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Roman mladog bh. autora Saše Stanišića predstavio je BBC. U romanu "How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone" ("Kako vojnik popravlja gramofon") – Saša Stanišić, koji je sada tridesetogodišnjak, slika svijet viđen očima lika srpskog učenika, čiji najbolji prijatelj nestaje zajedno sa ostalima u toku etničkog čišćenja.
Saša Stanišić je bio četrnaestogodišnji dječak kada je počeo rat u Bosni, u proljeće 1992. godine. Rat je došao skoro bez ikakvog upozorenja u njegov rodni grad Višegrad na rijeci Drini, predstavio je ovim riječima britanski BBC književno djelo bh. autora.
Kad je rat završen, a prije nego što je napisao knjigu, Saša se vratio u Višegrad da se suoči sa svojim bivšim komšijama.
"Ovi razgovori koje smo vodili bili su najteža stvar", priča on. "Nikome nije lako govoriti - priznajete da ste živjeli u laži... Mogu razumjeti zašto zatvaraju oči. Pitam se kako bih se ja ponašao na njihovom mjestu, ali nisam siguran da bih imao toliko hrabrosti."
Zajedno sa bezbroj drugih reportera sa Zapada, Saša je godinama obilazio ratišta po Bosni. Priznaje da je mnogo riskirao. Neki od njegovih prijatelja nisu preživjeli.
"Uradili smo to, jer smo smatrali da smo samo tako mogli vidjeti pravu istinu," kaže autor.
Knjiga Saše Stanišića je umjetnost, a ne novinarstvo, ona je fikcija, a ne reportaža. Istina koju govori je oštra, živopisna i bolna.
"Morao sam to izbaciti iz sebe," priznaje Saša. "Mislim da literatura još uvijek ima snage da ponešto kaže, zajedno sa novinarstvom. Bio sam siguran da knjiga ima moć da kaže istinu o stvarima koje nisam vidio, kao i o onima koje jesam."
Knjiga je napisana na njemackom (i koliko znam nominovana za nagradu "German Book Prize"). Prije par mjeseci se pojavila na sjevernoamerickom trzistu.
Ja je namjeravam uskoro procitati (samo da dodje na red ). Zanima me je li iko vec procitao i kakvi su utisci?
U svakom slucaju mislim da je vrijedno pomenuti ovu knjigu, kao i uspjeh ovog mladog knjizevnika, posebno zato jer mislim da nije nimalo jednostavno probiti se na trzistu literature i to jos na stranom jeziku
evo i orginalnog clanka, ako nekog zanima: Escaping Visegrad
By Allan Little
BBC World Affairs Correspondent
In the spring of 1992, Bosnia tumbled into war. It descended almost without warning on the town of Visegrad, on the River Drina, which separates Bosnia from Serbia.
Sasa Stanisic was a 14-year-old school boy whose life was about to be changed forever in the course of a single day.
"I was packing for school and my father told me you are not going to school today and four hours later the first shooting began," he said.
"Some people knew what was going on there were signs, private little signs but you would never expect them to become an klix war.
"He [Sasa's father] came from work and he came back, found out something, came back to get us...we went to my grandmother's and in the next 10 days we were hiding from the grenades.
"Sarajevo was three years, we only had to suffer 10 days they would start around 9am, and finish around 5pm, as though they were going to work.
"You get used to it."
Collective guilt
After 10 days of bombardment, Visegrad's non-Serbs, about half the population, were expelled from their homes at gun point in the course of a single weekend.
Some were murdered and their bodies thrown into the river from the town's famous bridge.
Three weeks later, I went to Visegrad myself, across mountain passes, down side roads and dirt tracks to avoid the shifting front lines.
The Muslim houses had been ransacked - stripped of everything of value. The town's two mosques had been razed.
The Serbs who remained would not talk about what had happened to their former neighbours.
"The war came," one man told me, "and they left."
You felt the sadness of the place, the despair of those who were left; their silent, unacknowledged sense of collective guilt.
When the war was over
In his novel - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - Sasa Stanisic, who is now 30, places himself in the mind of a Serbian schoolboy, whose best friend has disappeared, with the rest of the ethnically cleansed.
"I hate the shots in the night and the bodies in the river and I hate the way you don't hear the water when a body hits it, and I hate my eyes as they can't see exactly who's being pushed into the deep water and shot there," Sasa writes.
When the war was over, and before he wrote the book, Sasa went back to Visegrad to look his former neighbours in the eye.
"These interviews I had with these people were the hardest thing. Nobody tells you with an easy heart - you are admitting that you lived a lie I can understand that you close your eyes I ask myself how I would have acted in their place but I am not sure if I would have had the courage," he said.
Risking the truth
I and countless other western reporters ran around the battlefields of Bosnia for years.
We took absurd risks. Some of our friends didn't survive.
We did it because we thought that being there enabled us to tell a vital truth.
Sasa Stanisic's book is art not journalism, fiction not reportage. But the truth it tells is sharp and vivid and painful.
He said: "I wanted to get it out of my system. It was circling in me. It is something special for you but it's something else.
"I think that literature still has the power to say something, together with the journalism.
"I am very secure that the book has the power to tell truth about all the things that I didn't see as well as the things that I did see."
Saša je već u februaru prošle godine za ovau knjigu nagrađen prestižnom nagradom u visini od 15000 eura,Saša je inače sa 14 god.imigrirao u SRNj aporijeklom je iz Višegrada.
Saša Stanišić Der deutsch-bosnische Schriftsteller Saša Stanišić erhält den mit 15 000 Euro dotierten Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Preis 2008. Der 29-Jährige ist der bislang jüngste Träger der seit 1985 verliehenen Auszeichnung.
Geehrt werde in erster Linie sein Debütroman "Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert". Überreicht wird der Preis am 28. Februar 2008 in München. Die Stiftung zeichnet mit dem Preis jährlich literarische Leistungen deutsch schreibender Autoren aus, deren Muttersprache oder kulturelle Herkunft nicht die deutsche ist.
Stanišić wurde 1978 in Višegrad geboren und kam als 14-Jähriger nach Heidelberg. Er studierte am Deutschen Literaturarchiv in Leipzig. 2005 erhielt er bereits den Publikumspreis des Ingeborg- Bachmann-Wettbewerbs. „Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert“ erzählt die Geschichte des bosnischen Jungen Alexander, der scheinbar spielerisch über sein Leben berichtet und dabei zwangsläufig vom brutalen Kriegsalltag erzählt, ohne den Krieg direkt zu thematisieren. Der „tragikomische, nahezu burleske Roman über eine außergewöhnliche Kindheit in einer außergewöhnlichen Zeit“ habe die deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur „entscheidend bereichert“, schrieb die Stiftung.
vjesticanametli wrote:zambaklija koji je verlag u pitanju? jesi li citao ovu knjigu?
Luchterhand Literaturverlag-Verlag 20€
kod jedne prijateljice malo preletjeo,ja bi to prije nazvao autobiografijom al et roman,nije loš,nisam imao baš mnogo vremena da čitam ali mi je prijateljica dosta nahvalila taj book.
vjesticanametli wrote:zambaklija koji je verlag u pitanju? jesi li citao ovu knjigu?
Luchterhand Literaturverlag-Verlag 20€
kod jedne prijateljice malo preletjeo,ja bi to prije nazvao autobiografijom al et roman,nije loš,nisam imao baš mnogo vremena da čitam ali mi je prijateljica dosta nahvalila taj book.
zambaklija hvala puno na dodatnim informacijama
i ja ocekujem knjigu uskoro pa cim je procitam podjelicu utiske s vama....ne mislim da je knjiga autobiografija, autor sam naziva knjigu romanom mozda djeluje pomalo autobiografski, ali vecina pisaca pisu o onome sto (dobro) poznaju, pa me ne cudi da je on izabrao bas ovaj nacin da isprica pricu koja se nalazila u njemu
vjesticanametli wrote:zambaklija koji je verlag u pitanju? jesi li citao ovu knjigu?
Luchterhand Literaturverlag-Verlag 20€
kod jedne prijateljice malo preletjeo,ja bi to prije nazvao autobiografijom al et roman,nije loš,nisam imao baš mnogo vremena da čitam ali mi je prijateljica dosta nahvalila taj book.
prevod knjige za nase govorno podrucje izlazi (ili je vec izaslo) u izdanju Buybooka...pokusala sam naci odlomak na nasem, medjutim nadjoh samo ovo prvo poglavlje na engleskom...pa eto koga zanima...
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone An excerpt from the novel by Sasa Stanisic
Translated from the German by Anthea Bell
To be published by Grove Press, June 2008
From Chapter 1:
“How long a heart attack takes over three hundred feet, how much a spider’s life weighs, why a sad man writes to the cruel river, and what magic the Comrade in Chief
of the unfinished can work”
Grandpa Rafik, my mother’s father, died for good a long time ago—he drowned in the river Drina. I hardly knew him, but I can remember one game we played, a simple game. Grandpa Rafik would point to something and I’d say its name, its color, and the first thing that occurred to me about it. He’d point to his penknife, and I’d say: knife, gray, and railway engine. He’d point to a sparrow, and I’d say: bird, gray, and railway engine. Grandpa Rafik pointed through the window at the night, and I said: dreams, gray, and railway engine, and Grandpa tucked me up and said: sleep an iron sleep.
The time of my gray period was the time of my visits to the eye specialist, who diagnosed nothing except that I could see things too fast, for instance the sequence of little letters and big letters on his wall chart. You’ll have to cure him of that somehow, Mrs. Krsmanovic, said the eye specialist, and he prescribed drops for her own eyes, which were always red.
I was very scared of trains and railway engines at that time. Grandpa Rafik had taken me to the disused railway tracks, he scratched flaking paint off the old engine; you’ve broken my heart, he whispered, rubbing the black paint between the palms of his hands. On the way home—paving stone, gray, railway engine, my hand in his large one, black with sharp scraps of peeling paint—I decided to be nice to railway trains, because now he had me worried about my own heart. But it had been a long time since any trains had passed through our town. A few years later the first girl I loved, Danijela with her very long hair who didn’t return my love, showed me how silly I’d been to protect my heart from being broken by trains.
Peeling scraps of paint and the gray game are all I remember of Grandpa Rafik, unless old photos count as memories. And Grandpa Rafik is absent from our home in general. However often and however readily my family like to talk about themselves and other families and the dead over coffee, Grandpa Rafik is very seldom mentioned. No one ever looks at the coffee grounds in a cup and sighs: oh, Rafik, my Rafik, if only you were here! No one ever wonders what Grandpa Rafik would say about something, his name isn’t spoken with either gratitude or disapproval.
No dead person could be less alive than Grandpa Rafik.
The dead are lonely enough in the earth where they lie, so why
do we leave even the memory of Grandpa Rafik to be so lonely?
Mother comes into the kitchen and opens the fridge. She’s going to make sandwiches to take to work, she puts butter and cheese on the table. I look at her face, searching it for Grandpa Rafik’s face in the photos.
Mama, do you look like Grandpa Rafik? I ask when she sits down at the table and unwraps the bread. She cuts up tomatoes. I wait and ask the question again, and only now does Mother stop, knife blade on a tomato. What kind of grandpa was Grandpa Rafik? I ask again, why does no one talk about him? How am I ever going to know what kind of a grandpa I had?
Mother puts the knife aside and lays her hands in her lap. Mother raises her eyes. Mother looks at me.
You didn’t have a real grandpa, Aleksandar, only a sad man. He mourned for his river and his earth. He would kneel down, scratch about in that earth of his until his fingernails broke and the blood came. He stroked the grass and smelled it and wept into its tufts like a klix child—my dear earth, you’re trodden underfoot, at the mercy of all kinds of weight. You didn’t have a real grandpa, only a stupid man. He drank and drank. He ate earth, he brought earth up, then he crawled to the bank on all fours and washed his mouth out with water from the river. How that sad man loved his river! And his cognac—a stupid man who could love only what he saw as humbled and subjugated. Who could love only if he drank and drank.
The Drina, what a neglected river, what forgotten beauty, he would lament when he came staggering out of a bar, once with the frame of his glasses bent, another time after wetting
himself, oh, the stink of it! What a messy business old age is, he wept when he stumbled and fell, trying to hold tight to the river in case he took off. Oh, how often we found him at night under the first arch of the bridge, lying on his belly with his fingers clutching the surface of the water. Swollen, blue hands, half-clenched into fists. He’d be holding flowers in the river, stones, sometimes a cognac bottle. It went on like that for years. Ever since they took the railway out of service, so that there were no more trains running through the town with that sad man switching the points for them, setting the signals, raising the barriers. He lost his job and never said a word about it, he had nothing to do now and nothing at all to say. He was sent into retirement and he drank day after day, first in secret up at the railway station that wasn’t a station anymore, though the old engine still stood there, and later by the river and in the middle of town, overcome by sudden, stupid love for the water and its banks.
You didn’t have a real grandpa, only an embittered man. He drank and drank and drank until he was tired of life. If only he’d loved chess or the Party or us as much as he loved his trains and then his river, and most of all his brandy! If only he’d listened to us and not the deep, unfathomable Drina!
One evening he scratched a farewell letter into the river bank. He had drunk three liters of wine, and he used the broken neck of a bottle as his pen. We pulled him out of the mud by his feet, and he whimpered and cried out to the river: how am I to save you, how am I to save something so large all by myself ?
To think that something so sad can stink like that! We were called when his shouting and his songs got to be more than anyone could bear. Papa carried him home in his arms and put him in the bathtub, clothes and all, and in the bathtub your drunken grandfather threw up twice, in a fury, cursing all anglers: may your weapons turn against your own mouths, he said, prodding the river’s belly like that with your hooks, tearing the fish’s lips—ah, what silent pain! May your skin be flayed with blunt knives, you criminals, may the depths take you along with your boats, your filthy gasoline, all your weirs, all your turbines, all your mechanical diggers! A river: a river is water and life and power and nothing else.
Around midnight I washed his hair and his tortoise neck, I washed behind his ears and under his armpits. He kissed my hands and said he knew exactly who I was. In spite of his tears he knew whose knuckles he was patting, he remembered everything: what a jewel Love was, and Fate such a bastard!
I’m your daughter, I told him three times, not your wife, and on that night, his last, he made me three promises: from now on, he’d wear clean clothes, he’d drink no alcohol, and he’d stay alive. He kept only one of them. His railwayman’s cap was found under the first arch of the bridge, his cognac bottle was also found, but he himself was never found. We probed the water near the banks of the Drina for him with pitchforks. Why had he gone out again? What was there left to love on that May night? The bars had all been shut for ages when I tucked him up after his bath, after he’d made his promises. An angler, of all people, found his body in the reeds downstream. His face was under the water, his feet were on the bank—his beloved Drina was kissing him in death, marrying that sad man who kept only one of his promises. He had smartened himself up for the wedding and was wearing his uniform with the railwayman’s badge. He had spent so many nights looking for death, but until then he didn’t have the courage to find it; he didn’t keep his head under water long enough for the Drina to be the last and only tear he wept.
And when he was to be laid out for the funeral, twelve hours after I’d washed him into making his three promises, I was the one who took the loofah again, the hardest I could find, I was the one who scrubbed his thin torso the way you scrub a carpet, rubbed soap into his yellow, wrinkled belly and brushed his flabby calves. I didn’t touch his fingers or his face. Your sad grandfather had dug his hands into the bank, and what kind of daughter would I have been to scrape the earth out from under his fingernails? After he had said: when I die I don’t want any coffin? How that sad man loved his cruel river, how he loved the willows and the fish and the mud! You didn’t have a grandpa, Aleksandar, only a naive man. But you were too little to remember his naivete. You liked the way he said gray, gray, gray to everything, for some reason you thought it was funny. It was only for his river that he thought up the brightest of colors, he saw the detail of nothing but the Drina, that sad man who could laugh only when he saw his reflection in the water. You didn’t have a grandpa, Aleksandar, just a sad man.
I look at my mother with a thousand questions in my eyes. She has sung me the song of the sad man as if she’d been rehearsing it since the day he drowned. She has sung as if he hadn’t belonged to her, as if someone else had written the lines, yet with such loving anger that I was afraid a mere nod of my head might disrupt the song. Now she shakes her head over something I can’t see and lays slices of bread out in a row on the table.
I ask only two of my thousands of questions. What did Grandpa write on the bank? And why didn’t any of you help him?
My mother is a small woman. She runs her fingers through her long hair, combing it. She puffs in my face as if we were playing. She unwraps the butter. Unwraps the cheese. Spreads butter on the bread. Puts a slice of cheese on the butter. Puts tomatoes on the cheese. Sprinkles salt on the tomatoes with her thumb and forefinger. Takes the bread on the palm of her hand. Puts another slice of bread on top of it. Presses them firmly together. SASA STANISIC was born in Visegrad, Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1978. At the age of fourteen, he fled to Germany with his family and went to study literature in Heidelburg and Leipzig. His novel, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone will be published by Grove Press in June, 2008.
Copyright 2006 by Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich
Translation copyright 2008 by Anthea Bell
Mozda i necudi veliki talent pisanja Sase, jer je iz mjesovitog braka i sama cinjenica vjerovatno daje neke drugacije poglede. Slavan je u Njemackoj, neki su njegov talent uporedjivali s Grass-om.
uzivam u citanju ove knjige za sve zainteresirane prekucacu poneki odlomak koji je na mene posebno ostavio utisak...ja nemam kopiju knjige na nasem nego na engleskom zbog toga su i ovi odlomci koje dijelim s vama na engleskom
Who wins when Walrus blows the whistle, what an orchestra smells of, when you can't cut fog, and how a story leads to an agreement
After the end of his own career Milenko Pavlovic, once a three-point shooter and feared for his scoring prowess, who was nicknamed Walrus because of his bristly mustache and dropping cheeks, went off every Saturday to blow the whistle at basketball games in top Yugoslavian league, getting home the next day in time for lunch. Of the sixty matches he refereed, fifty-five were won by the home side.
That particular Saturday in late April 1991 his son, Zoran, went to a match with him in Split, and Zoran suggested coming home straight after the bingo. Bingo and beans with pork ribs in the most expensive hotel in town. A hearty helping for Walrus, who has whistled valiantly. After the offensive foul for the away team four seconds before the final whistle the crowd had chanted: Walrus! Walrus! rather than the names of their players. The home team, Jugoplastika, nearly missed out on victory, but Walrus didn't miss out on good winnings at bingo.
I can't be doing with a sleeping passenger, said Walrus, if you drop off to sleep in the car I'll put you out on the Romanija. He licked the fingers that had been holding the pork ribs. Walrus, that diligent referee, had equally diligently gnawed the meat fight off the bone. The bill was on the house. The pear cake was on the house. The pear schnapps was on the house. Walrus had tipped his third down the hatch, and over his fourth he and the hotel proprietor drank to Jugoplastika's victory. Walrus! Walrus! Walrus! cried the waiters and the guests of honor.
Walrus! Let's have a song for Walrus! babbled the hotelier, a sturdy Hungarian by the name of Agoston Szabolcs, loosening his tie. A lively accordion tune wound its way out of the kitchen and into the restaurant. The chief kicked the door open and swayed across the room. I'm the orchestra around here! He squeezed the red accordion back and forth over his magnificent paunch; a greasy meat fork dangled from his hip, sweat dripped into his smile. His stubby fingers slipped across the keys, the prelude smelled of beef, of garlic, of metal. Twenty well-fed men took up the song, twenty victorious voices, more seriously smashed, more rapturous, more enamored with every verse and every shot of spirits. The chef grinned as if under torture. The chef whistled. The chef dripped. The chef put his foot down on a chair to support the accordion. Yoohoo! cried the suffering chef, grabbing the schnapps bottle. He tipped spirits down his throat straight from the bottle, and there was no break in the singing when he took his hand off the keys. I'm the orchestra around here, he gurgled, that's me, the orchestra!
The waiters took orders, always ordering a double for themselves. They twirled trays on their fingertips, hugged one another and swayed in time to the songs, sailors dressed in black.
The eight, cried Walrus, throwing the seventh glass over his shoulder, the eighth is for my little lad here, only he can't legally drink yet, so I'll just have to manage it for him.
Little means a lot smaller than me, Zoran protested, and he drank the dregs from every glass without making a face. Agoston Szablocs did the same, only with full glasses, and he went to sleep after the tenth with his elbow in a brimming ashtray. All of you shut up! snarled the chef, and the accordion whispered an emotional csardas in the hotelier's ear. The men rose to their feet, looked at each other, closed the circle, moving arm in arm. Glasses hit the wall and didn't break, whereupon Agoston Szabolcs stood up as well, joining the dance even before he'd woken up. Milenko joined in, tilting his head back, more wolf than walrus.
Zoran stayed awake for the first hundred and twenty-five miles - the way his father was singing, there was no chance of going to sleep. Two hours later he drank the first thermos of coffee, and just before Sarajevo and after his third packet of glucose he felt a little unwell. When his father woke him up in the Romanija region - look at that, Zoran, fog like cement! - he rubbed his eyes and instantly cried: I wasn't asleep!
No, no you just closed your eyes for a minute, same as me. We'll both have to replace those eyes of ours, next time the meadows may not save us. The car had stopped a good way into a field, with a steep slope downhill on the right, you couldn't see where it went. Five in the morning, fog like cement, Zoran!
It was night, morning, and cold all in one in the Romanija. Father and son got out of the car, the big man stretched and scratched his mustache. Zoran yawned, picked up a stone and threw it into the fog. Dew lay on the grass and their shoes. They peed to the right and left of a fir tree, aiming downhill through the foggy cement, both of them whistling, both of them happy. Walrus leaned against the warm hood, one hand in his trouser pocket, a cigarette in the other. Zoran picked dandelions and daisies and something pale blue the name of which he didn't know and put them together in a bunch. He unwrapped the remains of the pork ribs and folded the foil around the stems. He didn't think much of flowers, and the bunch showed it; crap was his father's highest praise, but flowers are flowers, your mother will be pleased.
She wasn't pleased. The front door was unlocked; her hair was mussed. She wasn't pleased, she was naked, and why, Zoran asked himself, why fog like cement anyway? Nothing was ever as soft as the fog in the Romanija on the Sunday morning when Zoran and his father, Milenko, nicknamed Walrus, arrived home six hours earlier than planned. The door was open, and so was the zipper of Bogoljub Balvan the tobacconist's fly.
janje_ wrote:upravo porucio knjigu na amazon. pa bumo vidjeli. zale se ljudi da je stil zafrkan i tezak za citati.
ipak nije Krleza nije bas toliko tezak vjerovatno nece biti po ukusu onima koji preferiraju linearne narative...meni se knjiga bas i svidjela zbog te nekonvencionalnosti...zbog toga sto se svojim tokom prica poistovjecuje sa rijekom Drinom...zato sto nista o cemu Sasa pise nije jednostavno, cak i onda kada se cini da jeste...ali je prica, ma kako isprekidana, ipak zivopisna, puna uspomena, puna maste, puna ljubavi i pored toga sto je napisana na njemackom, a zatim prevedena na engleski, cak i ovako iz druge ruke ima u tom pisanju i dah naseg jezika ja toplo preporucujem....znam da cu je ja procitati jos koji put...
Ice cream
There’s always ice cream, but there isn’t always this particular ice cream, it’s my favorite and its name is a favorite name of mine: Stela. If I have a little sister, I tell my mother, digging the little blue plastic spoon into the ice cream carton, we’ll call her Stela, okay? Have I been putting on weight? asks my mother in alarm, and I say: no, but I’ve a right to join in family decisions, haven’t I?
My father slept all through my birth, and my mother fainted immediately after it, she couldn’t stand the sight of so much blood and shit all at once, so the only person present who was still conscious, my Uncle Bora, had a perfect right to say at once: ugly little dirtbag, we’ll call him Aleksandar.
It’s true that I was still very small at the time, but you never forget a remark like that.
My favorite Stela ice cream is vanilla. It comes in a blue carton. There are little colored spoons in a plastic bag in the ice cream vendor’s fridge. If you buy a Stela ice cream you can have a little colored spoon for free. Blue is my favorite. Stela is a pregnant ice cream with a secret inside it. Buried somewhere in the vanilla ice, sometimes near the top, sometimes in the middle, sometimes at the bottom, an icy, dark red, sour cherry lies hidden.
mislim, naravno da sam pristrasna, naravno da malo navijam za domaćeg pisca na stranom jeziku, i za magični realizam kao najbolji pristup pisanju o BiH, ali ipak... ovo je kao da Kureishi ili Rushdie pišu o nama... Ne, mislim, Saša ima svoj već razvijen i sasvim specifičan stil, ali hoću reći - tog je kalibra
U utorak, 25. ožujka, legendarni most Mehmed-paše Sokolovića u Višegradu proglašen je službeno zaštićenim spomenikom svjetske graditeljske baštine. Taj, kako su isticali srednjoškolski nastavnici, "glavni junak" Andrićeva famoznog romana bit će u budućnosti pod štitom i zaštitom Svjetske kulturne organizacije, sačuvan od daljeg urušavanja i propasti.
Generalni direktor UNESCO-a Koichiro Matsuura uručio je certifikat Komiteta za svjetsku baštinu predstavnicima vlasti u Sarajevu, te im predao dvojezičnu ploču, koju treba prikucati na sredinu ograde mosta. Postavljanju ploče suprotstavila se udruga "Žene žrtve rata", koja traži da se prije isticanja znaka UNESCO-a na sredinu mosta mora postaviti natpis o genocidu nad stanovnicima Višegrada, gdje je u proteklom ratu ubijeno preko tri tisuće Bošnjaka. Mnogi od njih su upravo s mosta bačeni u smrt.
Višegradski kameni most, djelo turskog arhitekta Sinana, kojeg su suvremenici nazivali Michelangelom Orijenta, postao je tako ponovno mostom razdora, ovaj put razdora između živih i mrtvih, stvarnih i današnjih vlasnika Višegrada. Kronologiju gradnje mosta romansirao je Ivo Andrić rečenicama trajnijim od mjedi, od kojih vrijedi navesti one o vladarima i njihovu nasilju.
"Oni koji vladaju i moraju da tlače da bi vladali, osuđeni su da rade razumno; a ako, poneseni svojom strašću ili naterani od protivnika, pređu granice razumnih postupaka, oni silaze na klizav put i označavaju time sami početak svoje propasti."
Ta ćuprija na Drini zapamtila je mnoge nerazumne vladare, ali ih je i nadživjela, što pregnantno opisuje nobelovska literarna kronika, koja obuhvaća višegradsko zbitije sve do početka Drugog svjetskog rata. Što se tu događalo u Drugom svjetskom ratu još nije do kraja rasvijetljeno, mada je najpouzdanija svjedočenja o masovnim pokoljima muslimana ostavio Vladimir Dedijer u knjizi Genocid nad Muslimanima (Sarajevo, 1990.). U ratu koji je rastočio Jugoslaviju u prvoj polovici devedesetih, Mimar Sinanov most bio je opet stratište mržnje i bratoubilaštva. O broju tad pobijenih višegradskih muslimana još nema pouzdanih podataka, ali postoji jedna nova književna kronika o tom užasu, koja, poput Andrićeva djela, prelazi u svjetske jezike.
Riječ je o romanu Kako vojnik popravlja gramofon Saše Stanišića (München, 2006.), djelu koje je anonimni bosanski autor objavio na njemačkom i koje je, odmah nakon izlaska, privuklo pažnju najvećih književnih autoriteta i već prevedeno u preko dvadeset zemalja. Saša Stanišić, kao četrnaestogodišnjak napustio je rodni Višegrad i s roditeljima se kao izbjeglica našao u Njemačkoj. U svom debitantskom romanu on očima dječaka opisuje srpsku opsadu grada i ubijanje njegovih stanovnika. Narator, dječak Aleksandar, iznosi niz djetinjih priča punih humora i radosti iz malog idiličnog mjesta na Drini, u čije se naoko mirne ljude polako useljavaju demoni nacionalizma. Kao dijete Srbina i Bošnjakinje on prati raslojavanje jedne tipične bosanske obitelji u praskozorje naše sveopće propasti. Priče o dva djeda, Slavku i Refiku, koje dječak želi oživjeti mađioničarskim trikovima, završavaju mrakom u koji tonu rijeka i dolina.
"Nisi imao djeda, Aleksandre, imao si Tužnog. Tugovao je za svojom rijekom i svojom zemljom. Klečao je, grebao po toj svojoj zemlji, sve dok mu se nokti ne bi slomili i krv ne bi potekla. Gladio je travu i mirisao je, i plakao u stručke trave poput djeteta – zemljo moja, kako si mi samo zgažena i izložena svoj težini." Stanišića sam upoznao proljetos na jednom čitanju u Salzburgu. Ovaj mladić u njemačkom govornom području ima status istinske književne zvijezde, a na njegova čitanja dolaze stotine ljudi. Pitao sam ga misli li se vratiti u Višegrad, odgovorio je da su mu roditelji izbjegli u Ameriku, te da u rodnome gradu više nema nikoga. Na pitanje beogradskog lista Politika je li srpski pisac, on je odgovorio odrečno.
"U centru pažnje mora stajati djelo, a ne ja sa mojim porijeklom, koje je inače bosanskohercegovačko, a ne srpsko, ja sam dijete iz predivnog 'mješovitog' braka, i na tu 'mješavinu' sam čak pomalo i ponosan, jer je ona ogledalo mog objektivnog pogleda na sva pitanja nacionalnosti i etničke pripadnosti, kao i na njihovu nevažnost. Da mogu sebi izabrati srednje ime, bilo bi neko lijepo arapsko, a treće bi mi bilo njemačko. Moj pasoš je bosanski, kroz mene se prelamaju okcident i orijent, čitao sam Bibliju i Kuran, i odlučio postati ateist. Pisanje na njemačkom bila je logična, pragmatična odluka: moj njemački je mnogo bolji od mog 'našeg', bosanskog, tako da nikada ne bih uspio ispričati sve ovo što sam ispričao tako precizno, da sam pokušao da pogađam naše riječi."
What goes on behind God’s feet, why Kiko picks up the cigarette, where Hollywood
is, and how Mickey Mouse learns to answer
At 14.22 hours they radioed a ceasefire through to the Territorial Defence trenches. The
third this month. At 14.28 hours the ball rose from the Serbian trench on the northern
outskirts of the forest and flew through the air, tracing a high arc, towards the clearing that
separated the opposing positions by about two hundred metres. The ball bounced twice
and rolled in the direction of the two spruce trees, now shot to pieces, that had served as
goalposts before when hostilities were suspended.
The commander of the Territorials, Dino Safirović, nicknamed Dino Zoff, jumped
up on the edge of the trench, cupped his hands around his mouth as a megaphone and
bent his torso back as he shouted to the other side: how about it, Chetniks, want another
hiding? He reached for his crotch and thrust his hips back and forth, back and forth, then
went a few metres in the direction of the ball, to the place where Ćora lay with a huge hole
in his head.
Mujaheddin cunts, we already fucked your mothers’ arses twice, roared a hoarse
voice from the Serbian trench, while Kiko – Kiko number nine, Kiko of the prodigious
headers, Kiko the iron brow of the gentle river Drina – joined Dino Zoff, took Ćora by the
ankles and dragged him behind the trench. He covered him up with his coat and put the
bloodstained strands of hair back from his forehead, oh, look at you now, friend Ćora, he
whispered, grass and earth everywhere.
Beside him, Meho clicked his tongue, dug the red and white Red Star Belgrade shirt
out of his rucksack and put it on over his jacket. He ceremoniously emptied his jacket
pockets: a Swiss army knife, a lighter, two hand grenades, an opened can of meat paste. He
kissed Audrey Hepburn’s photo several times, enraptured, and then put it away again. He
grinned in reply to Dino Zoff’s enquiring gaze, said: we all have our lucky charms, did you
know about Maradona’s underpants … and then he noticed Kiko and Ćora’s dead body
and stopped short. He shouldn’t have gone out, never mind how dark it was, began Meho,
both apologetic and accusing, but then he met Kiko’s eyes, sighed, and offered him a
packet of Drinas. Everyone in the troop knew Meho still had cigarettes, there were even
rumours that the packet was half full. Kiko took the last but one. He passed it over his
upper lip and breathed in the fragrance
Mirabelles, he murmured, closing his eyes, Hanifa’s throat when she’s brought me
home from training, coffee, real Turkish coffee. That’s the way of the world, friend Ćora,
you’ve snuffed it and I get a cigarette. Kiko passed his fingertips over Ćora’s eyelids and
put the cigarette behind his ear. For after the game, he said with his head bowed.
The Serbs had won the last two ceasefires five-two and two-one. A man called
Milan Jevrić, nicknamed Mickey Mouse, shot three of their five goals in the first match.
Mickey Mouse was a farmer’s boy aged twenty, two metres six tall and weighing a hundred
kilos, maybe as many as thirty of them in the great rock of a head with its projecting nose
and few sparse tufts of hair that he carried on his bull-like neck. He was really an inside defender,
and surprised himself more than anyone by his goal-scoring prowess when he
stormed ahead at the beginning of the second half of that match, shot from a distance of
thirty metres and hit Dino Zoff right in the face. Dino didn’t come round until Marko, one
of the Serbian forwards, held some schnapps under his nose, and for the next two hours he
spoke nothing but fluent Latin, quoting several Ciceronian maxims. After that direct hit
Mickey Mouse played as a midfield attacker, hammering the ball away from every
conceivable position. When he fired off one of his right-footed shots and the ball made for
the goal like a bullet, Dino Zoff regularly threw himself not fearlessly but bravely into its
flight path, and was just as regularly floored, lying there dazed or with his face twisting in
pain. Probably because there was no other way of keeping out Mickey Mouse’s mighty
shots, or perhaps in hopes of the return of Marko’s schnapps. There was no art in Mickey
Mouse’s shots, they didn’t spin or come off the outside of his foot, and after the first time
they no longer took anyone by surprise. In their lack of finesse they reflected Mickey
Mouse’s straightforward thinking, which he seldom expressed in words; they were simply
physical effort for which the big man was praised and feared, so he kept on doing the same
thing again and again with gusto, like a child.
There was just one drawback to the force of Mickey Mouse’s right foot, and the
Territorials mercilessly exploited it. After every shot the giant gave vent to his delight in his
strength with a shout that, in musical terms, was somewhere between a bull’s rutting cry
and the sound of a twenty-five-ton truck and trailer braking on a steep downhill slope.
Monika Seleš to the life! cried Kozica with the goatee beard, the Territorials’ outside left,
after one such cry of exultation had rung out over hill and vale, and he roared with
laughter.
Hey, is Monika playing with you today? Dino Zoff’s men would mock the Serbs
after that, or: Monika, Monika, come play on my harmonica! And they groaned out loud
whenever Mickey Mouse got the ball. This great mountain of a man, so large that no
uniform fitted him and he had to wear his enormous dungarees from home, was thrown
off balance by these digs. In the second game he toned down his shouts, and promptly his
long-distance shots too became less decisive, causing Dino Zoff no more headaches. If an
opposing player yodelled near him, Mickey Mouse would jump, his massive head would
rock on his comparatively slight shoulders, and his narrow brow was furrowed with
thought. If only he’d been given a little more time, Mickey Mouse would have liked to say
what he was thinking, but then play shifted to the other side of the field and his tormentor
ran off.
Today, as before, Kozica yelled at the Serbian side during warming up: what a
shame Miss Graf couldn’t come to Mount Igman! She’s in Wimbledon but she sends
Monika her best wishes, it’s OK about the nail varnish. Ho, ho, ho, cried Kozica, and his
companions joined in.
Two halves of forty minutes each, a Territorial ref for the first half, a Serbian ref
for the second – if there was going to be any sharp practice it would be fairly distributed.
Mickey Mouse tied a rope between the goalposts on the southern outskirts of the clearing
to serve as a cross bar. The other goal consisted of remains of the fence that used to stand
beside one of the two cart tracks. They crossed in the clearing. The wire netting between
the fence posts had been cut and the posts extended by boards to two and a half metres
high. Whoever had control of those cart tracks could reach the mountain more rapidly, no
need to forge a path through dense, poorly mapped forests with more mines in the ground
than mushrooms. That was what it had been all about here for the last two months: two
cart tracks. Lower down the valley one of them turned into a paved road leading to Sarajevo.
In normal times, flies flew here in square formation over dried cowpats, but there
were no fresh cowpats to dry off now. The farm cattle that hadn’t been driven higher up
the mountains had been slaughtered long ago, and humans buried their own shit. These
days the flies circled above corpses that couldn’t always be got into the earth at once.
At sixteen hours the teams met somewhere roughly in the middle of the football
pitch, the rest of the soldiers sat down in long rows on the grass to form live touchlines.
No one was visibly carrying weapons; there were some guns propped against trees. The
players passed the ball to each other, warming up in silence. The Serbs won the toss for
choice of ends.
Standing a little way from the others, Kiko and Mickey Mouse gave each other a
friendly hug. They knew one another from school, where they’d both had to stay down
twice in the eighth year, which was unusual. It was even more unusual for someone to have
had to stay down twice in the first year as well, and then in the fourth year and the sixth
year. Once, in the middle of a maths test, the boy with the ever-open mouth had asked
how exactly you set about learning things. His fellow pupils considered him a quiet, kindly
colossus who, when asked the date of Columbus’s discovery of America looked out of the
window and replied, ‘Colorado beetle.’ Kiko, on the other hand, though only just
seventeen, was among the country’s most promising footballers. While the first-division
clubs were vying with each other to recruit Kiko, Mickey Mouse was toiling day and night
on his parents’ farm, and there was nothing to suggest that better days and better nights
would ever come for him.
But come they did – with the war. Where’s the war? Mickey Mouse asked. His
mother said: still far away, thank God. Good, he said, whose side are we on? You’re a Serb,
his father told him. So next day there was Mickey Mouse standing in the doorway with a
rucksack that, on his broad back, looked like a make-up bag. He told his father, his father’s
ten fried eggs, the pale blue tiled kitchen, the notched cherry-wood table, the dusty yard,
the stink of muck from the cowsheds, the plough that had strengthened the muscles in his
back, and the countless sacks of maize that he kicked hard night after night because he was
angry with his father, with the ten fried eggs his father ate every morning, with the table
into which he had carved his name when he had to sleep under it once for two weeks, with
the yard where his father knocked him down in the dust and kicked him, with the muck
through which he’d waded all his life, with the plough because he wasn’t an ox – goodbye,
he told them all, goodbye, I’m going right away, I’m going to war.
Mickey Mouse’s father chewed his mouthful, drank his cauliflower juice and
mopped his mouth with the tea towel. He pushed his chair back, but froze when he heard
his son’s determined voice saying: if you stand up, if you take a single step, I’ll wring your
neck like a chicken’s, I’m going right away. Mickey Mouse walked for five days, asking his
way and saying he was Serbian, until he was given a gun. Can I go shooting now? he asked,
and he learned how to load the gun and take the safety catch off. He was sent to Mount
Igman, where the Serbian troops were preparing for the siege of Sarajevo. Mickey Mouse
never complained. He liked these remote places better than his home, although his
comrades said God had abandoned and forgotten them long ago, and a God like that
doesn’t turn back again. This place lies behind God’s feet, they said.
Mickey Mouse didn’t mind his nickname. I like the duck and the dog too, he said,
though Pluto is rather clumsy. He hadn’t been called Mickey Mouse yet at school, and Kiko
still called him Milan.
Milan, said Kiko, putting his hand on Mickey Mouse’s upper arm, your lot fucking
well killed Ćora last night.
By way of answer Mickey Mouse raised his eyebrows, ducked his head and took a
deep breath. His face lost any kind of symmetry. It looked like unhewn stone, pale and
scarred with acne. Kiko was waiting for some kind of response, but Mickey Mouse just
breathed out and closed his ever-open mouth, pressing his lips together the way other
people might lower their eyes.
A shrill whistle signalled the end of warming up.
Mickey Mouse took Kiko’s hand off his arm. Kiko, they told me: Mickey Mouse,
you’re playing in defence again, they said.
Mickey Mouse didn’t add that he was the only man who had fired a shot that night.
A heavy bird flew up from the woods, and the big man went back to the defenders.
Gavro, the key player on the Serbian side, a black-haired, curly-headed man with a
raven tattooed on his shoulder, whistled as the bird flew away. Gavro never stopped
whistling or humming tunes except to talk or eat. Even in his sleep he would snore a
resonant ‘Blue Danube’ through his moustache. The bird flew over the clearing and soared
south towards the valley beyond the trees. Gavro picked up the ball and went over to the
ref, who was gazing at his watch as if spellbound.
Fuck the sun, man, what are you waiting for, a sign from Allah? We don’t have all
day!
The man thus addressed didn’t deign to give him a glance, but went on looking at
the second hand, so Gavro kicked the ball up in the air with his toe, kept it there with his
left and right hands by turn, balanced it on his forehead, let it drop to his thigh and
stopped it with his instep. As he did so he whistled ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ in
such loud and musical tones that heads turned to look at him. The men blinked at this
combination of afternoon sunlight, skilful ball control and tuneful melodies, shifted from
foot to foot or simply stood around with their hands on their hips. It had been quiet on
Mount Igman more frequently over the last few months, particularly at night when the
guns in the clearing and the valley fell silent. But there hadn’t been such peace and quiet
here behind God’s feet for a long time as there was now, before kick-off, at the sound of
Gavro’s memories of maybe Glenn Miller.
General Mikado, commander of the Serbian unit, slapped the back of the whistling
man’s head with the flat of his hand, took the ball away from his foot, whistled shrilly
through his own fingers and made the first pass. You can whistle for the end of play seven
seconds early, called the sturdy commander with the slanting eyes to which he owed his
nickname. He raced past the ref and swerved to the right wing, where he was to set up a
score of one-nil score to the Serbs less than two minutes later – a ball centred to the head
of the whistling Gavro.
In the early eighties Dejan Gavrilović Gavro had given up a career as a clarinettist
to turn professional footballer. He spent five years trying to avoid relegation to the second
division, and then he tore a ligament. During his convalescence he took up the clarinet
again, and at the end of the eighties he and his brother were performing in Belgrade jazz
clubs. They recorded a disc that caused quite a sensation. In November ninety-one his
brother was called up and died four days later in the Croatian provinces. Gavro put his
clarinet away again, this time to become a soldier. He fought in the same provinces, was in
Croatia at the end of the war there, and when asked if he fancied taking further revenge for
his brother, for instance in Sarajevo, he just inquired whether he could take a quick shower
first, and was there was any prospect of clean towels?
Mickey Mouse made it two-nil with one of his mighty shots. He captured the ball
near the corner flag – a gun rammed into the ground – and forged through the enemy ranks
accompanied by shouts of derision, but no one tackled him hard enough. He didn’t
seem to mind the insults this time. He was still in his own half when he aimed for Dino
Zoff, his mouth wide open as always. A one-two, a feint, the shot at goal, uh! , and Dino
Zoff couldn’t deflect the ball properly. After kicking the ball Mickey Mouse stopped
abruptly and watched it sail through the air with his arm raised in greeting, as if waving
goodbye to an old friend off on a long journey.
The Territorials had their one good chance of a goal at the end of the first half,
when Kiko finished a solo run through the opposing defenders with a shot that hit the
woodwork of the spruce goalpost. Gavro countered this shot by passing to Marko, who
was spearheading the attack, but Meho got to the ball just a tad faster and hammered it
with all his might out of the penalty area, off the playing field, out of the clearing and into
the forest.
Oh, fuck the forest fairy, said Meho, shaking his head and crouching down as if to
throw up. The referee whistled and pointed first at Meho, then at the forest – a gesture
unlikely to be seen in any other football game in the world, meaning: Meho bungled this
one, so he has to fetch it back. But no one could give him a plan of just where the mines
were planted, and presumably no such thing existed. The mines, however, most certainly
did exist. Even before the front lines was entrenched around the clearing, the Serbs had
lost two men in the forest during an attempt to come up on the Territorials from behind,
and a third man had lost a leg. That’s right, they’d shouted from the Territorial positions at
the time, take ’em all back like good lads and don’t leave anyone lying around, shame about
the goats.
Dino Zoff took Meho under his arms. For God’s sake, Meho, he whispered,
haven’t we been over this a thousand times already? A good defender doesn’t knock the
ball away! Good clearance behind, short passes, it can’t be that difficult.
Can’t be that difficult, Meho whispered to himself as he arrived on the outskirts of
the forest with two paramedics in attendance and looked around. All the players and both
touchlines were looking his way. Someone waved and Meho waved back. The ball lay
about twenty metres inside the forest, lying peacefully on a bed of moss under a reddish
fern. The sun was flooding the woodland with bright light that slanted through the leaves,
falling on the slight rise of the forest floor which concealed dozens of mines from the
trembling man in the Red Star shirt. The shirt! In panic, Meho took off the red and white
strip of his favourite team, kissed the star, folded it carefully and laid it on the ground.
Hang on, Meho! Marko had followed his opposite number up the slight slope.
Here, it’s for the ball, said the Serbian striker, winking, and he handed Meho a bullet-proof
vest, wrap it up well before you bring it back.
Meho stared at the black bullet-proof vest.
Hey, tell us, Meho, what’s the idea? Marko picked up Meho’s shirt and shook his
head. They’re from Belgrade, right?
Meho’s chin was quivering. The Red-and-Whites for ever! he growled, wiping the
sweat from his brow. He put Marko’s bullet-proof vest on, said, his voice trembling: you
better go back, and then, as he took a step into the wood, added in English without a trace
of accent: this could get fucking dangerous!
Marko went back to the others, carrying Meho’s shirt. They were all sitting on the
grass talking, looking at the trees even after Meho had disappeared under the shade of their
canopy. Gavro was scraping dirt out from under his toenails with a wooden splinter,
whistling a playful tune. The full tones of his whistling floated past the bare chests of the
Serbian eleven and danced before the Territorials’ tense faces. A klezmer tune, and they
were all listening to the same song, some of them tapping the grass or their thighs in time
to it, some not, but that was the only difference. Watching the trees become forest, they
listened and waited – for Meho, for another song, or for a big bang.
There was a bang when General Mikado hit the back of Gavro’s head again. He
stopped whistling, and the general asked in a loud voice, emphasising every syllable as if
speaking on stage: so just what are we going to do if we lose the ball because of that idiot?
No one replied. The general scratched the hairy back of his neck.
The two paramedics on the outskirts of the forest were munching bread and
looking at the trees. They wanted to follow Meho's progress as closely as possible so that
they could follow his trail and spring into action at once if he was blown up.
But Meho wasn’t blown up, he just crapped in his trousers, it would wash out. His
own side and some of the Serbians applauded as he stalked back into the clearing with the
ball under his arm and his head still on his shoulders, looking as if at the very least he’d just
scored in extra time in the final against Brazil, making it one-nil, and was on his way to the
terraces to acknowledge the cheers. At close quarters, his pride looked more like anger, at
close quarters the arm with the ball under it was trembling, at close quarters Meho’s face
was grey, a thick blue vein stood out in the middle of his forehead, and he stank to high
heaven. At close quarters, he said: here’s the ball, OK, let’s carry on with the game, I have
to get changed but that’s all. And he added, to Marko, now we’ll swap shirts again, bulletproof
vest for Red Star Belgrade, and let me tell you something, I don’t care where the
team I back comes from, the lads are only playing football. When I was that big, said
Meho, pointing to somewhere level with his waist, they were my heroes. The final against
Marseille in ninety-one! That win! That penalty shoot-out! I don’t mind you being Serbian
either. Just so long as you don’t shoot me or sleep with my wife, who cares?
Meho put his shirt on and stalked back to the trench, which was empty except for
Sejo the fat radio operator dozing in the sunlight and three wounded men playing
dominoes. My God, look at the garbage lying around! Someone ought to clear this place
up, how the hell do we manage to live here? He frowned and looked around at the rubbish
in the trench as if coming upon it for the first time. Right in front of him there was an
empty can of sausage licked so clean that not a single fly took any interest in it. He chucked
it out of the trench. Then he washed himself thoroughly with water from a white plastic
container, rinsed his arse well and scrubbed the inside of his thigh with the clean trouserleg.
And as I stood there, rather bow-legged, in that rubbish bin of a trench, friend
Ćora, as I stood behind God’s fungus-infected feet, my poor friend Ćora, pouring water
over my fingers, I kept thinking all the time: don’t waste too much water, Meho, use grass
and leaves if you must, and when I was wiping away brown drops from between my little
hairs, honestly, I suddenly had to weep buckets, I wept buckets, friend Ćora, I thought the
tears weren’t flowing down my cheeks but bursting straight from my eyes in a jet, I really
did. Oh, friend Ćora, what a bloody awful day, and I hope you’ll understand if I borrow
your trousers now, you’ll be OK, it’s not cold out here, the sun’s shining, it showed me just
where to tread in the forest, it really did, shining down on the ground! I can’t beat the
Chetniks naked anyway, we’re two-nil down, like I said, a bloody awful day, Ćora, but who
am I telling? Meho stroked the dead man’s hair and undid his camouflage trousers, just
until the end of the game, Ćora, he said, you’ll get them back afterwards, Pioneer’s word of
honour!
Meho crossed the fifty metres or so back to the pitch at a run. Over the last ten
metres he realised that his bloody awful day was far from over. His unit was lined up level
with the spruce-tree goalposts, many of them with their hands behind their heads. Some
ten Serbs were standing in front of them in a semi-circle with machine guns at the ready,
others were running around the clearing gathering up the remaining weapons. No one was
taking any notice of the ball, which lay to one side in the tall grass looking more like a stone
there. Meho blinked and soundlessly moved his lips.
General Mikado sketched an embrace. Ah, he cried, that was the perfect perfume
for a Muslim!
While Meho was searched for weapons and then driven over to join the others, a
gun at his back, artillery fire could be heard far off. Sporadic salvos, filtered by distance and
the sun to a muted, rather weary sound. Fat Sejo the Territorials’ radio operator was
blundering about on the edge of the trench with a panic-stricken expression on his face,
but before he could announce that the ceasefire was over, as everyone had by now deduced
from the noise of fighting, the Serbian goalie fired several shots at him. Sejo collapsed, first
to one knee, then right over sideways, and lay there in a curiously distorted position with
his knee still braced on the ground.
You fucking bastard, shouted Dino Zoff through the first shots, breaking away
from the group of prisoners and imploringly raising his hands in their goalie’s gloves, we’re
surrendering, for God’s sake, we’re not defending ourselves, we’re not … But he got no
further. General Mikado caught up with him and put a pistol first to the back of his head
and then, pushing him to the ground, against the side of his neck.
That’s not the way I see it, you ape! His spit fell on Dino Zoff’s cheek and mouth.
The way I see it, you lot are fighting back ferociously, the way I see it you’re going to fight
to the last man! Sad, very sad to say, however, I don’t see a single one of you Mujaheddin
who’s going to survive to tell the tale of your last, glorious battle. General Mikado pushed
Dino away and aimed the pistol at his chest. His soldiers were in position in front of the
prisoners, a firing squad thirty strong.
OK! Dino flung his arm up above his head. OK, then we will fight back, let’s go on
with the football game!
What? General Mikado made a disgusted face.
You want to shoot down unarmed men? OK, I can believe even worse of you, I
don’t know how I’d have held my own lads back if we’d been quicker getting to our
weapons. But the game isn’t finished yet! Saliva was collecting in Dino’s mouth. There’s the
second half still to come! If you’re enough of a footballer let’s go on playing. And if we
turn the game around, and you’re still man enough, then no one here gets executed, no
one! And if your lot win … he said, looking round at his men and straightening up, then
you’ll be a fucking miserable murderer all your life!
And Dino Safirović, who had been chucked out of school because Latin and the
classics are important in the education of the young but hard drinking is not, pulled his
gloves more firmly over his fingers. And Dino Safirović, the lover of Cicero, who had
volunteered because he thought alcohol wouldn’t be so readily available at the front and he
really did want to dry out, clapped his hands so hard that the dust flew. And Dino
Safirović, nicknamed Dino Zoff, the cat of Trebević, looked General Mikado in the eye
and spat: come on, then, come on!
Kiko made it two-one with a header in the fourth minute of the second half, just as
there was a considerable explosion in the valley. He scored with another header five
minutes later, but this goal, like its predecessor, was disallowed for allegedly being offside.
This head of mine, said Kiko, slapping the back of it, was damn well not offside.
But it was no use. General Mikado had accepted Dino Zoff’s challenge with some
amusement, on condition that he himself didn’t just play but also acted as referee. I don’t
have any yellow cards on me, he said, so there’s only a bullet waiting for anyone who
complains.
An obvious foul on the goalkeeper preceded the score of three-nil to General
Mikado’s team. Dino Zoff was charged in the air as the ball was centred and fell to the
ground. As a team, the Serbs were playing with such fierce determination that you might
have thought their lives and not their opponents’ depended on the result.
Kozica made it three-one with a long shot that sent the ball straight into the goal. A
minute later Kozica was being carried off the field with an open wound on his forehead,
having been first knocked off his legs by one of the touchline soldiers and then beaten with
the man’s rifle butt. After that the Territorials stopped attacking down the wings.
In the sixtieth minute Mickey Mouse and Kiko collided. They both fell to the
ground and the game went on. The sun was resting on the tree-tops to the west, the midges
were hovering as twilight began to fall. Since Mickey Mouse, two metres six tall, had been
marking the Territorials’ best man after Kiko’s two disallowed goals, Kiko hadn’t had a
chance of another header. After the collision they both stayed sitting there, gingerly feeling
their chests. Kiko made a face: lucky thing we have ribs, he said, and Mickey Mouse
nodded: yes, ribs come in useful. His eyes wandered uneasily over Kiko’s face, he took a
deep breath and let it out again. The big man was about to stand up, pushing off from the
ground with his fist, but Kiko grabbed hold of it and whispered: that’s right, Milan, stand
up, don’t stay down again, just don’t stay down any more.
No? said Mickey Mouse in surprise, opening his mouth wide, and when Kiko next
headed the ball he didn’t stay sitting there but stood as if rooted to the ground, he didn’t
leap into the air, the ball bounced and it was three-two.
After this successful shot, which left the Territorials only one down, General
Mikado managed to foil all their efforts to get anywhere near his team’s goal. Every tackle
was said to be a foul, the whistle blew every time there was an attacking pass, every throwin
went to his team, even for obvious clearing kicks that landed out of play.
Two minutes before the end of play Kiko forced his way through on the inside left,
avoiding any kind of physical contact so as to give General Mikado no excuse to blow the
whistle for a foul, he swerved, he dodged, he leaped. With the last of his strength he
centred the ball in front of the Serbian goal – a harmless shot at the goal-post, but the
Serbian defender on the right kicked the air, Mickey Mouse missed it on the bounce, the
rest of them, friend and foe alike, either slid past the ball or were too surprised to react, and
it rolled to Meho’s feet. Meho had done nothing during the second half but wander around
the pitch, lost in thought, muttering to himself as if hypnotised: it can’t be so difficult,
Audrey darling, it can’t be so difficult. He had been sent off because he was getting in his
own team’s way, but after three more players had to go off because of injury – either from
fouls or beaten up by the touchline soldiers – he was brought on again.
So there lay the ball at his feet, but Meho didn’t even look at it, he was staring
eastward, enraptured. The sound of heavy artillery fire came from the valley, metallic,
hollow. Moving in slow motion like an action replay on TV, as if none of his movements
had anything to do with him, he shifted his weight to the left and easily clipped the ball into
the goal with his right leg, kicking it round the back of the leg he was standing on. This is
for you, he murmured, reaching under his shirt, a goal for you. Eyes shining, he put the
photo of Audrey Hepburn to his lips, whispered: hey, real Hollywood stuff, Audrey love,
oh, fuck me, what a happy ending!
Meho had been in the States in 1986, the only time he had ever been to the west.
He’d saved his wages as a brickie for five years, living with his father and never spending
money unnecessarily. Evening after evening he watched American films, mostly thrillers,
horror movies, and films featuring Audrey Hepburn. He learned to swear in English and
could order coffee without any Bosnian accent.
After scoring his goal Meho wandered over the field with his head tilted back. The
game went on, the ball hit him in the back once, but Meho wasn’t interested in that, he was
interested in the sky. Someone shouted his name. We are the champions, replied Meho in
English. Arriving at his team’s penalty area he stopped and put out his hand to see if it was
raining. Wrinkling his nose, he crossed his arms over his chest, as if rain really were falling
and it was cold. Someone fell at his feet, there was excitement, uproar, a whistle, a salvo of
gunfire.
Why are my fingernails always dirty? I’d love to phone, call someone on the phone
again. Meho talked to the sky out loud, getting in other people’s way, was pushed and
shoved, staggered.
A group of players had gathered around General Mikado. Only when someone
fired into the air did the men scatter. Penalty! shouted the general, taking the ball. Dino
Zoff shook his head, that was never a foul! he protested, and gazed at the ball that was now
lying at the requisite point. General Mikado stepped up to take the penalty after he himself
had mimed the foul and blown the whistle.
You shut your stupid mouth! the Serbian goalie snapped at Dino Zoff from one
side. He had run all the way across the pitch from his own penalty area after the alleged
foul, got one of the touchline soldiers to give him a pistol, and was now aiming it at Dino
from the left-hand spruce tree. Maybe you can stop the penalty, he said, squinting along the
pistol, but can you stop a bullet too?
General Mikado grinned, jerked his thumb in his goalie’s direction, and took a run
up.
Meho had turned his back to the penalty kick by this time and moved away from
the penalty area, and he didn’t look back. Perhaps they’re just shooting in high spirits down
there, he told his Audrey, perhaps it’s because the filthy war is over and they’re celebrating.
Audrey looked like a boy with her short hair. She was wearing black and leaning against a
white wall. Meho looked up from the photo and glanced absently at the place where some
beech trees grew on the edge of the plateau, and the cart track described a sharp curve to
the left around a rock before beginning the steep descent into the valley. The wind rose in
the east and grew stronger. Meho, already near the trees, could see the wind making the
leaves tremble. Meho was trembling too, even more than he had trembled in the forest
when surrounded by mines. The gust of wind cooled Meho’s face amidst the tears that
came after a shot rang out from the Serbian goalie’s pistol behind his back, followed by a
sharp sound like a very loud slap. His tears came not in torrents this time, but they were
considerable all the same. Oh, fuck these bloody waterworks, muttered Meho, rubbing his
eyes, but they wouldn’t stop.
The crowd was murmuring behind him, then there was a shout of glee, then
sounds and cries which the weary Meho probably didn’t hear at all, and he could hardly
have made any sense of it, just as he couldn’t have told Serbian from Bosnian jubilation,
people cheered in much the same way in this country. And even if he had seen the goal
that was greeted with such cheering he couldn’t have said for certain from this distance
whether the ball had flown sixty, seventy or even eighty metres before going into the
Serbian goal. For any moment now Meho would have reached the beeches at the far end of
the clearing. He would look down into the valley, although from a height of over a
thousand metres it’s as difficult to tell war from peace as it is to tell the words and laughter
of your friends from the laughter of your enemies. But the view was impressive:
indescribably beautiful, Meho whispered to Audrey seconds before he was shot down. The
bullets hit the number ten on the red and white shirt. It had been worn by Dejan Savićević
on 29 May 1991 when Red Star beat the French champions Olympique Marseille in a
penalty shoot-out in the final of the European Cup. Meho had watched the game with his
father. Reception was poor. Meho’s father had to hold the aerial in a certain position above
his head for the whole ninety minutes to keep the picture from going fuzzy. He didn’t even
dare put it down at half-time, so Meho made him meat sandwiches and fed them to him.
Next day Meho bought the Number Ten shirt for himself and a new TV set for his father.
The Serbian goalie had driven tears to Meho’s eyes with his first shot and two
bullets into his back with two more shots. The first shot was meant for Dino Zoff, but it
missed him by a few centimetres and hit one of the spruce-tree goalposts. The goalie had
fired too soon, the noise took General Mikado’s mind off his run-up, his penalty shot
crashed into the right-hand spruce tree and the ball rebounded straight into the arms of the
motionless Dino Zoff. He looked incredulously from one dismayed marksman to the
other, then from one goalpost to the other, and last of all at the abandoned goal at the far
end of the pitch. Then he kicked the ball with all his might.
Well, hurricanes fuck me! Meho would have greeted the lurching trajectory of the
ball that scored this goal in those or similar words. It may even be that one and the same
gust of wind first dried his tears and then gave Dino Zoff’s shot the impetus it needed for
the ball to end up in the Serbian goal. General Mikado froze rigid amidst the cheering of
the Territorials, and he hesitated, clearly not sure what to do now.
Our ball! Goal-kick! he said. No one heard him, so loud were the jubilations over
the three-four score. Goal-kick, that was no goal! He whistled through his fingers, but only
when the Serbian goalkeeper’s second two bullets hit Meho did all fall silent around him.
The general pointed at the Serbian end. No goal! No goal!
Gavro’s clarinet would still be lying, wrapped in its burgundy velvet cloth, where he
had left it before he went to war: in the living-room cupboard in his parents’ house, which
smelled of lavender even in winter, even after his brother’s death. Here and now, behind
God’s feet, Gavro didn’t need any instrument to earn an encore: he joined in with Mikado’s
shrill whistling, extended it, raised it to the key of F major, linked it to a series of light,
catchy, childish tunes, unexpectedly turned it into a waltz, then suddenly, over its playful
six-eight time, launched into a wild csárdás – and while his composition gained in colour
and speed Dejan Gavrilović, known as Gavro, that klix Belgrade clarinettist, sat
down on the grass.
The csárdás stung Mickey Mouse into action. Don’t sit there, he growled at his
team-mate who had fetched the ball out of the goal. Mickey Mouse took it from him and
marched across the pitch. Don’t sit there, he called rather louder. Two more Serbian
players sat down on the grass next to Gavro and, like him, gave no sign of wanting to play
on.
General Mikado’s throat was flushed red with fury, and when the general, who was
in fact a lieutenant, had spent most of his life laying tiles, and was married with four
daughters whose first names all began ‘Ma’, took aim to hit Gavro on the back of the head
for the third time that day, the clarinettist’s hand seized the tiler’s wrist. The csárdás swung
into Spanish dance music, don’t you ever do that again, said Gavro’s eyes, and the
flamenco sang the refrain. Gavro whistled, Mickey Mouse marched on, and Marko
knocked his own goalie over and took the pistol away from him.
Well, fuck me if it isn’t Muhammad Ali! would have been Meho’s praise for
Marko’s simple left hook. As it was, General Mikado was the only one to curse – fuck it all,
what the hell’s going on? – when his goalie hit the ground and his striker shook the pain
out of his hand. What’s the idea? shouted the general, biting Gavro’s fingers as they held
tight to his wrist, what do you lot want? he roared with the clarinettist’s blood on his teeth,
looking round. Goal-kick! he ordered Mickey Mouse, who was carrying the ball to the
middle of the field.
One by one his players sat down. So it’s klix, is it? laughed the general.
Deserters! And he lashed out. Defectors! I’ll have you court-martialled! The men on the
touch-lines sat down too, although some of the soldiers got their guns ready, not sure
whether they ought to aim at their own side too.
Most of the Serbian soldiers just looked at the ground, not as if they were afraid of
their commander but as if they were embarrassed by this angry man with his hairy back. As
if they were ashamed of something, as if they had just been asked a very simple question
and they didn’t know the answer. General Mikado shouted himself into a fury, his entire
neck was one large red patch, shoot them all down! he shouted, give me my fucking gun!
He stepped back and spun round. No one stopped him, no one answered the very simple
question. The Territorials stood around too, as if they were merely props on this stage
where a short, powerful man with a bare torso was ranting and raging.
No one could find an answer to the very simple question – except for Mickey
Mouse. Most questions had been too hard for him in school, at home his father had beaten
exclamation marks into his back with his leather belt, and here behind God’s feet there
were no questions, only orders. Milan Jevrić, nicknamed Mickey Mouse, put the ball
roughly on the kick-off position, placed his foot on it, and thundered the answer at
maximum volume above the soldiers’ heads, above General Mikado, who had got hold of a
gun but hesitated to use it, above the field, above the trenches, above Meho’s dead body,
above the beech trees, above the wind and above the valley, he answered it in as loud and
clear a voice as if, with this one great shout, he was going to give all the answers to all the
questions he had never been able to answer before: It’s four-three to them, replied Milan
Jevrić, nicknamed Mickey Mouse, answering the simple question. They’re leading, he
pointed out, but maybe we can turn it around in extra time, said Mickey Mouse, thrusting
out his lower lip, maybe we can still score.
His words got the Serbian defenders to their feet, the Serbian midfield players rose
too, and the Serbian striker poured plum brandy not on his Ali-like fist, which hurt him,
but down his own throat in such quantities that Dino Zoff looked longingly at him.
Mickey Mouse did the defending by himself, all the rest attacked. Gavro, as the new
umpire, gave them eight minutes’ injury time. The Territorials defended with ten men and
whacked every ball back into the Serbian half. Not too hard because of the mines. The
balls promptly came back again, Mickey Mouse persistently kicked them long and high
back to the attackers. In the last minute the Territorials counter-attacked, Kiko failed to get
past Mickey Mouse, who was everywhere now, even in goal. Mickey Mouse’s answer
instantly followed, for Mickey Mouse had learnt the trick of giving answers. He snapped up
the ball and dribbled through the Territorial ranks as if he’d grown up with Maradona
instead of a muck-fork. The veins on his throat were bulging, he pressed his lips together,
he simply ran down two Bosnian defenders and kicked the ball towards Dino Zoff’s goal
from a good thirty metres away. The gigantic man put all his power into this one shot, and
the cry he uttered after it sent dozens of birds flying up from the forest. And the ball, that
dirty, poorly mended ball, flew across the clearing towards Dino Zoff’s goal.
Gavro whistled for the end of play at 17.55 hours. Mickey Mouse’s shot was the
last in the game. The players dropped to the grass, exhausted. The echo of the whistle died
away. No one clapped. No one cheered. Heavy silence welled up from the valley to the
plateau. Weapons were quietly picked up. Marko tilted the schnapps bottle over Dino
Zoff’s mouth until a few drops moistened his lips, mingling with the blood on them.
Ah, slivovitzum bonum deorum donum! Did I keep it out? lisped Dino Zoff, handing
Marko a tooth. The sun cast the long shadows of trees on the clearing behind God’s feet,
behind God’s feet in military boots, behind God’s feet with the blisters coming up on
them, behind God’s dribbling feet.
Orhanowski wrote:On ono pise o gradjanskom ratu u BIH ?
ja sam procitala knjigu 2 puta...taj termin se ne spominje nigdje u knjizi niti je bilo gdje u prici insinuirano da se radilo o gradjanskom ratu...
otkud ti ta informacija?
Orhanowski wrote:On ono pise o gradjanskom ratu u BIH ?
ja sam procitala knjigu 2 puta...taj termin se ne spominje nigdje u knjizi niti je bilo gdje u prici insinuirano da se radilo o gradjanskom ratu...
otkud ti ta informacija?
Orhanowski wrote:
Citao njegov intervju u nekim njemackim novinama.
i sama sam osjetljiva na tu terminologiju...ali iskreno orhanowski odavno sam prestala pridavati puno paznje medijima osim malog broja novinara ciji integritet postujem, i cije radove redovno pratim...nivo manipulacije, iskrljivanja rijeci, senzacionalizma, prisvajanja itd itd ne samo u medijima, nego i inace kad su u pitanju politicke (ili politicki nastrojene) stvari nema kraja...ja sam citala neke njegove intervjue sa BBC-ijem i nije imao takvih izjava koliko ja znam...ne govorim njemacki tako da ne znam za njemacke medije...isto tako sam upratila da postoji veliki nivo svojatanja ovog pisca na portalima koji imaju veze sa RSom, al kad vidim ono sto pisu tamo imam jak osjecaj da oni koji to pisu uopste nisu ni procitali njegovu knjigu
sve dok ne osjetim tu vrstu "nastrojenosti" u njegovom pisanju ne namjeravam se obazirati na takve stvari malo ko od mladih pisaca me tako odusevio vrlo specificnim, prepoznatljivim stilom pisanja kao on... moje skromno misljenje naravno...
Luter wrote:Interesantno, i sama priča o bosanskom piscu i knjizi je čudo, to što se dešava i Bosni i Bosancima je dio tog čuda da ih je neko davno sa knjigom zavadio. Tačnije kad Bosancu poklanjaš knjigu kao da ga kamenom gađaš. Uđi mu u kuću i sve će ti se samo reći. Gledaj ima li knjige! Časni i beskonačno rijetki će mi oprostiti.
to je sigurno tačno i sigurno i malo tužno. narod se ne može, i vjerovatno i ne treba, prevaspitavati, iako sam sigurna da nas ni knjige ne bi spasile od onoga što nam se desilo i dešava. obrazovanje, kultura, socijalna senzibilnost - to su stvari koje hibridno rastu uz moralni rast zajednice i njenih pojedinaca, i to pogotovo ne samo onih koji vode ili misle da vode. na našim prostorima je nažalost veće pričanje (preseravanje), i s tim raste i iluzija, o "pameti" i o moralu, nego njihovi praktični rezultati. mi smo svjetski prvaci u pametovanju koje ne vodi ničemu.
ja sam u ovom spomenutom romanu (a naravno i u mnogim drugim čije pisce i ti, Luter, spominješ) našla utjehu i dokaz da ima i pameti i srca a pogotovo i praktičnog talenta koji nam sada treba više nego ikad - da probijemo granice (intelektualne i geografske) koje sami sebi crtamo i koje nam drugi (Evropa) ucrtavaju, i da se bar na neki način spasimo iz ovih vakuuma koji nas ostavljaju u crnini i bezdanu baš te iste evrope. i možda sam zbog toga i imala taj nagon spomenuti i preporučiti sašinu knjigu - jer mi je dala nešto više od priče i pripovjedanja - i jer bih se osjećala sretnijom kad bih znala da nisam sama s njom, i da nju negdje u nekom drugom dnevnom boravku mogu pronaći. ja sam poprilično nova na "svijetu interneta" i ovih foruma - samo sam se slučajem, tražeći informacije o stanišiću, uopšte našla ovdje. i baš zbog tvog pitanja "da li Bosanci po tome koliko čitaju i kupuju knjigu, uopšte zaslužuju i jednog jedinog pisca i jednu i jedinu knjigu?" mogu odgovoriti: kako da ne - i ako sam ja jednog novog čitatelja "vaspitala" da kupi ovu knjigu, onda sam i malo ponosna na to.
Upravo citam ovu knjigu, sta reci osim da je sjajno napisana i pomalo zavidim piscu sto je uspio napisati knjigu. Naravno ne zbog same cinjenice sto se radi o uspjesnoj knjizi vec o tome sto je negdje zapisao svoje uspomene. POred toga ne moze da te ne dotakne nacin kako je pisao, preporucujem svima da je procitaju.
). Zanima me je li iko vec procitao i kakvi su utisci? 
niti je bilo gdje u prici insinuirano da se radilo o gradjanskom ratu...