Under Pressure. Faruk Šehić

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СКАЧАТЬ was wearing light shorts and a T-shirt.

      Mother saw me from the toilet window.

      They brought me in holding me by the arms.

      Washed my face over the tub.

      I felt like a foreign object within a foreign object.

      I looked like a weary robot.

      * * *

      My hands were shaking as I drank coffee.

      Opposite the house.

      At pizzeria Amfora.

      It was completely normal that my hands were shaking.

      Common alcohol tremors.

      The coffee slid down my throat.

      Rinsed the smell of last night’s beer and cognac.

      It was day six of the war.

      For the first time in my life I was a refugee.

      * * *

      In the toilet of the Café West I took off my Levi’s and sold them to the owner for a hundred million dinars.

      The one million note had Nikola Tesla on it.

      The five hundred thousand one had Josip Broz Tito.

      Beer soon ran out.

      One beer cost half a million.

      We drank whisky.

      The barman poured it from a five-litre bottle.

      We didn’t notice when night fell.

      Outside, cold water was pouring from a crude drinking fountain.

      Soaking the hot asphalt.

      The smell of linden blossom.

      Honey in the air.

      That’s all I remember.

      * * *

      For a morning that gives us the illusion of a fresh start…

      Arrow-like rays of sunshine came in through the window

      of the room above the Café Hajduk.

      It was pleasant inside.

      Warmth caught on the tips of my toes.

      I put on fresh white boxers.

      I took some notes and coins out of my jacket pockets.

      I opened the window and reached out.

      A fresh breeze blew into my face.

      And that was no illusion.

      I counted the marks.

      The morning was made for that.

      * * *

      21 April 1992 (Tuesday), at 18:15, war started in my town.

      In the garden of Café Casablanca I was drinking Sarajevsko beer.

      I was wearing the latest model of Adidas trainers.

      A pair of Levi’s.

      A down jacket.

      I hid at my uncle’s some thirty metres from the kafana.

      He gave me a .357 Magnum and sixty rounds.

      Which I put in my trouser pockets.

      Some bullets had hollow points.

      Those were the dum-dum bullets.

      Shells and projectiles of various calibres were the soundtrack of the first day of war.

      I saw a shooting star crash down across a piece of sky between the roofs of two

      houses.

      I made a wish.

      For the war to end.

      And to make up with my girlfriend.

      * * *

      ’Ow much money ’ave you got?

      Ten marks.

      I’ve got five.

      We can get pissed as newts.

      * * *

      We’re drinking beer from the bottle.

      The floor is made of marble.

      It radiates cold.

      It’s sultry outside.

      Nobody’s wearing a watch.

      Because time is utterly pointless.

      * * *

      It’s wonderful being a refugee.

      Means you’re a fifteenth-class citizen.

      And nobody knows you.

      You can take a piss in the middle of the street.

      And go on your way.

      The passers-by will say: ‘What an oik, a proper savage!’

      ‘Why didn’t they kill the lot of you?’

      ‘Why didn’t you fight?’

      ‘Cowards!’

      ‘Cunts!’

      ‘Have you no balls?’

      Only sometimes the 155 mm howitzer shells whizzing across the sky remind them that there is no such thing as deep rear in this war.

      * * *

      A packet of Gales is 17 marks.

      Partners are 20.

      HBs cost 25.

      Skopsko beer is 10 marks.

      Ćevapi meatballs 20.

      A sack of flour 1000 marks.

      A kilo of coffee 330.

      We’re surrounded from all sides.

      But, there’s a substitute for everything.

      Quince СКАЧАТЬ