Kara’s Game

‘Where’s Jovan?’ she asked.

‘In the operating theatre.’

They sat on a bench in one of the corridors and waited.

The hospital was grey concrete and multistorey, though because of the shelling the top floors had been cleared. The corridor was dark and gloomy, the hospital running on an emergency generator, so lighting was restricted to key areas. A doctor hesitated by them, then passed on. In the town outside the streets were empty and the shells and mortars rained down on the buildings.

Another doctor stopped. He was old before his time, his shoulders drooped with fatigue and his eyes were haunted.

‘You’re Jovan’s mother?’

‘Yes.’ She stood up, fists clenched in fear.

‘Jovan’s fine, he’s going to be okay. He was lucky. Another half-hour and he wouldn’t have made it.’

‘Thank you.’ It was all she could say. ‘May I see him?’

‘He’s not come round yet, but of course you can.’

He led her along the corridor and into what now served as a ward. The beds were pushed tight together and the room was packed, a limited amount of lighting. She saw Jovan immediately, saw the others. Oh God, she almost wept. The children were wrapped in bandages, some had legs or parts of legs missing, some arms or parts of arms where their limbs had been blown off by shrapnel or snipers’ bullets. Others had their faces and eyes covered, or their bodies or abdomens bandaged. Some were crying softly, others still frozen in pain or shock or fear. My poor dear Jovan, she thought, yet you were lucky. She knelt by his bedside and held his hand, sensed Finn crouching beside her.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

He shook his head and left her, walked along the rows of tightly-packed beds and looked at the other children. When she looked five minutes later he was still in the ward, still standing as if transfixed, still looking at a girl with the sweetest smile in the world and no legs.

For most of that morning she stayed with Jovan. At noon – sometime round noon, she could not be sure – she left the ward and sat hunched with the four men, shared their food with them and the other parents who sat equally anxiously in the corridor. Outside the ice was solid on the streets and the shells continued to fall. What about you, Adin – her husband was never far from her mind – where are you and how are you?

‘Are the others okay?’ she asked.

‘Janner and Max should make it.’ Finn was to her left, both of them sitting on the floor with their backs against the wall. The others were somewhere else in the hospital.

‘What about the men who did the food drops?’ Because I assume you’re the same as they were, though I don’t know what that means.

‘They’re all right. You interpreted for them?’

‘Yes.’

They sat in silence.

‘Remember me to them.’

‘Of course.’

The conversation was almost formal. Any moment she’d offer him coffee, Kara thought, any moment she’d grind the beans and put the coffee on the stove to boil, any moment now she’d pour them each the creamy froth at the top, but still give him the first cup, in the local tradition, because he was her guest.

‘What were you doing in Maglaj?’ she asked. The question was unexpected. Because you weren’t dropping aid – the implication was clear.

‘There was a possibility of an air strike. We came in to locate the guns in the hills and direct the aircraft on to them.’

‘I thought I heard planes.’ Sometime yesterday afternoon, though yesterday was already a lifetime away. ‘So the air strike was to stop the Chetniks shelling the people.’ Perhaps there was hope after all, she remembered she had thought, perhaps there really was a ceasefire.

‘Sort of.’ Finn shifted slightly.

‘But there weren’t any air strikes.’

‘No.’

‘So there will be today?’ Except there can’t be, because you were supposed to locate the positions of the guns in the hills, and you’re here in Tesanj, not Maglaj, even though Tesanj is also being shelled. Even though, officially at least, there’s a ceasefire.

‘No,’ Finn told her. ‘There won’t be.’

‘Why not, if it was to stop the Chetniks shelling the people? They’re still doing it.’

Because it wasn’t to stop the people being killed, Finn didn’t know how to tell her. It was to save UN personnel, even though those personnel might have called in the air strike to save the town.

‘Because the United Nations decided against it.’ He stared at the far wall and thought of Jovan, of the girl with the smile and no legs. ‘Don’t ask me why.’ He hadn’t meant to say it. ‘Because I don’t know why.’ All I know is that we were in position, the Jaguar came in, pulled out of the first run, then was told to abort.

‘My country right or wrong?’ she asked him.

‘I’m just a soldier,’ he told her.

Perhaps he felt guilt, perhaps not.

She left him and went back to Jovan.

It was mid-afternoon, the temperature falling again and the day losing its light. Again she sat hunched with Finn and the others in a corner of the corridor, the shells still falling outside.

You speak English, Finn almost said; so how did someone like you end up in a place like Maglaj?

My husband’s job, she would have told him.

‘Family?’ he asked instead.

‘Adin, my husband, is on the front line.’ She couldn’t remember whether or not she had told him. ‘The rest of his and my families are missing. Perhaps they’re dead, perhaps they’re refugees.’ The statement was a mix of accusation, anger and resignation. ‘The only one I know is still alive is my mother’s mother, my grandmother, who lives in Travnik.’

‘Travnik is a mixed town.’

‘Yes.’ She turned her head slightly, so she was looking at him. ‘She’s a Croat.’ Crazy world, she thought again, crazy war, crazy people. But only because someone else made us so.

She pulled herself up and went into the ward, knelt by Jovan’s bed and stroked his face. ‘Told you everything would be all right,’ she whispered to him as he opened his eyes and tried to smile at her. ‘Told you we’d be okay.’

Finn knelt beside her.

‘When will the war end?’ she asked him. ‘You’re a soldier, you should know. How are we going to win and how long will it take us?’

He stared at her, stared at her son, stared at the shattered limbs and bodies of the other children. At the bed of the girl five metres away a woman doctor pulled the sheet over the still white face and turned away so that the parents would not see her cry.

‘You’ll never win,’ he told Kara. ‘Even if the war ends, which it has to sometime and in some way, you and your people are going to lose.’