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But now the national army had been converted—guns, tanks, and
officers—into the Bosnian Serb Army, which had quickly captured
two-thirds of Bosnia. Most army officers and their families saw no need
to live like the people they were shooting across the way, crouching
below shattered windows in shot-out rooms. Many Serb military families
had moved out of range, to country places in the resort towns nearby.
But scavengers, thieves, and Serb refugees had come to squat in Grbavica
apartment blocks, alongside Serb snipers.
Across the way, Irena observed certain rules. She had been taught a few,
and kept a few more for herself. Tedic, her chief, had told her not to
shoot at children. The morals were dubious and the publicity
devastating. On her own, Irena had determined that she would not shoot
at pets. Tedic had instructed her not to shoot at grandmothers, and when
she'd wondered if grandfathers were included by the same logic, he had
reminded her that Milosevic and Karadzic could have grandchildren.
Tedic had also directed Irena not to shoot at squatters. He said they
weren't worth the waste of a bullet, or the risk of revealing herself.
Serbs reviled squatters as bothersome bumpkins and pests; their loss
would cause no inconvenience or remorse.
"Why should we clean out their rats' nests?" he asked.
Irena decided that she would not shoot at someone who looked like Sting,
the Princess of Wales, or Katarina Witt. She wanted to be able to enjoy
looking at their pictures without seeing ghosts. She would not shoot at
someone who was already wounded, though she would judge if someone
limped because he had truly been wounded or because he had jammed his
toe kicking a plugged-up toilet.
Irena knew that Tedic would have a score of sensible objections to each
of her rules. What if Serb snipers started tucking puppies under their
arms? What if a Serb mortar team carried a little ginger cat as their
mascot? Would she shrink from firing at a Serb setting off an artillery
piece if he had eyebrows like Katarina Witt? Irena kept her rules in
confidence so that she could not be reasoned out of them. She already
knew that when the bullets she fired singed the air, they sailed under
their own authority.
"Two facts to keep in mind," Tedic had told Irena when she began work.
"They are always up. We are always down." The Serbs and their heavy guns
inhabited the hills. The Bosnians of Sarajevo looked up into those guns
from the valley into which their city was tucked—or trapped—along the
river.
When Irena looked across into the landscape of windows and balconies
where she had once lived, she imagined that she could make out bowls of
glistening hard-boiled eggs, glossy brass pots of strong black coffee,
and stout platters of fat brown sausages, passed between the dirty hands
of brutes.
Sometimes she could steady her sight and see little curlicues of pink or
blue petals dappling the family pottery. She imagined what it would be
like for a Serb family to sit at their table listening to the Knight.
She liked to picture their surprise when a loud snap smacked through
their window and punctured their coffeepot. She saw a brown downpour
splash against the wall, runny as blood, while the family scrambled
under the table. The sausages would go down like blasted ships, the lacy
ivory tablecloth would tear as the young son dived, grasping at the
scalloped stitching for covering. Irena imagined delicately tapping out
their telephone number. The family's phone would quiver slightly as it
trilled in the window (most phones in Serb territory worked), a
trembling hand scrambling up for the receiver.
Excerpted from Pretty Birds by Scott Simon Copyright © 2005 by Scott Simon. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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