Under Pressure. Faruk Šehić

remember.

      * * *

      For a morning that gives us the illusion of a fresh start…

      Arrow-like rays of sunshine came in through the window

      of the room above the Café Hajduk.

      It was pleasant inside.

      Warmth caught on the tips of my toes.

      I put on fresh white boxers.

      I took some notes and coins out of my jacket pockets.

      I opened the window and reached out.

      A fresh breeze blew into my face.

      And that was no illusion.

      I counted the marks.

      The morning was made for that.

      * * *

      21 April 1992 (Tuesday), at 18:15, war started in my town.

      In the garden of Café Casablanca I was drinking Sarajevsko beer.

      I was wearing the latest model of Adidas trainers.

      A pair of Levi’s.

      A down jacket.

      I hid at my uncle’s some thirty metres from the kafana.

      He gave me a .357 Magnum and sixty rounds.

      Which I put in my trouser pockets.

      Some bullets had hollow points.

      Those were the dum-dum bullets.

      Shells and projectiles of various calibres were the soundtrack of the first day of war.

      I saw a shooting star crash down across a piece of sky between the roofs of two

      houses.

      I made a wish.

      For the war to end.

      And to make up with my girlfriend.

      * * *

      ’Ow much money ’ave you got?

      Ten marks.

      I’ve got five.

      We can get pissed as newts.

      * * *

      We’re drinking beer from the bottle.

      The floor is made of marble.

      It radiates cold.

      It’s sultry outside.

      Nobody’s wearing a watch.

      Because time is utterly pointless.

      * * *

      It’s wonderful being a refugee.

      Means you’re a fifteenth-class citizen.

      And nobody knows you.

      You can take a piss in the middle of the street.

      And go on your way.

      The passers-by will say: ‘What an oik, a proper savage!’

      ‘Why didn’t they kill the lot of you?’

      ‘Why didn’t you fight?’

      ‘Cowards!’

      ‘Cunts!’

      ‘Have you no balls?’

      Only sometimes the 155 mm howitzer shells whizzing across the sky remind them that there is no such thing as deep rear in this war.

      * * *

      A packet of Gales is 17 marks.

      Partners are 20.

      HBs cost 25.

      Skopsko beer is 10 marks.

      Ćevapi meatballs 20.

      A sack of flour 1000 marks.

      A kilo of coffee 330.

      We’re surrounded from all sides.

      But, there’s a substitute for everything.

      Quince leaf can be smoked and costs zero marks.

      Roasted rye coffee is a mark a kilo.

      A bottle of reeky rakia is 10 marks.

      Ćevapi are a luxury anyway.

      Maize bread is tasty and cheap.

      We’re still surrounded from all sides.

      * * *

      At six in the morning my mother plucked dewy pigweed in the nearby dales.

      She brought the harvest home in her raised apron.

      For dinner we had blanched pigweed with garlic, pigweed soup and pigweed salad.

      I’m full of iron.

      As strong as Popeye the Sailor.

      * * *

      I loll about on a grey humanitarian aid sponge mattress.

      Ants are marching up the wall in wide columns.

      I’m popping 10-milligram diazepams.

      Sleeping twenty hours at a time.

      In my room I practise walking with crutches.

      My wounded foot still hurts.

      I’m reading T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

      In the guest room Greta and Nađa are playing solitaire.

      Mum is fiddling about with our wood-burning stove.

      Dad is away on the frontline.

      Behind our refugee house Mum planted onions, peppers, tomatoes.

      We’re waiting for the garden to produce produce.

      In front of our doorstep, Humpy Horsie is happily barking.

      The sun is at its zenith.

      * * *

      From the last dugout to the left they wired us that Osman Jakušović had been KIA.

      A sniper hit him in the forehead, by the hairline.

      It was impossible to reach the farthest dugout on Padež hill.

      That night they brought him down on a stretcher.

      He woke up from cardiac arrest.

      He mumbled netherwords.

      Our hair stood on end as we listened to the dead man talking.

      They took him to the rear.

      He died in hospital after three days.

      I never got to know him well.

      I don’t remember his face.

      He was a tall, muscular lad from the village of Stijena.

      * * *

      10 May 1992 (Friday)

      Nothing has happened to me today.

      * * *

      The machinegun barks like a dog.

      I’ve plucked a shirtful of cherries.

      Bullets whizz above incandescent roofs.

      They say a sniper’s been at it from the Old Citadel.

      Here and there, 60 and 82 mm mortars operate.

      From time to time a tank shoots a shell.

      A rocket launcher lets out a volley.

      I shudder if something explodes nearby.

      Shudders creep up the spine.

      Palms sweat.

      I’m