Slavenka Drakulić - The Balkan Express - Fragments from the Other Side of War

Croatia has proved two things to the world. First, that the process of self-determination cannot be stopped, and it will be remembered for that. The second lesson, I’m afraid, is that self-determination has no price, and if it has no price it means that a human life has no value. People didn’t vote to lose their sons in the struggle for independence, but the independence stinks of death. A sweet, poignant smell of burned soil and rotten flesh saturates the air. It is rising from the battlefield, from roads and hospital rooms, from half-empty cities and deserted villages, from army camps and ditches, from the people themselves. One can sense it even in Zagreb. Going into the post-office or boarding a tram one smells this distinct, familiar odour as if all of us, alive and dead, were marked by it forever.

Then, again, this ambiguity has its positive aspects: in it there lies a hope for the war’s end. There is a new kind of pride, too. Two years ago, if you mentioned that you came from Croatia (which you probably wouldn’t mention anyway, because you knew it wouldn’t make sense to a foreigner) people would look at you in bewilderment repeating the unknown name with a question mark, as if it were a country on another planet, not in Central Europe.

I hope I will love my new country. I know it is a strange thing to say at this moment of celebration. The presumption is just the opposite: that Croatia is getting its independence simply because millions of people loved it enough to fight and to shed their blood for it practically to the death. But it is not only physically a new country, it is politically a different state and no one knows exactly what life will look like here once the war is over – it could turn into a democracy or a dictatorship, there are no guarantees for either.

When he was elected president, John F. Kennedy in his famous inaugural address to the nation, said: ‘Don’t ask what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ To my mind the citizens of Croatia have to ask themselves a very different question. Having already done everything possible for their country, they have the right to ask: ‘What will our new country do for us, its citizens? Will the sacrifice of all these lives be worthwhile?’

Sisak is a small town less than sixty kilometres from Zagreb. This is the starting point of the front line. A little to the south, across the Sava, is the last southeastern stronghold of the Croatian army. A few days ago the Federal Army shelled the oil refinery, the hospital suffered several direct hits, the church was damaged. From where I’m sitting, near the door, I can see the street and in the street, right in front of the cafe, a hole made by a rifle grenade. It’s a wonder that the cafe is open at all, I think, for the first time physically aware that the war is close by. A woman is washing up some glasses at the counter. She is wiping them slowly, absent-mindedly, gazing through the window at some frost-bitten pigeons on the pavement across the road. The cafe is almost empty except for a few men in uniform. They stand leaning with their elbows on the counter and drinking beer. The barmaid and I are the only women in the room; the windows are blacked out with paper and the whole place is permeated with the dull smell of weariness. The front seems to begin at the very table where I’m sitting, as if the war is a sort of mythical animal which you can never properly glimpse, though you feel its scent and the traces of its presence all around you: in the woman’s movements, in her look, in the way the uniformed men lean on the counter, tilt the bottles to their lips and then wipe their mouths with the backs of their hands and leave abruptly; in the air of uncertainty which at this moment, for no particular reason, becomes quite palpable.

I sit and wait for my guide to the front to come. The 16 January ceasefire has held for almost a month and this time it seems it will hold, at least for a while; nevertheless, this is as far as you can go unaccompanied. In the undamaged County Hall with its dark-red facade which now houses the Croatian military headquarters and a press office, they told me that the guide’s name was Josip and that he was a veteran, meaning that he had been fighting since the beginning of the war in this area. The man who checked my papers and signed a permit said to me – perhaps because I’m a woman – ‘I only wish I had a plate of hot soup’, as if this sentence would best explain to me how he felt. He might as well have said, I only wish I could get some sleep, or watch a soccer game on TV or have some peace and quiet. Each of his wishes would have been equally pointless. The office was sparsely furnished: an ordnance map of the Sisak region on the wall, a long table and some chairs with metal legs that grated on the floor whenever they were moved. A woman brought in fresh coffee, men in uniforms sitting around the table pored over maps and made notes. As in movies about World War II, I almost expected a moustached commander to stride into the room and for everybody to jump up and salute. The setting was so familiar that for a moment I thought this must be a mistake. No, this cannot be military headquarters, no, this cannot be a real war… Leaving the building, I stepped on some grains of rice that crunched under my feet. There must have been a wedding here only yesterday. The thought of a wedding in the midst of war brightened the gloomy mood of the morning.

I have no idea what I expected when I set out for the front. Probably one subconsciously expects to see the same things as on television or in the papers. One expects to experience at least that same level of dramatic tension that the media offer in the process of editing reality: the usual footage of ruins, fires, dead bodies, soldiers, the bewildered faces of civilians, a concentrated picture of suffering. As the media present it, war at some point turns into a pattern, a mould that needs to be filled with content. What we see each night on television is one and the same thing all the time – destruction, death, suffering. Yet, what we see is only the surface. There are so many other layers, invisible ones. Those far from the front lines must wonder how it is possible to endure such pressure day after day, how it is possible to live at all.

Josip arrives. He is of medium height, thickset, with short cropped hair. He is wearing a uniform, but carries no weapons, at least not now. We set off immediately. Josip drives slowly. We pass several military sentries but everything seems peaceful enough, just the soldiers marking time, trying to fend off the cold. On the muddy slope near the ferry which will take us across the Sava river, Josip gets out of the car and says hello to a small group of soldiers who are guarding the ferry. I have trouble coming to terms with the fact that the front is less than an hour’s drive away from my home. Less than an hour’s drive away and everything is different: dugouts, sentries, the road stretching emptily away before one and an eerie, unnatural silence. Josip is not a talkative man, in any case he seems unwilling to start a conversation. I study his face, his narrow blue eyes, his open smile, his large hands and the unhurried, deliberate way he moves. But his face reveals nothing, it tells me nothing of what the war means to him. I ask him how it all began here. I never thought it would come to this, he says, as if he himself still cannot quite believe that it has come to this. Then he tells me about his neighbour from Sunja who is now fighting on the Serbian side in Kostajnica. His father is a Croat, his mother Serbian and his family has stayed on this side. Josip tells me he has recently seen his neighbour on television passing a message to his own sister that he will cut her throat for marrying a Croat. That’s the hardest thing, he says, the treachery of friends and neighbours who were Serbs and who, all but a couple of them (who are still here), left Sunja on the eve of the first assault because they knew that the village was going to be attacked. They left their cattle in the stables, dinners on the table, washing machines spinning. They did nothing to warn their neighbours and friends with whom they had lived side by side for many years. Why did they do it to us, says Josip and shakes his head. There must have been a conspiracy of silence among the Serbs. And the conspiracy of mortal fear. Why did they say nothing? Could they have stayed here? Did Serbian soldiers threaten to kill them if they gave a warning signal to their neighbours, or were the neighbours already the enemy and no threats were necessary? And how will they ever be able to return to these villages? The way Josip talks about this, I can tell that the memories of the betrayal are still fresh.