THE SEVENTH CIRCLE by Benet Davetian

They said Sarajevo was dead, or dying at least. The world mourned that the city would never be itself again. But which Sarajevo were they talking about? The one that was there before the well-to-do packed up their belongings and left? Or this new city of unlikely stories, this ramshackle town glued together with the resolve of those who were either too poor, too patriotic, or just too terrified to leave?
I cared nothing about politics, nor notions of patriotism. Neither did I have any desire to save my neck and leave the country. I admit that, at some point, I even stopped caring whether the cursed city survived or not.
Even so, there were times when I admired the risks people took to remind themselves that they were still alive. Like the iron sculpture of a bicyclist that appeared one morning at dawn, exactly where no one would ever have expected it to be. There it was, perched gloriously on a cable stretched between the banks of the Miljacka River. That very same afternoon, one of the students from the Sarajevo Art Academy took credit and explained to a bewildered television crew from France: “We put it up just like that for the hell of it, just for the sake of seeing whether or not we could do it at night, when they can’t see us. And why the hell not, when we get off on it!”
And why the hell not? I had to laugh. It was me, after all, that they had fooled. The whole thing happened during my lookout, right under my own nose. I woke the morning after they put it up and took up my position just as I did every day. And then, looking out the window, I saw the thing perched in midair, thumbing its nose at the whole of Sarajevo. I was flabbergasted. I thought I was hallucinating. The thing seemed to have materialized from outer space. I could have taken it personally and despised them for getting away with it, but for some reason I didn’t. Doing it at night so I wouldn’t see them moving in the dark shadows, setting up their complicated wires and cables. It was a big sculpture after all. Nothing to laugh at. A bicyclist of all things. It was no joke to set it up on a cable in the middle of the night. It dawned on me that I had been tricked, good and proper. I doubled over laughing. I hadn't laughed like that in a long time. Yes, it was as if a midget had brought down a giant.
But please don't misunderstand me. Had I seen them doing it, I would have shot them instantly, without the slightest remorse. They would have received no special consideration. I would have aimed my rifle carefully, precisely, held my breath, pressed the trigger, and gone back to breathing easily again. My job was to shoot and not to miss. And I did it well.
I worked from a two-room apartment on the fourth floor of an abandoned highrise building. It overlooked the boulevard that separated our side from the besieged Muslim historic quarter. The press called it no man’s land. I preferred to think of it as the forbidden zone.
I could see the entire forbidden zone from the window of the apartment. I could even see the open air theatre in the Muslim sector. My friend Meho and I used to go to a teahouse right next to the theatre on warm summer evenings. But after the barricades went up, he got stuck on his side of town and I on mine.
I liked working alone in the abandoned building. I was never one for teamwork. Before the war broke out, I worked as an apprentice mechanic in the city of Dubrovnik, on the Adriatic Coast. That was when Yugoslavia existed and all the towns along the coast were teeming with tourists. It was back when we still lived under the influence of the hammer and sickle. Things had to be done in committee. If a car wasn't working, half a dozen of us would gather around the engine and discuss what could be wrong with it, each doing his best to stay clear of a quick solution. Anyone who thought of a smart solution had to keep his mouth shut, not to appear too ambitious.
I was working as a mechanic to save money. I wanted to meet a woman, marry and have children. But after the war broke out...well, it's hard to marry after you've seen so many women raped.
I didn't want to go to the war. But how to avoid it when you're sent a notice ordering you to report? My sister Anna begged me not to go. She wanted to hide me in a hole under the house, just as one of our neighbours had done for her son. But I couldn't see myself crouched for months on end in some damp hole. So I took my chances and reported to the induction centre.
The army was big on teamwork, too. Our commandants liked us doing things in bunches. One day we were ordered to burn houses. Another day to rape women...so they would lose face with their neighbours and abandon their homes and move on to another region. During one assignment, I was sent to the town of Banja Luka where thousands of refugees were being herded onto sealed cattle trains bound for central Bosnia. I overheard the town's police chief talking to some foreign journalists who had come to witness the deportation. He referred to the forced migration as "safe transportation for those who wish to emigrate." The deportees were required to obtain twelve different certificates before being shipped out. They even had to get a certificate from the library attesting that they had no overdue books.
I hated their team spirit. Such mediocre nonsense wasn’t my style. I wanted no part of their schoolboy games. Anyway, the way I see these things, if you’re going to end someone’s life, better do it quickly, preferably without them knowing. I wasn’t a cheap torturer.
I came to envy my friend, Ratko. He worked as a sniper and didn't have to put up with any of their gang rape nonsense. I used to visit him in the apartment where he was stationed. It struck me that his work was a lot cleaner than what the regular army did. I mean, with all the signs and barricades everywhere, anyone entering the forbidden zone knew they shouldn't be there.
I was there in the room, talking to him, when he was brought down by a sniper from the other side. He went speechless in the middle of a sentence, looked like he was searching his mind for some word he'd forgotten, and fell over on his side...just like that.
I hurried to the commandant and asked for Ratko's job. He asked why I wanted to replace my friend. He wanted to know if I hoped to avenge Ratko's death. Imagine, what a stupid question. What use to avenge anyone’s death when you’ve lost track of the death count? No, I told him, I just wanted to work alone and do what had to be done. He then said some inane thing about how heartwarming it was that the nation's youth were coming together to defend the security of Serbia. Hell, what was he on about? I was no patriot. As far as I was concerned this had never been a country that could shoulder patriotism with a straight face. I mean, you can’t stick three countries together and then ask everyone to pretend it’s all in one piece--not people who still remember what they did to each other years ago.
Anyway, they gave me the job and set me up in a two-room apartment in an abandoned bombed-out building. There was a cot with a mattress, a pillow and a blanket. I also had a small propane stove, some candles, a towel, a bar of soap, and a small portable radio. I didn’t wear an army uniform; blue jeans, T-shirt, sweater, and running shoes suited me fine. Every day two soldiers walked up the four flights of stairs and left me a box of food. Two sandwiches--one made of beef kebab with onions and turnips in it, a second one made of some chicken--a large bottle of mineral water, another of soda pop, and a pack of cigarettes. That’s what it cost them to keep me. Not much, but more than most people in Sarajevo had to eat, even on their best days.
At first, I stationed myself at the window of the front room, just as Ratko had done. But then I realized that the snipers on the other side might easily see me. That’s the mistake my friend made. He became cocksure and forgot that a sniper must remain totally invisible. But I used my head. I went into the bedroom and cut a hole in the wall large enough to stick out the rifle and its scope. I then smashed the glass of the window in the front room and left some of the shards in the frame. This made it look as though the apartment had been hit by a shell. I positioned myself behind the wall separating the bedroom from the living room. I felt good in the cocoon-like space of the inner room, an invisible man doing what he wanted without having to explain himself to anyone.
Staying invisible wasn't the only part of the job. I also had to make sure that the target itself didn't remain hidden. Sometimes I couldn’t see the target and had no way of knowing where it was. But I knew it was there somewhere, that it was moving, and that it would get to where it wanted if I didn't react quickly enough. So I thought of a way to see the target even when it was too far to be visible. If it was a sunny day, I would concentrate on an area where I suspected movement. I'd wait for a burst of sunlight reflected off a button, belt-buckle or eyeglasses and would quickly shoot at the burst of glitter in the distance.
My mother died a few months ago. Nothing to do with the war. She climbed a ladder to reach something and her heart stopped. My father wasn’t alive to bury her, so, being the only son, I went back home for the funeral. Six months before I might have cried at her burial. But after so many dead, it seemed maudlin to cry, almost out of place. My sister Anna wrote me a couple of weeks later begging me to return, complaining that she was all alone now and very worried. Again, she offered to hide me somewhere until the war was over. But I didn’t answer her letter. I seemed to have crossed some invisible border.
A bicyclist hanging on a cable stretched across the sky, pedalling in empty space, trying to cross over from one hopeless side to the other. There’s nothing silly in that. It’s about the will to survive and all the little decisions people have to make here every day to keep body and soul together. Every minute a new question needs answering. Shall I risk going out to fetch water? Which route shall I take? Shall I stand in the market like a sitting duck just to buy a loaf of bread? What will I eat if I don't go out to buy the bread? How shall I send word to my brother in the next village? How to look my aunt in the eye when she and I both know that she was raped last week? The closer you are to annihilation, the more questions there are.
But I myself had few questions left. I liked being in the apartment, on my own. I could have lived somewhere else and come here just to put in my shifts. But I preferred staying here day and night. It helped me keep others faceless and nameless. The fewer faces I saw up close, the more anonymous I felt. There was a certain freedom in that. After all, isn’t the executioner always brought out at the very last moment? Doesn’t he always wear a hood?
I know you’re probably thinking: "He’s just a cheap murderer. What story could he have that’s worth telling? Why listen to him? It’s the incoherent babble of a psychopath. After all, doesn't he just kill people without even a warning, without the benefit of a hearing?"
I wish it were as simple as that. But you’re never the same after a few months of war as you are in the beginning. A lot of meanings change. A murderer does what he does out of feeling. But after awhile, the anger and hatred turn into something else. You become a machine that's positioned to make sure life doesn’t continue. There’s a difference between terminating life and not allowing it to continue. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s there nonetheless.
It was very difficult the first time I killed a man. What man in his right mind could feel otherwise? I tried to aim the rifle, but my whole body began trembling as if it were diseased; my legs threatened to collapse. Then a second fear took over and washed away the first. I realized that I had to hurry, steady my hand, and shoot straight if I were to hit him before he hit me. I felt a rush of energy I'd never known before and it pushed me forward, pulled the trigger for me. Then it was too late...it was done...I was alive and relieved.
And why shouldn’t it be like this the first time? Your hand isn’t used to doing such things. Why expect it to jump into the thing without faltering? Once the trigger explodes, the thing is out of your hands. Then you feel you’ve smashed some ancient taboo. You break out into a sweat. You wonder if it’s really happened or whether you were only dreaming. You do anything to take your mind in some other direction.
Some of my friends told me that, after their first time, they prayed to God--as if God were some vaccine you took after the first time to prepare you for the following times. Some others told me they went to the movies or got drunk and turned their terror into lusting rage. It takes time no matter how you handle it. Your mind needs to come up with its own good reasons for going on. My first time I sat on the ground and didn’t move for a couple of hours. I ran through my mind every injustice that I or anyone else had ever experienced. When I stood up, it felt okay to go on.
After a few more times it turned into something that was separate from myself. It became a matter of skill--shooting at a moving target at just the right instant. A part of me turned the other way so the rest of me could do what it had to do. It was rather like those shooting games in the amusement parks, the ones where the ducks are moving quickly and you’re trying to bring down as many of them as you can. One day I sent a rain of bullets on a huge water pipe. I knew that I wouldn’t get the man hiding in the pipe. Still, it amused me to imagine the noise this made in his head. Later, it shamed me to think that I had toyed with him like that. As I said, I am not a torturer.
When I first sat at this window, I told myself that maybe I was getting rid of those who had done us great wrongs many years ago. Some days, I even felt like a sort of hero. But I got used to the proud hatred after a while, or it got used to me and became part of my breath and blood and lost its meaning. I began seeing myself as more of a marksman than anything else.
Two soldiers dressed neatly in uniform brought me a medal one night. They also gave me a bonus basket of food. There was some fruit, two jars of jam, a long sausage, a package of crackers, three cans of soda pop, six packs of cigarettes, and a plastic disposable lighter. I pretended to be grateful for the medal and placed it on my pillow. I waited for them to leave and made myself a snack of sausage and crackers. Finishing the meal, I relaxed with one of the foreign cigarettes included in the gift basket. Then I leaned over and threw the medal out the window.
Medals always make me think of leaders. They love to give medals, as if we were dogs waiting to be rewarded with biscuits. You have to learn to survive in spite of them. Just this winter the leaders issued an edict. They said that all cars running on the roads in Sarajevo had to be equipped with winter gear: chains, snow tires, shovels, windshield cleaner. Imagine a man hurrying to get his car past sniper fire, having to stop at a checkpoint to show his proper equipment, all according to regulations. So the people found a way to get around it; the drivers would show their winter gloves to the policemen and the policemen would wave them on. This city hasn't survived because of its top officials, but in spite of them. So what does a medal mean to me.
And then there were the heroes of the media, the select cases carefully chosen to put on camera for the world to see. Like the little rich girl who wrote a diary complaining of how her comfortable life had been disrupted, how she wished the nation would come back to its senses. They published it all over the world. And then they arranged for all the appropriate visas and took her and her prosperous family out of the country. I thought about the other children in the streets. The ones whose mothers and fathers had been killed. What diaries they could have written, if only they had known how to read and write properly. But then I wonder if they would have written anything; they were too busy playing soccer in the huge ballroom of the Europa Hotel. It had been turned into a shelter for homeless kids--the Sarajevo soccer field had been turned into a cemetery.
It was the real people who managed to keep the city alive, the people wearing shoes with worn-out soles. When the war first broke out, I hated them for being so determined. But the more of them I killed, the more I began seeing them as men and women who were already condemned and in no need of my hatred. It was like counting bodies that were already laid out in a morgue.
I had no illusions about what they would offer someone like me when the war was over. It wouldn't surprise me if they rounded up us snipers and made us scapegoats to draw attention away from the leaders. They would probably execute us for crimes against humanity while the men who issued our orders ran for election in coalition governments or went off into comfortable exile.
I had no hope for the future, nor any great personal interest in the people who wandered into the sights of my rifle. Any attention I paid them was a passing professional interest. Not much more than the kind your doctor shows you until he abruptly turns his attention to his next appointment. I had developed the personality of a specialist. Everything I did was automatic.
One day, however, something strange happened on the road below my window.
I'd just shot four idiots who had tried to run across in broad daylight while shouting brash encouragement to each other. A crowd formed on the far side of the barricade. All of a sudden an old woman emerged from the crowd. She walked through a gap in the barricade and came out on the road. She must have been about eighty years old. I watched her through my telescopic sight, wondering what she was up to. She had a shopping bag with her. She walked past the four bodies and entered our side of the forbidden zone. I let her make it to our side just to see what she would do. She sat down on a block of concrete and rested for a few minutes. Then she got up and walked back over to her side, took a few minutes of rest again, and made the same dangerous crossing over to our side.
She could have kept on going and broken out of the besieged section, but she turned and went back to her point of origin. She made about half a dozen crossings that took up the entire afternoon, and then disappeared back into her side of town.
I was spellbound. She seemed totally oblivious of the danger. She was like a little toddler who walks out onto a four lane highway not understanding what she's doing. It threw me off badly. What was she trying to do? What did she have in that plastic shopping bag that she dragged along with her?
She was back again the next day. She sat on her side of the forbidden zone and fumbled in her shopping bag. She took out what seemed to be a photograph. She pulled it close to her face and peered into it. I saw her lips begin to move. I turned the scope of my rifle on full magnification. She was talking to whoever was in the photograph. At some point she smiled at the image lovingly and kept repeating endearments. Then a pitiful look came over her and she began weeping, all the while muttering to the photograph. She put the photo back in her bag, stood up wearily, and headed across the vacant road. She walked lumberingly, her kerchief-covered head bobbing from side to side, keeping time to the slow progress of her bowed legs. Completing her journey over to our side, she sat down to rest. She took out the photograph again and glanced at it, as if using it to gather strength for the return journey. A few minutes later, she waddled back to her side of town and disappeared behind the barricade.
I lay in my bed, tossing and turning all night. It was the first time someone in the forbidden zone had been in the sights of my rifle without my firing a shot. What was she doing crossing back and forth like that? Was she out of her mind? Was she senile? Why hadn’t someone stopped her from walking out into nowhere?
Her talking like that to the photo sent my mind travelling back to my grandmother’s house. I felt as if I were twelve again and sitting next to my grandmother out on the porch of her house. She had this same habit. She would sit and talk to a photo of one of her sons for hours on end. One day, the dike behind the house broke and water flooded the basement of the house. She whispered a blow-by-blow account of the incident to the photo of her son while hitting her knees in distress. My mother said it was foolish to talk to photos. But my grandmother chided her, telling her that a photo captured a person’s soul, that if you talked to a person’s picture you automatically talked to the person himself. She claimed that she sometimes heard her son answer her while she talked to him like that, and, imagine, he lived over two hundred miles away. I didn't care one way or the other. I never had much patience for riddles.
But this old Babushka haunted me for most of the night. I hoped that she would disappear and that the whole thing would go no further. Just before dawn I fell into a deep sleep.
Later, I ate some cheese for breakfast and made myself some tea. Usually I went straight to my lookout to check things out before breakfast. But that morning I think I was trying to delay taking up position, for fear of seeing her there again. I took my time drinking the tea, then moved behind my rifle and peered through the scope. I sighed with relief; there was no one around.
But half an hour later, her plump shape appeared from behind the barricade. I cursed under my breath. She was bringing her ancient presence into my space to ruin the simplicity of my life. I had done this my way for months, and done it well. Now I had to break stride and take her into account.
I didn’t want to think of her as a person, but my mind went its own way. Who was she? Did she have a family? Where did she live? Was the person in the photo still alive? Who was the person in the photo, anyway? And how could I possibly shoot an old woman who walked back to her side of town as soon as she had made it to our side? I had always been a strict gatekeeper, but she wasn't showing any desire to break through.
A man in his forties or fifties might have found such absurdity amusing. But I couldn’t understand any of it. I thought of calling my commander to ask him what he thought of all this. But I didn’t want to let on that she had me muddled. So I decided to wait and see for myself.
Reaching the midpoint of the road, she stopped and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. She looked straight in my direction. She stood there peering at my window as if she knew I was there! I saw her face through the scope. Her eyes were looking straight into mine. I was sure of it. A hundred ancient lines were etched across her face. I could swear she knew that our eyes had locked. She stood there staring for what seemed like an eternity, and then turned and walked back to her side of town.
I found sleep altogether impossible that night. I tried to blank her out of my mind, but I couldn't stop seeing her staring at my window. At one point, tossing and turning in bed, I even wondered if the other side hadn't sent her there on purpose, just to make me lose my nerve.
I was drinking some tea the next morning when I suddenly sensed her presence on the road. I hurried to the rifle and peered through the scope. She was there again, like a curse that follows you no matter how many prayers you recite. This time she seemed to be walking with new purpose. Arriving at the midpoint, she stopped, shielded her eyes from the sun, and stared up in my direction again. Then she bent down and pulled a cardboard sign from her bag. She held the sign up. Written in big block letters in our language was one word: “PLEASE.”
I broke out into a terrible sweat, my stomach churning. I dropped to the floor and crouched there, holding onto my belly. I felt like an executioner whose hood had suddenly been torn off. I was afraid to get up and look, and stayed on the floor for over an hour. Then, gathering all my nerve, I stood up slowly and peeked through the scope. She was nowhere in sight.
That night, the word “PLEASE” kept flashing in my mind. I tried to scan the strip of forbidden territory using my infrared sensor, but my eyes were useless. An entire convoy could have driven across the boulevard and I wouldn’t have noticed a thing. She was all I could think of. She wasn’t an anonymous Babushka anymore. She made me think of my mother, my grandmother, and every mother that had come before them. She was a harrowing reminder of the people we had been before everything had gone insane. Was it any wonder she stood in the middle of the forbidden zone talking to a photograph? For all I knew, her family might have abandoned her and left her to fend for herself in this city where almost anything edible had to pass through a pitiless black market.
I prayed that she would not appear again. The message she had flashed from four floors down was beyond my understanding. “PLEASE,” it said. But please what? Please stop shooting our young? Please stop the war? Please be nice to the United Nations? Please let the food convoys through? Please lower the price of cabbage? Please what?
Eleven in the morning. Dear God, again she appeared, kerchief over her head, trailing the same shopping bag. She walked over to the midpoint and stood still. It was a cloudy day. She stood there looking up, staring straight at me. And then she reached into her bag and brought out the photograph again. She glanced at it, closed her eyes, and hugged it to her bosom. A few moments later, she put the photo back in her shopping bag. From the bag she now extracted a cardboard sign that was nearly twice as large as the first one. I peered through the scope, squinting to read the writing. When I saw the message my heart pounded loudly a few times, and then it seemed to stop altogether.
The sign read: “PLEASE DO IT NOW. IT IS ENOUGH.”
Holding the sign up, she slipped the kerchief off her head and stood there bareheaded, hair white as snow. She had a crucifix in her hand and she crossed herself with it and pressed it to her bosom. And all this time I hadn't even wondered if she were Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim. Her age and bearing had been all that mattered.
A silent scream shattered my mind. I think if I had opened my mouth the whole of Sarajevo would have stood still. I felt like an infant forced into a world he wanted no part of. The gates I had shut tight in order to stay bli