One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [36]
‘Yes – there’s my brother!’
Except I barely recognized him. Two stone lighter – and he’d been thin anyway. His cheeks were sunken, his hair long, face very brown. His eyes scanned the crowd.
‘Kit!’
He saw me and muscled across. We embraced. He quickly introduced me to a fellow ICRS man, Brett, a Dutchman, equally brown and lean, and they hurried me outside. Through another swarm of people we dodged our way to a Bedford lorry down the street, engine running, a girl revving it impatiently. She had a tank full of petrol, Kit explained as we ran towards it, which was like gold dust. Didn’t want anyone stealing it at gunpoint. Brett ran to leap in the back and Kit bundled me in the front. Behind us, in steerage, three young Irishmen, all aid workers, were huddled with their backpacks. They’d also just arrived, apparently, and Kit assured me he wouldn’t have been able to collect me, to leave his post, but for these three: I’d have had to make my own way through Italy and across the border. As Brett banged the roof in the back, Fabianne, French and tight-lipped, let out the clutch, and we rumbled down Split’s main highway, dotted with bombed-out buildings and teaming with military. We weaved through the armoured vehicles, leaving clouds of dust in our wake. The sun was a huge shimmering orb on the horizon, and despite the obvious tension in the air, on the faces of my brother and his comrades, I couldn’t help feeling exhilarated as we swept through town. I was here. I’d made it.
Kit and Fabianne were silent until we’d left the city, their eyes constantly roving, watchful. Only when we were speeding towards surprisingly green, panoramic countryside, did they relax slightly; nod to each other in relief. I was awestruck by Kit’s new mantle of seriousness; even more so as the new aid workers in the back, aware we were now out of immediate danger, leaned forward to ask questions. Fabianne cut in occasionally in broken English, but it was Kit who did the talking. I listened to his answers in silence. About four thousand, he reckoned, killed at Omarska, including most of Prijedor’s intellectuals: teachers, lawyers, politicians – those were the sort of people they were after, but anyone would do. Anyone with an education, or who was in the way. Universities had been raided by the military in Srebrenica and Sarajevo, and professors and students were rounded up daily. Their families too. Some were shot on the spot, some sent to camps. No one knew who to trust. I learned that people knew their torturers, had grown up with them, gone to school with them.
‘Like the Jews in Nazi Germany?’ My only contribution, in a small voice.
‘Exactly. And no one thought it could happen again.’
The boys in the back were far more informed than I was. I listened as they had confirmed that which they’d already feared: atrocities they’d gleaned through Reuters, information agencies back home. All true.
At length, on a long stretch of dusty road, we fell silent. We were approaching the mountains now, beautiful majestic scenery rising before us. Fabianne shifted clunking gears as we lurched about, then began to climb. In the foothills, a little village would materialize, or the remains of one. A shattered mosque here, a few roofless houses there, endless piles of rubble. Hens pecked in the dirt, and a skinny brown dog slunk by. A clutch of people stood at the roadside: one or two old men and a tall woman, a few children peeking around her skirt like mice. The woman followed our lorry warily, her eyes dull.
‘Are they frightened of us?’ I asked.
‘They’re frightened of everyone. But they see “Aide Humanitaire” on the side and they know it’s OK.’
Kit pointed out the shelled school, then a tent used as a makeshift hospital. His hands were brown and sinewy, his voice strong, not broken as it had been on the phone: informative now, not emotional. I felt very proud. Humble, too.
Serb checkpoints had to be crossed, papers checked. Very young soldiers with guns at right angles to their chests came to the window. My heart began to pound as they