I was 29 years old. You are eight, and Maja is six and a half. On August 1st, we took you to my family in Milakare, and already on Thursday they brought you back because Maya fell from a tree, her elbow swelled and turned blue. She never cried, she just frowns and is silent. With her in Glin: she broke her arm, they put a cast on her. We barely slept that night. Around half past five in the morning, it started to rain. Only detonations from all sides. Fighting, fighting... Earlier, when it was heard, we went out on the terrace and if it was coming from here, aha, it's Komarevo, you hear it here - Bosnia, you hear it there - it's near Fikret. It was known exactly. This rumbled from all sides. I look at the street, people on bicycles, with rifles on their shoulders, are going towards Glina. Pero gets up, he prepares to leave too.
"What am I going to do with the children, Pero?"
He doesn't even stop without saying hello: "What about you, too." Those were all his words.
It's Friday, August 4, dawn.
LEAVING HOME: Grandfather, father-in-law, got lost somewhere. He went among the people to see what was happening, to find out something. Oh, what now? We need to settle such cattle, we need you, there is nothing, and you don't know what to do first. Hot, fly a million, you have no idea what's going on...
I remember that after the fall of Western Slavonia in May, someone listened to Tuđman on TV. He said that they called that action "Flash" and that they were preparing "Storm" for Krajina and that "we won't even know what hit us." This was known and talked about. However, everything was talked about. There was no electricity all the time, and the phones didn't work either. We listened to Radio Korenica through batteries, there were no newspapers. When there was electricity, we watched the First Program from Zagreb. I remember that once we caught a program from Serbia, it was a very bad picture, when Yugoslavia became the champion in basketball in '95.
Most of it was misinformation. Somewhere at the beginning of the war, I remember, it was announced on the radio that there was "hand-to-hand combat" in Vidoševac. You know that this one and that one are there, that they are barely capable of any fight, let alone "hand to hand". Your legs fall off after such thoughts. By the time you find out what's really going on, a few days pass in that agony. Then, somewhere at the beginning of the war, one night some devil thundered. Something collapses, falls, buzzes, hums, the house shakes, the windows ring, there are shots, you think it lasts forever, and so on four times. We turn on the radio, they say: "Four surface-to-surface missiles fired at Samobor." We froze. Do you know what that means? Well, four of them leveled Zagreb! No sleep. How many people were killed there... Fortunately, some man decided to throw them into some ravines, swamps, so that no one was hurt. Fortunately... How would life be here today if the city had hit?
For years, we lived in these guesses and hearsay. Then people come from the battlefield and explain what we heard, they talk, and the banter starts; when someone dies, let's mourn for a while. After that, we live a little again, or the season of some works comes, so our thoughts are diverted. In the end, you find your own way of understanding everything that is being said and what is happening: everything in order to find some peace of your own, to be able to remain normal, to take care of small children and, after all, to be able to work somehow. For the most part, we did not take Tuđman's threats so seriously. After "Bljesko", something similar could be expected, but no one believed that we would go to Serbia.
No one alive talked about it.
***
Somewhere around noon on Friday, a green car full of children, driven by a woman, stops at our gates. He is looking for Slavko Ljiljko from the village, you don't remember him... What is happening? They attacked from all sides, nothing is known, shells are falling, and so her husband told her. I tell her that if she doesn't find Slavko, to come back to us, there is room for everyone.
A little later, here is Soka. She is grandpa's nephew. He has beautiful green eyes. Lived in Zagreb in '91. escaped to Klasnić. She helped us a lot during and after the war. The news is also coming: this one died, that one died, among others one of Soka's cousins from Brestik. People die, but you don't have the same feeling as before. He died, go ahead, bury him, think about the next thing. There is a fight, a war is going on, what to do... Still no one is talking about running away.
You can't count on grandpa anymore. He is then 63 years old. By the way, he was an orphan, he didn't remember his mother, that's what he said. He had all the qualities of that generation of people who grew up in the Second World War: stubborn, headstrong, stubborn. He was hardworking, honest, sincere and sensitive to his grandchildren, and especially to you, his namesake. His wife, your grandmother Janja, Perina's mother, was in Belgrade then. She had an operation.
Now that Soka is here, it's easier for me, I have someone older by my side with whom I can talk, and she already ran away once. She tells me to take it to pack. What the hell should I pack? She says: "Everything you have is new and everything winter." It's the beginning of August, what do I want winter? "Listen to me carefully: pack all your winter clothes! Quilts, fur coats, everything for winter. Now everyone will give you a thin cloth, now you don't even need a miracle, but what will you do when winter comes?" Well, where are we going, I think. Okay, I listen and start packing, and as I'm packing, you and Maja are also packing. I'm arguing with you now, you kept throwing something out of line. I remember you sniffing something, what is it, when it's Perina's picture, the little one framed. I'll run through them all, stuff now what you want.
Suddenly, the planes whizzed by. But I didn't even have time to turn around. I know we didn't have airplanes then. They also started to beat us with airplanes. They targeted some paramedics and one man was badly wounded. Those airplanes struck such fear into my bones that I heard the airplanes all the way running whenever the tractor started. As soon as the tractor stops - there is no plane. So what, am I crazy? In fact, those riffs on the big tires on the tractor were humming. I wouldn't have understood that, but when we got somewhere near Banja Luka, when a real plane flew over us, then I realized what a tractor tire is, and what a real sound is.
Friday night. Soka says we should go sleep at her place because her house has a concrete slab. If they shoot, it will be safer. You know how scared I was. You are also satisfied. Sleep, my love.
***
Saturday, I wake up early, I hear horses walking on the road. We see loaded cars, people running away, we don't know anyone. What are they doing when they've come this far? When did they leave? It was just dawn. We are returning home, they say fallen Knin. How did Knin fall? Now there is a fight. How is it possible that Knin fell? You can't hear anything anywhere, I guess they jammed the radio, I don't know. It's panic now. Soka went to the funeral. Someone brought the information that they broke into Bachuga, that part behind Petrinja, that is, they wanted to surround Glina, to cut the road so that the people could not escape. It's already a general commotion.
Soka returns from the funeral, her golf bag full of things. She entered the yard and said to her grandfather: "Uncle, there is nothing to do with this!" This one died, that one died, they passed here, they passed there, I went to Banjaluka." The grandfather says: "Soko, can you take these two children and the daughter-in-law with me?" He says: "Yes! I'm taking all this out, I'm driving them." Where am I going now? I packed everything I had into the trailer. I won't go. Where am I going? I don't know anything about Pera. It was us in '91. several months in Belgrade and I know how I had a good time without going anywhere and I won't do it again. Soka goes alone.
***
Private archiveMaja and Mirko Rudić in Serbia in 1996
After some time, Rajko's wife Dragica arrives with a tractor and those long tractor cars. The tractor had no lights, no brakes, and was driven by a woman. In the car, four small children, two more women and many, many things. He says: "Rajko said that we should go to your place and wait there to see what happens next." It's easier for me again, I'm not alone. Now someone is going to bake blood, you are playing with Dragica's children.
In the evening of that day, I could no longer pass through the courtyard or around the house as many people were there. I couldn't go to the sink to wash my hands, I was milking cows. You don't know what you would do first: would you like to make something to eat, would you still pack something... When the news spread that Knin had fallen, that the leaders had fled, then the people asked themselves: wait, who am I fighting for, I am also going to save his family.
Now we have to move too. It's over. Let's go to the forest. We carry food for a day or two until it passes. We have to take cover from the shells, so we'll be back in a couple of days. Nobody mentions Serbia. When Grandfather heard Soka that "there is nothing to do with that", he panicked and he just kept stuffing and stuffing into the trailer. Until then, I packed everything nicely, now he just loads. Scythes, bicycles, some rifles, carbines I guess they assigned to the village guards, we were lying on them the whole way, pushing them with our feet, I don't know how it didn't work. Buckets of fat, all dried meat, all brandy, everything, everything, everything. I can't tell you what went into that trailer. On the tractor, from mowing, that big tractor hair remained.
We had some balloons covered with styrofoam, which we carried to the field when we went to buy hay, so that we would have ice water. We also had a big brown box with dry biscuits that we bought from unprofor people, Nigerians. Those Nigerians were poor, they were cold here, so we knitted them hats, gave them roosters, and they gave us what they had: fuel, biscuits, marmalade, fruit, that's when you started eating kiwi for the first time. The Belgians were completely cold, arrogant. The French kept throwing candy at you from their jeep when they passed by our house. You already knew the sound of that jeep and then you run to the road and wave to them...
In that confusion, I can somehow hear my brother. And he told us to buy and move and to tell those in Milakare not to leave grandma Stan, your great-grandmother. There were stories from the Croatian side that the people would leave and leave the old people behind, so that everything would happen. People can't control themselves because of fear. Those who have not experienced it cannot understand it. We can now listen, tell stories, watch TV, but war is the most terrible thing in the world. When you curse your own mother for giving birth to you because of what is happening to you, how can you not curse your enemy or think badly of him. When fear hits you in the head, you defend yourself, you don't know what you're doing... What kind of mental state are those who went to survive on the old or wounded, it's just out of mind.
I'm going to Milakare to deliver the message. I guess you stayed with Dragica and her children. I stop by Đukić, teacher Pera and teacher Danica. And they pack up, they don't know anything. Afterwards, they left by car before us, but I don't know how they got through. They were our neighbors, my teachers at school. Danica was also your teacher. I called them "friend" and "friend" - I still call them that today. They loved you very much, and Tihana, their daughter, looked after you when I was working at the post office in Glina. Tihana was then in Novi Sad. She later wrote to me what she was going through while watching the column on TV...
In Milakare, the same picture. Packing, commotion... I return home, to Rudice.
Let's meet grandmas Ljuba and Kosta. They are walking slowly along the road, a column is already passing by them, they are holding hands. Squeeze yourself together. Kosta and žed were partners, they hung out and called each other "colleagues". "Mate, shall we go?" "Let's go."
FROM KLASNIĆ TO UNE: We barely joined the column. When we left the house, around midnight, there were still people inside. There is no Pera. You know nothing about him. Should I leave him a message?
We stop at Kosta and Ljuba's so that they can load their things. I don't know how we found the seats. Ljuba, the poor thing, when she picked up that little package, it penetrated a bag and sugar spilled all over the entire trailer. By all accounts, according to Maya, it got into her cast, but... Let the sugar go, who cares about that, moves on. Somehow, the old man comes on again, when Ljuba screams: "Stop!" What is it? "I didn't turn off the light." Grandfather degrees the light, the hot sun, cursing the house, everything... She didn't turn off the light. See what your psyche is?
Now I care about Dragica, who is behind us on a tractor without brakes and with a car that is worse than a trailer. The car turns, the tractor is carried away, there are no lights, it is night. I shout to the grandfather not to rush, not to hurry, so that we don't lose her. I hold the battery in my hand and shine it on her. When she falls behind, I wave the battery, giving her a signal to see us.
***
And chasing, chasing... I'm sitting on the counter, holding the battery and lighting Dragica, you're tucked in, it's cold. People are shouting that Petrinja has fallen, you should get away from the main road. What will happen? You should go into the forest, you should not go into the forest... Until then, UNPROFOR was on the border with Bosnia and did not allow people to cross without passes. Then someone reported that UNPROFOR had taken cover. Let's just cross the bridge over the Una, in Dvor. We are going to Bosnia. It's 30, 40 kilometers to Dvor, it's not a lot, but you'll never get there. One only thinks about the bridge. You didn't understand why that bridge was so important. You asked me to wake you up when we got to him.
We are driving when there is a column in front of us. It's standing. Where are we? Darkness around. They say: "We only got to Žirovac." The second, third village from Klasnić. In five hours of travel, we did not move further than two villages.
Suddenly, he starts thinking about fuel. Wherever Grandfather hears that he has it, he goes to see, and we stay on the tractor. Then he came out with the tractor from the main column to get in there somewhere, he found where it was. Don't worry, we have fuel, Pero left plenty. Yok. He panicked that he was going to disappear and he left. Darkness, some path, some people, tractors are standing and some detonation rumbled nearby. Then we all started screaming for him to go back. As he turned back, his hair from the tractor got tangled in those strings on a loading trailer from some man. Nothing is visible. We are watching the father get up from there, fade away, shoot some more. I don't know how we got out of there. That man did not say a word to us.
The column is still standing. The army is also retreating from the surrounding towns and they all rushed to one road. I have no idea where we are, I've never been there, what's going on. As dawn broke, we saw in front of us people who had left hours before us. Cows are walking in the courtyards, entering the house, the people have already left. Our cattle remained confined, we had automatic waterers, they would not run out of water. I turn around, there is Dragica behind... I have never heard her story, how she coped. It is now in Vojvodina, in some Hungarian village, I will remember its name...
***
It is already the day, Sunday, August 6. We need something to eat, we need somewhere in the evening. The sun hit, the sugar melted. At some point, Maja starts to sing. I think it was "The Court Away, The Court Away". Then you sang battle songs. We didn't tell you anything about the war. You made your own conclusions, you remembered those songs. I didn't let you tell anyone that she was an Ustasha. I taught you not to swear, not to lie, not to steal. To be people, as Paul says.
Maja sings, I am silent, and Ljuba turns around and says in astonishment: "Maya, so you sing?" "That's me, Aunt Ljuba, just so I don't forget."
When the column starts, you can't stop even if you want to, but mostly it doesn't move. You are standing in a hole in the trailer, things around you. We eat those biscuits and drink water. There was also the blood that someone had baked. Meat, fat, brandy, everything is buried under us, we can't reach it.
Around you, women, grandmothers, grandfathers, children, you don't know anyone. Younger women talk among themselves. Someone shouts there is no coffee, who will make the coffee. The story goes like this, banter, banter, until someone says: "What do you think when our people come back and enter those empty houses?" Then silence again, you return to agony.
We get off the trailer, take a short walk. We also had a head of cabbage and jam. A woman goes and says: "How long until the Dvor, where will I buy blood?" I think to myself: where have you lived until now? I gave her our blood because I knew it couldn't stand for a long time, it would spoil, and we also have biscuits that are dry and can't be harmed. I also gave jam to some of them, I don't remember.
Then we come across a pear. The ribbon train turned yellow, everyone rushed at it, ran. I tell you: just one. What if you got diarrhea in that heat? Then the foal appeared. It came to our trailer and you collect sugar from things, Maya shakes it out of the plaster and gives it to him.
***
Photo: Pero RudićMirko Rudić
Let's break out on some plain. Someone shouts to take cover, to move out of the way, the tanks must pass. Grandpa won't give up: "The child beat my arm, I'm not moving anywhere, I have to cross the bridge." They stretch, but the tank is nowhere to be found. I look to the other side, the tank is knocking down some corn, it doesn't need a road. When there you are, behind us, there's a man with a beard, his hair is shoulder-length, he's short, he's only wearing a camouflage vest, a machine gun is hanging over him. He drives a car that has nothing, only wheels and where he sits. He must pass now, and the grief will not end. Grivanja says: "Give me the child, I'll drive him across the bridge." Who are you driving? Where would I sit with a child on that slop. I say: "Just go ahead, the child has a cast, he's fine." This one somehow passes.
Now there are already several columns on the road. There's a truck next to us, going and going... The road is narrowing, the snow will not end again. Truck forward two centimeters, go three and push with the truck. He shouts again at his grandfather to let the fool go - sob. Once, the old man jumped up to curse, he recognized the one from the truck: "Shame on you, drooling one, I was with you now!" I don't know who gave up, who passed first, but somehow we continued.
Then some shooting starts. They shout: "Get down, get down, the Muslims from Bojna are breaking in, let's run away on foot." The people started to run away, I went back to the trailer. Let him go where he wants. Leave me alone to suffer on that trailer as I suffer. I created my own image. What kind of Muslims. There was nothing.
Then, there is a politician, not to mention him now. He goes on foot in the opposite direction, I don't know what he is doing, he goes around the people, he is looking for someone of his own, or something. We know each other. He ate a lot of our sausages. I ask how far it is to the bridge? He says: "A little more..." I didn't care that he was calming me down. I really didn't know how far it was to the bridge. What did he think, that I was a cow, so he was going to calm me down like that? Tell me the truth and then I will deal with it as I know how. You shout "a little more" so I live in that hope and kill myself and that little bit of common sense.
***
A whole day passes, there is no bridge. He kisses the inflamed veins on his legs from sitting, the blood stagnates, his legs hurt. When, she says, "Oh, here's my Steve." Her son Steve was a military man. He saw that the people were going, so he started from the bridge to look for the house and the mother. I'm crying. Then he told us how much more there is, that the column is so-and-so, in that and that time you will cross the bridge. He says: "You keep going, let Vesna and the children come with me." We still don't know anything about Pera, nor about my brothers... I won't go. We are waiting for Peru. Neither will Costa with Steve. Stevo says: "Come on, son, you had a stroke, you're sick!" You can kill him, but he won't leave his colleague and that's it. In the end, Ljuba left. I am alone with them again. This one had a stroke, and he sits in the sun all day. Until then, Ljuba was taking care of him, and what will I do if something happens to him? I'm constantly dousing him with water, this, this, that. Grandfather is tired now. He did not sleep for two days and two nights, and there is no bridge. He takes tranquilizers.
It's getting dark. Everything fell. There is no return. Now we already know where we are going - we are going to Serbia...
It starts breaking in the head. What will we do in Serbia? Where are we going to Serbia? What are we doing? What are we going to do there? You have nothing anywhere. Then someone says: "Well, whose bones are left." That's how it goes... From moment to moment. In moments you relax, then something cuts you like that. You cry. I don't even know when I haven't cried. If you don't cry, then you keep quiet, if you don't keep quiet, then you make noise, argue and then someone remembers something and you cry again. You look around you, anxious just to find out about your loved ones, whether they are alive, whether they will make it out. Until Banja Luka, I tell you, I was afraid of airplanes.
I look towards you, keep quiet, you are clutching a red booklet "The Way of Salvation" in your hand. I don't know where you got it from, I think you still have it in that bag of yours. Some Baptist booklet, what was it? What should I think now? I didn't touch you.
***
I don't know at what moment we met Blagoja. He says that he met Peru and this one and that one, he met them all, they are all alive. It reminded me of a story my grandfather used to tell us when we were little. He was wounded in the Second War, so he was on Petrova gora in the dugouts for treatment. So, underground, they hid the wounded, it was a hospital. He gets typhus and they throw him, poor thing, into a barn so that he doesn't infect others. And the typhus are in a frenzy, they are raving, they are in agony and they are terribly thirsty. He was lying in the straw like that, flailing his arms and in that flailing he broke the egg above his head. Any nest. He brought his hand to his mouth, somehow ate the egg and somehow vomited, revived a little. He got up, started from the stable and met a man with horses. Are you okle, what are you, do you know this and that, the one with the horses asks him. Great grandfather: no matter what, we were here and there. He didn't know anyone, but he lied so that this one would tie him up and feed him. That's what went through my mind when he encountered Blagoj. I think, this is like my grandfather. Nevertheless, Blagoja cheered you up a little: "Yupi, dad is coming," you shout. We didn't tie him up, he continued on foot, it was faster that way.
I wake you up around midnight. Bridge on the Una. There was moonlight.
FROM UNE TO PRNJAVOR: There is already some civilization after the bridge, someone is commanding something, managing to cross the Sana as well. When we crossed it too, Kosta shouted to his grandfather to stop somewhere, to park, to take a nap. He stops, it's dark. Somehow he fell asleep behind the wheel.
We talk in our trailer. We hear someone else talking, a familiar voice. We're kind of moving together, you're from Gradac, so Goco, it's you, so I'm, who is it... My colleague's wife from the post office. They also parked there to rest.
What nonsense did I listen to in that post office? At the beginning of everything, when the HDZ was formed, when they won power and when they introduced those checkerboards as symbols, everyone shouted: "We don't want Ustasha symbols!" They slaughtered us, they won't do it again! No more! I will, I will go! Young people will not go. We will go first. We, we, we." The grandfathers gathered around the post office and chattered like that. When it really broke, when it started, this one bandaged his head, the other bandaged his arm, the other is carrying a stick, her spine is twisted, nobody can move anywhere. Who wants to go to war - young people.
I have one more thing to tell you. As soon as the war started, volunteers started arriving. They entered from Bosnia and passed by us. After a few days, relatives come to visit them. We don't have electricity. I'm outside doing a ton of laundry, and Maja spills a bowlful of sawdust into the back water for rinsing. I'm struggling now with that sawdust when I hear buses and some music that made me shiver from head to toe. What is this, my people? They played "Far away" from a loudspeaker on the bus. That's how much we knew about Serbia and Serbs. That was the first time I heard that song. Maybe someone actually knew, but I didn't. Those things were forbidden.
We from the village, ordinary people, well, there were all kinds, but most of them were just minding their own business. And that '41. some of them ran after the Ustasha trucks that collected them in the clay villages to take them to be baptized, thinking that they would leave them alone, but in fact they were driving them to slaughter them all in the church.
***
We can't stay here for long, and we don't know what to do. Should we wait for Peru? Kostin Stevo said that he would take Ljuba and then he would come back to pick us up. The column goes and goes. It dawned and we left too. We are not waiting for anyone, it is not worth it. Now the road is a bit more passable, there are people, but you can't stand anymore. We are in the sun for two days, in the same clothes, unwashed, sugar melted everywhere. We only eat biscuits and drink water.
After Dvor na Uni, we arrive in Prijedor, on Monday around noon. Grandfather listens to me and stops somewhere to put things together, to shake off the sugar, to put the guns away, to repack everything. In that whole mess when we were packing for the night, somehow I ended up with velvet pants on, and it was thirty and who knows how many degrees outside.
Grandfather and Kosta will sit in the lad and you will go with them. I make them coffee, they haven't had it in two days. It's not so tense now. Now we are no longer in direct danger. You can also talk to your grandfather. There is sporadic talk about the fall of Krajina, about what happened, who betrayed, why these people did not support us, but that is no longer a priority. The only goal is to find out who is alive, who got away or who died. Then we talk about what we left behind, what we took with us. We didn't take the TV, for example, because we were afraid of breaking it. You say that you have chocolate left under the TV, that you hid it there.
We sit by the side of the road and watch who passes by in a convoy. People go on lawn mowers, cultivators, on everything, cars are driven by women, children... Suddenly, there's Grandpa Dragan, my uncle, flying on a tractor. Wave, wave, but he goes, he doesn't see. I don't even know how they all got together in Putinci. I know that the same people who came to Vojvodina after 1945, as colonists, left.
There was a house where we stopped. Two elderly people are sitting in front, their yard looks like ours before moving. Everyone takes water, this one takes that, this one that. I take my pan, the same black one, and go to them to ask if I can pour an egg for you, you only eat biscuits. This woman says, why not, don't take anything, here is my fat and gives me a bucket, and there are barely two tablespoons of fat. I fry the eggs and when I have cleaned the trailer a bit, I fill it with a bucket full of our fat.
She also gave me a little wash and a change of clothes. I know you too. I shake the sugar off the stuff in the trailer, but it sticks to everything. I turn things over like that, take out meat, sausages, bacon, make a little order. I'm looking to see if anything is broken, we ride on it for days, when there are some old military sacks, burnt, mousav. I wonder what the grandfather did here, I'm already angry with him. I open it, and inside, cubes. Not legos, but some slightly bigger ones. There are also your other toys and stones. What on earth is this? You are silent, you are looking at me to see what the reaction will be. "They see what a small pile is," I show these two. They were speechless. We all cry. The child piled stones from the courtyard as a keepsake. Only later did you explain that you wanted to save the toys, to throw the bag into our stream, and so that the water wouldn't wash it away, you piled stones on it to make it sink. Is that so? Those stones were kept around the house years later. We also kept him in the aquarium. Somewhere it got stretched out in massive moves around Belgrade. Oh well.
I also bought you some candies there. In all that, I only had 40 dinars in my pocket, and it belonged to someone else. That's how much a sack of flour cost, and that's what some gave me so that Pero would bring them a sack of flour even before we left. And I had another 300 marks.
There was also a mother with babies. Only then did I see what suffering is. The child is hungry. She took off his diapers, then cooled him all down with her hands, and the one was red, red. No creams, no food, no nothing. I gave her a bag of powdered milk, which we also got from the unproforac.
We're moving on. We're going to Steve's, to Banja Luka, and then to Ana, Pera's sister, your aunt, in Zemun. The road is now more passable and it is clear that you are driving to Serbia. We are figuring out where to get fuel, we were told that they are distributing it along the way.
***
We drive on, cutting down the road. I don't remember meeting anyone. No one bothers anyone. Wherever we stop, we pour water and there is water everywhere, either a well or a fountain or it just leaks from the wall.
It rained in the afternoon. We had a tarp, but while the grandfather stretched it, while we adjusted it so that it wouldn't suffocate us, the rain stopped. Everything got wet. We took a break somewhere again. At some man's place on the corner. There was an inn, a stone cutter, or something, a nice yard. We were pouring water, I guess. You two found some kittens and tied a bow around the neck of one of them. I don't know where you found it. That's where you relaxed a bit for the first time, played with those kittens. We drank coffee again and continued on. You cried for kittens. We left them, yes. I just missed the kittens.
Time passes, Tuesday, Wednesday... You sleep in the open sky. You wake up in the morning, open your eyes, and your eyelids are heavy, heavy with dew. You just wipe yourself with your hand and it's like you washed yourself. You wake up, I look at the clock, six, half past seven. I think about how many people are in a hurry to catch the bus to work right now. Someone goes to feed the cows, someone goes here, someone there. When you have a daily routine like that, you don't wonder what other people are doing around the world, in America, in Canada, in Zagreb. You don't have time to think about it. What does anyone think of us now? Can others understand what is happening to these poor people? We have been sitting in the trailer for days. The worst thing is, we don't know where we are going, what awaits us, what our life will be like. You have no house, you have nothing. You are not even aware yet, in fact, how much you don't have and what you are left without.
FROM PRNJAVOR TO BELGRADE: Sometime on Wednesday morning, Stevo met us. He turned us off the road and we came to Prnjavor. His mother-in-law lived there, his wife, and grandmother Ljuba is waiting for us there, as well as other people from Klasnić, their relatives, a full yard. We don't know anything about Pera. When we got off, we could barely walk. My legs are shaking. We had lunch and bathed there. Costa will stay now, and Jedu is not going any further. He would stay a day or two to rest, to say goodbye to his colleague. It was also logical, he is tired, he has been wrestling with fools for days, he drives a tractor, he doesn't sleep.
It's crowded for me. I'm tired, I don't feel like staying, and I can't tell my grandfather that we're going, he won't listen to me, he has his own story. These others used to hang out everyday, they are their own and I didn't feel right there. Not because of them, but it seemed to me that I was a nuisance, and I didn't want to be a burden to anyone. I tell them that I would go further with the children by bus, on a regular line. There is a Prnjavor-Belgrade line in the morning, they say. Dear grandfather. It can! He will rest a bit and then he will follow us slowly, slowly.
However, those guys who went to the station to check, say that the line is not working. Traffic is at a standstill, only refugees are going. Instead, they say, in the elementary school there are workers from Plitvice Lakes. They go by official buses, but one of them broke down. Now, since before the war, Apatin was a twin municipality with Plitvice Lakes, i.e. Korenica. Now the workers are waiting at the school. There's room for the three of us.
We say goodbye, everyone cries and they drive us there on Thursday. Now we are waiting for the bus, which is almost gone. Vele: if the bus doesn't come by night, you have to come back so you don't sleep on the floor at school. I thought to myself, you will not see me again, I went my way. My goal is Belgrade. I have Ana's phone number in Zemun, I'll call them when we arrive, I'll take a taxi, I don't know, I'll manage.
I called Belgrade from school and someone told me that Pero had already arrived. When did you arrive first? Even today, I don't know how he got there and where he went. Don't talk about it. Neither he nor other people. These are difficult things...
If to me, as a woman, to a young mother who only picked up a rifle once, and that was only so that you could see that I could also shoot, so that you would not be afraid, if that war is so bloody to me, how is it that to people. Somewhere along the way, Bogdan Sljepčević's son died, and this little one just covered him with some branches and left. It's hard stuff... It's not naive at all... The companionship of war is five times stronger than this usual one. You watch a movie and freeze, but when you experience it... The person closest to you, with whom you went to school, with whom you played, he dies and you can't do anything about it, but you have to do something, and then you think that that branch somehow protect. That leaves a very heavy burden on whatever these people did afterwards and wherever they went, and they went all over the world and everywhere. Take these letters and look at the stamps where they came from. Now when they come back, you have nothing to talk to them anymore...
***
I only took my bag with me to school, the strap on which broke. He got hooked on the tractor somehow. I don't know what I had in her. I had those stamps, we had cards, drawing pads, crayons, I don't know...
At school, we played cards to pass the time. We also went for a walk, to see what was there. People were lying in the classrooms, benches were built against the wall. Whole families are there. Men in civilian clothes sit with wives, grandmothers, grandfathers, children restless, unproven. It was not clear to me what those men in civilian clothes were doing. Everyone knows each other. They worked together on Plitvice, in the National Park. There was also a doctor who applied poultices to women's inflamed veins. Children are licking ice creams, and you are looking at me. Ice cream can't! You'll catch a cold, get diarrhea, and when the bus comes, you can't say: stop, I have to pee, poop, vomit in the evening, as it will happen.
We sat afterwards in a canteen. Two horses running in a fenced corral were painted all over one wall. We had some Eurocream, I don't know what we got. Since you were bored with what to do, I gave you a pad to draw a horse. I don't know what Maja was doing, I'm bleating into space. "I draw!", you say. I look, the horse is perfect. "Oh, paint now." A woman who worked there came by. He says: "Oh, how beautifully you draw, it's really beautiful." When you draw, you take it to her to show, and she, I guess, wanted to give you ice cream for that drawing, so you said you can't.
***
Maya fell asleep. She fell asleep on the school desk. Now I can't move away from her because she will fall. I'm standing there and I remember my son's story in 43. fled to Bosnia before the Swabians, the Ustashas, I don't know before whom. It must have been the fifth offensive. And he says that he remembers how his mother held the bench with her knees all night while his brother slept. Well, yes. After 50 years, I was doing what my grandmother did. You now think and draw your own conclusions, you are old enough.
It's night, there are no more buses. We are sleeping now, let the baby cry or cry. Early in the morning, around six, the bus arrives. Things are being loaded, everyone has their place, we are silent, waiting on the side. Some grandmothers spread themselves out, sitting in two places. There was also a doctor and five or six volunteers from the Democratic Party from Belgrade, I guess. One of the journalists was also there and they talked to us, took pictures of us. I'm not comfortable. I feel redundant again. Those from Plitvice know each other. I only talked to those grandmothers about veins. They praised you two for how good you are, how obedient you are, they cursed their sisters-in-law, and in fact, those children were like that because both their parents were there, they were penniless, they don't know what's going on, they don't care about the war and running away.
Closed in the bus, stale air, hot. Some rotten milk stinks, people stink, they don't have anything to wash for days, lots of children, whining, whining. Now I realize how nice it was on the trailer. We were alone, outdoors...
We started when Maya was sick and sick. The doctor came: "Give her to eat breadcrumbs, give her to drink salt water." As she swallowed the salt water, she began to gag, vomit, vomit. Oh, what did you need Vesna? Why didn't you sit peacefully on that trailer... Then she calmed down, then she was hungry, hot, her hand was itchy in a cast, you were pushed somewhere. We suffered more that day than the entire trip.
***
All Friday we travel by bus to Belgrade. The same goes, then stops. Another bridge is waiting, Pavlović. The bottleneck is slow to cross. In Serbia, cauldrons, kettles, cooked food, roasted chickens await wherever we stop. They share everything for nothing. Crowded people, they take everything that is brought before them, they carry a chicken in each hand, they don't know where to go with it anymore. You say: "Mom, would I go to the line too?" Nowhere! What a chicken. There is something to eat.
I watch them almost fight and I think to myself: is it all in that roast chicken? Can that one chicken replace everything that lasted four years and that we lost? Is it just a matter of eating now? I guess it's that unconscious human instinct, the drive not to stay hungry because you know you don't have anything left, to stock up, to have something for later. Then I look at you and feel sorry. I say: "Come on, go, if you really want." How did you come, and it's gone. They shared everything... Maja nothing. That plaster hung on her, tired from vomiting, yellow in the face, tilted her head, folded over.
Volunteers approach, talk to us, ask where we are from, how we got there, did you break your arm on the way, they simply talk to you. They ask what we had. We had everything. We had no electricity and no money, but we had food. We could never recover from hunger. They worked all day long. Before the war, we built a house in Glina and during the war we covered it so that it wouldn't collapse. We had everything ready to fix it inside, but we didn't get there. All materials, materials, devices, equipment, everything was bought before the war and was waiting to be installed. I didn't know then what the situation was like in Serbia and that they suffered more than us because of that inflation.
The volunteers then say that we should go to the "Park" hotel, that we will have a little rest there. I explain to them that I am not with the others, that I have my own goal, that I am going to Zemun, that I have had enough of everything.
Everything has failed me, everyone has betrayed me, I have no more ideals. We lost the war. You don't have a job, you don't have a house, you don't have anything, you're not with your family, and I lost all that because I lost the war. First, no one asked me if I wanted to go to war, and then I lost the war because no one supported us. During those four years of war, we all looked at Serbia, at Milosevic, as I don't know what. We thought they would be right behind us. Karadzic will be behind us. Everyone was thrashing, talking "we will, we will"...
In the end, everyone let it all fall. Where are those sacrifices in vain? You are defeated, in every sense you are defeated. You lost! In the literal meaning of the word - you lost. You have nothing. You failed... And that one is running after the roast chicken. Do you understand? Other people saw it differently. They brought out plates with goulash and paprikash in front of us, they ate everything and took away the spoons and everything alive, and then the next person has nothing to eat...
***
In the end, we didn't come in front of that "Park" hotel, but in front of some hospital, or something. Yes, there was a park full of trees. There was an infestation of scabies, I remember. Those beetles, caterpillars were falling on us from the leaves, from the trees. We are waiting there to see what will happen. Reporter of the sea. Sikaju Maya.
I go there to ask if I can use the phone. I give them Ana's phone number, Duško, her husband, your uncle, answered. "Where are you?" I ask where we are, he takes a taxi and we go from there...
THE HARDEST PART OF THE STORY: That evening, at Studio B, we saw a story about how the "Park" hotel did not want to accept the refugees from the bus, I guess because it was organized by the Democratic Party, or something. We see Maja standing in that park, holding a sod of some cakes and chewing, I tied a palm tree on her head.
So, we arrived on the evening of Friday, August 11. Seven days after we left, yes. It was all laughable compared to what awaited us…
In the beginning, we lived on the market, nine of us in 24 square meters. You have nothing. Everything you need you have to go buy. There is no cellar, no barn, no nest, no chicken coop, no garden, no cow. Pero must not appear because the Arkans are arrested and taken to Eastern Slavonia, Vukovar and that. Glory, Saint Panteleimon, was ours on August 9. Then I said that in the future we will celebrate her wherever we are. That was not done there.
Let's take a walk around the new neighborhood. Maya will not leave the house. Not even to move. He won't go on the bus, he's afraid. He cries on the train. She barely got used to school after that. When the bell rings, the children start screaming, and she just squeezes my hand. None of the parents take their children to school, only me.
Grandma Miljka, Pera's grandmother, comforted us that at least we got into the tractor and drove to Belgrade. In the last war, she crossed the whole of Bosnia on foot, barefoot, in the middle of winter, and "here I am still alive", she said.
***
You can hear Milošević saying on TV that we left Krajina, that we didn't fight. Maybe it was really like that somewhere, maybe it was in Knin, but I told you at the beginning, people on bicycles with guns went to register when the fighting started from all sides. Pero left without a word!
Until '99, when they rushed from Kosovo, before the bombing, I thought about the fact that we survived. Then I saw that they went through even worse than us, and were refugees in their native country.
***
Then the information just comes. There is no Veljek. To this day, they haven't found him.
Then somehow I got in touch with my own. They are all alive. Baba Stana did not want to leave Milakar and stayed with Evica Šikanjska.
However, uncle Dragan, who is now in Topola, was the last to pass through the village and forcefully loaded them onto a cart and took them away. In Žirovac, the column had already been cut off and the horses scattered from the shells, the uncle managed to escape somehow, and the grandmother was left alone in front of the army. And Evica was always wise and somehow more advanced than all the other peasant women. She also knew how to show the children things for school, whatever they didn't know. She had a daughter in Sisak and carried a picture of her granddaughter with her. When the army surrounded them, not only the two of them but the column where they were, a young soldier approached them and Evica showed him the picture, and he said: "Don't be afraid, grandma, nothing. Your granddaughter and I went to school together." Later, the Red Cross took them over, I guess, still your uncle Dušan. She and Evica did not feel like running away from home even in front of the Swabians. They told us how one, also a young Švab, saved that very uncle Dragan from a burning house when he was a baby, and when they wanted to run away, he shouted at them: "Nichts Bosnia! Zurück, zurück!
Đukići, the teachers, also wrote to us. He also has Tihana's letter to you. She is now in Italy, in a small town near the border.
Grandfather came one week after us. How much did that old man work afterwards. In the bakery in Čumić... We all worked, but he especially. When he was dying, you remember, when he was insanely sick, he kept asking us to take him home. We explained to him in vain that he was at home, that it was his bed, that his flashlight was there, he always had that flashlight with him, that grandma was in the next room... "I know everything, but take me home."
***
In the 11th month, we went to visit my brother in Žabare, near Velika Plana. The militia did not allow entry into Belgrade when the refugees arrived. Only if you say exactly who you're going to. He went as he was directed and ended up in Žabari. Some Selendra, one room, dirt floor, Polish night... And now we are sitting there, talking. There are still some people from us there and one woman tells how she was passing through Klasnić and how a man told her to go to Slavko Ljiljko. She is the first one who came to us when it started. A green car with children... We were speechless.
Yes... It is possible! It is. That's what I've told you a hundred times, to be careful how you behave, because you never know who you're going to run into. How would I show that woman if I wasn't good to her. I forgot what they are called... Do you see how life takes you back and gives you a chance to correct a mistake or show you how to behave?
***
We are now talking about what happened 20 years ago. Each man from that column has his own story and each generation has its own experience of everything. We should thank this country as a country for accepting us and for giving you the chance to get an education and become your own people. And what does this story of ours mean when it is actually an everyday story today? Only other people are involved: refugees, immigrants, asylum seekers, as they are called. It doesn't matter if he is Muslim, Albanian, from Afghanistan, Syria or wherever. He also left his home and crossed so many lands hungry, thirsty, dirty, smelly, lice-ridden, all kinds of things. And he is looking for his place under the stars.
Every year August comes and here we have "Storms" again. Just as in those years they shouted "we will, we will" in front of the post office, so now they are collecting points and promoting themselves. Again someone makes a fool of you and tells you "there's still a little bit to go to the bridge"...
Who cares about you and me? But we managed. No one was killed, thank God. Do you know how many people are still living in reception centers? As far as I'm concerned, we're doing well, and just as we didn't brag about the bad, so we won't brag about the good either. But what good is that when you know that the parks are full of poverty and misery? If these people celebrate, make a parade, these people declare a day of mourning and what do I know, let's do something else. You should light a candle for the deceased, remember them, but you should also go to those people in the park and give them a bottle of water so that he doesn't buy it himself, let him save his money. There are organizations, there are young people who do that. Let's show the world that we know what an accident is. What does it mean to me to declare a day of mourning? What? I regretted everything.
