The Small Boat of Great Sorrows by Dan Fesperman Page B

were part of the weather, in a stale atmosphere that stank of backed-up plumbing, burning garbage, and death.
    But the mention of the man’s name—hearing
Haris
pass from her lips—seemed to prod Vlado out of his accustomed trench, and she out of hers, and from that day on neither was quite as insistent about documenting their two years apart. Gradually, those discussions faded, and with them the name of Haris.
    It was not the last time Vlado would hear the name, however, and he regretted that all the more now that the American, Pine, had arrived on his doorstep.
    He had met Haris more than four years following his return—a mere month ago—in a place called Noski’s. It was a bar, one of the few where a Bosnian could hang out and not worry about being beaten within an inch of his life by the neighborhood pack of young toughs. Vlado went there sometimes to read outdated newspapers and magazines from Zagreb and even from Belgrade piled at the end of the bar. Sometimes there was a fairly recent copy of the Sarajevo daily,
Oslobodjenje.
The manager, an old barman from Prijedor, never seemed to mind that Vlado seldom bought a drink. He knew most of his customers couldn’t afford it, and the few who could more than made up for the others by drinking themselves to oblivion, day after day.
    Vlado was sitting at his customary roost when a voice hailed him from behind.
    â€œYou’re Vlado.”
    He turned to see a thin, grizzled man in jeans and a scuffed black leather jacket, hair unkempt, eyes that would have been a nice calming blue if they hadn’t been bloodshot. But they were eyes that wouldn’t let you look away, and Vlado knew exactly who this must be.
    â€œAnd you’re Haris.”
    The man nodded. “I’ll buy you a drink. Then I’ll tell you a story.”
    He sat down at the next stool, smelling of whiskey. But he seemed sober enough, neither swaying nor slurring his words.
    â€œI don’t want a drink,” Vlado said. “And I definitely don’t want a story.”
    â€œIt’s a story for a policeman, and you’re the only one I know. And, okay, it’s a story for a husband, too. A husband who only wants to read his newspaper and go home to his wife and daughter.” He turned to the bartender. “One beer, please. And a whiskey.” Then, turning back to Vlado, “Just hear me this once. That’s all I ask.”
    Those eyes again, pleading from some far and distant hill in the man’s past.
    â€œOkay. Just this once.”
    Haris waited for his whiskey, then began.
    â€œI came here with my sister in late ’92. My sister Saliha. From Bijeljina. We grew up there. Went to school there, got jobs, made friends. Most of our friends were Serbs. When the war started, I knew we would all be fine, because everyone knew us. No one would let anything happen.”
    He took a long swallow of the whiskey, wincing, then wiping his mouth with a sleeve before he continued.
    â€œSaliha was raped in the first month of the war. Five times by a group of men in a room where they kept her for two days. I was put in the concentration camp at Keraterm. They loaded fifty of us on a bus and put us behind a fence. Nothing to eat for four days while they took us out, two at a time, beat us around the head, chained us to trucks. A few of us they shot. Me they just beat. Legs and face. Left us behind the wire for five weeks until one day a commander drives up and sets us loose. All the ones who hadn’t died, anyway. But they took our papers, our money, then put us on trucks and drove us up to the front lines, where they dumped us out and told us never to come back.
    â€œSnipers shot two of us while we were walking to the other side, stumbling across the lines. Another one stepped on a mine. The UN was there and everything, but there was nothing they could do. I think someone filed a protest later.”
    He sipped the whiskey again, gestured