What to Tell My Son About Bosnian War
My son has grown
And is now asking questions
About Bosnia
He wants to know who he is
And what the country he was born in
Was really like
During the time of war
Above all
He wants to know why
Serbs, Croats, and Muslims
Started shooting at each other
He is reading Zlata’s Diaries
And is determined to write about Bosnian war
For his History Day project
He barely started and is already finding contradictions
Unlike Ana Frank
Zlata didn’t die in the end
She is well and lives happily in Paris
From the proceeds of the book sales
He is reading other books too
But they don’t answer his questions
And neither can I
Although my memory
Is brutally clear
I know exactly
How one day in 1993
Our neighborhood felt broken
As when a house catches fire
Nobody repairs it for a long time
It just stands in the street
Blackened windows an omen
Of worse things to come
Dad why didn’t you write your own book
My son insists
At least you were there
Too many books were already written
I said
They sold well in the nineties
Of the past century
Publishers are looking for diaries
By little Iraqi girls now
Backed by free commercials
Camouflaged as evening news
Do I write about
My English teacher
And how he died
While playing chess
In front of his apartment building
When a 120mm mortar
Fell among the chess players
And broke everything to pieces
Scattered brain tissue
Among Bishops and Pawns
Or do I talk about infidelities I witnessed
When a woman from the Red Cross
Complained to her colleague that every muscle in her
Body ached because of her love for a man
Who wasn’t her husband
While she oversaw a food delivery
Charity items discarded in countries far luckier than ours
And wondered aloud if we would live another day
Because an enemy attack was starting
Right that moment
The rumbling noise from
Behind the mountain
My silence is long but not deliberate
And my son starts regretting
That he chose Bosnian War for his
History Day project
He thought he could get insider information
First rate stuff
Eye-witness testimony
But all he gets are long silences
And incomprehensible words
By someone who should know more
Someone who was there
In the winter of 1993
Searching for the bodies shot down
Between the enemy lines
© Copyright 2010 Miroslav Ladan. All rights reserverd.