A large blue truck. On the outside there is a "Food for Life" sticker. Viki and I enter into the part where there are cans of beans, boxes of cookies, a barrel filled with bread. We have brought our packages also, prepared the day before for Nova Pazova.
Day after day people are arriving there from the long columns of people from Krajina. The newly arrived wander through the roads without aim or hope—hungry, thirsty, tired, lost with their bundles, trailers, and teams of animals. Long columns of people, dying of exhaustion and sorrow, crawl up the roads. How similar to those boat people of long ago who held a fate similar to our own.
They floated for days in boats across vast expanses of water, rain beating down on them, among wind, storms, shark attacks. Here, our people are floating across crowded roads; they are struck by the heat, tormented by thirst, fatigue, and endless human sadness. Where to stop and, with tired hands, untie their bundles? Do the ideologues of war see this whole valley of pain, the moving of a population, achieving the idea of "all Serbs in one state" or "one leader, one people"? God, how can they sit at the table and have a peaceful lunch surrounded by their family? How? Why don't they go and kneel before those people and beg for their forgiveness? How can they look their own children in the eye? Where are the heartless organizers of this hell now? These businessmen used other people's lives to change borders, cleanse territories, and wage war with the whole world. Yet they themselves did not go to the "front lines," and their children don't even go into their army. For them, these columns of people do not exist; the new alchemy of the great masters of lies and deceit will hide it all. They will pack it into a new program and motto. We won't have to wait long for their new scope of "spirit and reason." The masses of people, hopeless and homeless, float across forests and mountains. Without a home, without a dream, without anything anywhere. Like the proverb says, they are "caught between a rock and a hard place." Where will they stop with their bags? Trembling hands pull something out of those bags. Where will Milina from Knin lay out her "woven blanket which is all [she has] for clothes"? That was all she was able to carry with her. Will the older women, Danica from Gracac, Nina from Kostajnica and Soka from Dvor, all go to the same collective center? Because they "became very close during the trip." The others are scattered across the highway of "Brotherhood and Unity." Will Draginja, an 80 year old woman from Glina, used to living alone "since that first war," be able to read "those beautiful love stories" at the "collective center"? As she says for herself: "We are bitter people, the trash. The chiefs sold us." From "that first war" (World War II) until now, everyone has been in mourning. Women in Black. Women from the column look for black clothes; men from the column look for "civilian clothing," to get rid of the army uniforms which were forced on them.
We from Women in Black had already had encounters with people from the columns. Stasa, Rada and Violeta had been going to the border crossings for days and carrying milk, fruit, cigarettes, diapers, medicine and whatever else could lessen, even a little, the suffering of these people from the columns.
My first encounter with them was in Sabac. Women in Black joined Radio B-92 (which started an amazing action of civil society with people from the column), and with a group of taxi drivers we went to meet people in the column.
The images from Sabac are horrible. Not in my worst nightmare could I have imagined that people would be driven to such conditions. They fight over cigarettes and milk, they search, they throw out what they consider momentarily unnecessary. One taxi driver was very affected: he stood motionless. Stasa ran off to a room full of old women who were rambling on, slowly dying. Cut off from everyone, with one another, because they "became close during the trip." All the images from Sabac spin around in my head as I'm holed up in the truck on the way to Nova Pazova; I guess it must be better there. We arrive. The door of the truck opens. We get out. We look around. Abandoned shacks, everything falling apart and groups of people from the column are sitting on benchs and on the ground in front of the shacks. Some people wander around. I see children, elderly people, pregnant women, young men and girls. They approach the truck, looking for something or someone. A gray-haired old man keeps saying to everyone: "Where's my dog? What has become of him? I feel the worst about him. They'll kill the calf and slaughter the cow and then eat it. But what about my dog? All he can do is hide and he won’t find any friends." Another old man tells us: "I brought my horses. Here they are. I brought them from Dalmatia. Look at them. I came with a team of horses." He takes out his son's school index: "This is what's left of my son. I lost my only son and two brothers in this war. For me this war is over."
We ask them to stand in line. Is that fair? How to divide what we've brought? A line, a line....How will I do it; I can't. I can't count out cookies. Do I really have to? And how to divide them fairly? Where am I? Somehow we manage to divide up the food; our friends from the truck leave.
Violeta and I stay with the packages we've brought and people all around us. They form a tight circle around us. Violeta knows what she's doing; she has been working with people from the columns for years. But now, even her face shows the strain of all the horror around us. How to stay composed and look at the people around us with a pot of beans and a slice of bread in their hands? That's their first cooked meal in several weeks. Secretly, I observe how they guard these worn out pots full of beans. I see it but I don't believe it. I'm thinking it's a bad dream. But it's not. Watching all this around me I collapse, all of a sudden, among the packages. I'm crying. I can't go on. Behind me I hear a voice: “What am I supposed to do when I see you crying?" I look at her. I'm ashamed of the tears. They'll think that I'm some sort of spoiled "lady" who is there so that I can later boast of having done some charity work. No, I'm not one of those.
But there's Jadranka. "Keep things under control." She has strength. Stasa is walking around, talking with people; her large eyes are very sad. I watch them and keep quiet. Slowly evening falls. We have to go back. We've forgotten that we really haven't eaten all day. I won't drop in at Bilja's place; I have no peace within myself. Though my visits with her are pure joy, I would not be relaxed with her now. Tonight I can't even see her. I can't wait to get home, to become lost in dream, a deep dream. Yes, a dream...
Senka Knezevic
(written September 12, 1995 after a bad dream)
