Prologue

Veliki Trnovac 1998

I found my parents in the basement of our house. I was so relieved. I was convinced they were dead.

“What is it?” I said. “Why are you living down here?”

I never got a reply to my question nor did I receive the sort of welcome I expected. Where was the ‘Big Greek Wedding’ kind of love and almost over the top drama and outpourings of affection that I had been used to? I had been held captive for many months, I had not been able to get any form of communication to them and here I was safe and sound and back home but there were no hugs and no tears of joy from my parents, no kisses or smiles. Instead my father ranted at me about how stupid I was to come back and my mother begged me to run for the hills.

“Go Laura,” my father said. “Run as fast as you can, go back to where you came from, go anywhere but get out of here.”

My father continued. He said the soldiers had come looking for me many times and he’d told them I’d gone. They didn’t believe him and had beaten and tortured him and abused my mother. They had returned again and again and he said he was lucky he had not been thrown in prison or worse.

“They’ll be back,” my mother whimpered through the tears.

Her words were instantly prophetic because as soon as she had uttered them I heard the rumble of a truck from the garden of our home and just a few seconds later the vibration from the heavy vehicle reverberated around the basement area. I heard their heavy boots on the kitchen floor above us as we sat huddled together frozen in terror. I put two and two together - someone had been watching the house. The soldiers knew the house well and they found me within minutes as they kicked and punched me up the stone steps that led upstairs. My father was trying to fight with them, begging them to leave me but he was no match for their youth and aggression as they hit him with their rifle butts. My last overriding memory was of my poor parents lying in a heap in the garden, holding onto each other with tears running down their dirty, bloodied faces. I remember being frightened and feared because of what had just happened I might never see them again. I consoled myself with a small grain of comfort that at least they hadn’t been shot in front of me but I blamed myself because although my name meant ‘the gift’ I now knew I was not a blessing after all but surely a curse because to have this happen to you not once, but twice in your lifetime was surely the only explanation.

The soldiers took me to a warehouse and I was led to a sparsely furnished room and made to sit on a chair. A big brute of a man walked into the room. He smiled at me and for a second I thought he might listen to me, perhaps a few questions and he’d allow me to return to my parents. He walked towards me, leaned over and grinned. He then took a step back and punched me full force in the face. It felt as if I had been hit by a train as the chair catapulted backwards and I sprawled onto the hard floor.

“You are a fucking spy you bitch. We’ve been watching you and we know all about you. You’ve been to Kosovo. You’ve been spotted.”

I dragged myself back into the chair and straining through the blood and tears made eye contact with him, mistakenly believing that if he looked into my eyes he would see the truth.

I could feel blood in my mouth and loose teeth as I begged him to listen to me.

“I’m not a spy, I was kidnapped by a Kosovan gang. I have lived in Serbia all my life. I am eighteen years old. How could I possibly be a spy?”

Between the tears I attempted to tell him the story from start to finish. I told him the truth as my father had always taught me and sincerely believed that the soldier would see that I was not lying. My thoughts drifted back to my childhood. My mother had often said that the way of truth and love always wins through and my father knew instantly when I lied and when I told the truth. He was never wrong. It’s a gift all men have surely?

Not this time it seemed. The soldier punched me again and again as I begged for mercy and he kicked me all around the room. The interrogation went on for some hours and then the door opened. I was pleased to see someone else enter the room but my joy was short lived. Two men approached me and began to tear at my clothing. They hauled my jacket off and then the second man produced some sort of metal contraption that he plugged into the wall and after just a few seconds it glowed red.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“The farmers use it to brand cattle,” he said. “But today we will use it to extract the truth from a spy bitch... a Kosovan whore.”

They were laughing at me as I begged them to believe me. The second soldier passed the branding iron to my interrogator while he lunged at me and threw me to the floor. I struggled for all I was worth but it was no good as he held his full bodyweight on top of me. He pulled at the belt buckle to my jeans as I tried to kick out at him. He pulled at each leg of the trousers with little effort and within a few seconds I lay on the dirty floor in just my knickers. Despite the iron contraption being more than a metre from me I could feel the intensity of the heat from it as he held it over me. I was struggling and fighting and felt two hands clamp hard on my right leg as the sensation of heat grew ever stronger and I began to tremble as my whole body began to perspire. My interrogator held the branding iron just millimetres from my calf and then pushed down hard as it came into contact with my skin. Despite the hurt and suffering I’d been through in Kosovo, nothing could have prepared me for the pain that seemed to go on and on forever. I remember screaming hard and then a misty vapour drifted up to my face. I recalled the smell of cooking meat just before I passed out.

When I regained consciousness I had been transferred to some sort of prison cell and I remember thinking that they knew I had been telling the truth but it didn’t seem to matter. My cell was not so much a cell as a small broom cupboard. It was big enough to stand up but not big enough to lie down straight. There were no lights and the floor was concrete and deathly cold and I was aware of something scurrying around on the floor. And yet I was so tired, more tired than I had ever been in my life and I wanted to ignore everything around me and close my eyes. My previous period in captivity, the torture, interrogation and living constantly with the fear of death as well as the journey from Pristina had taken their toll and miraculously I fell asleep and sleep I did. I slept like a day old baby.

When I awoke I wanted to go to sleep again. I wanted to believe I was in my own personal nightmare and I convinced myself that when I opened my eyes again it would all be over and I’d realise I’d been dreaming. I closed my eyes and prayed for sleep to take over me but it was a hopeless cause. I opened my eyes and as they became accustomed to what little light there was, they filled up with tears as the horror of where I was and what had happened became apparent. Pain wracked my body, my bones and muscles ached and the pain on my calf kicked in too as it throbbed and stung as if a hundred wasps had attacked me and my whole being screamed for relief from the agony I was suffering. I felt at my swollen mouth and took a sharp intake of breath as I realised some of my teeth were missing.

But the worst bit of all was when I realised I had been taken prisoner for a second time. I was in a hellhole; there was no other way to describe it, a living nightmare that wasn’t going to go away. And so the only thing I could do was pray. I prayed to my God with everything I had to lift me from my dungeon hell and get me out of there.

“Please God,” I whispered, “if you are testing my faith then surely I have passed. Please God get me out of here... please God take me back to my parents and let this be over.”

I was crying hard and the tears dripped onto the hard concrete floor.

“Please God answer my prayers, I don’t want to spend one more night in this terrible place.”

Perhaps God didn’t hear my prayers that day, because although I didn’t know it at the time, that hellhole would be my home for six long months.