Like the collapse of the `safe haven’ of Srebrenica. The massacre in which peacekeepers did not intervene. The audacity with which it was taken – it was a larger version of Anna’s rape. With similar, though also different, dimensions of betrayal.
`Safe haven!’
The shameful lack of action by the UN. When it was they who had endorsed its `safety’. The `disappearance’ of the men and boys.
Mother had friends in Srebrenica who are now childless and husbandless. We haven’t had confirmation of the names of all those who were killed. But how could we have, when so many have been lost? And how, even were it possible to get a message to the town, could a message possibly be framed? All that is happening is made worse by the inability to reach out to one another.
Friendship, rock-solid before, can scarcely withstand the allegiances which now render it secondary. And even treasonous. We are becoming estranged from each other. We are becoming estranged from ourselves.
I remember a long ago visit from one of Mother’s friends and her family. It is not a clear memory. But I vaguely recall her young son who may well have been killed in the massacre. Actually, it’s his jacket I remember. Which must have been distinctive for me to recall it at all. A dense pattern, an unusual mustard colour.
Safe haven!
The decimation of language. That, too, seems like outright theft. And, strangely, a violation akin to the others. I wouldn’t have thought so before (what are words compared with bodies?) But I know my error now. `Normal’ life has become untenable, `natural’ emotions distorted. The familiar reassurance of words is itself denied; inverted. We are robbed and bereft of all structures and supports.
Except, of course, those imposed by collective identity on the basis of ethnicity. Which is to say, to the perception of ethnic identity. Which now not only threatens but obliterates all other kinds.
So it is also decreasingly possible to view the pain of others as remote from ourselves. And that means both a heightened awareness and a dull withdrawal. For how can we nurture hope for ourselves and those close to us in the enormity of such loss? We try, of course. But direct personal knowledge of those for whom there is no longer any hope renders even selfless feelings selfish. And renders us guilty.
We have had to accommodate death. And in this way have become complicit with it. In the strangest and yet most logical paradox of all, death lives in us as well as grief. And so, after all, is alive. Is more alive, in some ways, than life.
Yet there is, after all, a stranger paradox.
The staging during the siege of Sarajevo, city of death and vivid life, of the play `Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett. It was directed by American writer, film maker and activist Susan Sontag, who visited for that purpose.
Which is to say because, rather than despite, the siege.
Could anything be more bizarre? And yet, perhaps, more surreally appropriate?
7. Dominic
For some reason (I am still grasping at reason) my anxieties have crystallised into the figure of a lone skier. A skier such as delighted us at those long ago Winter Olympics.
Only it is not delight that he (or is it she?) inspires now. It is terror. Or rather, the intimation of terror. Which seems immeasurably worse.
This skier is remote and resplendent. Encased in the armour of invulnerability.
And has somehow become fused in my mind with the figure of a sniper.
Skier or sniper; it is increasingly difficult to tell them apart. They are indistinguishable.
Inscrutable behind dark glasses, the figure is lithe in a black snowsuit. S/he radiates self-containment.
And hostility.
Without warning, the ski pole becomes a slimline shotgun, both lethal and elegant. Silhouetted against the skyline, the figure pauses momentarily as if for maximum effect.
And then executes a leap.
Into the void, into infinity. Leaving nothing but absence in its wake.
Part 2 Sydney 1995
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
