Life Changing Times

He looked into my eyes, smiling, and asked, ‘You will be here for me when I come back?’. I laughed, uncomfortably, because I knew there was something more. 

We carried on flirting, talking, smiling. Then he said it again. ‘So when I come back, you will be here waiting for me, right?’ This time it was a little more desperate, urgent. A hint, but there nonetheless.

The third time he asked I looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘Yes. Yes, I will wait for you. I will be here when you get back.’

Mostar, Bosnia Hercegovina. There we were, three young, naïve, well-intentioned but foolish people running around a war zone. We were going to help. Heading to Tarcin, a town near Sarajevo where there was an orphanage that we would visit and send supplies to. Right up until the mortar landed close to our car in Mostar and we clambered out, shaking, white-faced, people beckoning us to run into a basement for protection. Abid, our driver, clearly also scared but trying to hide it. I was beyond trying to hide it and more worried about shitting myself. Literally.

Then I walked into this other world – this smoke filled, coffee smelling basement full of people. No children as I recall, but young and old men and women. It was not a dark, damp basement, it had chairs, furniture – I suppose a lower ground floor is what it would be called now. On the table were all the accoutrements for Turkish coffee – the small cups, the ornate sugar holder, the cezve – the long handled pot for brewing the coffee. 

A wave of comfort and familiarity hit me. My grandmother used to make Turkish coffee at home and I loved the ritual of it. People were talking all around, I only understood some of what was being said – the conversations were fast paced, in accents I wasn’t familiar with but the whirlwind of energies were tangible. 

And I felt as if I had come home. The shaking subsided, the furious smoking helped calm me, the familiarity of the setting was soothing. While listening to the shelling outside…but that began to move from the fore of my consciousness, replaced by the all the sounds, smells and feelings I was experiencing inside the basement.

The coming home sensation intensified. And in fact never left me over the years where I was in and out of Mostar, it just became more entrenched. I cried every time I left, heartbroken at what I was leaving behind, never able to remove the feelings of not having done enough and that I was abandoning people. And I cried when I left home to come back to Mostar. At leaving my daughter, again. And for never knowing when I would come back or if I would come back.

He sat next to me in the basement. The young soldier, in his old and worn fatigues, startling green eyes, dirty blond hair, tanned face, mischievous written all over him. Like the boys I met during my summer holidays in former Yugoslavia – handsome, funny, arrogant, confident, cheeky. Sometimes when we talked, I felt myself back there – he and I in a bubble, by the sea, on holiday, laughing and flirting. And then the jolt back to reality – another mortar fell, someone started to cry or shout. 

I was captivated, it was almost hypnotic. People kept interrupting, of course, life in the basement continued. I was continually being asked to translate – ha – my mind and emotions were spinning so fast I couldn’t make sense of them to myself, never mind translate. I pieced together parts, added in parts of the conversation and ‘translated’. 

My soldier kept pulling me back into our world. Drawing me in with his charm, his smiles, and all else would fade away again. I am sure there are a 101 psychological, factual explanations for what was happening between us, but they are irrelevant to me. It was real, intense, incredible.

He started to get more edgy, hyped up. Mildly at first, although that edge had been there from the start. His asking me to wait for him became more desperate. The ideas of what we would do when he got back (from where, I had no idea) more rapid. I began to notice the same tension in the room with other people – I saw a glimpse through the newly opened door of weapons. A room full of weapons. 

Then he said he had to go. I didn’t understand. Go out? Go to get something? He kissed my hand, told me he would see me when he got back and walked away. I said goodbye on auto pilot, smiled, told him I looked forward to seeing him again and would wait.

I am trying not to cry as I write this. 24 years later, almost to the month, and it still breaks my heart as intensely as it did then.

I looked out of the window to the courtyard. There was my boy, with 10 or more other soldiers. They were putting on camouflage paint, some sort of bandanas around their forehead, hyping up. I could feel the testosterone through the glass – it was palpable. They were egging each other on, back slapping, mock punches while getting ready. Arming themselves.

An old man came out and handed one of them a grenade. The person next to me looked at me quizzically for a minute, as if weighing me up. Then said quietly, ‘That grenade is for them to blow themselves up if they get caught. We have so few weapons that we have to ration and they only get this one.’

The understanding came down on me like a ton of bricks, each brick hitting me and hurting me more than the last. I felt sick. I wanted to crouch down on the floor and cry. I wanted to scream out the window for him to come back. Shout at them all to stop. Make everyone go away, get me the fuck out of there, it was too much, I couldn’t do this, I was a coward. 

My boy, my beautiful, charming, gentle boy was going out on a mission, and he didn’t know if he would make it back alive. I had missed that, completely and utterly missed that. I felt a pain in my gut that was physical. I looked around, everyone in this room was feeling or had felt the same way. Except for them, it was a brother, a father, a husband, a lover. Not someone they had met for an hour. 

Then the next thing was that the shelling stopped and my companions said we had to go. Oh god, it was all I could to not scream at them – we are not going! We are not leaving until they come back alive. We will stay. To this day, I regret that I didn’t do that. I said I wanted to stay, but I didn’t stick by it. I have said before many times that I don’t have regrets: clearly I was wrong. 

So we left. I walked away. I had promised him I would stay and yet I left. Yes, I have gone through the logic so many times I have lost count: it is fine I left, I had to, he needed the hope that I would be there to leave with blah, blah, blah. Honestly, it makes no fucking difference. I left. Because I was overwhelmed, because I put pleasing my companions first, because I did not trust myself enough to stick by what I felt and believed. 

Over the next years, I went back many times to look for him. To laugh, to joke, to smile together and to somehow let him know how sorry I was that I had lied. But I never found him.