As the world looks to the 22nd commemoration of the Srebrenica massacre on July 11th, I went through some of my reflections, and found one that I wrote back in 1995:
I’ve spent another night in Bosnia
Blood splattered on my face
On a bed of glass, under a weighted beam
I wait for help, but none arrives.
I spent the night in Bosnia
And burned with resentment
Of the loss of my sister by the hands of a Bosnian Serb
Who wore a Rolling Stones t-shirt.
The night falls dark in Bosnia shrouded in its own dirge.
Family dogs are starving.
The wood’s long gone.
We had to burn our couch for heat.
Two years ago (how long ago it seems)
I played soccer and watched MTV.
I went out with my friends, and was pissed
That I wasn’t as popular as I thought I should be.
But then is no more in this hellish now.
There are no remnants of former times,
No sign that I’m in Europe.
The crises I always read about seemed so distant before.
But not now. Oh no, not now.
I lie here and long for the scent of freshly laundered button-down shirts. The smell of Anais Anais on my girlfriend’s clean neck. The casual lounging around the TV. The pain of longing for the past suffocates me. It wears me down more than this damned beam.
The rot of the flesh.
The dampness around my groin from the muck I’m laying in.
The unreachable itch on my left leg.
Is gangrene setting in?
The Nivea cream I parceled out these past two years in on my skin under the layer of dirt, blood, and sweat. I can even detect a bit of the cherished Joop I sprayed on this morning.
At 19, I’m faced with my own death.
I had/have so many dreams,
But my former friends haved turned on we Muslims, so my dreams have turned to mud just like the mud I’m laying in.
I even dated a Bosnian Serbian girl, and hung out with her brothers.
But Milosevic, Karadzic, and Mladic have made them hate me.
It’s not fair. The sons of bitches.
I spent the night in Sarajevo. My city.
A third cold night under this beam.
I’m tired, hungry, and worn out.
I’m not sure I’ll make it.
Does anyone hear me yelling?
Those UN fakes sure won’t. Protection force? Bah!
I’ll probably spend another night here in the wreckage of Sarajevo.
And another.
And another.
Until I’m dead.
No one will know how lucid I still am right now.
Teenagers of the world (just a few hundred kilometers away)
Won’t know of the connections we share.
That I know U2, Bjork, and love Motley Crue.
They won’t know of these things.
As if they don’t matter.
As if I never mattered.
Brad Mazon 