News I Simply Could Not Comprehend

“Talk to me Agi. What is it?”

My father was crying.

“I’m sorry locki but you won’t be sleeping here tonight.”

The bowl of Baklava I had been holding fell to the floor.

“What?”

“Do you think I’m going to send you back there?” he said, “what sort of father do you think I am?”

I was speechless at first. I couldn’t bear the thought of not spending a night in my old bed. My father was full of apologies but told me he had planned my escape for several weeks and it had taken him many months to get the money together for my release.

“It’s all about the money,” he said. “The spying charges were nonsense, I’d be surprised if they questioned you more than once or twice. War creates murderers and profiteers. Wherever there is conflict you’ll find a man ready to torture, rape and kill in the name of the cause, and to line his pocket with a quick easy buck.”

I could hardly speak. Agi had it spot on, it was always about the money and it had been the same with Kupi. Men play-acting as soldiers pretending they had a just reason and all along they were lining their own pockets, parading in the streets as heroes and freedom fighters. What was it Brian had once said to my father?

War is undertaken for the acquisition of wealth. There are no exceptions.

Agi was on his knees by the sofa as I found my voice.

“I’m not going Agi, I’m staying here and I’m going to bed.”

He was shaking his head. He reached for my hands and held them tight,

“I can hardly walk,” I said, “how do you expect me to escape and run again? I was strong when you sent me to Pristina, but look at me now.”

He wasn’t listening.

“I have organised your escape. You are going to your uncle in England.”

“I can’t do this Agi, I won’t do it.”

My mother sat on the sofa beside me. “Listen to your father Laura.”

I was beginning to get angry with them. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be like. I wanted to climb the stairs to my room and take a wash in my bathroom with the smell of soap I had been familiar with. Then change into those soft pyjamas that were under the pillow, climb under the duvet, pull it up to my chin and sigh as the warmth of the duck feathers enveloped me. Within minutes I’d be in another land, a different place, an altogether beautiful place that no one could stop me from going too. It had been almost magical up to now, why had they spoiled it? I turned towards my father.

“Then we can do it in the morning.”

“We can’t,” he said. “The soldiers will come and...”

He didn’t finish the sentence and I realised what he was saying. I looked at him and then to Nani and then back to him.

“You’re not coming with me?”

He shook his head.

“I won’t go without you.”

I cried harder than I ever had, I was almost hysterical as I lay back on the sofa and covered my eyes with my hands.

I was praying with my hands clasped together.

“I wanted one night with them, just one night dear God, one night in my own bed and I prayed and I asked you for that and you’ve let me down, you’ve let me down again. Why do you do this to me?”

My father was getting agitated.

“We will need to go in thirty minutes.”

Still I argued and protested and asked him why they couldn’t come with me. He said something about the money, said that it was impossible. I always listened to my father as he had a way with words and was always very persuasive but I was fighting him like I’d never fought him before. My mother was sitting on the floor packing a bag for me and then it hit me like a blow from a sledgehammer, a thought far worse than anything I had been through, a vision a thousand times worse than any torture I had ever gone through.

My lip was trembling and I began to cry as I blurted out the words.

“But they’ll kill you.”

My mother looked down at the bag and threw a few more things in as my father stood and walked back through to the kitchen ignoring me. I knew what these men were like and my father had brokered a deal. They would be furious if they found I’d fled.

I almost threw myself from the sofa and ran through to the kitchen.

“I won’t go. They’ll kill you.”

Father was standing by the sink washing a cup or a dish with his back to me. He turned slowly.

“I know they’ll kill us so you had better say goodbye to your Mother.”

He held out his hands and I ran to him burying my face in his chest.

“This will be the last time you’ll see us,” he whispered before kissing the top of my head.

I argued with my father right up until the time I left the house but I was wasting my time. I told my parents that life would not be worth living without them but they would not listen. They were sacrificing their own lives to save mine and at that point I realised how much I meant to them. This was a love that no words could begin to describe and it was so powerful to me that I found a determination from somewhere, a determination that told me I had to win this final battle. If that’s what my parents truly wanted then I would make it to England and I would survive and I would beat my tormentors otherwise their sacrifice would have meant nothing.

I told my mother she was the best friend a daughter could ever wish to have and we held each other for so long. Agi kept telling me that we had to leave. When I eventually let go of my mother she collapsed onto the ground in the garden and she put her hands together and looked skywards.

“Dear God, why have you punished us so much?” she said as the tears stained the ground.

I asked myself the same question.

It was pitch black as we made our way across the fields at the front of the house. I remember it being very flat and the moon was bright with millions of stars lighting our path through the short grass. I could hear the sound of the wild dogs barking in the distance, the dogs with no owners who lived in the mountains.

In due course we crossed the main motorway to Pristina, thankfully it was almost deserted and then after a twenty minute walk we crossed the main Serbia to Macedonia road. Agi led me a little further and we walked close to a river and up ahead on the road I could make out the shape of a truck despite the blackness of the night. The main lights were out and I could see the faint glow of the parking lights.

Father stopped.

“Wait there.”

He walked around the truck and disappeared from view, coming back just a couple of minutes later.

“I need to put you in the truck now,” he said.

I wrapped my arms around him and ran my hands through his thick hair.

“I love you Agi, I will make you so proud of me.”

He was kissing me and crying, telling me he couldn’t be more proud of me as it was.

“You are the best daughter a father could ever have hoped for.”

“You are not going to die Agi, I know it.”

“Perhaps not,” he said, “but we will always be there with you locki. If you think of us hard enough we will always be there with you. Promise me you will remember that.”

“I will Agi, I will.”

He walked me round to the passenger seat of the truck and opened the door for me. He hugged and kissed me one last time. He smelled of Agi, my beautiful Agi and I knew that the smell would never leave me no matter what. As the truck pulled away, I looked in the side mirror for one last look at my father but it was too dark and I couldn’t see him and I felt somehow as if I had been cheated.

I could see the lights of Veliki Trnovac over to the west and I watched carefully as they gradually disappeared from view. I had never felt so alone in the world, I felt like an orphan with no roots. I remembered my father’s final words. I closed my eyes tight and within a few seconds my beautiful parents were with me once again.

Agi had been right.