The two of us stole food to survive, hiding during the day and walking at night. Our limited geographical knowledge of the city made progress difficult and we headed into what, we hoped, would be a safer area. We kept a constant watch for enemy soldiers, many of whom were scavenging through the wreckage of what had been homes for many innocent people.
As we walked through the devastation, we came across numerous mangled bodies and even the occasional limbs of people who had grown up in what had been a small, tight-knit community, their lives cut short by the brutality of war.
It was sickening to see packs of hungry dogs tearing at the flesh on the corpses of the innocent villagers. I felt certain that they would attack us as well if our scent reached them and hurried Selmira onwards to, what could have been even more dangerous for us.
It was fortunate for us that we came across a NATO camp just outside the city. Hungry and exhausted, we decided to approach the camp. Fortunately, we were received with consideration of our horrific experiences and given food, clean clothes and a temporary place to rest.
As the conditions in Srebrenica had deteriorated to the current disastrous levels, the British Nato representative had taken particular interest in this case. When he discovered that neither of us had any living relatives, he felt that evacuation to Britain would be possibly the safest and best solution for the two of us. Selmira and I were provided with temporary accommodation until our visas and other immigration documents had been prepared. After this, we were escorted by a minder, moved by train to France, where we travelled by ferry to the United Kingdom. From there, we were taken to a juvenile reception centre in Manchester. It did seem, at one time, that the two of us would be separated, but, after much pleading by both Selmira and I, it was agreed that we should stay together.
We were placed with foster parents, who really cared for us and this is where Selmira and I stayed for the next five years
We were, by now, inseparable and, when we reached the age of seventeen, both of us were determined to work hard and soon found employment, while staying with our foster parents. We were thankful to them for all their care and, later, we moved out and rented an apartment in Sale. We decided to legalise our relationship and were married in a simple ceremony at the local Registry Office in 2003.
Neither of us said anything about our difficult past in war-torn Bosnia and the fact that we were legal refugees with no living relatives. Both of us were hard workers and saved for a property of our own. We took as many jobs as we could safely endure and managed to scrape enough money for a houseboat on the Bridgewater canal system.
With hard work and many hours of study, we were able to reduce to one well-paid job each. Our use of English as our main language had assisted us in finding potential employment.
After passing a difficult College course, Selmira was able to become a lab technician at the local Hospital, while I had worked hard to be taken on as a car mechanic at quite a large Car Dealership close to Altrincham.
Our improved fortunes did mean that we could save for a permanent place. In 2013, we achieved our ambition, buying our own house in Sale. Both of us were used to the area and liked the friendliness of the people in this small town, a few miles south of Manchester.
I would have liked to have children with Selmira, but, sadly, this never materialised. The problem seemed to lie with me, apparently because of an unusually low sperm count, which I was very embarrassed to discover after extensive medical tests.
The rift between us began in 2015, when Selmira began a relationship with David Allinson, a twenty-nine year old work colleague. He was a smooth talker with rugged, good looks, turning Selmira’s affections away from me.
As she began to become more distant, I turned to drink, falling into periods of deep depression. I could never have been violent towards Selmira, yet she continued with her relationship. When I arrived home from work to find Selmira having sex with Allinson in our bed, it broke my heart. Although physically strong, I could never wish to actually hurt my wife or lover and, instead, I started shouting insults in my native Bosnian language while consuming large quantities of Vodka, becoming so intoxicated that I, was unable to stop myself from passing out on several occasions. Selmira must have decided that she had put up with my dark moods for long enough.
I was not certain just what happened next. What I did realise was that, from that point on, I only existed in the spirit world, while able to view what Selmira was doing in the real world. She was in the bathroom along with my prone body, lying, naked and in the bath. An ice-pick had been plunged deep into my throat, streams of blood pouring out of the wound. The rich, red streams were diluted with bath water before running down into the drain.
Selmira was, herself, completely naked, presumably to avoid compromising, genetic evidence on her clothing. She had a collection of very sharp kitchen knives laid out on the shelf adjacent to the bath, lined up as though for a surgeon ready to perform a major operation. As the flow of blood from my throat began to diminish, Selmira climbed into the bath, sitting astride my limp body. She appeared to be deep in thought as she sat on my thighs looking at the figure she had known and loved for twenty-two years. Coming to a decision, she removed the ice-pick from my throat, then took hold of one of the knives and began to cut through the flesh just above my hip bones. She kept the bath water running as more blood and stomach contents poured, steadily, into the bath.
Selmira appeared unwell, looking quite sick. After a few minutes, she seemed to recover a little, stood with one foot on either side of my body and began to try and lift it to turn it over. It was a struggle, but, eventually, she managed to achieve this. Sitting down again on the backs of my thighs, she continued with her task of disconnecting the spine from the lower body. It was quite a struggle separating the bones and cord within the spinal column, but slowly, the very calm, driven woman succeeded in separating my body into two halves. I think her experience in the X-ray department at the hospital may have assisted her.
This done, she used the shower handset to rinse the bloody stains both from the bath and herself. She then stepped out of the bath to retrieve two large plastic bags, returning to ‘bag’ the two halves of my body. Even so, Selmira had great difficulty with this gruesome task and struggled to lift the bags out of the bath.
Once she had the bags on the bathroom floor, Selmira patted them with toilet tissue to remove any excess moisture from the outside. She then wrapped insulating material around each bag, finally using large rolls of packing tape to hold the insulation in place. Still naked, Selmira lifted one of the bags containing half of my corpse and, struggling with the weight, carried it into the front bedroom. She pushed it firmly into the fireplace opening in the chimney breast, resting for a minute or two before returning to the bathroom. She seemed to struggle even more with the second half of my body, but, eventually, she managed to insert it into the chimney breast in the rear bedroom. Selmira seemed to be deep in thought, presumably deciding how to thoroughly conceal the evidence in the chimney breasts.
Coming to a decision, Selmira retrieved her Sajada, the prayer mat, from the side of her bed and laid it on the floor, carefully aligning it to point towards Mecca.