I take a packet of cigarettes out of my pocket. “See this?” I begin. “D’you know why the packet is completely blank?” He shakes his head. “It’s because there isn’t anywhere in Bosnia to print the brand names and logos. I bet you think we’re poor and unhappy because we don’t even have any writing on our cigarettes. That’s what you think, isn’t it? Know why? Because you haven’t a clue where to look.”
I begin to unwrap the packet because I know that something is printed on the inside: it might be the label from a box of soap or a detail from a movie poster or part of an advertisement for shoes. I’m very curious to find out what’s inside — I make a point of checking — and it’s always a surprise. The American is curious too, but he has no idea what I’m doing. At last I undo the cigarette packet to reveal a Marlboro wrapper — the old brand from Sarajevo.* The American is nonplussed but I swear under my breath. I don’t know what else to say. Whatever I say, he’ll just think, “Look at these mad people! They turn cigarette wrappers inside out, then tear them apart to see what cigarettes they’ve bought. If you want my opinion, the people here are just like their packs of cigarettes: everything is back to front — what they say and what they think and what they do.”
Later on, I regretted that I ever opened my big mouth to the American. Why didn’t I just say that we are an unhappy and unarmed people who are being killed by Chetnik beasts, and that we’ve all gone crazy with bereavement and grief? He could have written that down, and I wouldn’t have ended up looking ridiculous in his eyes or in my own.
In the United States people use elevators in graveyards. It says a lot about Americans. If the Serbs attacked Pittsburgh or some other city, the local people could just go and hide underground using the elevator. They wouldn’t have to worry about the shelling or the fighting in the streets. When you look at the advertising billboards, fifty feet high, you don’t have a clue what Sarajevo Marlboro is or isn’t. Nor do you comprehend the sort of unhappiness that sent Rasim underground, or why he saved those Jews, or why he was in turn saved by Salamon Finci, or what happened to his face in the dough mixer at Edhem’s bakery, Vrbanja Street, which can be seen from any graveyard.
*Sarajevo Marlboro — a brand of cigarettes developed by Philip Morris Inc. to suit the taste of Bosnian smokers. The tobacco company made a study of the local cuisine before launching the product, according to a practice that is widespread in other parts of the world. That’s why Marlboro varies from country to country, and from manufacturer to manufacturer, and why a smoker can find the taste of a foreign Marlboro unpleasant. The experts from Philip Morris were especially pleased with their Sarajevo product, it seems, and believed that the tobacco in question, which grows near Gradačac and Orašje, was generally one of the better blends.
The Condor
Izet was what they call an eglen-effendi, or brilliant talker. He could talk non-stop from dusk to dawn. One story flowed into another, one event turned into the next. Often he’d use the day’s events to begin a story that would range across whole centuries and finally return to the price of meat or some gossip about a fellow called Hido who led a ram across Mount Jahorina just before the animal sacrifice of Bairam, right through the Serb positions, until he reached the Višegrad gate, where he was hit by a UN armored truck — I swear to God — and thrown into a ditch while the ram was killed instantly. There was no end to Izet’s stories, just as there’s no end to time, the past or the future. But they were never dull and they usually had a message or a moral and were seldom erratic: a tiny thread of narrative kept you holding on to the story, and forced you to listen, even if it meant that you had to go hungry or without drink, or that your life as a whole became a tense silence in which things only mattered if they could be described by a storyteller.
At the outbreak of the war Izet was staying at Vraca. Before he could even blink, let alone run away, a gang of Chetniks turned up outside his house. His neighbor Spasoje immediately began to point the finger at Izet. It was very sad. Until the day before, the two of them were always drinking rakija together. Spasoje was as good as gold and as harmless as a water-pistol. But on the day in question he dressed up in a black uniform, with a knife flashing at his waist, and his beard seemed to have grown overnight, as though he’d fertilized it with manure. Anyway, he was outside Izet’s door yelling that he’d slit his throat if he didn’t open up. Suddenly Izet lost his tongue, and his knees began to tremble. He didn’t want to open the door. He didn’t really want to keep it shut either. But since he couldn’t say anything in reply, only being able to manage a hiss in the back of his throat, he just made his way to the door and painstakingly fumbled with the key in the lock. He could smell the rakija on Spasoje’s breath through the wooden door. As soon as he opened the door he was hit in the face by a rifle-butt. Izet fell to the ground like a stone. He was so light that Spasoje was able to pick him up by an arm and a leg, and carry him through Vraca. Blood was pouring down Izet’s face but he was still conscious. Even so, it was impossible for the eglen-effendi to utter a single word.
His neighbor didn’t let go of Izet until he reached the Stara Rampa bar. He carried him inside the building, where pictures of King Petar and Draža Mihailović had sprung up overnight. Yet there was no sign of any barroom furniture. Instead, five men in uniforms sat at three tables in the empty room. Spasoje dumped Izet on the floor in front of the soldiers, but the wounded man quickly got to his feet. A fair-haired captain wearing the uniform of the Yugoslav National Army pulled up a chair for Izet.
“Where are your weapons?” demanded one of the other soldiers, who had a beard down to his belly-button.
Izet opened his mouth but only the hissing sound came out. The bearded Serb repeated the question, and Spasoje delivered another blow with the rifle-butt. Izet was feeling dizzy. He could see that his captors weren’t fooling around, and so he began to make up plausible lies, except he couldn’t give voice to any of the stories. As the question was repeated for a third time, the five soldiers jumped up, almost fighting one another for the privilege of hitting Izet. In the end he was pummelled from all sides. At one point he imagined that he heard an echo in his ears as if the Chetniks were beating somebody else, or as if the neighborhood children were shaking the apples off the tree. The lies slipped his mind, and he drifted first into indifference and then into a soft comfortable darkness from which he didn’t emerge until the next day.
He woke up battered and broken, with his arms and legs tied, in the cellar of the bar. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a pile of tables and chairs. On top of them lay Mijo Penava, also battered and tied up. He was the butcher from Lenin Street who’d cut off his left thumb six months ago. The two of them looked at each other for about ten minutes, Izet lying on the wet cellar floor and Mijo on the heap of furniture that was almost collapsing.
“Why did they put you up there, you poor thing?” said Izet, who had by now recovered his voice.
“Because they threw you down there, I guess,” replied Mijo.
“What did they want to know so badly that they had to beat you to a pulp?”
Mijo was trying to put his head between two chairs. “The same thing they asked you, I guess.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“I said whatever came to mind. But now they want me to lead them to the place where the guns are hidden. Dammit! How will I show them what isn’t there? If I tell them I was lying, they’ll just beat the hell out of me. I have to think of something else. Blow me if I know what. And you? How did you butter them up?”