This afternoon, after lying motionless for hours, I decided I’d had enough for the day. I moved my head fractionally back behind the tree so that I could crawl out of sight and rest. There was a puff of air, a crack as a bullet embedded itself in a tree just a few feet behind me. I froze. I remained low, hugging the ground, my face in the grass. I watched a tiny insect crawl over the obstacles of leaves and twigs that blocked its way. Although scarcely breathing, I was thinking quite dispassionately about how that was the closest I’d ever been to being dead. I must have avoided death by a millisecond or so. I even put a hand up tentatively to the side of my head to check if there was any blood.
As I lay there, I remembered the man who’d walked up to me in the camp a few days earlier. ‘So, Englishman, you are still alive?’ he’d said.
The man had stood before me, his hands in his trouser pockets, legs apart, looking down on me as if I was some trapped animal he’d stumbled across on a tour of his estate and which he hadn’t expected to survive another night.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’ I was sitting by myself on an upturned packing chest waiting for Santo, who’d gone across to the kitchen area to collect his food.
‘Not for long. You won’t disappoint me for long.’ It was said matter-of-factly, without any sign of malice.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He stared glumly, at my chest rather than my face, possibly trying to work out in his own mind why I hadn’t yet been killed, then turned away without answering my question. I almost went after him, but decided not to waste my time. It was for him to worry about, the fact I wasn’t yet a corpse, not me.
But now he’d almost been proved right.
I was a little surprised by how relaxed I felt about this incident. I wondered where the shot came from and how long the sniper had been watching me. I imagined he must have seen me move into position – over three hours ago, because I’d have been hard to spot once I was in position. I also wondered if the sniper had been aiming specifically at me, if, as Santo once suggested, my signature had now been recognised? Possibly the shot had been totally random: I was simply another enemy sniper. I thought that was more likely. I was more concerned I wouldn’t be able to move safely for at least an hour, possibly until dusk.
Back at the Vraca camp, when I mentioned to Santo that I’d almost been killed, he told me to be more careful. I was moved by his concern, but only briefly. A second later he added, ‘If you are shot I will probably lose that army coat I gave you.’
A minute later he was telling me word had come through that the Croatians had launched an attack on Serb forces in the Krajina region of Croatia, south-west of Sarajevo. ‘There has been a ceasefire down there for several months, but now it seems to be over. This is good, this is what we want. The only reason people arrange ceasefires is so they can break them, and now that has happened we can get back to fighting again.’