THE THIRD OF MAY
My name is Adnan and I was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1977.
This is my story.
I grew up with Amel. I am his cousin and his friend.
Memories from May 1995.
It’s weird how time affects our memories. The things that happened, the things I know for sure happened, may not have gone exactly as I remember them.
At first, I’m sure of what I know. And then, then some time passes. Then a lot of time passes. And suddenly… That cute brunette might have actually been blonde. And the movie, the movie that we watched together, holding hands, maybe I watched that movie years after she moved to the Netherlands. And so… For some events, I know how they went. And others, I just remember them. And I truly believe in those memories. Or maybe not.
I also remember 1995 and those days of May when there was a false truce, the time when they were killing children. And what do my memories tell me? I hold on to them firmly however unreliable they may be.
We hadn’t gone to school for a while. I don’t know the exact reason, whether it was an air raid siren or something, I don’t remember. Free to choose between playing games and doing something else in those days, we enrolled in a course that we attended at the Džavid Haverić School in Vratnik (Sarajevo). Religious subjects, fiqh, Arabic language and such. Under the motto ‘at least something is happening’ we got to studying. In the madness we lived in, every activity was a welcome distraction. There were four of us: Amel, Lejla, then Meliha, or was it Sanela, and myself. We only went to this course for three days. These were the last days I spent with him. Sitting together in school. He usually used his spare moments to draw. On the pages of his notebook he worked on his illuminations. A man with a moustache and a beret on his head, and a stylized lily. There was even a little devil with flames around him. I remember the previous night and the movie I watched, The Last Valley. I never watched that movie again, but some scenes are still there, fresh in my mind. The shooting location was Trins, in Tyrol. It’s weird how we remember some seemingly insignificant details.
The next day, Amel came to me. He invited me to come to play, but I had been eating, or something else prevented me. “I’ll be there in half an hour,” I told him. I’m not sure if he was carrying a racket in his hand. Maybe that’s just how I imagine our last encounter. There, in front of the house, he met my uncle with whom we enjoyed playing on a Nintendo. He boasted that he had figured out some new tricks in a baseball game. We played that game without fully understanding it. “I figured out how to score points,” he told him and scheduled a match in the next few days. He predicted his great victory. Half an hour later I searched for him on the street, but he was gone. Later, they told me he went to check on their garden. A garden in Sarajevo meant another asset in the survival game and it had to be given due care.
This tape recording was made in 1995, a few months before Amel’s death.
Adi and I had spent the night at Amel’s, and while having breakfast we tried doing Monty Python type of jokes.
Not finding him on the street, I went to Sanel. Namely, Sanel and I had an ingenious plan to build a radio station. Sanel had invested his knowledge of electronics and his equipment and I had invested my enthusiasm. Out front, on the street, was a group of children. A cheerful murmur came through the window.
And while we were inside inspecting a bunch of wires and resistors, there was a bang outside.
Screaming.
Running.
Calls for help and the realization that something terrible had happened.
We ran out and saw him on his mom’s lap.
He had fallen somewhere near Ademir’s fence, and his mom had run to try to save him.
On the street, chaos, and me running home to call an ambulance.
I run through open areas in the meadow, but there are no more shots.
Up in the house I learn that someone has already called it in and that an ambulance is on the way.
They won’t let me out on the street again.
I wait.
They announce that he was driven away.
He’ll have a surgery.
He’ll be fine.
That’s how we encourage each other.
Uncle comes in.
I’m alone in the hall.
He approaches me, grabs my head and puts it on his chest.
Then I realize it and begin to sob.He had been awarded a scholarship a few days earlier. 50 DEM a month, if I remember correctly. He had plans. He wanted to buy a big, men’s umbrella. I don’t know if he did. To me, that umbrella seemed like something big, something important, something bought with his own money and that shows the transition of a boy into the world of adults.
Music used:
Michel Allard – Sad Birds (piano) 1975
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0
© 2022 Sniper Alley. All Rights reserved.
