A minibus was waiting for me at Belgrade airport. Four passengers were already on board: volunteers who’d just flown in from Germany. They greeted me with silent stares and an unsmiling indifference that bordered on hostility. They were fridge-like, so tall and wide I was reminded of the sailing ship in the bottle trick, and wondered how the driver had squeezed them all into his vehicle. No one spoke on our journey to Pale. The town, situated up in the mountains about ten miles south-east of Sarajevo, is the Serb seat of government in Bosnia and the place from which the siege is directed. The narrow cobbled streets were a chaos of rushing, shouting officials, army trucks and a few sour-faced locals. We were told this level of activity in Pale was unusual, and due to Mladic meeting with Serbia’s military and political leaders to discuss their endgame. I immediately worried that they were about to sign a peace treaty.
About twenty of us, many of who I guessed were from within Yugoslavia, had lunch in a deserted school hall. A plate of five different kinds of meat and one vegetable – raw onions – was put down in front of us. The only bread on the table was salted. Those around me ripped into the meat like animals – or maybe just Serbians? I was the only person who didn’t look too enthusiastic about the fare. After lunch we were kitted out, briefed, signed some declaration of loyalty to the people of Serbia, and then provided with a Steyr SSG. When they put the rifle in my hands, I felt nothing. I was surprised. I somehow thought this would be a defining moment in my life, that I’d feel like a new man or something, but I didn’t. It was disappointing. I wondered if I’d feel so indifferent if I shot someone.
We spent the night in temporary barracks, and the next morning were driven in the back of an army truck to a cold, windswept ridge about one thousand feet above Sarajevo. On one side of the Pale road, overlooking the suburb of Grbavica, lies the Vraca memorial park, dedicated to the Partisan liberators of Sarajevo in the Second World War. An official with a clipboard informed us, as we climbed down from the truck, that it was from this hill, in 1945, that the campaign to win back the city was started. I think he was trying to make a point.
Our camp, along with a handful of houses and a scattering of small trees and bushes, is on the other side of the Pale road, nestled in a hollow beneath the summit of Mount Trebevic and hidden from the town to the north. Higher up the mountain, near the summit, is a forest.
Every now and again I heard a deep and distant boom. I knew this was gunfire, but no more than that. Now I was excited.
I met Santo as soon as I stepped down from the army truck. He told me he shouldn’t even have been in camp that day, so I was lucky to meet him. That was how he put it to me later: ‘You were lucky to meet me.’ He was laughing as he said it, but I could see he meant it. He shook hands with all the new arrivals, shouting ‘Welcome!’ many times and slapping everyone on the back, but he adopted me. ‘I saw you had a book in your hands when you arrived in the village, so I knew you were intelligent. I am tired of stupid people. Anyway, I do not like Germans, even when they come and fight for us, and fellow Yugoslavs do not interest me. But an Englishman, that is different. You are the eccentrics of the world.’ He finished this tortuous, rapidly spoken welcome by asking: ‘What are you reading?’
‘It’s a novel I picked up at the airport.’
He grabbed the book from my hand. ‘Martin Amis? He is English, I suppose.’ I nodded. ‘I do not read novels, I do not like them,’ he said, dismissing the millions of books since Pamela with great decisiveness. ‘Already my life is exciting enough.’ He thrust it back into my hands. I didn’t bother to say anything, but wondered if he was any different to the stupid people he’d just mentioned.
‘Follow me.’ He walked off. I looked across to where the others who’d accompanied me from Pale were being addressed by the official with the clipboard. ‘Shouldn’t I speak to him?’ I called after Santo. He stopped. ‘You want to live in a tent or a house this winter? If you talk to him, you will live in a tent.’ I followed him. ‘No one cares where you stay or what you do,’ he said as we left the road and trudged across what could have been either a snow-covered field or a garden, ‘We are an easygoing people.’ If Serbs are easygoing, I thought, what does that make everyone else?
We climbed over collapsed fences and a semi-demolished wall, and walked past houses that had once belonged to Muslims and Croats before they were expelled by the Serbs. There was no one to be seen anywhere. Some of the houses had obviously been shops once upon a time; now their windows were smashed and their contents looted. Most had been stripped bare. In a few I could see makeshift beds and tables, and the glow of bare light bulbs. The novel-hater disappeared through a doorway, and I followed. It was a square room with a dirt floor. Against the walls were four bunks. There was one small table and a chair that scarcely looked strong enough to sit on – nothing else. I had an unpleasant sense of déjà vu, my London prison cell of a few months earlier coming suddenly to mind. Santo took my bag and threw it onto one of the beds. ‘You can sleep there. There are three of us in here, but this bed is free. It belonged to a man who was killed. You are lucky, my friend. That is the only reason you are living in a house and not a tent – because he is dead. I will tell Papo you are here.’
We left the house and walked further from the memorial park until we came to a camp. There were around twenty small tents scattered amongst the trees. I saw some of the new recruits being allocated tents. I realised there had to be others elsewhere in the memorial park, and Santo later told me there were temporary camps like this one all the way around the city, up in the hills. ‘But you will make this camp your home, the same as me.’
In front of the tents was an open space with a fire. Santo said that it was kept going all day and night, although during daylight hours it was only embers. Around the fire was an assortment of seats, blocks of cement, wooden boxes, barrels and logs that had been spared the flames. On one side of the clearing, furthest from the houses, at the edge of what appeared to be a small wood but could have been a forest, was an enormous pile of firewood. Apart from the new recruits moving into their tents, there were few people to be seen. It was like a school corridor during class time.
Santo led me to a long, prefabricated hut at the western end of the open space, which turned out to be the camp kitchen. Inside were a half-dozen dubious-looking individuals, peasants with stubborn, sly faces who looked like they’d long ago worked out how to get the better of every situation or person they ran into. They had a duplicitous, calculating look, as if they were weighing up the odds just as they weighed up the potatoes and meat they were now preparing for the evening meal. They eyed me suspiciously as one of their number started making the two cups of coffee requested by Santo.
While we waited, my self-elected friend leant over the counter and peered into a vast saucepan. ‘Hey, is this what we’re eating this evening?’ he shouted.
‘It is,’ replied the large individual preparing our coffees.
‘What is it?’
‘You know what it is, Santo.’
‘Tell me what it is, fat man.’
‘It’s stew,’ and I could see the rolls of stubbled fat beneath the kitchen hand’s chin start to wobble with mirth. I wondered if he found his stew funny, or Santo.
‘It’s stew, is it?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘But we had stew last night, and the night before that, and the night before that. We’ve had stew every night I can remember.’
The men in the kitchen were now grinning – in a leering fashion. ‘That’s the truth of it,’ said the fat man.
‘So why don’t you cook something else? Why don’t you give us a choice, you unshaven pig?’
‘You do have a choice, you fucking ratbag.’
‘I have a choice, do I?’ Eyeballing his adversary across the steaming saucepan.
‘You do. You can fucking take it, you son of a city whore, or you can fucking leave it.’
The men behind the counter laughed. Not in the least fazed, Santo laughed also.
We took our coffees and went and sat by the campfire. He told me how his home had once been in the city to which he was now laying siege.
‘I am fighting to return home. My wife and boy are now in Belgrade. Look.’ He produced the soldier’s obligatory creased photograph from inside his army coat. ‘He’s nine. Happily, he is too young to fight in this war. He will be able to study and get himself a good job when he is older. I love him to death.’
‘And your wife?’
‘I do not love her to death. She is a bitch. It is better that she is not around – more peaceful.’
At that moment a man shuffled across the grass towards where we were sitting. Despite the cold he was wearing only a pair of trousers and an open shirt. His huge stomach was covered in thick black hair, which he scratched with one hand. In his other hand there was a bottle from which he took regular sips, like a baby at the breast who wants the reassurance of knowing his source of comfort hasn’t gone away. He hadn’t shaved for days. His face drooped – everything drooped, the bags beneath his eyes, his jowls and chin, his shoulders and chest and, most noticeable of all, his stomach. I guessed that he’d just got out of bed and was suffering from a serious hangover. He and Santo talked briefly, the man staring rudely at me, but saying nothing. He half raised one leg and let out a fart. Without further comment, he shuffled back where he came from.
‘He’s going to work now,’ said Santo.
‘To work?’
‘Yes. To snipe.’
I wondered how he would be able to set his sights. As if reading my thoughts, Santo said, ‘Everyone is drunk when they shoot. You will be too. It is easier.’
After our coffee, we walked back to the Vraca memorial park to see the battery. As a precaution against anyone in the city attempting to bomb the battery and hitting our camp instead, the two are sited well apart. There’s also the noise factor. Although the gun isn’t fired much after dark, it’s still fired – with the intention of interrupting the sleep of those in the city. My guide said it makes a considerable noise, so it was placed over a rise, hidden amongst the trees, near an old fort from the Austro-Hungarian era.
There, soldiers manning a Browning heavy machine gun were sitting on empty ammunition boxes and smoking, waiting for orders to fire. They were unshaven, black with dirt, sloppily dressed and, apart from when they were cursing and joking amongst themselves, reticent to the point of rudeness. They were riff-raff (I like that word, its symmetry and pendular resonance, the switch of just one letter for another). I was reminded of Wellington’s comment, along the lines of, I don’t know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God they frighten me. I wouldn’t have trusted them with anything, that’s for sure, and my point was proven when Santo told me they frequently let off a few rounds into the city every now and again, whether or not they’d received orders to do so.
‘Usually,’ he said, ‘we shell the city for a few days, then for a little time we do nothing. The enemy does not understand what is going on. It frightens them: “Why aren’t they shelling us any more, what is happening?” they ask themselves. They wonder if perhaps we have left and gone home, that’s what they hope. Then we start the shelling again. It’s totally random, to keep them guessing.’
While we were at the battery, the Browning was fired (for my benefit, I had the feeling), the bullets ripping through the air in a deafening explosion of sound, like a stream of sperm erupting from the burning barrel of the gun. One young man – no, creature – cavorted around as if he was doing St Vitus’s dance, at times bent double, laughing and shrieking, a hand in the pocket of his baggy camouflaged trousers jerking himself off. Santo dug me in the ribs, grinning broadly, concerned that I’d missed the spectacle. The other soldiers ignored their friend, possibly having witnessed his excitement many times before, more interested in looking at Santo and me and studying our reactions. Some of them were smiling, but only with their mouths, not their eyes.
When they finished, Santo added: ‘The other thing they do is lob a mortar into the centre of the town. It may injure a couple of people, and they cry out for help. Others rush out of their homes and shelters to care for them. A few minutes later, our boys lob another mortar onto exactly the same spot. That second one is more effective.’
I made a mental note of all I was seeing and hearing as we headed back into the village. I was congratulating myself on discovering a goldmine.
Santo interrupted my thoughts. ‘Tell me, why are you here, Milan?’
‘My father’s Serbian.’ I thought that was the simplest explanation.
‘That is a good enough reason. So you are not one of those who are just here to kill people? That is why many people come to this city: so they can shoot their fellow human beings. They think it is more fun, better sport, than shooting wild pig or wolves. They get bored shooting those.’
I changed the subject. ‘What I don’t understand, Santo, is why don’t we march into Sarajevo and take it by force. Why stay up here in the hills?’
‘We would lose too many of our people if we did that. The Serbs have never been good foot soldiers. We are only good with artillery. Also, the UN is down there, in Sarajevo – French, Canadian, Dutch and your British troops, too. They would make things difficult – awkward. Anyway, the Bosnians will surrender soon, so why should we bother? But now it is my turn to ask you something, Milan: why do we allow the UN to use the airport to bring relief into the city?’
‘Do they control the airport?’
‘They do. They keep it so they can fly in humanitarian aid, yet they will not allow the Bosnians in the city to use the airport to escape. So they are prolonging the war: feeding the enemy, but not helping them to leave the city. That is crazy if you ask me.’ He slapped me on the back and laughed. He has a staccato laugh, one that fails to convey happiness – huh, huh, huh, huh! Having a laugh that sounds like an extended burst from a machine gun strikes me as a bonus around here.
‘But there are many crazy things about this war, Milan, so why not one more?’
He then told me how the enemy had built a tunnel beneath the airport’s main runway. They finished it two years ago and it’s now the busiest route in the country, rumoured to have as many as four thousand travelling through it every day. ‘At some time you will be on duty to fire at these people who sprint from the cover of the earth like badgers.’ I asked him where they headed after they left the tunnel. ‘Either into the Sarajevo suburb of Butmir, or the other way, into so-called Free Bosnia, the part of Bosnia that has not yet fallen to our troops.’
We stopped for a few minutes on the way back to the camp and, like some private tour guide, Santo pointed down into the city at some of the places of interest. The Orthodox and Catholic cathedrals, a mosque and a synagogue were all within a few hundred yards of each other, and made me think of the city’s past reputation for tolerance and peaceful coexistence. He showed me the contrast between the old town to the east with its Islamic and Oriental influences, and the wide streets and grand buildings of the newer part of the city, dating from the Austro-Hungarian occupation at the end of the nineteenth century. From the many bridges across the Miljacka River I was able to work out which was the Latin, just downstream from the National Library, where the Serbian militant and student Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austrian throne, prompting Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia and so cause the outbreak of the First World War.
Sarajevo lay motionless and lifeless beneath its sound-stifling sheet of snow. It resembled a white tulip, the top edges of its opened petals being the mountain ridges encircling the town, its stamen, the buildings nestling at the centre. It huddled in the bottom of the valley, a cowering victim on its hands and knees, its face pressed into the mud and snow, waiting for its persecutors to rain further blows on its battered body. The buildings were funnelled, forced from the open plain in the west towards the rocky gorge and its rushing river, slashed into the steep mountainside to the east. On the slopes of the old town, beneath the old military fortress, the frost-covered roofs of the houses and the minarets of the mosques were piled upon each other as if in a desperate bid to escape their surroundings.
It all looked very promising.