Half a world away, they cry

The Boston Herald

Damir Vrankic is 30 years old. He moved into a rented apartment in Allston last week. He has a bed, a table and two chairs. He owns a couple of changes of clothes and a watch someone gave him.

He doesn't have a car or a job. His family and friends live an ocean plus half a continent away. He has met a few people in Boston, but they're acquaintances. Essentially he is alone. 

He's not complaining. He's grateful. At least he's alive. At least he's free

Just a few years ago, he couldn't have imagined that he would be in the circumstances he's in today. That's the deceit of life. Even when you hear the wolf howling, even when you feel its breath in your face you refuse to believe that the wolf is after you.

Vrankic didn't believe it. He was surrounded by family and friends. He lived in one of the most cosmopolitan, historic and beautiful cities in all of Europe. He ran a small company, had a good, seemingly stable life.

And no matter what was happening in other parts of what used to be Yugoslavia, there would never be fighting in Sarajevo, people said. In Sarajevo people didn't care about race and religion. In Sarajevo everyone got along.

But soon the war was on Vrankic's doorstep. This is the way a person's world changes forever.

'We didn't divide between ourselves even when the war started,' says Vrankic, who escaped from Sarajevo a year ago, and arrived in the U.S. last week. 'I'm talking about normal people, the people in my apartment building, eight families - four Muslims, two Serbs, two Croats.’

The normal people, citizens, not soldiers, had no interest in this war, he says. It pains him to talk about Sarajevo. He wants to forget looking out his apartment window and seeing the dead and the dying, people who had been waiting in line for bread, sprawled on the ground in puddles of blood where seconds before -- they had been standing and talking.

He wants to forget running out of his building, down the street, his heart pounding in his ears, reaching the marketplace and smelling tears and blood and fear. He wants to forget picking up the wounded and carrying them to the hospital, holding them, praying for them, strangers he didn't know.

'It's a million times worse than all the stories and pictures,' he says. 'For 22 months there has been no water, no electricity, no telephone, no heat, no food. People are starving. There is no life in Sarajevo anymore. The people still left are permanently damaged. My hands peeled for 10 months after I got out. We had no food.'Can you imagine what's happening to the children who are growing? The whole world sits and watches and talks about who is responsible, while people die.

'No one talks about war crimes. No one talks about rape and murder. No one talks about how suddenly nationality and religion can became the most important things in life. You can be killed just because of that?' he says, questioning, still unable to fathom this.

'Before I didn't concern myself with politics. Now I listen. They talk now about giving back territory. Giving back to those who stole. How can you accept something like that? It's the same as if someone came to your house, beat you, raped you, killed your children or your mother or father, stole everything from you, then came back the next day expecting to shake your hand. It's impossible.’

Vrankic was born in Sarajevo. So was his father. Now his father and his entire family are imprisoned there. 'I have no pictures. Not one. I was afraid someone would hurt my family if they caught me. It's like I left my life behind.' Sarajevo is surrounded by mountains. Serbian gunners hide there and lob mortar shells into crowds, and shoot pedestrians at whim. Everyone's a sitting duck. No place is safe. Last week 68 people died in what the world is calling a 'blood bath.' There have been blood-baths before, more than 10,000 killed in Sarajevo alone. The world acts horrified, but then forgets. Vrankic would like to forget. 'I need a break from war and horror.’

But there is no break for him. Half a world away, he hears the moans of the dying, and feels the despair of the living who have begged, to no avail, for an indifferent world's help.