Belgrade Noir

When Neđo came to pick her up and led her toward the jeep, she was somehow not surprised to find the little emaciated creature by his side. Hobbled by confusion and fear, the girl was helped into the backseat. On the way back to Pale, M.N. tried talking to her over her seat. She asked for her name repeatedly, but the girl kept turning away and hiding her face.

“Her name is Zumreta,” Neđo finally spoke for her.

“Zumreta,” the journalist repeated, as if tasting the word, and then turned again to the little girl. “Really?”

“Yes,” said Neđo. “Zumreta Alispahić.”

The rest of the way, they drove in complete silence through the apocalyptic beauty of Bosnian landscapes razed by the war.

Even though that name — Zumreta Alispahić — stayed with M.N. forever, she confesses that at first she did not think much about the girl’s personal fate. As far as she was concerned, Zumreta Alispahić was saved. Neđo had taken her with him, and that was that. “And so I forgot about her,” she admits. “Simply because I believed she had more luck than the others.”

She supposedly dedicated herself to the more pressing fate of all those women who still remained in the Korzo Motel and claims that she used all the influence she had on a few of the Bosnian Serb authorities in Pale. “And,” she wrote with glowing pride, “things actually started getting better.”

The women presumably began receiving food more regularly. They were allowed to gather in the dining room. They were even provided with basic toiletries. Rapes were thinned out significantly. As was the harassment. And the beatings. Days passed without even one of them being killed. And most importantly, the steady stream of “contingents” or “packages” was completely suspended. Then the resettlement began. They carted them away one by one or in small groups. Although the journalist spent many days at the Korzo Motel, she couldn’t figure out where they were taking them. The soldiers kept quiet, and the women knew nothing. Only much later would it become known that they were distributing some of them to the local fitness center and some to the construction site of an electrical power station. In both locations the individual and group rapes, torture, and killings continued with undiminished intensity. A number of women were also distributed to a former women’s prison. The same one where Zumreta Alispahić would also arrive, although much later.

Several months passed after the journalist had last seen Neđo. But Pale is small and she spent a lot of her days there, so it was truly just a matter of time. When they literally bumped into each other on the street one day, Neđo took the opportunity to invite her over to “his” apartment. She happily agreed and they walked together to a neighborhood at the very edge of town.

Even though it really couldn’t have been that long since she had last seen him, she couldn’t help but notice certain changes in Neđo. That conceited prince with his long limbs and light step, who once seemed to float high above all the horrors of war, had gone through a striking transformation. His head was no longer raised on his slender neck in that aristocratic way, but as if it had grown heavier and had become difficult to hold up, so much so that his beard constantly touched the top of his chest. The expression on his face had become suspicious, maybe even evil, his step significantly heavier, and his posture revealed an unending tension. He was quieter than before, but simultaneously more crude and short. But his eyes, at this point the journalist’s words were nearly rapturous, dear God, those eyes! Intensely green and sad. Like the Neretva River he grew up near.