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Table of Contents
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE : It’s complicated
UNDER PRESSURE
FARUK ŠEHIĆ
Translated from the Bosnian by Mirza Purić
First published in 2019 by
Istros Books
London, United Kingdom www.istrosbooks.com
Copyright © Faruk Šehić, 2019
Published originally as Pod pritiskom, 2004 , this book contains additional material
The right of Faruk Šehić, to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Translation © Mirza Purić , 2019
Illustrations and cover art: Aleksandra Nina Knežević
Typesetting: Davor Pukljak, www.frontispis.hr
ISBN
Print: 978-1-912545-02-5
MOBI: 978-1-912545-03-2
ePub: 978-1-912545-04-9
This publication is made possible by the goodwill and generosity of a number of readers across the globe, who gave support through Kickstarter.
In the beginning
In the beginning was Eden, whence we were expelled.
We watched the clouds pile up above the hills below which the Una flowed into our town. At first they were light in colour, then they took on the muddy hue of dirty snow. The air was electric, as it always is before a summer torrent. We didn’t like rain because it meant the end of bathing for the day, and it had to be hellishly hot the day after for us to muster up the courage to dip in again. Bathing in the river was the main summer ritual in our town. Life existed only for the sake of bathing. The calendar existed because of summer and water. The town smelt of river, of riverine greenery, of fish. Duck feathers were in the air, fish scales scattered on the riverbank. Smoke rose from barbecues in every corner, crates of beer were cooling in the water. On the other bank, on the roof of a house in progress, the wind outspread the tri-colour with the red star, and the towels tied below it to bring happiness and well-being to the house and its occupants.
When a cormorant appeared on Mallard Isle, somebody tried to stone him away. His feathers were greasy black. He submerged and emerged swallowing fish. The current took him far down the river from the Wooden Bridge, where swimmers tried to drive him away by shouting.
I dived into the river till I could dive no more. The moment I’d emerge onto the bank, which we’d cemented for more convenient walking, I’d climb onto the platform again, leap up as high as I could, bow to the river, straighten my body and delve in with all my might towards the murky blue bottom. It’s peaceful and quiet down there, and soothingly cold. The fish would scatter before me every which way. I’d dive straight into a shoal of nase and the odd chub.
Everyone dived, in order to make the most of the day. Some wouldn’t come out of the water at all, they splashed about in the shallows like walruses letting the stream take them to the waterfall which catapulted them to the Wooden Bridge, some hundred metres from our beach on the Quai.
The clouds are now dark and menacing. Peak voltage in the air. Heavy drops fall hard. Bathing ceases, everyone rushes out of the water, only a few bathers are still swimming. Rain picks up pace, the drops are larger and colder. Thin trees dance in the wind. The raindrops weigh down on their crowns, like when an umbrella is being closed. It’s roaring, and bolts of lightning rend the sky like in the Bible. One should find a lee, wait for the downpour to abate and go home. The surface of the river is obscured by the liquid curtain. It is as if the rain decided never to stop.
A HIERARCHY OF THINGS
Under Pressure
1.
They’ve brought us to the frontline. Mud and fog everywhere. I can barely see the man in front of me. We almost hold onto each other’s belts lest we get lost. We pass between burning houses. The file trudges on alongside rickety fences. The mud sticks to our boots, stretches like dough. Lines seen for the first time are the best. Everything is new, unusual and hairy as fuck. Especially when you take charge of a position at night, and the next day, in daylight, you realise you’re sitting on the tip of a nail.
Charred beams are falling off roofs, sizzling in the mud. We trudge up a big slope. The grass is slimy with fog. Whenever someone falls, he brings the file to a halt and, as a matter of course, curses a blue streak at the motherland and the president. The very thought that we would sleep out in the open flares up my haemorrhoids. The guide, a military policeman, brings us up to the top of the hump. Emir and I take a shallow trench in which we find: a mattress and a quilt, mud-smeared, and a few fags, smoked down to the filter, nervously stuck into the soil.
‘Alright, lads! Freezin’, innit?’ a voice reaches us from the right-hand side.
‘Come ’ere and we’ll talk,’ replies Emir lying on the mattress.
A silhouette approaches from behind.
Hops into the trench.
‘I’m from the third battalion,’ he tells us as we shake hands.
‘Got a fag?’
I open a cigarette case full of Gales.
‘Ain’t they gonna see us if we smoke?’ asks Emir.
‘Nah. They’re far from ’ere, and the fog’s thick.’
Emir and I both light up, as if on command.
‘Now then, what’s the lie of the land?’ I ask. ‘Is it ’airy?
‘They ploughed the hill with shells earlier today. A fighter from the second company ’ad ’is cheek blown off by shrapnel. On Metla, a hump twice the size of ours, they ’ave a couple of ZiS anti-tank guns. They can shoot us like clay pigeons,’ Third Bat-Boyo recounts slowly.
‘So, survivors will eat with golden spoons, just like the president promised,’ heckles Emir.
‘Ain’t as bad as it looks,’ Third Bat-Boyo comforts him. ‘Gotta die someday any road’.
Fear creeps into me like mould. It’s shrapnel shave day tomorrow.
* * *
‘Your life line is broken in two places. You’ll be wounded twice, once severely,’ a Gipsy woman told me on one occasion.