Braco
BRACO
BRACO
A NOVEL
LESLEYANNE RYAN
P.O. Box 2188, St. John’s, NL, Canada, A1C 6E6
WWW.BREAKWATERBOOKS.COM
Copyright © 2012 Lesleyanne Ryan
This is a work of fiction. The characters are products of the author’s imagination, and any similarity to persons living or dead is unintentional.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Ryan, Lesleyanne
Braco / Lesleyanne Ryan.
ISBN 978-1-55081-334-0
I. Title.
PS8635.Y357B73 2012-----C813’.6-----C2012-904975-1
eBook development by WildElement.ca
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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $24.3 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada. We acknowledge the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing activities.
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PROLOGUE
TUESDAY: ATIF STAVIC
TUESDAY: MICHAEL SAKIC
TUESDAY: ATIF STAVIC
TUESDAY: JAC LARUE
WEDNESDAY: MICHAEL SAKIC
TUESDAY: JAC LARUE
WEDNESDAY: ATIF STAVIC
WEDNESDAY: JAC LARUE
WEDNESDAY: MARIJA STAVIC
WEDNESDAY: ATIF STAVIC
WEDNESDAY: MICHAEL SAKIC
WEDNESDAY: ATIF STAVIC
TUESDAY: TARAK SMAJLOVIC
WEDNESDAY: TARAK SMAJLOVIC
WEDNESDAY: ATIF STAVIC
WEDNESDAY: MICHAEL SAKIC
WEDNESDAY: MARIJA STAVIC
TUESDAY: NIKO BASARIC
WEDNESDAY: NIKO BASARIC
WEDNESDAY: TARAK SMAJLOVIC
WEDNESDAY: JAC LARUE
WEDNESDAY: NIKO BASARIC
WEDNESDAY: TARAK SMAJLOVIC
WEDNESDAY: ATIF STAVIC
WEDNESDAY: NIKO BASARIC
WEDNESDAY: MICHAEL SAKIC
THURSDAY: JAC LARUE
THURSDAY: TARAK SMAJLOVIC
THURSDAY: ATIF STAVIC
THURSDAY: NIKO BASARIC
THURSDAY: TARAK SMAJLOVIC
THURSDAY: JAC LARUE
THURSDAY: MARIJA STAVIC
THURSDAY: ATIF STAVIC
THURSDAY: MICHAEL SAKIC
THURSDAY: MARIJA STAVIC
THURSDAY: JAC LARUE
THURSDAY: ATIF STAVIC
THURSDAY: NIKO BASARIC
THURSDAY: ATIF STAVIC
THURSDAY: JAC LARUE
THURSDAY: MARIJA STAVIC
THURSDAY: ATIF STAVIC
THURSDAY: TARAK SMAJLOVIC
THURSDAY: NIKO BASARIC
THURSDAY: MICHAEL SAKIC
THURSDAY: ATIF STAVIC
THURSDAY: MARIJA STAVIC
THURSDAY: ATIF STAVIC
THURSDAY: NIKO BASARIC
THURSDAY: JAC LARUE
FRIDAY: TARAK SMAJLOVIC
ATIF STAVIC
FRIDAY: NIKO BASARIC
FRIDAY: ATIF STAVIC
FRIDAY: JAC LARUE
FRIDAY: ATIF STAVIC
SATURDAY: MICHAEL SAKIC
SATURDAY: ATIF STAVIC
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOR JACQUES AND ATIF
PREFACE
THE PEOPLE OF the former country of Yugoslavia are the original inhabitants of that region of the Balkans and are racially identical. For more than two thousand years, the great empires of Europe–including the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Ottoman Empire–shaped the identity of the area that would become central Yugoslavia, dividing the people along religious lines: Roman Catholic Croats, Eastern Orthodox Serbs, and Muslim Bosniaks.
The three groups were united under the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, and it became the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946 when a communist government was established. Communism blurred the lines between the three groups for the next forty years. During this period, they intermarried and lived side by side in peace.
The Republics of Croatia and Serbia were dominated by Croat and Serb populations respectively, but Bosnia and Herzegovina mixed all three groups with approximately 44% of the population identifying themselves as Bosnian Muslim, 31% as Bosnian Serbs, and 17% as Bosnian Croat.
The death of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, in 1980, led to a resurgence of Serbian nationalism under Slobodan Milosevic. As a result, the Serbs dominated the military and political structure of Yugoslavia into the 1990s. When Communism failed across Eastern Europe, Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence, leading to a short war between Croatia and the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army in 1991. United Nations peacekeepers were deployed to Croatia to implement a tentative ceasefire, but not before the Serbians had claimed one third of the newly independent country.
In 1992, war erupted in Bosnia where an arms embargo hobbled the Bosnian Muslim army. They could do little against the Bosnian Serbs, who had easy access to the former Yugoslav army’s equipment and ammunition. By 1995, the Bosnian Serbs had claimed more than half the country while an alliance between the Muslims and Croats struggled to hold on to what remained. Attempts at a peace deal collapsed largely over the issue of the Muslim safe areas of Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde in Bosnian Serb territory.
While peace negotiations continued into the summer of 1995, the Bosnian Serbs secretly made their own plans to deal with these issues. The ethnic cleansing of Muslim areas started with Srebrenica in July, 1995.
This story takes place over the five days following the fall of Srebrenica.
CHARACTERS
Atif Stavic
Marija Stavic
Jac LarueTarak Smajlovic
Niko Basaric
Michael Sakic
PROLOGUE
YOU LIE STILL and stare at the sky.
Curious.
The fog cleared hours ago, but the clouds remain low. The layers move, join, and tear apart. A speck of blue disappears. A wisp of black drifts into view. You draw in a long breath. Soot coats your throat.
Buzzing.
A bee? Mosquito?
You raise your arm and swat around your face. Your hand comes back red. You blink, trying to focus. You can’t understand why it’s red.
The buzzing grows louder.
A black cloud invades, moving from right to left. With effort, you move your head to follow the cloud from the heavens to the earth. White concrete homes line the street. One alley is familiar. An overturned car blocks the entrance and the black cloud billows up from behind.
The buzzing crackles. Voices join the chorus.
Someone touches your shoulder.
You ignore them and concentrate on the car, on the alley. The place seems important. Someone shakes you, but your eyes rest on the alley. You struggle to focus. Your vision clears.
A small arm hangs limp between the car and the wall.
TUESDAY: ATIF STAVIC
ATIF STAVIC WOKE to hands shaking his shoulder. His head rolled from side to side. He tensed and sucked in air like a newborn.
“Please,” a woman’s voice said. “You’ll hurt her.”
Atif rubbed his eyes. “What?”
The young woman held a scarf tight around her pale face and pointed. Atif raised his head. His feet had pinned a little girl against the rusted metal railing at the foot of the bed. She moaned, holding her hands to a blood soaked cloth wrapped around her head. Atif jerked his feet back and sat up, drawing his knees close to his chest.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know,” the woman replied. “You were dreaming.”
It was a dream?
Atif looked around. A bright sun lit the room through a cracked window high on the aging concrete wall next to him. The light flickered as legs rushed by in both directions. Across the room, three children shared another bed. Injured and dying people carpeted the floor: groaning, crying, talking. The stench of urine and vomit mingled with antiseptic and infection. Atif’s stomach churned. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
Was the dream real?
His head pounded in rhythm with the beating of his heart and he fought the growing nausea. The memories formed in a haze.
They had played two on two using a wrecked Lada tipped on its side as a goal. Jovan and Ramo had paired up against Atif and Ramo’s little brother, Dani. Excited that the older boys had invited him to play, Dani paced back and forth between the front to rear axle of the wreck with his arms held wide enough to hug an elephant. He had not been able to stop a single shot. Atif played near the goal to help him.
Jovan and Ramo advanced, passing the ball between them. Dani stayed close to the car.
“Come out,” Atif had said. “You can’t stop a ball if your back is up against the drive shaft.”
The boy took a step forward, his arms still up. Atif looked back as Ramo made a clumsy attempt at a back pass to Jovan.
He thinks he’s Elvir Bolic.
Jovan bounced the ball back to Ramo, who made a chip shot. The ball took flight and sailed high. Atif turned as Dani’s short frame rose in the air, his fingertips scraping the bottom of the ball. It bounced on the car and disappeared from sight.
“Thirty-two to nothing,” Ramo said.
“That wasn’t in,” Atif replied. “That was over the goal.”
Jovan laughed.
“Fine. Thirty-one nothing.”
“I’ll get the ball,” Dani said.
Atif spun around. “What? No. I’ll get it.”
He plucked the boy off the transmission, scaled the wreck, and ran after the ball as it skipped over rocks and garbage in the gutter across the street. He picked it up and stood still, scanning the hills for movement.
The snipers can see the street.
But the hills are quiet.
Atif faced the alley and held the grimy ball over his head, ready to throw it back.
His memory blurred.
Why didn’t I hear the shell?
“Bad dreams?”
Atif looked to his right. A young soldier sat slumped in a chair next to the bed, his eyes fixed on the far wall. His name, Omar Pasic, was scribbled on a scrap of paper pinned to the heavy bandages wrapped around his gut. A cigarette hung between his fingers. The long ash threatened to drop.
“No.” Atif turned away. “I wasn’t dreaming.”
“Don’t worry about it. We all get them.”
The door opened, striking a leg stretched out in its path. A female voice yelped. A nurse glanced inside and left, leaving the door open. People moved back and forth in the dim light of the corridor, pushing and shouting. The nurse returned, shoving a gurney into the room across the hall. The door to the room slammed shut, its faceplate swinging from a single nail. Atif tilted his head and read the word on the plate: morgue. A man backed into the morgue, cradling his injured arm. A woman followed a doctor down the corridor.
“Mama?”
“She’s here, somewhere,” the soldier said. Atif turned. “She’s trying to find a doctor. Wants to make sure it’s okay for you to leave.”
“Leave? Why?”
The soldier lifted his arm and looked at the cigarette, then crushed it against the wall. The ash left a black scar on the peeling white paint.
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Chetniks are coming. The tanks are just outside the town. They’ll be here in a few hours.”
Panic stabbed Atif’s chest. He thought back, struggling to remember, but his memory stopped at the alley. Ramo and Jovan laughing. Dani’s bright blue eyes staring out from behind the wrecked car. Then nothing.
“I don’t remember. Where’d they come from?”
“They’re coming up from Skelani,” the soldier said. “I heard there were twenty thousand troops. We never stood a chance.”
“But the UN, the Dutch.”
“The bastards don’t care about us. They promised us air strikes. They warned us last night to evacuate our front lines. They said there would be massive air strikes. A zone of death they called it.” The soldier paused, pulling in a laboured breath. “And what did we get? Nothing! Not a single aircraft showed up and the Chetniks walked in and took our trenches.”
Atif swallowed, his throat sticking. He tried to formulate a thought through the shellfire in his head. The Dutch had hundreds of peacekeepers in the area. The UN had sent them to protect the town, but Atif knew a few hundred Dutch could do little against the Serbs without air strikes.
Unless.
“Maybe the planes didn’t come because the blue helmets are bringing in more troops,” he said.
The soldier laughed and the laugh degenerated into a fit of coughing.
“There are no troops coming.” He wiped blood trickling from his mouth. “They don’t give a damn. To them, one Dutch life is worth more than fifty thousand Muslims.”
“That’s not true!”
“Believe what you want,” the soldier said. His head settled back and his eyes focused on the far wall. “If you were smart, you’d follow the men.”
“What are you talking about? Follow what men?”
As the soldier opened his mouth to respond, a familiar voice drew Atif’s attention to the door. His mother stood in the hall, speaking to a doctor. She was wearing a white blouse and a long dark skirt and she had his sneakers in her hand. Atif glanced at her feet. She wore her walking shoes.
“Mama.”
The doctor left and his mother stepped inside, bringing her hand to her nose for a moment. She slipped through the minefield of injured and dying and laid Atif’s sneakers on the bed.
“You can leave,” she said, handing him a bottle of water. “Drink some.”
Atif drank while his mother pushed the sneakers on his feet and tied the laces. He capped the bottle.
“Where’s Tihana?”
“She’s waiting at the house with Ina and the twins. They should be packed by the time we get there.”
Ina and her twin seventeen-year-old daughters had shared the same house in Srebrenica with Atif’s family for three years. Ina worked as a nurse in the hospital.
And she’s not here now?
“Why? Where are we going?”
“Potocari. We’re going to the Dutch base.”
“But he told me the Dutch weren’t going to help us,” Atif said, motioning over his shoulder with his thumb.
“Everyone is going there. They’ll protect us.”
Atif turned to the soldier.
“See, I told you.”
The soldier’s head slumped forward.
“Mama?”
She finished tying his laces.
“Should we call the doctor?”
“We have to go.” She took his hand. “Now.”
Atif slid off the bed and followed his mother to the door, glancing back. Two women had claimed his spot on the bed. Behind them, the soldier remained motionless.
Atif’s mother pulled him into the corridor. A gauntlet of injured people lined the hallway on stretchers, beds, and the floor. An old woman stopped a nurse, blocking the hallway.
“My husband needs help.”
Atif followed the woman’s finger to a man curled up on the floor. Bandages hid his face.
“We’re starting an evacuation,” the nurse said. “You have to take him to the Dutch base in Potocari.”
“Potocari. That’s five kilometres. I can’t carry him that far.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. You’ll have to wait to see if the Dutch can transport him.”
The nurse sidestepped the old woman and shouldered her way through a growing traffic jam. Atif followed his mother as she picked a way for them through the hall and up the stairs to the main entrance. They walked through the doorway and stepped into a brilliant sun. Atif winced, turning away from the bright light. Spots clouded his vision and sweat rolled through his eyes. He wiped his forehead, his fingers brushing something on his right temple. Gauze and medical tape. He counted eight bumps under the gauze.
Stitches?
His mother wrapped an arm around his shoulder and they walked down the driveway. Atif blinked his vision clear. Thousands of men, women, and children clogged the main road flowing east like a raging river that could not be stopped. No one could move west against the torrent. Men carried children on their shoulders and women carried bags. A donkey struggled to pull a cart filled with wounded. Two men pushed a wheelbarrow with a television in it. Soldiers walked in groups.
Have they all given up?
A pillar of dirt and debris rose up suddenly behind the houses across the street. The report punched the air an instant later.
Whomp!
The sound always reminded Atif of ice sliding off a roof onto a bed of fluffy snow. A sharp but muffled sound of air trying to escape. A sound that meant death.