BOOK FOUR
STORIES FROM BOSNIA
“If only one tenth of what he said would be worth believing.”


Reality is not contradiction, but requires diligent testing, probing and in the final value remembering. There is either a reason or there is no point. We in all cases must try to make one; I am if nothing else and the stories.
Where to begin when your at the end. Test your reality and remember what was before. The stories of Bosna I know all intermingle in the thread that is my essence. All from my very personal perspective; American research has found that coming to terms with death lengthens your life on average and generally speaking it alters you. Those who survived I met and remember. They for the most part remember miraculous people that did not survive. Stories of their glories remain in hearts torn across the Balkana and are shared at the simple cost of attention. Around coffee and other stimulating environments; having arrived to tell the tale to the new arrival the only not heard it.
The roads to Gornji Vakuf I traveled; diamond was far the best one named. Along the makedan. Left right. Right left. Up round; down left in our old land rover, golf or the best 4x4xfar. ™ Bon Bon corner: it is the tightest turn where the convoys are at their lowest speed. The people I know mostly know these things, but those around me now know more the polar ice caps of mars. Not really anybodies fault but what is mostly on the news. Have you put it together has it occurred to anyone. Children all around bon bon corner: the Bosnian candy store. Sure they sold cigarettes for profits. That was the extent of their mandate.
The corner was also a border; where land changed with an entirely new ecology. You shot down in the valley round these most amazing corners. Ahead there were you closest allies with radios telling you all was clear. Or perhaps you were on the cutting edge reporting their strategy. Either way you were going too fast. Unless of course a convoy was in front of you, perhaps a German ambulance or the awkward humvee; you were going too slow, but saw was around you. Down below there is a whole in the road I only once forgot about. My empty combi bus was air born. Was you learned was not to panic for it would serve no purpose. You land and you break so slight. Left Right. Right left. Up round; down left into the ideal position of your road. Recovered and relieved close calls only come once in a while. Nothing more to worry about here.
Diamond is just one story that would take more time than I have to tell. From the Dalmatian coast I first arrive in Gornji Vakuf in 1995 to only pass through that I some how would returned. The place my train finally came. Poetically is the farthest from my attempt at meaning. Nato hauled trains through GV on tractor trailers. One starry night I told a friend that I had come there to wait for my train. Reasons I had so few it was me and I would most likely continue doing something. Surviving to find reason. The next night NATO drove by my train and I was gone down the track left the empty bottle behind. The real truth is that peace keepers never help anyone. They do not know how. From countries with chronic problems impossible to solve they come to solve problems of which they have little comprehension. Nobody really is at fault. What else would you do?
War is a matter of scale. It is lost in the translation. Anybody could understand but sometimes there are no English words for it. Izvolite, for example on English would mean about twelve different things that we do not really say in English. Welcome to my home take what you like comes somewhat close, but who would ever say that. I learned my own language. There was this bombed out village I visited once during a Bosnian holiday. A deserted Serb village now filled with refugee women from around Srebrenica. You take from everyone; to not receive the greatest of sins.
If I could comprehend what I was witness to I would write it here. Yet these are my echoes that need to rebound and go back to their old ways. There are few whole stories and little to be understood of chronology. There is much a quality in quantity, but quantity seems to be the point.
Humor seems the most logical place to start. The peninsula’s view of it, how they share, where and why. In Serbia when NATO put the lights out we all were around talking about when there would be lights again and what all we would cook. People end up next to each other. Life starts. In all honesty no one can live like that, but others seem to each of to live through worse. On the news if no where else; organized or not murder is right up there with concerns. Death sometimes just drops out of the sky and snatches you away. Time like that really leaves a mess.
One afternoon walking home from my new born daughter and wife in the hospital, I found the morgue in Nis. Through my mind new pathway were built.