two buttons: Delete All -- Are You Sure?
There were no survivors.
The cop handed me back my camera. He wore the sort of a smile a politician wears after just having lied to an audience of millions and knowing virtually every one of them believed...
I lost my photos.
But I wasn't arrested.
I had my camera.
Sıdıka was not hassled.
We watched them walk back to their car and drive away.
Sıdıka trembled.
I've seen animals tremble with fear. Dogs, cats, small rodents.
I've described characters in stories as trembling. But I have never actually seen a person tremble in the manner she did. The adrenaline aftermath of panic and knowledgeable terror.
After a few minutes we began walking. It was about 6 kilometers back to the bus station. In the town of Srebrenica. She didn't speak.
The most common phrase Sarajevans have about the genocide at Srebrenica is There is nothing to say. You just have to go there. These words felt like concertina wire wrapping my heart as i walked. The sound of my boots on gravel and asphalt and muddy grass became the only conversation. The wind and the heat added their say. the two people present were silent.
There was nothing to say. We just had to go to Srebrenica.
The only bus going backto Sarajevo departed in forty minutes.
Considering the history of those who have walked that same landscape, O my Brothers and Sisters, too, it was the saddest walk I had ever made. However, since the buses those people in the past walked towards took them away from their loved ones -- and the loved ones away to their torturous murder -- and the bus we walked towards would, by the exchange of some 30 marks, take us in relative safety to Sarajevo... it was also one of the easiest walks I have ever made in my life.
I lost my photos. I had the company of my friend.
And an idea for making something of art from this genocide.
Ideas and art change the world. And they are necessary after genocide. When walls are constructed, more bridges are needed...
4 July 2010
~between Srebrenica & Sarajevo
w/ Sıdıka asleep beside me on the bus
~*~
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