The Taste of Translation

  Kisha went home to Baba, sat her down and fixed her with her most serious look. They’re still taking names at the Jewish Centre for a place on the next convoy – and not just Jews, she said, anticipating the first line of excuse.

  Baba scoffed, moved straight to the second. What would I do out there? Somewhere out in the world. I don’t know those people out in the world, she humphed. I belong here, right here with you.

  She tried again. We’ll go and collect Azra. You can go together.

  Azra? Leave? Baba snorted. She’s the most sedentary Gypsy I know. Moving her a hundred metres would be a miracle.

  And she went back to the kitchen.

  Four

  The bombardment had gone on all night, but by dawn had eased and mid-morning arrived silent, sunny and warm.

  The poor lads are tired, Baba said. She bustled about the flat, wiped benches, put away dishes. What a busy night they’ve had! She put on her shoes, took her walking stick, string bag, checked the coins in her purse.

  No, said Kisha firmly. You can’t go out in this.

  In what?

  Kisha spread her arms wide. There were no words. She was too weary from a sleepless night and exasperated by a grandmother’s boundless energy in the face of full-frontal adversity. Things couldn’t be plainer from where Kisha stood.

  Nonsense, said Baba in response to the unsaid, went and kissed her cheek. I’m just off to wait for the bread truck outside Planika. Those boys in the hills won’t get busy again for hours.

  Kisha sighed, went out to the balcony and heard the scuff of shoes and the solid plonk of Baba’s walking stick rise five floors to where she stood picking at the thyme in the trough. She leant over the balcony railing to see her shuffle down to the bridge, watched her cross. A quick chat to a neighbour, a look down into the water, then up to the hills before walking on.

  She went inside, brought some water back out to the herbs, looked again for Baba but she was already lost in the narrow tangle of alleys on the way to the cathedral, on the way to Vaso Miskin Street, on the way to the bread line.

  Only a few minutes. Only a few minutes in which she has heard Samir climb the stairs, in which she has begun assembling pots and jugs and plastic containers on the kitchen bench for his cargo of water. Only a few minutes before she hears it, feels it, smells it. A huge blast which rumbles walls, sends windows shivering in their frames, delivers a fresh curtain of plaster dust between her and the world.

  Smoke plumes near the cathedral across the river. A second mortar whistles overhead, strikes the same target. Then a third.

  She does not think. Runs, flies fast down the stairs, is gone past Samir and his canisters before he has time to react. Fast, no faster can she run, down the street across the bridge, over broken tram tracks and fallen wires. Sniper bullets, each a split second behind her heels, their author woken by the mortars no doubt, cannot break her stride. She reaches Vaso Miskin, reaches hell, reaches destruction a la carte.

  It is blood, it is nothing. It is people with no legs, stomachs, arms, heads. What can be gone is, what has been severed has. Here is the chaos of the aftermath, the chaos which follows the silence which follows the shock, the vertigo. The delirium it could happen at all – how can intellect ever catch up with what is seen, witnessed, what the body has already processed, a lost voice which says:

  What is this that they have done?

  Ambulance sirens, screams of pain, the cries of victims calling out to loved ones, skidding trails of blood from those who can drag themselves away from the sunlit street into a shadowed doorway. A woman collects apples which have fallen from her shopping bag while life spills from her side, she chats to a person no longer with her, chatters on into the void of a world forever changed. This day, this instant. Hit.

  Baba! Kisha cries, spun round by the four directions. Baba! Light-headed, fear rises to her throat, chokes her breath. At last she sees her, rushes. A sniper fires into the space between them and she leaps, crawls over and out to where Baba lies in blood. So much blood.

  I won’t leave you, she whispers. They can’t make me leave you.

  People load people into the backs of trucks, onto makeshift boards, ripping their own clothes to stem the flow of others’ wounds. Angels waft in the air to search out the faces of the already dead, to shield them from the TV cameras, to mist the lenses of foreign voyeurs. While snipers continue to work the street from invisible sights, delighted to pick off the aimless wanderers who wring disbelief from shock-numbed hands.

  Bastards! Kisha screams into the sky and reaches out to a woman’s skirt to pull her back into the shadows. Fuck off! she screams to the prostitutes of pain, and cloaks Baba in her own body.

  I won’t let them hurt you, she whimpers. I won’t let them hurt you anymore.

  Baba reaches up, tugs at her hair. Her hand trembles but she pulls the girl close, close enough to breathe words in her ear, words she hasn’t breath enough to speak.

  Ki-Ki-. Baby, she says. Don’t let them – don’t let them make you hate. Don’t give in to them, Ki-Ki-. It’s what they want. They want you to hate, they want you to want revenge.

  She takes the child’s face in her hands, looks at her with clear eyes and smiles. My beautiful girl, don’t forget love, don’t forget to love. Ki-Ki-? Her voice is but a squeak, a breathless squeak from air pushed too tight through collapsing lungs. Ki-Ki? Find the Lady. You must go back and find the Lady.

  Kisha nods and stares into the deep blue of eyes not yet ready to close. Not yet ready because there is still too much to tell.

  Find the Lady, Baba says again. She knows. She never gave in to hate, only love. Remember, baby. Remember, only love.

  A man sets his hand on Kisha’s shoulder. How is she? he asks gruffly.

  She can’t speak, can’t trust herself to speak.

  Get a stretcher! he yells, pulling Kisha to her feet. Come on!

  She walked through the ward, past bloodied sheets covering stumps of limbs, past the moans of those for whom there were never painkillers enough, to where Baba lay on a bed by the window.

  Sorry, said the nurse. No one wants to be near the window when the next round of shelling starts.

  Baba smiled wanly. But you’ve made me very happy. Look! she said. Spring is kissing my cheek, and pointed to where a small square of afternoon sun reached in through dust-filled air and crumbling walls to catch her pale skin in orange light.

  Kisha sat by her pillow, stroked her snowy hair, and followed her gaze out the window to where the sun edged lower in the sky. Soon it would be gone beneath the windowsill.

  She’s waiting for me. She says it’s time to go.

  Who? said Kisha. Who?

  The Lady, Baba whispered. Don’t forget the Lady.

  I won’t, and she kissed her forehead. It’s time to rest now.

  Baba squirmed, grimaced, turned her head toward her. Ki-Ki-?

  Hmmm?

  Don’t forget to water your herbs. You’ll relish the little flavour they add. She smiled, sighed.

  Ki-Ki-?

  Hmmm?

  Let them go to seed at the end of the season, keep them till next spring. You’ll need them.

  She turned back to the window. I’m so tired, she said. Maybe I will rest. Just a little nap. Then I’ll go, she’s been waiting such a time –

  Kisha raised Baba’s chilled hand to her lips and kissed the wasted flesh. Her eyelids flickered once, twice, fell still.

  It wasn’t long till the nurse returned and said: We need the bed.

  She nodded, signed forms, made arrangements and walked through corridors oozing rotted flesh through pitted walls till she found Nada rostered on in the donation clinic.

  She’s gone, she said while blood was sucked from her arm.

  Oh Ki-.

  She’d suffered enough. Last time – then now. It’s better this way.

  Nada removed the needle, pressed a hunk of cotton to the vein, pushed the arm closed, said: You kno
w, I believed what they taught us in school. I believed Tito’s Partisans put an end to those fascist bastards for good last time. And now? Who are these people, who are their kids? Do you think it’s genetic to hate?

  Kisha stood up. I need to get home, water the herbs. She stared at her shoes. Baba knows. This is going to last a while, at least through next year.

  How?

  Kisha shrugged. Baba knows. She always knows.

  No words. He held her, and she let herself be held, held, held. After a while, he went and got a bottle of Baba’s brandy made from ten-year-old plums.

  She skolled the first glass, felt the hot slice of chilled liquor detour to her heart, offer a resurrecting jolt to a shell-shocked organ.

  Taking a deep breath and a candle, she went into the bathroom, rummaged around till she found the pink cylinder, unspooled the scroll of parchment it held, laid it on the floor, its edges held flat by books plucked from the shelf. Placing a candle either side, she looked into the face of the Lady.

  She asked me to go back and find it.

  That’ll take some organising, said Samir. Dobrinja’s still cut off.

  Yeah – I know.

  Kisha poured herself another glass and toasted the hand-sketched replica of her grandmother’s icon imprinted with longer-than love.

  Five

  This time it began a little before dawn, surround-sound explosions pulling them upright from sleep, and she tried hard to acclimatise. It was as if the gates of hell had been flung open and every wild thing therein rushed out in a wide yawning scream. Yet as suddenly as it began, silence. A gap in the script which howling dogs were quick to fill before the next wave sucked sound from their throats. The building rocked. Walls trembled beneath her fingertips. But the only casualties were books tumbling from shelves and cupboard doors swung open, while a glass or cup too near the edge of the bench held its breath before freefalling to a shattered end.

  She wrapped herself in a blanket, went out on the balcony. Tracer bullets skated the sky, sketching rhizomes of random hate. Shells exploded in flashes of white. On and on it went till banished by morning sun, till a fresh-sculpted wasteland lay revealed.

  Samir came out, lit a cigarette.

  Marko and Miki are out in that, she shivered and kicked her foot hard against the balcony rail. Typical – I can’t even mourn Baba because I’m so damn scared for my best friend.

  She slumped down against the wall.

  I’ll make coffee, he said and delivered the cigarette to her waiting lips.

  More than a week passed before he walked in the door, propped his gun against the wall and collapsed onto the mattress in the hall.

  Thank God! she cried and rushed to hug him. Then – Miki?

  He’s OK. Marko tossed a carton of cigarettes over to Samir. That’s my pay for the week.

  He rolled over and slept while she removed mud-caked joggers, covered him with a blanket, and smoothed sweat-soaked dirt-drenched hair away from his eyes.

  When he woke, she plied him with food.

  God, he said. This is brutal! He held up the pie, peered into its folds. What’s in this thing?

  There were only some nettles at market. I thought some greens would do you good.

  He grimaced and kept chewing. You’re all heart, he said.

  So, said Samir, lighting one of the payday cigarettes. A good day at the office?

  Marko humphed. Let’s put it this way, he said. It’s pretty difficult fighting a war when you need to share guns and are rationed to 30 bullets a day.

  Samir grinned. Well, at least we’re not the only ones forced to ration essential items, and waved the cigarette in his face.

  Kisha headed out to the balcony to light the fire for coffee.

  Ki-! Marko cried. Can’t you be a bit more careful? If you can see the hills, the hills can see you! Don’t make it too easy for them. He took another bite of pie. You’re not the only one who worries, he mumbled.

  Alright, she said and crouched down behind the herb troughs to tear up bits of cardboard.

  It’s surreal out there, he went on. Consider this – you’re in a trench on the front line. There’s a narrow stretch of rubble which is our version of no-man’s-land so you can hear your friends talking in their trench. Friends you thought you had except apparently they were hiding an inner core of murdering bastard.

  Or they’ve been convinced to become murdering bastards, Samir pointed out.

  Marko shook his head, more than puzzled. We used to go and play soccer together. Now they’d kill me if they got the chance?

  Plus they can use as many bullets as they like, Kisha chipped in.

  Exactly! said Marko, another slice of pie halfway to his mouth. How’s this for statistics – the Serbs have 200 APCs, 300 tanks, not to mention artillery and aircraft. We have two APCs and two tanks. That’s it.

  But, he grinned, we found two more last week.

  Where?

  His grin grew broader. The National Museum.

  Samir leaned forward. You didn’t –

  Sure! They still work! Oh, it was brilliant. His eyes shone. Driving them out the gate, all the guys cheering. He shrugged. And if they make it through, we’ll give them back.

  Ha! Samir laughed. Such a creative nation we’ve founded. Embryonic, but full of glorious ideas.

  Six

  There seems to be a lull, said Samir, sniffing the air as if a storm cloud had passed and he could test for the timing of the next heavenly downpour.

  If you say so, her nose buried in a book.

  Coming?

  What?

  I’ll go mad in here. I need some human company.

  What. And I’m a baboon?

  I mean more human company. Let’s go to the bar, see who’s there.

  She marked the page in her book. It wasn’t that exciting anyway.

  They tripped their way down the staircase, buttoning up jackets against the approaching chill and reached the protective columns of the inner courtyard pockmarked with the calling cards of the neighbourhood sniper. Turned up collars, held hands and said together: On three.

  The starter’s gun sounded and they crouch-sprinted down the street, across the bridge, hurdling twisted tram tracks, leaping shell-rendered potholes, a steeplechase of forded debris, in and behind the first building on the right where they stopped, bent double, lungs aching.

  I think he must have been taking a potty break, said Samir.

  They skirted the burnt out Hotel Europa, made their way into the alleys of Bascarsija, into the café with its barricaded entry and black-out curtains. Down into the vaulted cellar they went where a generator hummed, small tables hosted smoking patrons and a radio stayed tuned to the hourly news.

  Hey!

  It was Haris, one of her German literature tutors with some others from the faculty Samir clearly knew well but who, as usual, ignored her presence.

  Kisha was used to the response she received from these aging intellectuals, their assumption that their colleague would soon grow bored with a student lover and need a woman of more robust mental stimulation to meet his other, more lasting needs. She was used to the fact they couldn’t see beyond a stereotype, so took her place on the edge of the circle, lit a cigarette and leaned into an intimate conversation with Haris.

  Did you know Mirza’s been looking for you?

  No, why?

  She’s looking for all you English grads – Kasim, Marko, Jasmina … something about translating. There’s a meeting in the bar of the Holiday Inn tomorrow morning with one of the humanitarian organisations.

  She nodded slowly. Marko’s joined the Territorial Defence. But the others should be OK. What about you? You were an English grad once upon a time.

  Yeah, he said. I’ll be there.

  The evening wore on. Everyone forgot the war outside, except in the abstract. Samir was holding forth.

  Sieges are a time-honoured method of warfare, he said. We have a grand opportunity to prove we
’re more resilient than our historical brothers.

  There were guffaws round the table.

  The Moors survived the Siege of Sevilla for fifteen months before being starved into submission by Christian kings, he argued. It was the longest in history, and I salute their tenacity.

  Cheers and gulps of beer greeted this announcement.

  So, he said, climbing onto a chair, I predict that next summer we will overtake a seven centuries old record. All because Milosevic wants to enter the Guinness World Book!

  Laughter erupted around him. Kisha looked up and he grinned down at her, eyes aglow from candlelight and beer.

  She shook her head at his small theatre of the absurd. But Baba knows, she remembered. Baba always knows. And now Samir, too?

  They fidgeted in the bowels of the Holiday Inn while Serb shells shook the walls. By the flickering light of a candle Kisha took in the tense faces of Jasmina, Mirza, Haris and Kasim while they waited for the woman who stood talking to a man at the bar to join them.

  Two journalists and a cameraman raced out the door calling instructions to their driver on the way, someone played piano beyond the small circles of smoky light. A barman wiped glasses, stacked coffee cups, checked water jugs along the counter. Every now and then he glared at the students who hadn’t ordered, whom he knew couldn’t afford to order in this palace reserved for the international elite.

  I feel like I’m on the set of Casablanca, said Mirza, chewing a fingernail.

  I can’t believe they charge $150 a night to stay in this ruin, Jasmina said.

  War tourism is big business, Haris quipped.

  The woman gave a final nod to the man at the bar, gathered a sheaf of papers together and came over to the small table.

  Sorry about that, she said. We were just trying to finalise where we can set up.

  And? Haris asked.

  It’ll be at the Olympic complex at Zetra. The building’s large enough for all the different aid agencies – UNHCR, Doctors without Borders, Caritas … she trailed off. Oh, and a refugee shelter.