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  IN MEMORY OF STEPHEN MEEHAN

  FOREVER TWENTY-FIVE

  Blossoms are scattered by the wind and the wind cares nothing,

  but the blossoms of the heart no wind can touch

  —YOSHIDA KENKO

  TIME LINE

  * * *

  1989–1991

  • The Berlin Wall comes down. The Soviet Union collapses.

  1990–1991

  • Former Soviet republics and the Baltic States declare their independence.

  • The Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia begins to tear apart.

  • Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia’s leader, tries to rein in the Yugoslav regions of Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia. A bloody conflict begins as the country splits apart along ethnic/religious divides.

  1992

  • Reports of ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, and mass rapes, as the Serb army and militia slaughters Muslim and Christian inhabitants of towns and villages in order to create an ethnically “pure” Serb area.

  • The siege of Sarajevo, in Bosnia, begins—the Serb blockade will last more than three years.

  1992–1994

  • Massacres committed by all sides, civilians often the victims. International peace plans fail.

  1995

  • 8,000 men and boys are executed by the Serbs at Srebrenica when UN safe areas in Bosnia fall to Serb forces.

  • More than 250,000 are killed or wounded in the war, and a million civilians displaced.

  • NATO bombs the Serb military.

  • The United States forces the Serbs to join Bosnians and Croats at the peace table in Dayton, Ohio.

  • War drags on in Kosovo until 2001, and NATO brands Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic a war criminal.

  • Milosevic is arrested in 2001 to stand trial for war crimes but dies in prison in 2006.

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  There are many ways to reach your grave near Mostar.

  You can drive by car up through resin-scented woods, or travel by bus or by train, then walk across the bridge over the bluest river in the world and climb the hill that overlooks the sixteenth-century town.

  There are many ways to reach your grave, but on this day the hot summer roads are clogged with people.

  For today is the Day of the Dead, when the souls here laid to rest have prayers said in their remembrance.

  Today, all the local hotels are packed, for people drive from Dubrovnik and Sarajevo, from distant cities and towns, and the international media crews come from as far away as America.

  They come together to pay their respects to the thousands of names and numbers, the known and the unknown, inscribed upon wood and stone that record the passing of loved ones.

  Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters.

  Adults and youths, children and infants.

  They lie here side by side, and in different graveyards scattered across the land: Christian and Muslim, Orthodox and Jew, agnostics and unbelievers.

  Some were soldiers, many were innocent civilians, and most all of them were helpless victims in a conflict not of their making.

  And you, a stranger whose war this never was, are buried among them.

  • • •

  Your grave bears no name, simply a number. You are an unknown casualty of war, and this is where they have laid your bones.

  On this day the holy men enter the cemetery and walk among the tombs, priests and mullahs and rabbis praying and chanting, and the scent of incense drenches the air.

  Lines of mourners follow them. They pass your tomb.

  Under a warm sun, the thoughtful among them place a flower. Children leave a toy trinket or a boiled candy. A young boy solemnly runs his hand across the smoothness of your gravestone, then giggles and runs away to join his friends.

  There is no disrespect intended by his mischief, and so it should be on this day when families and friends gather to be among their departed. For when they mourn, they mourn also for you, but of you or your story they know nothing.

  They can never know how much you cherished your wife; how she taught you how to love, and to trust. How she completed you, became that other half of ourselves we always seek but seldom find.

  They can never know how much you worshipped your son and daughter.

  How you loved to plant kisses on their necks and tickle and chase them and make them laugh. Or how you and your wife would watch them sleeping, stare down at their faces in awe and wonder: how could you both have earned the right to such happiness?

  But to those mourners who wander here this day you’re just a number.

  They can’t even know that you are a young man buried far from home, in a peaceful meadow where bees buzz and butterflies quiver and flowers drench the air with nectar. You are simply one dead among so many.

  Finally, the holy men and priests move on, their prayers completed. Some families stay, to sit and talk to their dead, for their pain is etched far deeper than mere words can ever inscribe.

  And when the sun fades, when the evening sky looks like fire and smoke, they will rise, some with tears in their eyes, to touch and plant kisses on the headstones before they drift away among the graves.

  They will come again, upon the same day next year, or when memories haunt them.

  If you could, if it was within your power, you would call them back and you would tell them how you came to lie here.

  You would tell them that in your brief lifetime you loved and argued, were good and bad, imperfect and human. In short, you were just one young man among the many victims who lived and died here, and yours could be the story of any of them, condemned by the senseless brutality of war.

  But your story is different.

  Perhaps your story was always meant to be different.

  And if you could, you would tell them what is important to know: that it doesn’t matter what a man or woman is, or who they are, or by what name they call their religion, or the color of their skin or the history of the blood that flows in their veins, so long as they believe in truth and redemption and forgiveness, and in the mercy and pity that dwells in the depths of each of our souls.

  And if you could, you would say to them, please, listen to our story.

  Listen when I tell you that if you don’t stand up to evil, then evil will stand up to you.

  Come back with me to the beginning, to the very beginning, to where this story began.

  Learn how we came to lie here.

  Because if the world never learns from the lessons of its history, then it is condemned forever to repeat the sins of its past.

  1

  * * *

  1981

  This is how you find the one you’ll love.

  Your name is David and you’re an ordinary kid—not so much a kid at twenty-one but still innocent—shy and awkward with the opposite sex, fumbling your way toward manhood.

  You’re a military brat on the U.S. base near Frankfurt and you love art and girls, movies and baseball. Like all young men, you don’t see eye to eye with your parents.

  It is the summer you and your father had a violent row that came to blows. The one that started off with a discussion of your lack of future plans and ended with him throwing a punch that bloodied your lip and sent you crashing against the wall.

  You see the shame on his face.

  The instant regret that
he’d lost his temper and hit you.

  That’s something that never happened before. But you don’t care. You’re angry, you want him to hurt.

  Your father, the military man, the special forces tough guy who’s been to Panama and Grenada and every hot spot the U.S. military stomped their boots on in the last twenty years.

  You never wanted to be a soldier. You never wanted to fill his shoes. You’re a dreamer. You want to paint, to be an artist.

  That day, you tell him you’ve had enough.

  You tell him he doesn’t control you anymore.

  You tell him you’re leaving the family home for good.

  Your mother cries and slumps on the couch.

  Your father tries to stop you. You shove him away, and leave in a rage.

  You love them both, but you know it’s time to stop living in your father’s shadow. Besides, you want to taste the pleasure of being twenty-one, to enjoy your summer of freedom and find some Mediterranean sun and bone-white beaches and girls, and get drunk on life.

  You have a longing for change. You want to find yourself, to travel your own road.

  So you pack the dented Volkswagen Golf you bought with the proceeds of a part-time bar job while you sweated in college.

  You pack your paints and brushes and blank canvases, a sleeping bag and an ice box for drinks, and set out one Saturday morning from Frankfurt and drive south over the Tyrol, to Switzerland and Italy. Exhilarated, you drive that little Golf all the way down Yugoslavia’s Dalmatian coast, heading for sunny Greece.

  But like the best-laid schemes of mice and men, things never work out the way we plan.

  • • •

  That night you stop in Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast.

  You find a cheap hotel. Across the moonlit bay, beyond a flotilla of cruise ships, lies Italy. Frommer’s guide tells you that nearby Korcula Island is where Marco Polo once lived.

  And that the walled town was first founded in the seventh century. But long before that it was coveted by the Romans and Greeks, and later by the Crusaders and the Byzantines.

  You marvel at its beauty. You want to paint its tight cobbled streets and the way the light falls on the pale sapphire waters of the bay.

  You know little about the darker side of Yugoslavia’s history; how the Balkans are torn apart by centuries-old vendettas, enmities, and grievances between Serb and Croat and Bosniak. The buried hatreds that would one day wreak havoc upon your life.

  For now, you love this town. The Mediterranean lifestyle appeals to you.

  You stay a week. You paint in the mornings and evenings when the light is good and afterward you go for dinner and sip a glass of wine or two.

  And then one evening, sitting at a restaurant called the Marco Polo—owned by a funny little man with a hunched back named Mr. Banda, who tells you his Italian father deserted Mussolini’s army to join the partisans and settle here—a waitress with cinnamon eyes serves you.

  Her dark hair is tied back in a ponytail, her skin tanned against her crisp white blouse. When she leaves your table, Mr. Banda sees you stare and he smiles.

  “All the men like Lana, but she never goes out with them.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugs. “All her free time, she studies. She wants to be a writer. And you, I’ve seen you paint. You want to be a painter?”

  “Sure.”

  Mr. Banda winks. “Two artists. You like her, yes?”

  You know it in your veins. It’s not like you’re starry-eyed and violins start to play but something happens to you, because your heart quickens.

  Mr. Banda tells you Lana’s from a town beyond Sarajevo, that she’s an English student at the local college. That she’s his best waitress.

  He calls her over and introduces you.

  She shakes your hand, and you can smell her hair. It smells of almonds. Something in those cinnamon eyes speaks to you.

  She smiles when you compliment her on her flawless English and she tells you her mother was an English teacher and she’s spoken the language since childhood. When she talks to you, it’s as if you’re the only person in the world.

  You stay an extra week. You’re normally shy with women, not good at small talk, but you finally get up the courage to ask her out.

  She surprises you and accepts.

  You go to a café for coffee and cake. You talk for hours. It’s your last night. In the café there’s even some cheesy but apt background music: KC and the Sunshine Band playing “Please Don’t Go.”

  Afterward, you walk on the beach and talk some more: about art and books and music, about Shakespeare, a favorite of hers, and everything under the sun.

  And you kiss.

  It’s not your first kiss—there was a certain Fräulein named Frieda back in Frankfurt who could claim that distinction, as well as a big prize for alliteration—but it sure feels like it.

  And now passion has you by the throat and won’t let you go.

  • • •

  You stay another few days.

  You drive up to Mostar one afternoon and Lana brings a picnic.

  This is a town she has known and loved since childhood, when her parents took her on Sunday drives. You wander among the Turkish coffeehouses, and the bazaars selling trinkets and Persian carpets.

  You stand on the beautiful arched bridge that would one day be senselessly destroyed by Serb shelling and watch young men climb onto the parapet—their arms outstretched, their graceful bodies arcing as they dive from an incredible height into the bluest river you have ever seen.

  Friends greet them on the riverbanks below.

  An old man sells daffodils by the bridge. You buy her a bunch. Lana tells you they’re her favorite flower. And that for centuries young men have come here to earn the title “Mostari” by jumping from the bridge. Some do it as a sign of their manhood. Others to show their commitment to the woman they love.

  She smiles. “Or else to prove how crazy they are.”

  “Do women jump?”

  “Sometimes. But mostly men. It’s dangerous. Twenty-five meters from the bridge to the water. People have been killed.”

  You tell her you’ll jump.

  She laughs, and says you must be mad. She peels a daffodil from the bunch and lets it fall. It flutters deep down to the river and flows fast in the blue water.

  You tell her you’ll jump anyway. “Want to jump with me?”

  She realizes you’re serious.

  “No! David, really, it’s dangerous. The water’s always icy cold, even on a hot day. The shock to the body alone can kill you if you’re not fit.”

  You look from the bridge into the river.

  “I’ve read about it. The trick is to jump straight, and let your arms out a little just before you hit the water. It slows your descent.”

  “David, to jump without practice would be crazy . . .”

  “I worked as a lifeguard for three summers. I can dive. But twenty-five meters, that’ll be a first.”

  You tear off your T-shirt, kick off your sandals, but leave on your jeans. You look down. The flowing blue water seems an awful long way. Your heart’s thudding and there’s a lump of fear choking your throat but you try not to show it.

  “David, please, I beg you . . .”

  You climb up onto the bridge. She tries to grasp your hand to stop you but she’s too late. You look back at her and wink. “Wish me luck.”

  “David . . . !”

  You jump.

  The air whistles past your ears.

  For a long time you plummet like a stone. The water rushes up to meet you, and you splay your hands and hit the river.

  The icy cold smacks you like a brick.

  When you come up gasping and sputtering for air, you wave to her.

  She runs down the winding walkway to meet you on the riverbank.

  You’re drenched, and laughing.

  She kisses your fingertips, puts them to her lips, and then wipes your face with your T-shirt. “You’re
insane, you know that, David Joran?”

  “Maybe. But it felt terrific.”

  • • •

  She seems genuinely happy as she slips her arm though yours, and you walk together up the hill, your jeans soggy. You find a grassy meadow and beside a gnarled olive tree you picnic on the fresh cheese, bread, vine tomatoes, and the wine she’s brought from her father’s farm.

  As your jeans dry in the sun, she tells you about the stories she’s written. They’re not good, they’re not bad, either, but she knows that nobody’s good at the beginning. She keeps a diary she practices her writing in.

  Someday she wants to write a book that will change the world.

  You tell her you’ve always wanted to be an artist, ever since as a kid you scrawled on your parents’ kitchen walls with a colorful selection of indelible markers.

  And you tell her what you think is true: that she’s far too pretty for you.

  She looks back at you, and for the first time you see wariness in her eyes.

  You think you’ve blown it.

  She tells you she’s slow to trust most men.

  You tell her you feel the same.

  She laughs, but when she looks into your face you know those cautious eyes of hers are not for lying.

  You’re a little lightheaded from the wine and you take a penknife from your pocket and you do something juvenile, something kind of dumb but you do it anyway, because you want to show her you’re an artist.

  You carve your names on the trunk of the olive tree. You carve the shape of a heart—you carve it pretty darned well—and chisel out two hands above it. On each side of the heart you carve your names: David, Lana.

  When you’ve finished she looks at you.

  And her eyes seem to burrow into your soul before she kisses you.

  • • •

  And that night, in your cheap hotel near the harbor you lie with her for the first time.

  You love her face, and everything about her. You love her laugh and her voice and the way she touches your skin with her fingertips.