The Proud and the Broken (Sinisa Jancan - Baton Rouge, LA)

 

(From his book: Silence in the Quiet of Peace)

Nights are different during the war. Without the

power to light the street lamps everything is

darker. People are mere silhouettes sifting about

under the moonlight. They move erratically for fear of

snipers, whose line of sight is obscured by the darkness—a

saving grace for those foraging for food. The buildings come

alive with flickering lights from candles and lanterns.

You can see the shadows of children playing, adults

cooking whatever they could scrounge up during the

daylight over a dying flame, and sometimes you can see

people reading. These small things brought some normalcy

to an otherwise abnormal situation.

Occasionally there would be a scream in the distance or

nearby. Someone was killed or injured by a sniper, or a

shell, and then the lights recede, and the peoples’ silhou-

ettes disappear into the absolute darkness that held an

unwavering grip on the city.

There’s something about staring at a burning flame in

the middle of the night that makes you feel calm, almost

invincible. We seldom had power, so much so that I hardly

ever remember it in my earliest years. I remember light

bulbs. I remember television. I remember video games and

technology. What I remember almost always, however, is the

flickering flames. The late-night walks to the restroom with

a candle or lantern in my hand. The late-night conversa-

tions my parents had by candlelight. The crackling of flames

with dancing shadows that lulled me to sleep most nights.

Despite the overwhelming odds the morning came for

us as it always did while some had seen their last day of

sunlight. As day breaks you glance outside your window to

see the building next to yours had been shelled, corpses

piled upon one another in the street. You see the bodies of

parents clutching their children, hoping they could have

shielded them just enough to at least keep them alive, but it

was all in vain. Everything felt in vain. Everything was in

vain.

Our apartment was a small space comprised of two

bedrooms, a kitchen, and a small hallway that held a single

bathroom. Our house had been decimated by the war and

we were forced into the living quarters that a family friend

owned and graciously allowed us to reside in.

One morning, as dawn broke, there was a loud commo-

tion outside of our apartment; I saw my father running fran-

tically through the front door as a man’s wails echoed

through the neighborhood. He had been injured by the

shelling. Other neighbors were gathering around him as he

writhed in pain, his right arm bleeding profusely, blood

pooling underneath him. Some came to help, others to

merely spectate. Whatever muscles he had in his upper arm

had been shredded and his flesh barely latched onto bone,

which was clearly visible, even from a distance. 

I stood still, my face pressed to the window. I held my 

breath as if it were making me invisible, as if drawing atten-

tion to myself would alert the snipers surveying the area.

People admonished one another as they tried to

help stabilize him and staunch the bleeding. Time was

important because they knew he would bleed out in

minutes. The tension in the neighborhood felt like a thick

fog descending upon us, you could almost see its weight on

everyone’s shoulders.

Some were reluctant to touch the man while others were

grabbing his uninjured arm or legs to help carry him some-

where where the snipers could not kill him or the neighbors

trying to aid him. Some were advising him to take deep

breaths, to calm down, to realize he was still alive, and help

was on the way.

Help was on the way? Was it? From where? From the

skies that rained destruction down on us as we slept? From

the ground where it was lethal to misstep? From the water

that poisoned our bodies, killing us slowly like boiling frogs.

What hospital would see him? Many who took their

chances to seek out help bled out in the cold hallways

before doctors could see them. Assuming he would live long

enough to be seen by a doctor, there was no guarantee the

Serbs would not bomb the hospital, something they had

done quite often during the siege.

Nonetheless, he survived through the day. He would be

the talk of the neighborhood until someone else was struck

and then they would inherit his title of “survivor.” But he

was not the only “survivor.” Every neighborhood in the city

had one.

Despite our fishbowl, we did not go unnoticed by just

the Serbs. There were journalists everywhere capturing the

raw footage of us being blown to chunks of meat and bone

and being gunned down with children in hand. Our misery

was being traded like diamonds and gold for ratings. Our

suffering in exchange for their petty praise. We would

become poster children for nations like America, who were

told to be grateful for the poverty they had because at least

they were not being killed in the streets; they had the plea-

sure of starving to death or dying from disease in the

comfort of their own home.

Maybe we were fortunate? Maybe we, those trapped in

the city, were lucky because we were not in the concentra-

tion camps like some of our neighbors and family? We had

our own beds, had luxuries like using a restroom at our own

volition or laying our heads down anywhere else that was

not a concrete floor or mound of dirt.

I often wondered if my father felt that our chances for

survival were greater in the city than anywhere else? Until

we could escape Sarajevo it was easier to keep us cooped up

inside rather than finding us naked with our throats slit

behind a slaughterhouse in a camp.

While we fought for survival in those desolate streets,

those held in the camps lived in constant panic. We were

alive but trapped, and they were waiting for certain death.

We had a chance to suffer and die somewhere familiar.

Was this something to celebrate, to be proud of? The

Serbs were a proud people, so much so that they refused to

leave a single shred of evidence of our existence behind.

They showed no restraint in their quest to create a proud

full-blooded Serbian state, which could only be realized

with our unmitigated destruction.

Meanwhile, our kind were bound and lined up side by

side before deep ditches and left to pray for an ounce of

mercy before being extinguished with a single bullet to the

head, broken bodies buried in shallow graves or left to rot in

the streets.

The Serbs wore their cruelty like halos, which pushed

us further into their shadows, but in the shadow of their

prosperity, we would be damned if we did not carry on.

It was revivifying to see my father leave shelter behind

just to help someone. A stern man he always was, but he

never lost his heart. Even with imminent death looming all

around he kept his composure.

War changes you in subtle ways. It takes away your

sense of security, your resilience, and even your dreams.

Sleep, for those who can afford it, is just a silent blackout.

You can’t afford to dream because your mind cannot afford

to slip from reality. What if a sniper kills you in your bed?

What if your home is shelled? What if the windows are

blown out and your body is pumped with glass like a

pincushion? What if you see something other than death

and dismay? What if you dare to escape to a place where

war is just a myth?