Srebrenica

  “Thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers’ eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson, thousands of women and girls repeatedly raped. These are truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.”

       -International Criminal Court

 

 I have been sitting next to your bed all night, holding your hand. Last evening I selfishly thought that you were going to die. I say selfishly because what I was really thinking was: “What I am going to do with my life if you pass away?” You were shuddering so severely and the fever was so high that I almost called 999. That’s a nasty bug you caught. But the cold towels I put all over your body and the many-herbs and spices tea I prepared for you did their job. Now the fever has subsided, and the shivering has stopped. At first you were raving in that strange language that I don’t understand, then, finally, you fell asleep. It’s a good thing Kilmaynham Gaol Street is quiet, at least during the night. Now your face looks so peaceful that no one could guess the horrific memories you are concealing in some deep, dark and unreachable recess of your mind. Do you remember how and where we met? I do: at the Fortune Terrace Buffet Chinese restaurant on O’Connell Street. I was enjoying the dinner buffet with my friends, and you were sitting by yourself at the next table. Your dark dress, dark hair and dark eyes immediately caught my attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. I told my friends that I was captivated by you. They began to tease me saying that I was falling in love. I continued to peep at you, until you realized that I was doing it, and then you started doing the same thing. When you stood up as if you were going to leave, I felt a pang in my heart. Don’t go please! I thought. I was relieved when you went to the counter to get more food. We continued to peek at each other. At one moment you grabbed your purse, retouched your lipstick, looked at yourself in a little mirror, and combed your hair with your hands. I was very pleased because I thought you were doing that for me. When the evening was over, and my friends and I headed for the door, I deliberately walked by you, so close to you that I nearly touched your arm. As I walked by I was able to see the back of your neck, so pale, contrasting with the darkness of your hair. I felt anguished, as I did not want to leave. Outside, my friends and I stopped, to talk about something, while all the time I was watching the restaurant’s main door, until I saw you exit, and you started walking towards us, and I became nervous. I wanted to approach you and talk to you, but then, you went inside the Pick and Pay store. Whether it was to buy a drink, a confectionery, cigarettes, a mobile accessory, to avoid me, to hide from me, or to look at me from inside, I will never know. All this time I was telling my friends about you and what you were doing. They wanted to return to the hotel, but I wanted to wait until you came out of the store. When you did, we looked at each other for several seconds, and I had a chance to pry into the depths of your black eyes. After that you continued walking down O’Connell towards the Liffey. My friends were in a hurry; they crossed the street and were waiting for me at the corner of O’Connell and Eden Quay. Then I reluctantly rejoined them. I looked once more towards the corner of O’Connell and Bachelors’ Walk, and you were still there, standing, looking at me. I told my friends to go on to the hotel, that I would join them later. They warned me to be careful. Thereafter I crossed the street, and joined you. We looked at each other’s eyes, and then walked to a pub in Temple Bar. There, we drank a beer and talked, and afterwards we went to your place, where I spent the night. “Are you fucking insane?” said my friends when I told them that I wasn’t going back home, that I would stay here. They were in shock. Are you throwing away a successful life for a sudden crush? Are you going to stay in a foreign land where you have no friends, no family, no acquaintances, living with a stranger? What are you going to do when you get tired of her, or she gets tired of you? When either one of you says “I can’t do this anymore?” Well, it’s been several years now, and we are still here, at least I am. I am not feeling any itch to leave. I don’t know about you. Despite the fact that we have been living together for several years now, I barely know you; you don’t let me get too close. There is an immense chasm in front of that space where your memories are hidden. I am not allowed to go there. There is a high fence between us that you don’t allow me to jump. It’s funny, my friends even warned me to watch out, that you might be a selkie. It is ridiculous but, for a while, I lived in fear that you might be one, that one day you would hear the call of the sea, and then you would get your sealskin from wherever you had hidden it, and return to the waters to live with your own. Where did she hide it? I would ask myself. I need to find it and destroy it, to prevent her from leaving me and going back to the ocean. And then I would tell myself, don’t be stupid, there are no selkies in the Balkans. While I talk to you, sometimes your hand starts trembling and you mumble something, as if deep inside your sleep, you were listening and wanted to give me the answers that I’ve been begging for. What did they do to you in Srebrenica? Were your family slaughtered? Was your house burned down? Was your village razed to the ground? Were you repeatedly raped? How old were you? How can anyone, let alone someone so young, survive such acts of violence without losing their minds? How can I help you if you don’t talk to me about those things? On the other hand, how can I even ask you to exhume the memory of those appalling events from the places where you have buried them? There, they are out of your conscience, and that is the only way you have had to survive what you had to endure. What kind of gods-believing monsters can commit such atrocities? How can the psychopathic gods allow such monstrosities to happen, looking down coldly, holding back on their supposed power to stop suffering and evil? The yellowish light of the rising sun seeping into our bedroom makes the specks of dust visible, and their dance makes me sleepy.  But I don’t want to sleep. I don’t feel relieved yet.  I want to be awake when you awaken. I want you to see it in my face that I am staying with you through the good times and the bad times. I want to see it in your eyes that, for the foreseeable future, you are not leaving.

 ©William Almonte Jiménez, 2023