THE PRINT OF THE DRAGON'S PAW
cover photo by Milomir Kovacevic - Strasni
I picked up the pace as I was walking down the steep Bjelave street that morning. It had been years that I had walked this street since we moved to another part of the city and I had no need to climb up the Bjelave district filled with the fragrance of blooming lilac trees (I’ve haven’t even had a nostalgic urge to revisit my childhood neighborhood ever since). This spring was no exception and the lilacs were in full bloom in spite of everything. They spread everywhere with astonishing stubbornness – in backyard gardens, between the fences, behind the garages where we used to urinate during the ‘small soccer’ match breaks and where the mild stench of children urine and feces full of cherry pits was always present. Dear God, I thought, I was a refugee in the part of the city where I had spent my childhood. The memories I never had time to think about before started to persistently flood my brain. I dropped by Mujaga’s bakery. Truth to be told, Mujaga passed away ages ago and the bakery had long since changed its owner, but we, the buddies from the same street across the orphanage home, would always refer to it as Mujaga’s bakery. Those were the early days of the war and one could still occasionally find some yeast crescent rolls so I bought a full bag and went on to Mejtaš to bring some to Cuca, Goga, and my brother. They moved there into a rented apartment of a friend who had left for Vojvodina (Serbia) to be with her parents. I started from Breka, across Višnjik, past the student residences, then around and about in an attempt to deceive the snipers. I’d rather choose some incidental side streets, atypical walking routes, in a naïve hope that this would trick the shell ‘meant to finish me’. I hastened down Bjelave street when I caught a glimpse of the print of ‘the dragon’s paw’, they said that four people were killed by this one just the other day, right there. The print was small, and I’d say shabby, in an elliptical shape diffusing more or less the same elliptical circles flourishing all around it but always more on one side than the other, depending on which direction the shell came from.
I could hear heavy machine gun fire directly across, somewhere from Trebević hill, and at the same time I could feel a touch of the May sun, above from the soft, blue sky. My dear God, is it possible that this is just another day in the existence of the universe, that the calendar still exists, the sun still shines, and that the leaves are turning green? My hastening feet were taking me down the slope where I used to speed down on my rollerblades as a kid only to stop my suicidal race by hanging on to the traffic sign down there next to the pastry shop, at the corner with Nemanjina street.
I was not afraid of anything back then, but now as I rushed down I feared even the air I breathed: it’s not the kind of fear that shakes and shocks, it’s not even the real fear but rather a completely new feeling which made me wonder how it could be that the sky was still blue and that the lilacs were still in bloom that spring.
I passed by some sort of scrappy store, actually a hastily re-purposed café which was still open with cues of people crowded over a few boxes of macaroni and cooking chocolate, nothing else was of interest as it wasn’t edible. I hurried by the store capturing in my blind spot a saddening print in the asphalt, which we named, for whatever reason, the print of the dragon’s paw.
I reached Drvarska street and opened the gate, walking through the garden to the ground floor apartment. I knocked and opened the door; they were still asleep on the sponge mattresses spread around the floor. I took out a couple of crescent rolls. “Great”, Cuca mumbled half-sleeping. She then added that they couldn’t find any bread for three days in a row. Goga mentioned that she had spent two hours in a line for bread that day and went back home empty-handed. “And some people were taking ten loaves at a time”.
-“Oh, well, what can you do”, I said.
- “Where did you find the crescent rolls?” asked my brother tearing off and chewing one.
- Mujaga’s bakery. - “Seriously? Mujaga’s bakery?” he gave me a strange look. - Yes, you know the one, I don’t know what it’s called now but it still works and they still carry the rolls, not that they are cheap but anyway… - It’s pretty far from here, Cuca said. - Yes, it’s not close, I said thinking to myself that just a few months ago that distance could have been walked in a matter of minutes. Now it’s far away. I said I had to hurry as I didn’t want to be late for the shuttle bus. Then I asked instead of goodbye:
- Did it rock last night here too? - Yeah, Lambada, added Goga dreamily through her sleep. - It’s always rocking here – they added almost habitually. - They demolished the maternity hospital in our neighborhood. - Yes, we’ve heard on the radio.
I went out to the street, a dangerous one, steep and wide open to Trebević, thinking to myself that I should keep close to facades and run down as fast as I could. Mejrema, the neighbor, opened the window: “Nino, be careful, one exploded in front of Planika shoe store, just heard it on the radio.” She wanted to warn me as she knew I was trying to catch a TV station shuttle bus which had a stop near the “Eternal fire” – we still called it ‘eternal’ even though the fire had long been extinguished. “Eternal fire, I thought, eternal to whom? Did she say Planika or Alpina shoe store?” I got the stores mixed up in my head. Yes, there’s often a shell explosion there. Then I saw people running up the hill next to the Olympic Museum. Their blank, frozen faces read horror, the same mark printed on all, and the same seal in their eyes. All I’ve seen was the faces of people who saw, just the reflection in the eyes that saw, nothing else.
I thought that I had never seen anything this horrific in my whole life. The expression on their faces (the same expression in all) while they were running up as I was hurrying down by the Olympic Museum building and I felt like I was magnetically pulled down by some brazen force of our joint Mother Earth. “Where are you going?” I heard the voice addressing me from somewhere. “To catch a shuttle” I responded calmly. “What shuttle? It’s a slaughter house down there; the street is full of dead.” A vague face expression became familiar as I finally recognized her (like in sharpening of the camera lenses); it was my TV station colleague, Djeni.
“Go home, there’s no shuttle today” she said.
I went back taking the same curvy streets. I climbed Drvarska street (with my shoulder glued to facades), behind the orphanage home, passed the student residences, all the way to Podhrastovi and through Old Breka (because one should never take the same route back) to finally reach our temporary “home”. Marija gave me a hug already at the doorstep. She was shivering next to my body. I noticed that everyone had the same expression on their faces, like in the people I just saw, somewhat slighter but still similar. “What the heck is wrong with you all?” I asked.
- There, I brought some rolls.
The TV broadcast was just showing the pictures from Vase Miskin street.
They told me that Marija kept repeating: “Oh, my dear God, my dear Lady Mary, please let him not be waiting in the bread line”.
I thought that sometimes it was good to remember a childhood street and Mujaga and his bakery. To remember how he used to fall asleep at the counter. And, how Zika, Hike and Pic once went in and stole a few five hundreds with a print of a metal-sheet worker, from the cashier. They used the money to buy a used bike and sped ran it down the street. Zike was nine when he got a record in the national police. Has he now joined Caco or Juka para-military forces? Or he might still be in the Munich jail serving the sentence?
- Here is a repeat, do you want to see?
Aida moved the children into a different room. Marko waved something at me, like Sonja and Tamara would be teachers and he’d be a student as he was the smallest. “No” I said. I was going to be with the kids. I watched their faces, their eyes: no change was visible. These were the simple, still somewhat joyful children’s eyes. (My God, how will the war be reflected in their eyes? More clearly than in any of the pavement’s and facades’ ‘prints of the dragon’s paw’, and more evidently and visibly than in a whistle of a flying shell in its depressing and deafening detonation.) I don’t want to watch”, I thought, I’ve got my portion today: I’ve seen the faces of the people who saw.
I’ve avoided watching this footage for a long time. Much later when I was cooperating on a documentary production I had to include a few sequences and I did it like any other edit: calmly and collectedly, like a surgeon in an operating room, reviewing the material and making a cut, replaying the same sequence a hundred times over. A movie editing room is like a vestibule to the hell?
- Where is Boro? I asked inadvertently. Aida replied: “He went to the hospital.”
Boro was an alpinist and a speleologist. He used to be in a rescue team, and knew a few things like how to carry an injured person and such. He was also good in organizing work; he was an economist and a company leader. Boro returned home late in the afternoon. It felt pretty quiet so he, Samir, and I went outside for a smoke. Marija wanted me to take Marko out too but I didn’t. It was a truly beautiful day; the sun was about to set down somewhere above the Hum hill, the air fresh and clear, and everything was visible: the Ciglane residential district right across from us with its soft cascade terraces like in Pueblo-Indian dwellings, and with the traces of burns on the facades; the maternity hospital sticking out on the right at the top of the hill, like a ghost castle with its black holes of burnt floors, and further away Poljine field: this is where they were; and deep down below us, we could see a blackened roof of destroyed Zetra (an Olympic skating rink) that was burned down just the other day (with a huge thick, black smoke cloud still smoldering upwards), and on our left Trebević clearly outlined with every single pine tree (they were there too); the view expanded further down the whole city all the way to Alipašino Polje and Ilidža. The air was crystal clear, the reddish sky; everything was beautiful and eerie at the same time.
Boro said he simply couldn’t stay at home as he felt the urge to do something; anything he could do to help. Samir offered us a cigarette, he didn’t smoke but he was given a pack in the Territorial Defense unit. “What can I tell you, I immediately rushed down to the orthopedic unit where I saw the first wounded arriving so at first I helped carry them inside but the ambulances and cars kept arriving, one after another, with people in trunks, vans, trucks…I realized there might have been too many of us so I asked the receptionist if anyone was taking a record of arrivals, a list of a sort. How come nobody did it? So, I took it upon myself. I found two more volunteers and told them to write down the name of the father and the date of birth, you know, so that there is no confusion afterwards. Then I took over the phone informing people calling in. When things got under control with the list and the receptionist I went on to see if there was anything else I could do. I climbed the stairs to the second floor thinking to myself it was good that things were still functioning as I saw prosthetic legs lying in the corner, the whole pile of them. I asked the nurse where they got them from so quickly. He stared at me like I was from Mars: these are not prosthetic legs he said hurrying back into the operating room.”
Boro inhaled a deep smoke. Samir gazed down somewhere towards the ground: “Want another one?”
“Sure” I said staring at the view over Sarajevo: Ciglane, maternity hospital, a tower at the top of Hum hill, the red skies. ‘Who could tell it’s already the end of May, almost June?” I wondered inside. Caka called us inside, she made macaroni. Macaroni were still available. “Let the kids eat first, we’ll have some if there are any left overs.” I was still in awe that the air was so clear and that everything was so calm and quiet. I guess they must have felt ashamed now. Or maybe a truce was in place? This might be the end of it all? Anyway, there was nothing else to be done after all that happened today?
That evening it rocked like never before. We were all in the basement; literally, all of us, all familiar faces. There was Ratko, an engineer, and his wife, Bera. He used to work in Vogošća, and was now on a forced sabbatical leave of absence. Bera was a high school teacher and she told us a story of how she recently went to look for some groceries to the ‘Lake land’, right behind the maternity hospital, literally no man’s land where the Serbian villagers from Nahorevo would bring milk and eggs and sell it to people from Sarajevo coming from the other side. It used to function just fine until the other day and it now turned into a hell. Bera said that as soon as she entered the ‘no man’s land’ she was stopped by a soldier, in a camouflage uniform, with a Kalashnikov and a bandolier over his shoulder, bombs and hand grenades hanging on his belt, woolen cap with the Serbian three-color flag on his head. He was standing there, supposedly controlling people but when he saw Bera the old reflex awakened and he straightened up like a true soldier, and awkwardly smiling he said: “Hello Professor”. Ha, ha, we kept repeating laughing: “Hello, Professor”. Bera and Ratko didn’t say any funny stories that night. Their son, Siniša, an electronics engineering student, was opening the cards playing the solitaire. Aida took the kids to the basement locker, like she wanted to teach them English. Marija was having a small talk with the refugees from Vogošća, the whole extended family was there: two married couples, the children, a blind grandfather who normally never goes to the shelter but it was rocking so hard that we had to take him downstairs tonight. I was taking him down together with his grandson, and we were walking him step- by-step, it took forever. The shells exploded nearby, it was really rocking that night. We could hear the rockets whistling over our heads:” They are shelling Velešići from Mrkovići hill”, Samir added absent-mindedly. Samir’s girlfriend’s name is Mika, her sister is Dženka, from Dubrovnik. Both were studying medicine, and lived in a bachelor apartment in the basement. Their sister, Suada, was killed on the first day of the war when the gunfire first started, at the Vrbanja bridge, at the beginning of April. Olga Sučić and Suada were the first official victims of the war in Sarajevo. Suada was also studying medicine. After her death, Samir left an engineering unit up there on Pale, where he was employed as a civilian serving the Yugoslav National Army, and he managed to smuggle a scorpion rifle with one only charge – this was the only arms we had to protect the building. Samir’s mother brought down a portable TV to the other side of the stairwell, at the opposite side of our basement shelter. She was a kind of activist in the community center, Red Cross, Red Crescent, and God knows where else. I remember that some humanitarian aid arrived, some children’s clothes and she proudly showed us what she took: some baby shirts and overalls, and some other stuff: “Look, how cute this is”, she said. “What do you need it for?” asked Boro. “Well, you know, when my little Selma gets married one day and when I get a granddaughter, God willing”.
“Great”, we said thinking that we also had three small children, and not even to mention the poor refugees from Vogoca. Anyway, it was kind of her to give us a quarter of the flour from the bag she got, and of course, she kept three quarters for herself. She bugged me yesterday to send a fax from the TV station to Brigit Bardot since her cat had no cat food to eat.
-She is now worried about the animals?
"Yeah, she lost it” I thought and told her that I’d definitely try to send a fax.
A few months later I gave her a visit when I learned that Samir was blown away by a shell explosion in front of the ‘Svjeltlost’ bookstore. She spoke in a soft voice, modestly, about her husband who had passed away before the war and a few words about Samir. ‘God’s will; nothing we can do.” Her daughter was a tall, quite good-looking girl. She doubted between the two boys that night as we were all in the basement shelter: one was on the front line and another who was with us, free in his camouflage uniform, whispering something into her ear. Anyway, I did notice in the silence of the empty room and brownish earthy color of the closed window drapes which were also reflected on her face, that her age seemed a galaxy older and more serious than her real age.
Caka, Tija, and, my aunt Beba, together with a few more of them were sitting under the stairwell in the building entrance hallway. We agreed to smoke there because of the kids. Džuma was exceptionally silent that day. Her son was a nurse in the hospital and he was on duty that night. “They are rocking the hospital” I thought but didn’t say anything not wanting to upset her. The only person who didn’t come down was old Mr. Kovačević, he believed in destiny, they said. I thought that it was not true: he simply had enough brandy to wipe all of his fears away. The other day he gave me the keys to his basement locker adding not to mind the mess, as we should have more space because of the kids, and asked if I could clean it up a little. I really did sort a few things out and moved some boxes around when I came upon two unopened bottles of rum behind the old washing machine. He totally read me out, a real humanitarian. Then I installed a chair and brought a spongy beach mat and a few books, and I made my own real man’s cave out of his locker. I managed to stretch the rum over the ten days. The old Mr. Kovačević finally came down the following week when the electricity went off for the first time for a few days in a row. The frozen food had to be eaten quickly not to rot. The summer was on its way and it was getting really hot. Mr. ćcame down with the bags full of meat, together with a couple of spirit bottles and a bag of barbecue charcoal. “I live alone, people. It would be a pity to waste all of this food” he said. We made a picnic style barbecue with the tables set in front of the building entrance, in the passage. We were barbecuing the schnitzels all day long, including the kebabs as we’d long forgotten what the meat tasted like. And, of course, we were drinking as well. We were spending the last left-overs of our “old life”. There was an occasional shell, a whistle over our heads, exploding somewhere below us, but nobody gave a damn. We could also hear the anti-aircraft machine gun fire above the building. It was only when the stars showed up and the shrapnel started hitting the building roof that Mr. Kovačević agreed to a withdrawal. “OK, but let’s do it successively” he emphasized which meant that women and children should go in first (which they had already done hours ago) followed by us who had to finish barbecuing the left–over meat and moving the tables and drinks inside. In the end, it was only me, Samir, and Boro, and of course, the old lawyer, who had stayed outside. When we finally went into the basement, we distributed the meat to everyone. I approached the refugees from Vogošća uncomfortably explaining that it might be pork. She smiled at me and said that the children should eat it, Allah would forgive them if their life was in danger.
That evening, after the day when I saw the faces of the people who had seen, Džuma was unusually quiet, as well as angry and nervous at the same time, which didn’t really seem like her. She pulled her ‘dimije’ (baggy Turkish trousers), dangling her body and nodding her head in silence. Everybody else was very quiet that night too. I was wondering if we all thought the same thing: it couldn’t get any worse, what else can they do. And, oh, My God, I thought, it was only the beginning. Anyway, Džuma was swaying her body for more than an hour or so, no electricity for hours, a gas lamp burning (some still had a gas lamp back then) after she finally spoke:
-Well, I don’t think it’s wise of radio and TV to keep scolding them all the time. They constantly blame them for everything and anything. She made a ‘drama’ pause and added:
-And you know how sensitive they are.
And she pointed in her nervousness somewhere “outside”, where the dragons occupied the hills and spit fire from a hundred pharynges leaving the red reflection on the sky; their roars multiplying in series, directly from stomach hitting a diaphragm.
And they retracted their claws through the windows, ripping off the cabinets, book shelves, including the sleepers together with the bedding sheets they were sleeping in.
