S.: A Novel about the Balkans

It would have been better if she had spent the night in the woods, she would have felt less endangered by animals there than she does by people here. Their menacing presence can still be felt in the house. This devastation is the work of human hands. Just like the death of the new-born infant at the hands of a woman who was supposed to be his grandmother.

A. dies three days later. The wound on her forehead had already started to heal and a fresh reddish scar was beginning to appear under the scab.
The worst thing for me was that this young man really did know her, he had been a friend of her brother.

The person who returns to the ‘women’s room’ the following evening is no longer A. None of them recognise her. She looks like her but they immediately realise that this is no longer A., that A. has left the body standing in front of them. Like her mother whose eyes lived on long after she was dead, A.’s body is still alive, but A. is dead. Since the guards brought her back she neither cries nor speaks.

After a while, the daily horrors and death become routine. S. listens to the camp stories without emotion, she listens to the words dropping into the hollow of her insides. Or she sees scenes, sees them with her own eyes, but it is as if they do not directly concern her. She is no longer horrified or saddened, she does not react at all. Death surrounds her daily, death is a fact. But it is also something that does not concern her until the moment it touches her personally.

Smells are a dangerous thing, they catapult you back into the past and she is afraid of forgetting where she is.

The moment the armed men appeared in their village, each one of them had ceased to be a person. Now they are even less so, they have been reduced to a collection of similar beings of the female gender, of the same blood. Blood alone is important, the right blood of the soldiers versus the wrong blood of the women.

Only she, the water and this moment exist. She feels her body, cold skin, muscles, her thirst, her body’s joy to be alive. Perhaps this is the only way to survive, by living from one moment to the next. The continuous flow of time no longer exists for her, merely isolated moments which are impossible to weave into a meaningful whole.

She still finds unreal the scene of the two women inmates lunging at each other, as if they had forgotten where they were. Maybe they really did forget. Maybe their fight is a sign of humanity, like gossip, theft, friendship, enmity, pettiness and small favours. You cannot think about death all the time, even when you are living in its shadow.

Belongings do help you to recognise yourself.

A refugee is someone who has been expelled from somewhere but does not go anywhere because they have nowhere to go.

She has, of course, already heard of the ‘women’s room’ from others. These stories seem far more likely to her than those of torture. Who could stop the guards or soldiers from doing whatever they want with the women?

The guards had come for the girls. They must have seen them before, because they knew exactly who they were looking for. They observed them during the day, while they were working, eating, resting, that was when the victims were chosen. Then last night they had walked among the sleeping women, flashlights illuminating faces, until they found those two particular girls.

How can I ever explain to anybody the isolation we were kept in? Everything got around, but the news was unreliable, unconfirmed. Even though it is happening right next to you, you don’t believe it. And even if you do believe it, you cannot dwell on it, it would be the end of you. You believe it only if you yourself see it. Perhaps this deliberate blindness is a form of self-preservation.

S. could not imagine that a man’s body could do such damage to a woman, that it was so powerful, so unfairly overpowering that a woman had no defence against such force.

Their murderers need to forget, but their victims must not let them.

In this place, death is not something remote or foreign. It is no longer an unexpected visitor, as it is in ordinary life. Death is a constant companion in their lives, like a reflection in the mirror you cannot wish away because it is always there, waiting for you.

To suppress the scream with chocolate. The tang of mint on her tongue. She recalls having read somewhere that chocolate is good for depression.

How much longer would these memories last? Is it good to remember or is it easier to survive if you forget you ever lived a normal life?