A Lazy Summer Afternoon in Sarajevo

O Memory, damn you!  Sometimes I wish I was incapable of remembering anything at all.  Would that be such a terrible existence, I ask you?  I could walk the streets unencumbered by war and death.  I hate death.  How I hate that evil presence!  It taunts me every day.

Maybe if I could selectively remember life would be easier.  I know people who are very good at that. But then again, I could imagine that selective memory results in selective vocabulary too.  These types usually only say "thank you," "good day," "pass the gravy," and "isn't the weather marvelous?"  I realize that I've made them sound like a bunch of English aristocrats straight out of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited - but wait, don't they have trouble with memories too?

Since I am not English, Roman-Catholic, aristocrat fictional character, I don't think that this selective memory approach will really work.  It just does not sound like a viable option.  There is always opting out of life completely, but no, s-u-i-c-i-d-e just isn't for me.  It's too messy and I like myself too much and there is also that whole "death thing" which just sends creepy crawlies up my spine and I have already established that death and I are not good companions.

The worst is when summer begins to arrive.  Nature wakes up and so do your senses.  And the senses begin to give you a large dose of truth and fiction.  Did I really remember that?  Or am I dreaming, sleepwalking and making stuff up as I move my feet on the pavement?  Ah - pavement -

- pavement - concrete jungle - heat - summer in Sarajevo - prewar - mid-day worst sun - empty neighborhood streets, no one in sight, except a grocery store owner peering through the door, thinking it might be good to get some business, it's been a slow day, but even he is far too hot to care about making money.  I am 9 years old.  I sneak out of the apartment and venture into park without telling my parents. I didn't drink any water and I will surely faint.

In the park I see a swing - not any swing, my favorite one, and it's empty now.  Nobody is foolish enough to go out in this oppressive heat.  The soil under it is dug out from forceful, dangling feet which kick it every time - back and forth, back and forth.  I go up and down, into the air, into the earth, repeat, obsessively, go higher, condominiums appear and disappear from my view.  I am getting dizzy: "you must stop," I tell myself, an interior parental voice of moderation, but my being is not listening.  "You must stop or else you'll die!"

I stop and ponder death and I experience a deep hatred for it.  I am sweating.  It's time to get back home.  I pass the grocery store owner who does not have a choice but to relax, he reads the newspaper.  He nods in recognition: "How's your father?"  "Good, good," words barely come out of my mouth.  My mouth desperately needs liquids.  I am an anxious girl and don't want to spend time talking to the store owner and my thoughts are moving rapidly in anticipation on my and someone else's utterance.  I want to get out of here.  I quickly point to an orange popsicle and leave the exact change on the ice cream freezer.

By the time I get home, the melted juice of the popsicle runs through my fingers - drip, drip, drip - turning into orange stickiness on my hand and elbow.  I need water to wash myself.  I go back home, entering into the condo building, being greeted and welcomed by the cold air.  I touch the walls and such pleasure it brings but I am still foggy from my swinging adventure that I barely make it into the apartment.  How much time has passed?  I don't know.  I sneak in.  My parents did not notice, or it is more likely that they pretended to not notice.  My mother is still doing the dishes in the kitchen, my father is at the dining room table doing crossword puzzle.

It is a lazy summer afternoon in Sarajevo - before the war.