Or that you could be killed anyway?
But despite my desire not to talk about this, I know I must say something to allay your fears. Your last letter – dated over a month ago but only received yesterday – radiates the anguish of uncertainty.
God knows what you have undergone these past few weeks. If the shoe were on the other foot – if it were I, not you, who is studying in New York (as it easily could have been – do you remember how we discussed who would go first?) I would be crazed with desperation and grief.
So let me reassure you as far as I am able. And perhaps, in the process, attempt to reassure myself.
I’m ok. I’m physically intact. Emotions are another story. But physically I’m ok.
The siege was surreal. Its bizarreness even rivalled the fear. After a while routine just took over.
Keep your head down. Keep the lights out unless absolutely necessary (if you still have the luxury of electricity, that is). Watch out for the young and older ones who can’t look out for themselves. We were lucky there were few young children in our block, and no babies. How others managed in such circumstances is beyond me.
It seemed interminable, it passed in a dream.
Do I need to say more? I don’t know if I can.
It defies normal experience. There are no words or concepts which fit. Contrary to many in this city, I have sympathy for the foreign journalists who are trying to convey the enormity of it. Of course there is flagrant bias as well. But they can be subject to abuse from residents when no one outside here seems to care. Foreign media have become displaced targets for some. Maybe it’s easier to attack them than to confront the brutality we are inflicting on each other.
One of the worst strains now is not hearing from Milos.
Since his enlistment we have had practically no news. As you can imagine, mother is beside herself. Trying to calm her occupies much of my time now. Or maybe I should say trying to distract her. For she is already calm. Much too calm. You know how strong she is. And how internalised her suffering must be.
Sasha, these few references to our shared knowledge are both consoling and desolating. I think of you always. Our love is proof that I am alive. It energises me to think of you over there studying (ok, I know the deepest part of you is still here). And that I don’t need to worry you’ll be killed in this insane fighting. Thank God you left- that it just happened you should leave – before these disasters befell. Otherwise you would have been in the army like Milos, and I’d be desperate about both of you.
Sasha, my love. Remember all those arguments we had over coffee at Milena’s? (which no longer exists by the way. An essential part of our past has been obliterated). Remember all my vehemence about gender equity? Which you supported me in of course. And about the value of education?
I would laugh except that it’s not funny. Now my highest aspiration – if I were capable of thinking about the future; if that concept, like so many others, still had validity – would be to be your wife and have your children. Yes, I say your children. Don’t ask me why, when I would have rejected such male privileging before.
I dreamt a month or two ago that we were together. Away from here, I don’t know where. And that you had bought champagne because I was pregnant. The memory sustained me for a long time after. To think we put off marriage until your return!
But I’m getting maudlin. And I don’t want to upset you more than I know you are already. Who knows about anything anymore?
All for now, love for always.
Lena
5. Address to a spectator
A university cafe. It could be anywhere, the world over (many places share a basic similarity, don’t you think? Or do we prefer to avoid such equations?)
The long serveries. The crowded tables. The muted vibrancy of student life, the buzz of conversation.
Open books, coffee-stained newspapers. Plates of left-over food, utensils inelegantly splayed.
This particular university cafe could be in Boston. Or New York.
Perhaps the one at which Sasha is studying. Geographically remote from the turbulence of where he used to live.
Maybe that’s him over there by the window. Kind of thin and pensive-looking. He looks the way I would imagine someone to look after reading a letter which has affected them deeply.
Distant, preoccupied.
Not really there.
But then maybe it’s not him. I’ve never seen the guy, after all. Am reading into a completely unknown person what I imagine a possibly different unknown person might be like.
And even if it is Sasha, why must he be thin and sad looking? Why not robust and cheerful? Seemingly cheerful, that is. Because unless as emotionally detached from his homeland as he is physically distant, a cheerful exterior would have to hide at least some pain.
Wouldn’t it?
And why should inner and outer life synchronise? Why should they appear to correlate?
The lunch break is almost over. While the cafe will not empty until late in the evening, those who have afternoon classes are gathering up their things. In the process of so doing, a girl knocks over a sauce bottle. Its contents spill over a newspaper like a slowly grasping hand.
Beneath the spreading stain is a photograph of the latest UN negotiating team. With an inset picture of David Owen. The photograph’s caption – barely decipherable now – reads `New Hopes for Ceasefire’.
More students get up to leave. The boy who could be Sasha among them.
Yes, there is a sameness to university cafes. Hard to believe, though, the extent of their closure in Bosnia. Like so many of the institutions to which they are (were?) affiliated. Perhaps blown away completely.
Markets are another universal.
Open-air markets, with trestle tables and makeshift benches. They are usually lively and often festive.
But not the Sarajevo market the day of the massacre. Remember the footage of helpless civilians that was beamed around the globe? Of people lying in pools of blood, their arms outstretched beseechingly? Even among the rising tide of atrocities, that one stood out.
Many who had previously felt little identification with what was going on in the former Yugoslavia were shocked by that image.
People like Justin (let’s call him that).
Perhaps Justin is himself a journalist or photographer. Perhaps he is moved to imagine how, in different circumstances, he might have been taking those pictures. Or trying to write about them.
But professional identity aside,
