The Taste of Translation

  What would we be doing?

  Translation, pure and simple. Anything, everything, she said and rattled off a washlist of tasks: Taking down people’s details, hearing their stories, helping us work out priority evacuations, getting us through checkpoints, signing off on aid deliveries, distributing humanitarian packages.

  She paused. There’ll also be rosters at the soup kitchen.

  They looked at each other, shrugged hesitant shoulders.

  The woman flicked through her papers. I’ll draw up a schedule, she said. The hours are long and we’d appreciate flexibility. We can pay a small wage in American dollars.

  Kasim snorted. That’s nigh-on useless. The black market’s only taking Deutschemarks.

  There’s nothing I can do about that.

  Can’t you pay us in stuff instead? Kisha asked. Like coffee, cigarettes?

  The woman shape-shifted her straight business face into a look of horrified surprise. Are you sure?

  Jasmina laughed. It’s worth more than oxygen in this place.

  Back at the flat, she found them, heads together, deep in conversation.

  What mischief are you cooking up? she said. A rebellion?

  Samir grinned. We’re going to start giving classes in one of the vacant apartments downstairs.

  Plato wrote some last notes on a scrap of paper and looked up. We’re developing a fresh curriculum, he said, in line with contemporaneous culture. It’s called Siege Humour 101. Essays can cover any number of topics – ethics, literary merit, cultural conditioning, interfaith relations, socialist ideals. All on the back of several jokes. See what you think about this one. What’s the difference between Sarajevo and Auschwitz?

  Kisha shook her head.

  At least in Auschwitz they had gas.

  Samir chortled. Ouch. How far we’ve fallen.

  A Jew told me that! Plato was a study in righteous indignation. Alright, he grumbled. Here’s another. A Muslim dies, goes to heaven, his best Serb mate goes to hell. They call their families in Sarajevo to tell them where they are. The guy in heaven has a half hour chat, gets charged $200; his mate in hell also chats half an hour, is only charged 20c. So the guy in heaven complains to the phone company.

  How fair is that? he says.

  Completely fair, says the phone company. Your call was long distance, but his call was local!

  Plato slapped his knee and belly laughs filled the tiny flat.

  Kisha grinned. I like that one.

  Wait, wait, he said, wiping his eyes. How’s this. A guy is out on his balcony swinging in a hammock. His mate yells: What are you doing? Don’t you know it’s dangerous to be outside?

  But it’s fun, says the guy. I’m teasing the sniper!

  Oh-oh-oh! Samir raised his hand like in class. I’ve just remembered a great one they were telling in the water line the other day. A guy comes home late at night, meets two policemen patrolling the streets.

  You’d better get home, mate, says one cop. It’s almost curfew.

  Wait, says the other cop. Where do you live?

  The guy tells him. The cop shakes his head, says: Sorry mate, and shoots him dead.

  The first copper says: What the hell did you do that for? It’s not past curfew!

  Yeah, says the second. But I was doing him a favour. See, I know where he lives. He never would’ve made it home in time!

  Baba’s grave is in the sports stadium not far from the hospital where she died, not far from the aid centre at Zetra where Kisha works. She would visit more often but it cuts her heart to see an entire soccer pitch heaped with mounds filled with the people of her town.

  One day she hears the sound of mewing. A kitten purrs, rubs itself against her knee while she sits beside the makeshift wooden paddle propped in the dirt which bears her grandmother’s name. Two more kittens emerge from a broken pipe with a half-starved mother still wearing her collar and bell from a life before siege.

  She tickles the kitten under its chin, another casualty of conflict. Like the dogs which roam the streets and dig through rubbish piles, their homes now rubble or their owners long gone, like the cats which lap blood from the pools punched by mortar shells because it’s all they have left to drink.

  Is this what happens when we lose our humanity? she thinks, as she picks up the kitten, tucks it into her jacket. That we care for nothing or no one except ourselves?

  Seven

  Kisha?

  Mmmm? She rolled over, opened her eyes, saw that Samir was up although it was still dark, and registered the silence which cloaked the city.

  Today?

  He nodded. I’ll get Plato.

  Wait. I’m coming too.

  No. We know what we’re looking for. It will be easier with two.

  Then we two, she said firmly. I couldn’t bear if something happened to him. With Susu, the baby and all.

  He knelt down. And I couldn’t bear if something happened to you.

  She kissed him. Who was it said we should never be parted? She was my grandmother, after all.

  In the surreal quiet of a pre-dawn free of birdsong, Samir knocked on Plato’s door.

  You’ve been outranked, he said, but I still need the car key.

  They headed down to the riverbank, to the stoic Beetle studded with bullet holes and dented by barricades at tight-cornered turns. Kisha plucked broken glass out of the window frame, brushed more splintered debris off the split vinyl seat. The engine hummed into life and they were off, slowly at first but speeding up as risks grew exponentially at intersections and along Sniper Alley.

  Duck, he instructed, crouched low over the wheel.

  Shots ricocheted off the chassis as he swerved and pushed the accelerator to the floor, avoiding as best he could the potholes made by mortars. Toward Dobrinja, they began to pass the occasional UN APC, ghost-white, rising out of the mist. Off the main road at last and into the housing estate, they crawled along past burnt-out buildings and impromptu cemeteries. In playgrounds no longer used by children no longer there, graves sprouted like weeds. Now and then, someone stepped out onto a wrecked balcony to stare at the car, like a ghost in the rotting mouth of a giant.

  It was worse here than in the old town. In their neighbourhood, there was still a feeling of life somewhere beneath the rubble. But here, nothing. The emptiness crowded in on Kisha, claustrophobic and heavy with its nothing.

  How can nothing trap me? she thought in between desperate attempts to breathe.

  Easy, said Samir, patting her knee.

  They drove until blocked by a trench and walked on, hugging the sides of buildings, hopping fences and crossing gardens to where the older houses stood on the edge of the estate. They passed home after home of shattered windows cloaked in thick plastic sheeting, of facades pitted by shrapnel, of roofs without tiles. One of Baba’s neighbours stood at her back door and, crying out in surprise, ran past the deep crater in her garden where the shed should have been to give Kisha a hug.

  We saw the funeral notice in the paper, she said. If the road had been open, we would have come.

  It’s OK. Funerals aren’t the occasions they used to be.

  I’ll make coffee.

  Alright. We won’t be long.

  I don’t think you’ll find much, she said, going back into the house.

  A thought came. Have you seen Azra? And Kisha turned toward the splintered hull of apartment block at the end of the street.

  I think the Gypsies had gone by the time it was hit.

  You don’t know where – she trailed off as the other shook her head.

  Memory is long, and good luck too.

  Kisha looked up into the hills, remembered Baba’s face the night they’d sat around the radio listening to the news of Dobrinja’s destruction once the war began in earnest.

  What about Azra? she’d said then.

  She’ll be alright, Baba assured her. They’ll know where to hide, how to survive. They remember the Nazi death camps.

&nbs
p; But you hid her last time. You hid her in your attic.

  Yes, but she’ll be alright. Baba smiled and patted Kisha’s hand. Sometimes I think Azra’s immortal. Or a cat with nine lives.

  She left the memory where it lay in the hills and went to join Samir. One more garden to cross and shredded trees to ford before they arrived at a cavernous hull and collapsed roof, all that remained of a Howitzer calling card.

  What do you think?

  He shrugged. We might as well have a poke around. And climbed through rubble into what used to be the sitting room.

  She followed inside, to an inside no longer within, a charred space lit by the rising sun through a gaping wound in its side. Wallpaper flapped hesitantly in the breeze, no longer sure of its mooring. Ripped curtains framed non-existent windows, splintered floorboards pierced a rain-soaked couch, a tumble of bricks opened onto a new view of the kitchen.

  She sifted through the corner where the icons should have been.

  Nothing, she said. Did they disintegrate or were they looted?

  Who knows? Where would she have kept her winter coats?

  What?

  I have a feeling they might come in handy.

  Um, cellar probably. She didn’t like climbing all those stairs to the attic.

  He scrabbled over and back into the hall while she stood helpless in the midst of nothing.

  What to do? Look for some small treasure, some relic of her past, of Baba’s life? Or was everything too shattered, the memory of some shard or other only a memory of pain, destruction?

  Here, said Samir, passing her several overcoats.

  She took the bundle while he picked his way through fallen timber, hunting and gathering as he went.

  We could use some of this wood too, he grunted.

  That night, by the light of a candle stub, Kisha once again removed the parchment replica of the icon from its pink cylinder, unfurled the crinkled scroll and whispered to the Lady that her real self was gone.

  She returned it to its protective shell, placed it in the backpack she had used for class and then slowly moved around the apartment, collecting the few touchstones of their life, a handful of basic provisions and their passports, to place in the same repository.

  Nesting in reverse, denuding a violated space, assembling her bright baubles to be scooped up in flight. While Samir watched.

  Eight

  Dusk gathered, approaching on all sides, ready to gobble up the day. A red glow guided her to the shadow on the balcony that smoked and contemplated the hills to the north, thick-forested and green. She kissed the shroud of night from his brow, stood by him and followed his gaze. And into this space, he said:

  The hills will burn, you know. We’ll need wood for winter and the hills will burn. The groan of the trees will go unheard by our ears, their cries drowned by the hack of axes and buzz of chainsaws, by the cracking crash of their fall to earth.

  He took a last draw of cigarette. Its end hissed. He stubbed out the butt and said: I will not cut the trees.

  She nestled into his shoulder and sighed as he said further: I will not, cannot kill. I will not sacrifice another life to fuel my own comfort. I will not add to the destruction of whatever still lives and breathes in our city and hills.

  Then what shall we do?

  We shall burn the books.

  Speechless. His books? His precious library which swamped their tiny flat? She loved his books, had only been able to add a slim number to the space of their love in the time they had been together, but –

  Books are life too, she protested. They’re filled with life!

  He smiled, knew the argument to come, was more than ready to engage.

  We have lived their lives once, twice, many times over. Each time we read we bring more of them into ourselves. They’re part of us already, Ki-. Why not complete the circle and let them feed us, warm us? It’s not a sacrifice, I see it as a privilege.

  He kissed her stunned forehead. There’s no black and white to this war and this is my particular shade of grey. We shall burn the books. I would rather savour them one last time like a wine slow-sipped than see them poured down the sink in a bonfire fuelled by the ignorance of hate.

  A small tin stove stood on the balcony, the one he’d brought home from Bascarsija when it was clear the gas wasn’t coming back on. The couch had fed its hunger, the chairs, table, bed, cupboard doors, shelves. Samir’s library now stood in high towers against the wall, floor to ceiling, a wall of books.

  Yet she resisted and brought home random flammable items found on garbage piles, brought home a splintered park bench and the shattered branches of the plane tree which shaded it, brought home anything she could find to stave off the books’ fate, pleaded with the centre workers to let her take the boxes and crates the cans of aid arrived in. All to take home and burn.

  A night came when they unleashed a barrage all along the riverbank. Up and down the Miljacka, bridges were hit, houses hit, their building hit. They coiled into each other, into the mattress, while shells rained down, closer then further, closer then further. Then a tumult, louder than all the rest, centred as no other, and striking a target a short five hundred metres upstream. On and on.

  So a night came. As summer ended, as nights grew longer, as a chill in the air warned of winter’s almost-breath, so this night came. When millions of books spanning a millennium of life spiralled up to heaven, extinguished before angels could grasp a single ashen fragment. This night, when flames licked the clouds, the National Library shot high in the sky. This night, when knowledge burned on Salem’s pyre, when Samir’s hand trembled as he lit each cigarette.

  Once again we have failed the goddess of wisdom, he said. Once again we have built our civilisation on sand. And he spat his pain into the troughs of thyme.

  A whole night, a whole day they watched her die. Till all that remained was a smoulder and a stench of burnt paper palled high. The wind jettisoned her charges far and wide, delivered them up to torn lament upon hair, clothes, herbs, balcony. Kisha reached out her hand to ease the landing of one refugee, but its tiny blackened wings had beat so long, so hard, that it crumbled to dust in the compassion of her embrace.

  Dust, said Samir. They know. It all ends in this. Dust.

  She could not cry, no tears came, evaporated in the heat of the flames. Too intense, this fresh image seared to retina, this cultural holocaust.

  I need a coffee, she said and walked inside to the teetering towers of books, brought down her hand of fate, and gave it to Samir to light the stove.

  Are you sure?

  She nodded. But –

  Wait, she said. Wait.

  She hesitated, looked back into the room, to the dark shadows of pensive tombstones piled against the wall, took back the volume she had given him and flicked to the end where several blank pages footnoted the text, tore them out, took up her pen and began to write.

  Every library has its catalogue.

  Kisha stood at the firebox door, custodian of the firebox door. A sacred ritual, this dance enjoined of singular farewell. One by one, each in turn was offered into the flames with a prayer of thanks for what they shared of themselves on this, their last time read.

  What have you found? Samir asked, leaning over her shoulder to where a finger traced heart-spoken words.

  Basho, she said.

  Summer grasses –

  All that remains

  Of warriors’ dreams.

  We wish, he grinned.

  I was thinking, she said, just as a way to – you know – not let it get me too down, I could write all this siege shit out as haiku. Reduce all of it to separate discrete events – the classic moment-captured-in-time, seventeen syllables, three lines, a seasonal word …

  She trailed off in her uncertainty of whether it would be useful after all, and Samir watched as she placed the slim volume onto the tower furthest from the fire pile, watched as she rearranged the tower to slip it in further down, away
from its future.

  Here’s one, he said.

  Machine gun rattles

  Into life, or rather death –

  Siege in summertime.

  Oh, you’re a genius! she gushed, turning away from her work, drawn full fathom five from the space of melancholy. It makes Sarajevo sound like a holiday must, she laughed.

  He lit a cigarette, drew deep and handed it to her. If you keep up that level of interest, I might invite you to my garret.

  She smirked. You wish! And chose a different book from a different tower.

  He took back the cigarette, fixed her with those damn gorgeous eyes.

  Of course, he said. Always.

  Nine

  A quiet day in autumn, an afternoon of gold-shafted light.

  Come on, said Samir. This may be our last chance to scuff some leaves before all the trees metamorphose into firewood.

  Others had the same idea. Children kicked soccer balls, parents stood smoking in small knots of conversation. An artist had set up his easel outside the shattered mosque but he wasn’t getting much done.

  The contours are too unruly, he complained as they passed. It’s as if my hand doesn’t want to paint the scene before me but the one committed to memory. See how it trembles the closer the brush comes to the canvas? It twitters and zitters, I can’t force it to connect! Body and mind have separated. What am I to do? He shook his head. In a war where nothing makes sense, even I don’t make sense!

  They left him to pack up his easel and paints and go home to paint from inner sight while they walked along the river through Music Pavilion park. Her remaining trees shed leaves with joyous abandon in a breeze skating up off the water. Shutting out all reasons why they shouldn’t, they promenaded arm-in-arm, overtaken by the memory of how it should be on a lazy Sunday afternoon in late October.

  They crossed the river at the National Library, looked into the tumult of ruin, looked beyond.

  I see the turrets gold-washed by the sun! Kisha cried. The patios and columns and the vast Great Hall!

  I see the students, their arms full of books, said Samir and laughed. Especially the ones who can’t wait to start reading. They’re sitting right here on the steps at our feet!