Deep Black - Andy McNab [91]
‘Romeo and Juliet?’
‘Fucking nightmare, man. I was with Jason before the enclaves blew up. We were just cruising, looking for something different to shoot. But everywhere you went in Sarajevo was the same, wasn’t it? We decided to check out the front line a bit before going back to the hotel.
‘There was a stand-off, city guys against a group of Serbs just over there. This Serb tank appeared from nowhere and started firing. We ended up with the city guys. Next thing I knew, one was yelling at us to get our cameras. He was pointing at a young couple running towards the far side of the bridge.
‘They got the guy first. The girl was just wounded, and I got a shot as she crawled across to his body and put an arm round him before she died. Turned out she was Muslim, he was Serb . . .’ He had the sort of expression I probably showed every time I caught myself thinking about Zina or Kelly. ‘Fucked up or what, man? It was the first time I ever cried doing this shit. First time I ever wanted to put down my camera and pick up a gun.’
It was business as usual these days. Cars crossed the bridge, people walked around with bags of shopping. On the steep rising ground immediately the other side of the river, all the roofs were shiny, and all the mosques had new minarets. There seemed to be one every two hundred metres or so. It was easy to spot a Muslim house: its roof was pyramidal while the rest were gabled. Satellite dishes sprouted from just about every wall; these guys must have been as keen on The Simpsons as the Iraqis.
Just to the right of the bridge, flags of every description fluttered over a new steel and glass building. I pointed it out to Jerry. ‘That must be where our friend the general takes his meetings about meetings. I wonder how Paddy puts up with him.’ The Right Honourable Lord Ashdown was the UN’s High Representative in Bosnia. It was the sort of title you only expected to find in Gilbert and Sullivan, but in effect he ran the country.
We turned left and followed the river towards the city centre, but we hadn’t gone far when there was the dull thud of an explosion up on the high ground.
Everyone in the street looked up. A small plume of grey smoke floated above a square of trees, surrounded by rooftops. Two old women coming towards us, weighed down with carrier-bags, tutted to each other as if this was an everyday annoyance.
‘What do you reckon, Nick? A mine?’
‘Had to be.’
When the Serbs withdrew, they left hundreds of thousands of the little fuckers in their wake. There was no need for Keep Off the Grass signs in Bosnia.
70
There was some reconstruction in progress along the riverbank, but most buildings still hadn’t been patched up. A few of the places immediately facing the Miljacka had all but collapsed. Others had done so long since, their rubble cleared to make room for muddy car parks. At least the river was nice and picturesque these days. The last time I’d seen it, there’d been bodies floating downstream.
A tram stopped just ahead of us, brand new with a sign announcing it was a gift from the people of yet another guilt-ridden country that had done fuck-all to help when it was really needed. Passengers jostled to get on and off with their shopping, a very few in headscarves, some in grey raincoats, briefcases in their hands and cellphones to their ears.
Soon we couldn’t move for people and cafés. A coffee shop seemed to have sprung up every ten paces, but these were indigenous. George would have given Sarajevo the thumbs up: there wasn’t a Starbucks or skinny latte in sight. A lot of them had outside tables with canopies and butane heaters so the punters didn’t have to stem their nicotine and caffeine intake even when the temperature dropped.
Most of the buildings were still peppered with shrapnel and bullet scars, but at street level it was all plate glass and stainless steel, bright lights and rap. We even passed a Miss Selfridge, where women were holding up the new season’s collection against themselves, and teenage girls lounged around in Levi’s, smoking and listening to their