====================== Sarajevo by Nick DiChario ====================== Copyright (c)1999 Nick DiChario First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1999 Fictionwise Contemporary Science Fiction --------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the purchaser. If you did not purchase this ebook directly from Fictionwise.com then you are in violation of copyright law and are subject to severe fines. Please visit www.fictionwise.com to purchase a legal copy. Fictionwise.com offers a reward for information leading to the conviction of copyright violators of Fictionwise ebooks. --------------------------------- In Sarajevo, at Rade Koncar Square, Ahmo watched a young boy fall to the bullet of a sniper. The shell blasted into his left ear and exploded out his jaw. The spurt of blood and chunk of meat and bone that was once his delicate, rounded chin burst into the air like a champagne cork. His body snapped in fierce retroflex before it collapsed. His neck twisted grotesquely underneath him. This was one of the first things Ahmo saw in Sarajevo. He watched it again and again, unable to believe his eyes. The boy, for all his ghostly appearance, died his perpetual deaths in exquisite detail: His bruised left elbow hitched against his ribs. The torn, dirty, olive shirt he wore flapped airily in the breeze. A look of utter confusion crossed his face as the bullet introduced itself as smooth as an ice pick to tender skin and fragile bone. Even the dust settled around the boy's broken body as it must have done a century ago, captured by the extravagant miracle of his never-ending death. The boy died with his eyes open, questioning, as if there was something about the entire experience he'd just plain misunderstood. "Excuse me, sir," a smartbot said in metallic English, rolling toward Ahmo on two trim wheels. "Should I call medical assistance for you?" It was an outdated model, short and broad-framed, with arms like brass sticks. It had a square head, no neck, and an old RetnaNet scanner strip for visuals, winking peridot and platinum. "English?" it asked in its scratchy voice. "Do I presume correctly?" Ahmo felt the summer heat closing in on him. It was a bright afternoon, and there was nowhere to hide from the sun. He must have looked very pale. "I'm all right," he said. "Very good. Will you please accept reading material from the Sarajevo Council on Spiritual Awareness?" The smartbot had a stack of pamphlets tucked under its stiff arm. It pinched one of the pamphlets with its adept robotic fingers and held it out to him. "By the grace of Allah, you are allowed to tread upon this Holy Soil. Allah offers the Miracle of Ghosts to all people who -- _ssschkitch_ -- travel to Sarajevo. The ghosts are prophets of Allah sent to remind us never to forsake peace. Peace with Allah, peace with one's soul, peace with each other and all living things is paramount. The people of the world were once guilty of turning their backs on Sarajevo, but Allah will not permit the world to-to-to _click, nnnnnnnn_ -- so easily forget. Read this pamphlet, please." "I'll read it." Ahmo took the paper and folded it into his pocket. "Sir, are you planning to visit Vase Miskin Street and the infamous Bread Queue Massacre?" "Dobrinja," Ahmo answered. "If you pass the BQM, maybe it is best for you to -- _skeeeeeech_ -- close eyes. You do not look so good." The smartbot rolled away toward a group of Eastern Indian tourists on the other side of the square. The machine was right about Miskin Street. Hundreds of ghosts gathered outside what was, during the siege on Sarajevo, the city's only working bakery. On the morning of the massacre, the people came in hopes of buying a loaf of bread for their families with what little money they had. Ahmo knew from what his grandmother had told him that the people had no food, no water, no electricity, their telephones had all been cut off. They suffered the indignity of inadequate sanitation. They had not eaten eggs, meat, fruits or vegetables for many months. They survived on bread and rain water and what little rice they received from humanitarian aid. The grenades exploded in the center of the crowd. Arms and legs were thrown into the air, landing on nearby balconies. This was Sarajevo in the year 1992, and 2092, and all the years in-between. Welcome. Ahmo stepped into the shadow of a decrepit building of worn and crumbling Jerusalem stone. He wiped the perspiration from his face with a bandanna already dampened by sweat. He dug in his pocket, unfolded the pamphlet the smartbot had given him, and read a quote from the _Holy Qur'an:_ _'...Men began to fear the strong and oppress the weak, _ _To boast in prosperity, and curse in adversity. _ _And to flee each other, pursuing phantoms, _ _For the truth and reality of Unity_ _Was gone from their minds.'_ Ahmo wanted nothing more than for the truth and reality of this horrible place to be gone from his mind. He had to remind himself of why he'd come. He'd come for his beloved grandmother. He'd made her a promise he would not break. He reached in his hip pack for the gold ring Grandmother Ivana had given him on the day she'd died, felt it at his fingertips, brought it to his lips. "Soon," he whispered. "Soon I will take you home." Ahmo stepped out of the shadows and walked toward the suburb of Dobrinja, where Grandmother Ivana had lived when she was just a little girl. * * * * Ahmo rushed into his grandparents' small brownstone on the outskirts of Greenwich. He was late for Grandmother Ivana's death. He hadn't meant to be late, but the tube from East Jersey had stalled twice, and the demonstration against new government regulations on webnet virtuware had drawn thousands, clogging up eight blocks of prime downtown real estate. "I can't wait around here all afternoon," said the Hemlock technologist, a petite young woman with a stiff posture aimed at Ahmo's grandfather. She wore a blazer the color of blush clay, a tight skirt, and a pair of black pumps that made her feet look large. "I've got two more deaths scheduled before six o'clock." Grandfather's face turned crimson. "We pay Hemlock advance for job, you are going to _do_ job. Or else you refund money. _All_ of money!" He smacked his hands together. Grandmother Ivana smiled up at Ahmo from the quilted sofa. In spite of all her sickness, she looked beautiful. She wore a long, silky, agate-blue wrap over an ivory-colored gown. She'd primped her hair, and Ahmo could see a trace of makeup on her blanched face. She was not even shaking much today. Ahmo took a moment to savor this picture of her. The Hemlock lady noticed Ahmo standing just inside the parlor. "Is this the young man we've been waiting for?" The woman's voice no longer sounded quite so tart. Not many women could remain angry around Ahmo. He had what his grandmother called "pouty little lips" and a baby boy's complexion. He'd inherited his mother's long, thin face and thick black hair, his father's strong chin and sky-blue eyes. Ahmo had developed a lean and muscular physique from his years of high school and collegiate basketball, and his job as assistant basketball coach at East Jersey University kept him fit and trim. The fact that he was an English Lit intern, teaching under a highly respected professor at the university, was something he kept to himself until he met a woman impressed by such things, a rare occurrence in his social circles that still revolved mainly around athletics. "Ahmo," said his Grandmother, "I knew you would come." She spoke to Ahmo as if no one else were in the room. His grandmother had always talked to him this way, even when he was a child. She'd always made him feel special. Ahmo was almost thirty years old now and still hadn't found anyone else who could do that for him. There were plenty of women who wanted his body, and vice versa to be sure, but _special_ was hard to come by. This was one of the reasons he didn't want Grandmother Ivana to go through with the euthanasia. Selfish, but true. "I'm sorry I'm late," he said, not really meaning it. "It wasn't my fault. The tube stalled, and the demonstration downtown -- " "It's all right, Ahmo," said his grandmother. The young woman smoothed her woolen jacket. "I don't believe we've met," she said. Grandmother said, "Miss March, this is my grandson, Ahmo. He'll be your second witness. Ahmo, this is Miss March. She's single." Miss March smiled. "The pleasure is all mine." She had the sort of pinched face that made a smile look pained and exaggerated. She smelled too strongly of powdery perfume, putting Ahmo in mind of the funeral homes her clients were one step away from. He said, "I'm glad you can find some pleasure in this." His grandmother frowned. "Don't be like that." "It's okay," said Miss March. "We at Hemlock are often treated like _betes noires_. We learn to overlook it." "Miss March is a kind young girl, Ahmo. You know I want this or she wouldn't be here." "I know, but that doesn't mean I want it." Ahmo knelt beside his grandmother and held her hand. "Can't I talk you out of this?" "Stubborn boy, just like your grandfather. We've been all through this. I'm one-hundred-twelve years old and modern medicine has run out of miracles for me. It's time for me to go." "Time to go! Time to go!" snapped Grandfather. He stormed into the kitchen. "That's all you've said for the past three months. Go then. Get it over!" Ivana smiled. "You'll watch out for your grandfather when I'm gone, won't you, Ahmo? He's not so young anymore." "Of course I will," Ahmo answered uneasily. He knew Grandmother Ivana was ready to die. She had made all of the preparations with Hemlock and had undergone the required psychological evaluations. She had even thought to make Ahmo executor of her estate, whatever that meant to a woman who coveted so few possessions. But Ahmo was not ready to let her go. He thought about his family. Ahmo's parents, along with his sister and brother-in-law and their three children, lived a long way off, in George Washington Province, the new American colony in Canada. They would be angry when they learned of Ivana's passing. They would want to know why Ahmo hadn't notified them sooner. It was Grandmother's wish, he would tell them. She had not wanted anyone else to watch her die. "It's time! It's time!" Grandfather hollered from the kitchen. "Let her go!" Miss March placed what looked like a hard-plastic fishing creel on the end table. She snapped it open and removed some needles wrapped in white linen. Ahmo glanced around the small parlor where he had spent so much of his time since the rest of his family had moved north. The antique poster on the wall from the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo glinted in its burnished frame. His parents had bought it at an auction and had given it to Ivana on her one-hundredth birthday. He'd often caught his grandmother staring at it, appearing as if she might cry. The tiered curio table in the corner of the room had been cleaned and polished recently, along with all of the miniature pewter teacups his grandmother had collected over the years. He touched the large, round area-rug at his knees that he and his sister had helped Grandmother Ivana braid and sew when they were just children. Ahmo suddenly wished he'd gotten stuck in the tube, or lost in the crowd downtown. Anything, anything other than this. Ivana cupped Ahmo's chin and gently pulled him closer. She kissed his forehead. She had the most beautiful plum-colored eyes he'd ever seen. They flashed liquid and hypnotic in the dim light of the room, like wine and candlelight. Ahmo couldn't imagine no longer having those eyes to look into for warmth, for comfort, for his own sense of family and personal history. It was amazing that this old, frail woman had come to mean so much. "Ahmo," she said, "what are you holding on to? I'm happy. I'm free to say, _this is how I want to die_. Do you understand?" Ahmo understood, but he could not embrace it. His love was too strong. Ivana brushed her fingers through his coarse hair. "Listen to me. I have something important to ask of you. A last request. Will you promise to do something for me after I'm gone?" "Of course. Anything." Ahmo kissed his grandmother's fingers. Her palms were clammy. He noticed that he'd been trying to warm her hands with his own, caressing them as if they were sticks he might alight by rubbing them briskly together. "I want you to go back. I want you to go back to Sarajevo for me." "Go back? Grandmother, I, I don't know...Sarajevo..." "Please," she said. "It is my last wish. I have set aside the money for the trip. It will cost you nothing but your time." Ahmo hesitated. He did not relish the thought of seeing the Miracle of Ghosts, of watching his ancestors die their horrible deaths. "Your mother will never go. She's afraid. I can't blame her. Maybe she's too close to it." What choice did Ahmo have? How could he say no to this beautiful woman, his precious grandmother? This was her last wish. "All right, if it's that important to you." Ivana lifted her left hand and removed the gold ring from around her finger. She placed the ring in Ahmo's hand. "Take this ring and bring it to Dobrinja, bring it to my home. I have all the information written out for you, with a map. When you get there, just leave the ring on the ground. That's all I ask. The ring has been with me all these years, and I want to return it. This is my dying wish." Ivana's lips quivered, her delicate jaw trembled, her eyes filled with tears. "Oh, look at me. I promised I wouldn't cry." "I hate to sound all business," said Miss March, "but I'll need Ahmo to sign the witness statement now." She said this to no one in particular, but Ahmo felt it as a blow to his heart. "All right." He stood and quickly signed the paper without reading it. He did not want to linger over this task. He felt as if he were signing his grandmother's death sentence. "Is it done yet?" Grandfather yelled from the kitchen. "Are you dead yet, Ivana?" Ivana laughed nervously and brushed away her tears. "No, not yet. Make a pot of coffee. By the time it's perked I'll be dead. Make decaffeinated. You'll be up all night if you don't." "We're out of decaf!" he shouted. "I put it on the list but you never bought it." "I bought it. Look in the refrigerator behind the pickles. How are you going to live without me? Tomorrow I won't be around to tell you where to find things." Then she looked into Ahmo's eyes. "_Cuvajte se_, little Ahmo, take care of yourself. I love you with all my heart." Ahmo clutched the ring in his hand, and stepped behind the sofa, where Grandmother Ivana could not see his pain. * * * * Ahmo walked past "sniper alley" in Sarajevo, and watched an ambulance driver lose control of his vehicle after he'd been shot in the neck. The ambulance spun out of control, flipped over, and crashed silently into a café. The injured victims in the ambulance spilled out onto the street like lumber from a broken sheaf. Outside the general headquarters of UNPROFOR, the United Nations Protection Force, a woman from the humanitarian agency Equilibre burned to death after being caught in the flames of a Molotov cocktail. She was most likely killed by a Chetnik guerrilla. The Chetniks took great pleasure in the killing of volunteers, women, and children. The sky was cloudless, the sun beat down mercilessly. Ahmo's eyes stung and his mouth felt sandy from the blowing dust. He could feel the skin on the back of his neck beginning to sunburn. He walked the road between Butmir and Dobrinja. The southwest was one of the hardest hit in all of Sarajevo during the war. There were no trees or mountain ranges to protect it. At the old airport, Hercules airplanes packed with medical relief and rice and beans from the West came under heavy anti-aircraft fire, and crashed one after another as they attempted to land. There was a phosphorescent glean to their aerial distress that made the sky itself look drunk and confused. Ahmo watched for a while, and began to wonder if these tired old airplanes were fed up with crashing and burning over and over again, if their pilots had long ago given up trying to set down safely. Had Allah truly asked them to do this great thing, to make this sacrifice? _Haunt Sarajevo! _ Ahmo imagined Allah commanding, and then he saw thousands of Sarajevans, legions of the dead, spirit-zombies, obeying their one true God. A smartbot from the Bureau of Tourism approached Ahmo as he stood in front of the airport. It said, "Slovák? English? Deutsch? Italiano? Français? Español? -- " "English," Ahmo interrupted. "Good day, sir," it began without pause. "Do you know what started all the killing in Sarajevo? Do you know the details behind the Bosnia-Herzegovina vote for independence from the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, and how the Serbian Democratic Party violently disagreed? Would you like to learn the truth about the evil war criminals Milosevic and Karadzic and their policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide?" This smartbot was tall and thin with a galeate head, a newer model sporting copper alloy legs, a pristine voice chip, and glass eyes that looked almost real. Its exoskeleton was the color of almond, giving it the appearance of a walking corpse. The 'bot wore a navy-blue smock with an official patch on its breast, and held a neatly wrapped computer virtuware package in its dull, brass hand. It clicked and hummed forward. "Why did the Europeans and Americans, the holy and righteous people of the civilized world who prided themselves on their humanitarianism, allow the slaughter of innocent victims when they could have easily put an end to it? Why was this peaceful city allowed to degenerate into the world's largest concentration camp? You can learn all about it from this commemorative Sarajevo virtuware, the only presentation package sanctioned by the Sarajevo Historical Society." Ahmo looked past the smartbot. Another aircraft spun out of control on the runway, tipped over, and snapped a wing. A fiery mushroom of bleached smoke consumed the plane. "Walk the streets of Sarajevo, the City of Tolerance, before it was completely destroyed by the war and inhabited by ghosts. Learn how the Croats, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and even the Serbs lived in peace for centuries, side by side. See exclusive interviews with Sarajevans who miraculously escaped the violence. Hear theories from internationally renowned mystagogues on why the hauntings continue to transpire. All of this can be yours for only two-thousand dinars, the same amount of money it once cost for one-half kilo of macaroni here in Sarajevo during the terrible war of aggression!" Ahmo donated the money to the Historical Society in German Deutchmarks, the preferred tender in the Balkan region, but told the smartbot he did not have the stomach for its virtuware. In Dobrinja, there was nothing left but collapsed mosques and synagogues, ruined minarets and housing complexes, and ghosts forever dying. Ahmo was swiftly learning to ignore them, just as the world had learned to ignore the real thing so many years ago. But Ahmo felt as if he had earned this right. He was one of them now, under siege with the incendiaries, mortars, cannons, and snipers silently stalking him. Ghosts, now, were everywhere... _dancing_... _dancing_... So many had died here that the phantoms expired in paranormal heaps, creating numinous silhouettes of multiple executions, of blood and brains and entrails superimposed over torn flesh, exposed bone, and silently screaming faces -- a macabre choreography of vision and light, transparency and color, life and death. There was an absurd, mythical quality to all of it that was just now beginning to take shape in Ahmo's mind, a fuzzy surrealism, a sense of floating adrift in a psychotic nightmare that neither permitted him to succumb to its terrors, nor played itself out of its own accord. Ahmo was nothing more than a prisoner waiting to be set free from Sarajevo, this land of restless, tortured spirits. Finally it was the ring, of all things, the ring burning in Ahmo's hand that released him, centered him, reminded him of who and what he was and why he had come. Somehow Grandmother Ivana's ring had gotten from his hip pack into the palm of his hand and had it not been for this delicate band of gold, he might very well have become a ghost himself. By the time Ahmo found his grandmother's building, he was both mentally and physically exhausted. He felt the hot wind on his face. Sweat streamed down his ribs. He sipped water from the canteen he'd purchased in the gift shop at the Sarajevo Marriott. He wanted only to fulfill his promise and be gone. Ahmo watched a family blown to literal bits in his grandmother's old building. At first they were just sitting there. Then a little girl ran into the room. The bomb hit and the room caved in on them. The little girl looked so much like his grandmother that Ahmo watched the scene unfold again and again, trying to peer through the other ghosts and study her face. His grandmother had been one of the lucky children. She'd gotten out before the winter, before temperatures of below zero forced people to burn furniture in their stoves to keep from freezing. When the mortar fire hit, Ivana was not killed. The rest of her family had died but she'd survived with only minor cuts and bruises and some ringing in her ears that would not clear for many months. The day after the bombing, a delegation from The Children's Embassy spirited her away among a group of Italian journalists. From there she'd been placed in an American home. This girl's resemblance to Ahmo's grandmother was uncanny -- the structure of her cheeks and the curvature of her jaw, the delicate nose and lofty forehead, the upturned lips and small mouth. Ahmo had heard that as people grew older they began to resemble their childhood likenesses. Perhaps this thought moved him forward. The ghost of the young girl glanced in his direction, and Ahmo saw clearly, for the first time in this hauntingly familiar child, his grandmother Ivana's dark, plum eyes. No. It was not possible. His grandmother had escaped to America. She could not have been killed in Sarajevo. Perhaps this was a cousin, or even a sister he'd never heard about. How many of his ancestors had died in this building? It was so long ago. Perhaps Ahmo was beginning to see ghosts of his own design on top of ghosts on top of ghosts. Whatever it was, he'd had enough. He could not take the sight of anymore death. He placed the gold ring on the ground, among the ruins, just as Grandmother Ivana had instructed him to do. He was ashamed to admit that he was glad to be rid of it. He turned his back on the building and strode away. But something stopped him. Ahmo could not say what. He turned around to look one last time at the young girl who had died her horrible death over and over again in this building, her eternal coffin. But on this occasion something very different happened. The girl did not go running into the room. She stopped short. Her beautiful wine-colored eyes caught a golden wink in the summer sunlight on the ground where Ahmo had laid his grandmother's ring. She walked over to it and reached for the tiny band of gold. The grenade struck again, but this time the girl was not in the room. This time she was thrown out onto the street. She rolled across the pavement, almost to Ahmo's feet, and began to cry. She was alive! And then the scene faded. The little girl vanished. She no longer lay crying on the street. She no longer appeared in the ghostly reincarnation of her family's death. She was not _anywhere_. Ahmo walked back to the place where he'd dropped Grandmother Ivana's ring. It was gone. His grandmother's ring was gone. * * * * Ahmo sat on the quilted sofa and cradled Ivana's head and shoulders. She was so light her spirit might have already fled her body. It had been six minutes since the Hemlock technologist, Miss March, had administered the fatal injection. Miss March said it would take no more than ten minutes for his grandmother to die, for the Seconal and Lace to furnish her a painless, peaceful, dreamy death. Ivana's eyes were closed, but she smiled thinly, and whispered, "Ahmo." "I'm here, Grandmother." "Have I ever told you how fortunate I was to survive Sarajevo? Not so many people were lucky like me." Her voice was very weak. "You were meant to live," Ahmo whispered in her ear. He gently squeezed his grandmother's shoulders, as if his hands held the power to keep her forever by his side. "Sometimes I dream of Sarajevo," she said, "but in my dreams it is always beautiful and peaceful. No one is afraid. I am with my family. We are all alive and happy. Isn't that nice, Ahmo? It was strange when the bomb hit our home. I was running to my mother, but then I saw a light, just a twinkle of light, and I thought it was Allah calling me." His grandmother had not mentioned Allah in many years. Ahmo's family had given up the old ways, the old religion. Ahmo himself had followed his parents in having no particular religious associations. He wished now that it was not so. It would have been nice to have a god to pray to at a time like this, a god who cared. "I can see that light again, Ahmo," she said. "I can see it. A twinkle...just a twinkle...far off...calling me..." Ahmo forced himself to smile through his tears. He gripped the ring in the palm of his hand and thought of Sarajevo. For some reason the journey no longer frightened him. Grandmother Ivana had made him feel special one last time. ----------------------- At www.fictionwise.com you can: * Rate this story * Find more stories by this author * Get story recommendations