My first morning in Sarajevo, before having coffee, I set forth at 6AM on a quest to find a couple of friends I had never met. Armed with my camera, two croissants from the pekara, and an ephemeral story pieced together from multiple sources, I walked a half dozen kilometers up the northern thoroughfare towards one of the far too many graveyards which sprinkled the hillsides of the city. Without verification, I had narrowed my search for Lion Cemetery to one of the several which occupied the fields around the Olympic Stadium where, 16 years previous, the Winter Games had taken place. I took some cursory pictures en route, but was driven by the rising sun and my own demons to find my unmet friends who lay waiting for my visit.
Lion Cemetery is unmistakable once you are upon it. In hindsight, as I write this, I wonder why I did not aim my camera at the immense feline structure which perches like a sphinx sentinel over the Islamic and Orthodox residents of its field. Yet even in finding the cemetery, locating a single grave—even a single grave housing two dearly departed—is not a simple task. Lacking geographic space, the waiting list for entry, and—due to snipers and motor fire—the benefit of the living to devote much time to careful arrangement, the cemeteries of Sarajevo are quite cramped. I had seen pictures of the heart-shaped stone marking where my unmet friends waited their visitors, but among the hundreds of closely laid white obelisks and gray blocks and crosses, I could not find them.
I began to wonder, after walking what rows there was space to walk, if Lion Cemetery was spread over more than one location—as St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans is—and for several minutes despaired of finding them. I vowed one more careful pass of the graveyard when I spotted the outline of two linked hearts in polished marble—I had found them!
I do admit a smile upon standing at their feet. The smile, albeit grim, of a weary traveler upon finally reaching their destination. I had been waiting more than a few years to meet these two—friends in spirit if not in life. Admira and Boško (declared in stone by his nickname, Bato). The Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo. Star-crossed lovers who had been together in life for more than 7 years; in death for 17.
 |
| The couple look out upon their city. |
In my rush of excited sorrow, I had forgotten completely about my other unmet friend—one with whom I had shared two emails more than a decade before; one who had introduced me to them. I was reminded of only when I bent down to set down my bottle of water and camera in a respectful space between graves and saw his name on a small headstone set in the ground at my feet. Kurt Schork was the journalist who had witnessed Admira and Bato's death; had written about them and introduced the world to the small tragedy that was theirs amidst the larger tragedy that was Sarajevo's. The tragedy that stains the soul of the western world due to apathy and arrogance. Kurt Schork is, so far as I am aware, the only non-Sarajevan buried in Lion Cemetery. This somewhat dubious honor is his because of his writing about the couple (for his part in reporting about the Siege, the road leading to the airport in Sarajevo is named after him).
After spending some time in quiet stillness with Admira and Bato, and then speaking a word of thanks to Mr Schork, I took up my weapon and began firing. Unlike the sniper who cut them down, I fired emotion at the pair, not bullets. When I had taken a dozen shots, I set down my camera again and stood with my hand on the cool polished stone of the two hearts linked together for as long as marble will stand unabashed. That was when a woman, a Sarajevan, stepped heavy-footed up the narrow path and was surprised by finding someone in the graveyard this early in the morning. Someone, that is, who was obviously not Sarajevan.
The look she cast upon me was, to be sure, less vile than those cast across enemy lines during the Siege, but nonetheless as sharp and bitter as any aimed at another in "civilized" interactions. I was intruding upon her morning visit to where her loved ones rested. It didn't matter how respectful or compassionate I may or may not be, I was an outsider, and tread upon her most sacred of ground.
I bowed slightly to her, collected my water bottle and camera, and carefully made my way back to the street to leave her with her ghosts and pain.
•~•
My connection with Admira and Bato is appropriately strange. Here is my side of it:
On the day they prepared to leave Sarajevo—18 May 1993—I was in the bay area of California between shows while touring (i.e. following, not performing) with the Grateful Dead. Two days previously, I had been in Las Vegas, and two days later, I would be in Mountain View at Shoreline Amphitheater. 18-20 May I was in Santa Cruz. I clearly remember those few days, as I had just met some folks in Las Vegas who would become a turning point in my life a few months later, and it was dawning on me that Dead Tour was no longer what it once had been, becoming overtaken with ever-younger kids who were not showing up to the venues in hopes of getting inside to experience the show, but rather to linger in the parking lots with the sole purpose of scoring drugs. Morals and ethics aside, the Dead family had always been one in which the music and friends were the foremost reason for being there, all other aspects taking a tertiary place in any hierarchy.
The morning of the 19th—morning in California is 9 hours behind Sarajevo—I was out of sorts and put it down to just one of those days when, even on Dead Tour, I didn't feel I fit in among my surroundings. In all objectivity, that was likely the case, but since those last days of May remain so clear in my mind, I do wonder if the connection was already there. I was awake at sunrise. The weather was clear and bay-area perfect—thin fog layering the air which the sun had yet to burn away—and I was discombobulated, but content with who and where I was.
A day later I would commit a selfish act which would create in me a principle I have, to this day, never violated. I took a 20 dollar bill I found which I knew only was not mine and, when confronted with having stolen it, had my friends defend me to the accuser. More than the theft, it was being defended against it that irreparably damaged my sensibility; I had made liars of people who I valued.
A day later Admira and Bato lay on a bridge spanning the Mijacka River where they would lie for another week before their bodies were recovered.
As for their side of things, I will say only this—preferring to allow someone far more gifted with words than myself to speak on their behalf:
When I was awake on the morning of the 19th, and watched the fog burn away in the rising sun, Admira was shot—bleeding profusely and aware of lying in the dirt and heat of the springtime sun in a sticky river of blood; her own and her lover’s. She crawled to Bato and tried to roll him over but couldn't move his dead weight so she slumped over him, motionless in the sticky brown liquid. He'd already stopped breathing. He would never again look at her and make her laugh. She would never again feel how much she was wanted and loved by him. How safe they felt together. His life is over. And hers soon would be. On the Vrbanja Bridge in their beloved, accepting city, they were killed amidst something utterly smothering and incomprehensible. Their story was at the end.
It wasn't poetic. It wasn't theatrical. It wasn't romantic.
Just dead.
To fill in some details, if only in a similar manner as I had done—by hypothesizing via distant empathy—is Slavenka Drakulić, from an article that first appeared in The New Republic, 10/25/93, Vol. 209, Issue 17:
'Love Story'
A true tale from Sarajevo.
I have seen their picture in newspapers. It was not clear, obviously taken from a distance: two bodies lying on the Sarajevo ground, two sports bags next to them. Admira is wearing a dark skirt covering the soft curves of her body. Boško is in jeans--what else?--and they both wear sneakers. But one can tell, even looking at that blurred photo, that Admira is embracing Boško as they are lying there, dead. This is how it happened: On Wednesday afternoon, May 19, around 4 p.m., they walked along the Miljacka river in no-man's-land, visible to both sides, the Serbian and the Bosnian. Their escape from the besieged city onto the Serbian side was prearranged; both sides had agreed to let them pass. They had to walk about 1,000 yards, but just before the Vrbana bridge--some fifty yards before safety--they fell to the ground, hit by a sudden burst of a sniper's fire.
I can almost hear that distinctive, short, yelping sound in the afternoon air. Boško died immediately, Admira lived long enough to crawl to him and embrace him. There they stayed for almost a week, rotting in the sun (unusually strong this May), the odor of their decaying bodies mixing with that of the young grass.
It is not known who killed them, and maybe it is not even important. There are people on both sides who saw them walking, then falling. Some of them say the fire came from the Serbian side, others claim just the opposite. However, for the next five days the two sides fought for possession of the bodies. On the sixth night, Serbian soldiers resolved the dispute by snatching the bodies.
Boško's mother, who had left Sarajevo a year before and now lived in Belgrade, had given permission for her son to be buried in Sarajevo. Admira's parents said they would prefer to have them buried in Sarajevo in order to attend to their grave, but they also said that the place was of no importance as long as the two were buried together. And finally it happened: the Muslim girl and the Serbian boy who had loved each other for nine years were put in the same coffin and buried in the same grave at the Serbian army graveyard south of Sarajevo.
Their attempt to escape from the war that threatened to destroy their love as well as their very existence had failed--so had their naive belief that love could overcome all obstacles. But I wonder: What did being a Serb or a Muslim mean to them before the breakout of this war? And when exactly did they realize that belonging to one nation or the other might determine their future? Looking at a picture taken after their high school graduation in 1985--both of them handsome, smiling as they hold each other--I can hardly imagine that nationality had any important meaning for these kids, or for any of their peers in ex-Yugoslavia. I am not suggesting that they were not aware of such things. They probably were, as much as anyone else around them. But nationality did not matter much: it could not decide their destiny, or prevent them from falling in love.
They were born in the late 1960s. They watched Spielberg movies; they listened to Iggy Pop; they read John Le Carre; they went to a disco every Saturday night and fantasized about traveling to Paris or London. They had friends in Croatia and Serbia whom they would meet in the summer to go camping somewhere along the Adriatic coast. And then the war broke out, and it was as if someone had opened an old history book: Chetniks against Ustashe, although this time Tito's Partisans were not around. It was the absurd, monstrous war of their grandfathers' stories. And now this war descended on them, crushing a whole generation that had been brought up under the illusion that they belonged to Europe, that they had a better, different future in store.
Boško and Admira decided to save themselves. After all, it was not their war. When Boško's mother asked Admira if this war could separate them, she answered, "No, only bullets could separate us"--as if she knew. This happened only a year ago. The moment Boško decided to stay behind when his mother left for Serbia, Admira and her parents understood it was only love that kept him in Sarajevo. But I imagine that he also decided to stay because neither he nor Admira believed that a war in Bosnia would be possible at all, not really. How could you divide people living on the same floor of an apartment building just because they are of different nationalities? (This is what people from Sarajevo would tell you as late as last spring.) How can you split up a mixed family?
Of course, the power of politics proved stronger than their belief in tolerance and togetherness. After tens of thousands of civilians--their neighbors, friends and relatives--had been killed for no other reason than being of the "wrong" nationality, Boško and Admira realized that they had no chance. The rest of the world had given up on Sarajevo. And while one can perhaps stand lack of electricity and water, even bitter cold and no food, one cannot stand a state of hopelessness for too long. So, when Boško and Admira decided to leave, it made it easier for them to go knowing that the city they once knew did not exist any longer. Perhaps Admira's friends thought she was crazy to leave for Serbia, being a Muslim. What would happen to her once she arrived there? But how could Admira explain to them that in the war she was nothing--only part of a nation, doomed to be "cleansed"? She was confident that Boško and his mother would protect her and that in Belgrade there would be at least a chance for survival.
I can almost see her on that evening of Tuesday, May 18, as she takes out her old Adidas sports bag and begins to pack. "Don't take too many things with you,"--Boško warns, as he leaves the house to make sure everything is ready--"just imagine we are going to visit my mother for a week." But this time Admira lacks imagination. If she would go for a week's visit, she would not take a photo of her parents, her high school diary, her diploma. She would not take her favorite winter dress (not now, it is spring), her golden bracelet and an old rubber doll that brings her luck.
And she would not sit down to write a letter.
When she finishes packing, it is late at night. The city is strangely quiet as if everyone is sound asleep, tired from this endless war. Admira takes a piece of lined paper out of her notebook. There is only the dim light of a candle in her room, but her eyes are used to it by now. "Dear mother and father," she writes. Then she pauses. What can she tell them? that she has to go because Sarajevo is not safe for Boško any longer, that he could be drafted by the Bosnian army at any moment? that they could be separated or killed because they are of different nationalities? or that it is only a matter of time before they will be killed by shells in the middle of one of Sarajevo's streets, for no reason other than that they live there? Mama and Papa know it all, thinks Admira, as she sits alone in her room. There is nothing to tell them, nothing to explain. They only need to be sure that we managed to escape the death sentence.
Admira sits for a while, then decides to write about her cat. "Please, take care of my cat. He is looking at me and meowing as I am crying and writing this. Sleep with him at least once a month and talk to him all the time." Then she puts out the candle (candles are precious) and goes to bed, staring into the darkness for a while.
The next day it all happened, and this is how I imagine it: On Wednesday afternoon, after briefly hugging her parents, she leaves the house. She must have been very brave not to have shed tears, not to have looked back. As she approaches the river, she can see Boško waiting. It is easy to recognize his tall figure, his nervous gestures. Suddenly she feels that her palms are wet with sweat, but as she rushes to him, she fears no longer. Everything is going to be all right--she thinks--as long as we are together. Then they leave their shelter and get out into the open. They are on the north bank of the river. They do not run. They think there is no need to because they have been guaranteed safe passage. Holding hands, they walk briskly toward the bridge, and all that they hear is the creaking of sand under their feet and the murmur of the river.
The safety zone is not so far away now, and Boško speeds up a little. Slow down please, I can't run, Admira wants to tell him, thinking about how foolish she was to pack so many things in her bag, so many unnecessary things that make it heavy now, too heavy to run. But just as she is about to utter those words, she feels something warm gushing out of her stomach. As she looks down in surprise, she sees that her hands are full of blood. Then pain takes over and she falls on the ground. She can see Boško already lying there motionless, far from her, as if he had been pushed away by some unknown force. "How strange, I heard nothing," she thinks, crawling toward him with the bag in her hand, as if they might still have a chance. But before she sinks into emptiness, she lives long enough to come close to him, to raise her left hand and embrace him.
Boško's mother, Radmila, is the only one from the two families to attend the funeral on May 27 on the barren hilltop south of Sarajevo. Admira's parents don't dare come, although the Serbian forces have guaranteed them safe passage. They can hardly trust guarantees from either side. What should we make, then, of the fact that the two families were never at odds? They tried together to help the young couple escape from what finally became their destiny. On the top of a plain wooden coffin Radmila drapes a pullover she has knitted for Admira. Then she throws a handful of dust into the open grave: "My children, you were blown here by the wind of war," she says. She has no more words, no more tears. I can imagine her there, her feet sinking into a greasy yellow clay. Even if she was not aware of it, her grief had become our grief. Boško and Admira, two young people who represented the future, were driven into the past by a war from which neither generation could save itself.
~•~
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