cafeteria told Goran it was not as easy as she was presenting it.
At night they slept on cots in the classrooms, the desks piled up and pushed to one side. They were divided into separate rooms: adult men, adult women, teenage boys, and teenage girls. Younger children slept with their mothers.
It was cool at night in the classroom but bearably so. There were enough blankets, and the guards and other staff were polite. Goran noticed that the adults spoke in hushed voices. The young people’s rooms buzzed with conversation like the dorm rooms at the state-sponsored summer camps he went to every year. Until the talk turned to what they had left behind and what would become of their homes.
The next day it rained. The young men, most of whom had played football outside the day before, were now crowded in the small indoor gymnasium. Goran joined one of the games for a short time, then made an excuse and dropped out when the players on the opposing team started to shove and curse every time they had the ball.
Once outside he found an empty picnic table and pushed it under an awning so that it was mostly shielded from the rain. He sat on top of the table and leaned against the wall of the school. He pressed play on his CD player. He was memorizing the lyrics to every song on U2’s Achtung Baby.
Goran’s eyes were closed when the girl came over to the table. He jumped slightly, embarrassed that he had been mouthing the words.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Do you mind if I sit here?”
“No, go ahead.”
“I’m tired of being in the room with all those girls. It’s either knitting, playing cards, or gossiping about boys they probably won’t see for a long time.”
“It’s basketball for us. One court and, like, eighty guys.”
“I’m Nikoleta, from Mostar.”
“I’m Goran, from Sarajevo.”
“You’re Serbian?”
She asked this as nonchalantly as if asking what his favorite color was, or which football team he followed.
“Guilty.”
“I’m Muslim. Not that it matters. Or it didn’t, before all this.”
“Where are you trying to go?”
“Germany. My father has a cousin there. But they don’t seem to want to take our papers. You?”
“US. My mother has an aunt there. But now my mom’s really tense. I can’t tell if it looks good or not.”
“What are you listening to?”
“U2.”
She smiled. He couldn’t tell if the smile meant she thought his choice of music was too obvious, or if she truly liked U2, or if she was just relieved it wasn’t one of the local nationalist, turbo-folk bands inciting war. The only thing he knew for sure about her smile is that it hinted at irreverence and self-assurance.
“May I?” she said and reached in the direction of his earphones.
“Here,” she continued, moving toward him so she could put one earpiece next to her ear and he could hold the other next to his.
“Which is your favorite?”
“It’s this one,” Goran said.
They listened to a few songs this way, their shoulders touching. Goran pressed the pause button when he saw the military vehicles pass on the road outside the school. Three tanks, two personnel carrier trucks filled with young men, some in uniform, some not, and two jeeps pulling cannons that looked to be from World War II creaked by.
Goran reached out to touch Nikoleta’s arm and she held on to his. She released it a moment later, then opened her knapsack and pulled out a drawing pad and a charcoal pencil.
“I draw when I get nervous, or anytime really.”
“I play guitar. Or I would if I could have brought one with me. That’s what I do when I get nervous. Or bored.”
He felt her gaze on him as he said this. It was then that Goran noticed her full lips and that Nikoleta was wearing lipstick, or maybe just that her lips were naturally red, and that her green eyes, reddish-brown hair, and pronounced cheekbones all went together.
The rain shifted from a light drizzle to a full-on downpour. Nikoleta put away her drawing pad as the water began to hit it. Even with the awning over them, the rain splashed off the roof and table and onto them. She reached to wipe the drops from Goran’s face. He recoiled slightly at the unexpected gesture and immediately wished he hadn’t. He knew she could tell how nervous he was.
“You’re cute with rain on your face,” she said.
“Should we get out of it?” he said.
“I know where,” she said.
He nodded.
“Those cars behind the school. No one’s ever there and we’ll be out of the rain. I’ll run first. Wait a minute or two, then come. You know, so no one sees us.”
Goran nodded again and she leapt off the table and ran around to the back of the school, out of his view. He waited a minute, put his CD player in his backpack, threw it over his shoulder and ran in the same direction. As he reached the rear of the school, he saw six cars. With the heavy rain he couldn’t tell which one she was in. He was getting more soaked with each second he spent outside.
Goran looked in the driver-side door of three of the cars, and then a fourth, and she wasn’t in any of them. He wondered for a moment if she had changed her mind and gone inside the school. Looking inside the fifth car, he still couldn’t see her. The door opened.
“Get in, quick,” she said.
It was a red Yugo with worn, black seats and Nikoleta was sitting in the passenger side in the front. It smelled faintly of gasoline and mildew. They looked at each other and at the steamed-up windows, and laughed.
“We haven’t done anything and they’re already fogged up,” she said.
Goran ran his hands through his hair to rub out the water.
“Play the song again, your favorite one. Translate the words for me.”
Goran knew this much: that while he was in the red Yugo with Nikoleta, his mother was inside the school, pleading, explaining, confirming details, desperate to get them out. That nearby, men were amassing weapons. That his relatives waited for word of his family’s fate. That in military barracks, plans were being drawn up for creating enclaves that separated Serbs from Bosniaks from Croatians. That in some camps like these, men and boys were being taken into the woods.
The rain let up slightly as dusk approached. Nikoleta leaned her head on Goran’s shoulder as he translated the lyrics for her a third time. She wanted to memorize the song. In a hushed voice, he sang the words to her.
They turned to face each other and he brushed her damp hair away from her face and ran his finger lightly across her lips. Goran wasn’t sure about this
