Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

i need a good reason not to see and death isn't a good reason i want to see what i'm cooking

i want to go into the world that's what i want

the filthy war came just at the right time for me there was nothing to be done with my husband not with rafik he carried his crooked back around in his head his whole life was crooked he ducked down low there was nothing to be done with him i want to be young still for a while i'm not all that old i could only be old with rafik i had to stay at home he was working and i was at home and he didn't want men to see what beautiful hair i have

i want to have beautiful hair always it takes a lot of caring for

i want to go out in the world that's why i've gone away from rafik because he had principles all the way from the drina to china

i want to be friendly i want an unmasked sun but who can stop the clouds coming

if i were a magician like you rain and progress would all be different and the megdan would spit fire we'd have quite different worries from the ones we have now

i want to be a bit useful to you all for a while yet but i want to be useful to myself even more

i don't want to be kind to everyone all the time i'd rather wait

i want to know what you'll be like at twenty and what you'll know your grandpa was that age when i had to marry him there was a walnut tree in my village it snowed under that tree in summer about as often as you found unmarried girls there

i want to find another husband or maybe not

i never want to herd cattle again or look after courteous birds

i want to be proud of breaking something

i don't want to die of loneliness or guilt or a fishbone or a river i want to have the feeling when i'm dying that i'm wearing a lot of jewelry that's how it is

i want to fly someday and climb a volcano and throw a stone into it.

nena fatima

Dear Asija,

Forgive me for not writing for so long. Do you ever get my letters? Are you still there? I go on writing, I'm alone a lot just now anyway, but I don't mind that.

My parents have been living in the USA for a year. In Florida. They've gone there for good, they say. Father picked a coconut and painted his first picture in seven years. He calls it Self-Portrait with Coconut, and the colors he chose are a duet of ochre and brown on a lush green summer meadow. Mother started work in an attorney's office, she says it's not difficult, the laws there are a lot easier to understand than ours. She's bought skates, she goes to the ice rink every Sunday, and she'd like to watch a soccer game in the stadium, without my father. She thinks the soccer players' shorts fit them nicely.

If they hadn't emigrated, she'd have been sent back to Bosnia. It's called voluntary repatriation. I don't think something you're told to do can be voluntary, and you can't really be repatriated to a place where half the original population is missing. It's a new place, you're not returning to it, you're going there for the first time. I can't even imagine what it would be like, going to school in Bosnia now. All I see is my old classroom and Edin on the bench behind me. Tito's picture is still hanging on the wall. I was allowed to stay here because of school. My parents thought it was sensible for me to take my final exams in Germany. Mother wrote down eleven recipes for me, ten easy ones plus the recipe for minced-meat-and-plum schnitzel. She explained how to boil clothes that need it before you wash them.

The last year in Essen was a little better for us. Mother gave notice to the laundry. She signed on for a course in German and studied every day for three months. After that she wrote seventy job applications. In the seventy-first, she didn't mention that she came from Bosnia and she got a job as a cashier.

I talked to Father so little here that I was sometimes surprised to hear him speak my name. Mother fell sick and then got better, Father got quiet and then grew older, and now he's sitting in the sun, painting still lifes again, and even selling them.

You see, Asija, I haven't gone to any trouble. All this time I haven't gone to the trouble of wondering or maybe even asking what my parents think or what they want or how I can help them so that we'd feel better here. It was embarrassing for me to go to their interviews with them; it was embarrassing for me to translate the questions they were asked: how good is your German? I was never ashamed of my deaf mute Nena Fatima, although she laughed at jokes and talked in her sleep. She had more friends here than I'll ever make. She listened to her women friends when they were talking, they asked her opinion, she would nod or shake her head. But then she'd sit out on the pavement in front of the building cutting her toenails. She was happiest of all about Florida. She gets up early and swims in the neighbors' pool, one more length every day.

I sometimes wish my name was spelled “Alexander” and I often wish people would just leave me alone. For a long time I thought I was just playing at being a teenager so as not to make my parents anxious. But a time came when I really didn't want to see war or know about suffering and flight anymore.

Today is the first of May, and Granny Katarina wants to send me a package from Višegrad. Granny Katarina always wants to send me a package on the first of May. Photos of Tito, Grandpa's speeches and decorations, my Pioneer uniform. Every year at this time Granny tells me how I especially liked wearing the uniform on church feast days, how I knew whole passages of Das Kapital by heart, and I understood what they meant.

Now my father buys himself chewing tobacco and says: Coconuts! I'm the first Bosnian to know how to chew tobacco, and Mother says: the Jacksonville Jaguars have a good team this season. In the evening, they invite other Bosnians, they grill homemade [evap[ici and supermarket hamburgers on the veranda, and the crickets chirp; the asphalt cools down and smells of cinnamon. A man called Dino Safirovic tells them how he and his troops played soccer against the Serbs in the trenches, and how he stopped the shot that would have decided the game with his face, but ever since then there are certain sounds at the ends of words that he can't pronounce properly. He tells them how he was going to light a fire in a hollow tree trunk where a hand grenade was lying. My mother says she misses me. She buys Slovenian wine, and Father thinks our crickets would knock the stuffing out of the American kind.

I tried looking for your name on the Internet, Asija, and then I realized that I'm not at all sure of your last name, even though I always write one on the envelopes. I read pages full of lists of missing persons. An Asija was mentioned twice, but that doesn't mean anything. At least I found out what your name means.

If I look for my own name I get a single hit: Midsummer Night's Dream in the school theater. I played Puck. Puck is an elf whose king gives him the job of finding a special flower; if its nectar is put on a sleeping person's eyes, the sleeper will fall in love with the first living creature he or she sees on waking up. Not a great story, but Puck can work magic. At some point in the play everyone gets to be loved, even a man with a donkey's head, and it all has to be a dream because that's what the audience decides in the end.

Asija, I can make Nazis think I'm from Bavaria just by using the words Bavarians like. I can make Frisian jokes, they're a bit like Montenegrin jokes at home — if the Frisians' flies aren't open today they'll wait until tomorrow to pee. I back five national teams. If anyone says I'm a good example of integration, it really freaks me out.