Danilo, my girlfriend's Slovenian father, is interested in purchasing some land in northern Bosnia, but needs to check out a few potential spots before committing. I agree to accompany him on the three-and-a-half-hour drive from Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana, using Croatia as a corridor. We have completed the journey once before, but that time we had my girlfriend with us to act as interpreter. Today it is just he and I, a language barrier and the open road, as we set off just after 7am into a glorious spring morning.
After a few wrong turns in Croatia, we find ourselves speeding along a seemingly endless dirt-track, dust being launched from under our wheels into the bright green fields and tall trees that line our path. Behind them, rolling hills as far as the eye can see.
I am quietly admiring nature’s serene beauty, when my eyes happen upon a reminder that things haven’t always been this tranquil: a sign warning of land mines in the surrounding fields and woods.
I spend the remainder of our time on the track trying to clear my mind of images of peasant women collecting firewood for the family cottage one minute and being blown to pieces the next. What if we swerve to avoid a pothole, go off the road and …
The end of the track returns us to normal roads and the border crossing into Bosnia. After a couple of questions from Customs, a new stamp is added to my passport and we are waved on across the frontier. Danilo is in familiar territory, he has been here many times over the past few months and has made friends.
Our first stop is outside the town of Velika Kladuša in the very north-western corner of the country. I get out of the car. The scene looks like every cowboy film I have ever seen: a dusty road, without pavement and scarcely lined with buildings; bars and shops that open directly onto the road - each one marked by bullet and shrapnel holes. We are elevated, high up in the hills. Below us green countryside dotted with half-finished hotels and mansions: “businessmen” who got out of Bosnia long ago, returning to splash the cash.
I follow Danilo across the road to a little bar with a few tables and chairs outside, where we are met by a smiling man who greets Danilo with a bear hug. I am introduced and we sit down with a few bottles of Union beer, the taste of Ljubljana in a remote part of Bosnia.
As the men talk and I gaze into our surroundings, a detail strikes me: the distinct lack of male inhabitants. Since crossing the border I have seen plenty of women going about their daily business, but not one has been accompanied by a husband. Apart from children and young teenagers (and our host), there doesn’t seem to be any males from which to select a partner.
The man we are sitting with is Zlatan, a cousin of a friend of Danilo’s. He is skinny, has no teeth, his veins pop out all over his arms and neck, and his face is as gaunt as it is gormless. He has to be a junkie.
“I speak a little English,” he tells me, in a heavy accent.
“Where did you learn?”
“Ah, here and there. I had to pick it up,” he shrugs.
There is a long silence as he stares out into the clouds.
“You know, 14 years ago business was good here. Now, nobody comes. One is dead, one is killed, one is murdered, one has disappeared,” he says, monotonously, without emotion. “Look at me. I am 41 but I look 55. War does that.”
After ten minutes of drinking beer in silence, Zlatan perks up.
“These days, I love my life. I do what I want, when I want. I have two women and three daughters, all in Croatia. Here I am a free man. I am free. Now we go to pick mushrooms.”
Zlatan points the way as Danilo drives us out into the forest. He demonstrates what he means by being free, as he turns around in the front passenger seat to pass me a lit spliff. I decline his offer. Not because I’m against smoking a bit of green, but because Zlatan has no teeth and, I'm ashamed to admit, the thought of putting between my lips what has just touched his gums turns my stomach.
We pull into some woods, park the car and trek up a steep hill through the trees. I get left behind as I struggle in my flip-flops. What do I know about finding and picking mushrooms? Suddenly I remember the land mines sign and freeze in my tracks. I spend the next twenty minutes walking in a circle around a tree, retracing my steps over and over. If I trod there last time and wasn’t blown up, chances are it will be fine this time as well.
I hear Danilo’s voice calling me from somewhere in the trees. When he finds me I see that he knows as much about picking mushrooms as I do: his bag is empty. We look at each other and laugh. Carefully, we walk back down to where we parked the car and wait for Zlatan. He emerges ten minutes later, chuckling loudly, his bag overflowing with huge, white mushrooms. On the drive back I ask if mines are a big problem in the woods.
“No, no, don’t worry about mines, they aren’t a problem. They are almost all cleared from this area now.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“It’s the bears that you have to look out for.”
He grins.
We sit down with a couple more beers outside Zlatan’s bar while he disappears inside, returning ten minutes later with a plate of fried mushrooms and hot dogs. We feast.
After eating, Zlatan says he has something he wishes to show us, and leads us behind his building to a patch of plants.
“This is where I grow my shit.”
He picks some leaves and puts them into his pocket. This is his freedom.
The back of Zlatan’s house is more shrapnel-ridden than the front.
“When the Bosnian army were here in the war, they took over my house and my bar and used it as their headquarters.”
Soon, it is time to move on. We bid Zlatan farewell and pull away. Some 20 minutes later we are in a tiny hillside village, close to the town of Cazin, that I recognise, having stayed here on my previous visit. We turn off towards the unlit dirt-track that leads down to the familiar little farmhouse, passing women picking vegetables from fields and children kicking footballs around, as lazy cows and sheep look on, feigning interest.
The middle-aged woman with workman’s hands looks surprised to see us. She stops toiling in the field and walks over to the car, a huge smile on her face. She invites us in and before I know it I am sitting on her settee drinking more Union while she brews up some strong Bosnian coffee in the corner of the room. I met her the last time I was here, the sister of one of Danilo’s workers. Her two plain-looking daughters, both in their late teens, sit in the corner sending text messages to their boyfriends working in Germany and Austria, waiting for them to come and whisk them away to a more exciting life. In between sending and receiving texts, the girls motion with their hands the international sign for “Another beer?”
The woman with the workman’s hands has no husband; the dreaming teenage girls and their little brother, no father. The war took him from them.
These people work from dawn till dusk and have virtually nothing to show for it, and yet, when a guest comes, however unexpected their arrival, they welcome him and lavish upon him whatever he desires. I am treated like a returning son. The love and warmth feels genuine. And all it takes is a few inexpensive presents for the family – a tin of biscuits; a toy for the child – for these kind-hearted people to well up with tears of appreciation.
In the late afternoon we take the 11-year-old family son to the nearby Ostrožac Castle, built in the 1500s by the Ottoman Turks, while the mother and two daughters prepare the dinner.
The meal is delicious: roast chicken, potatoes, soup, bread and vegetables, all ingredients produced on the farm. But it is difficult to eat when the family of women are just sitting around us on the floor with nothing, watching us tuck in, waiting should we desire something more. They won’t eat until both guests are full and satisfied. They won’t take care of their own hunger – a hunger built up by a life of constant manual work – until they have first taken care of ours.
“Eat, please!” I gesture, but am met with nothing more than a polite smile and shake of the head.
Wow, really liked this! Keep it coming
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