A Love For A Country

PART 1

When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard.

The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

BERTOLT BRECHT

Selected Poems

1995: SRBRENICA, BOSNIA

'Mother, what's going on? Why is it so noisy?'

The question screamed out from 15-year-old Miroslav Vldic hiding in the corner of the kitchen, holding his 12-year-old sister Irina's hand tightly.

The thunder from the sky was worse than a marching band on parade. It was as if the storm from hell had arrived, the walls of the house vibrated in tune with the noisy sounds.

In the middle of all the noise, there was a banging melody of a methodical pop-pop-pop that rang through. Miroslav recognized it as shots from when he was out in the woods hunting with his father.

'Mother, where's Father? What's going on?'

He asked his mother to answer, but once again he received no answer. There was nothing she could give.

The children saw their mother running back and forth from the windows, looking anxiously out through them as she packed two small backpacks full. Some clothes, shoes, a bit of dried food and a few water-bottles in each before she tightened the zippers. When she was finally done, she stretched out the bags to her children with her hands shaky as leafs on an autumn’s morning.

Her face was pale as a cloud, on the inside she was terrified of something she was trying to hide from them. They had received the message too late, the Serbs had invaded. They were on their way to their city with death as their companion.

Outside, the humming sound of large machines rolling down the streets, explosions echoing loudly between the houses, the whistling sound of missiles before chaos took over. She did not know what scared her the most, the noises, the explosions, or that fate had already been determined for her.

Something collapsed outside, it sounded like something came crashing down in a hurry. Loud cries for help echoed through the closed windows, the sound of running feet disappearing as they ran away from her.

Anica Vldic looked out the window, her eyes fixed on the chaotic scene she saw. The house across the street was in ruins, blown to pieces, it looked like a brick pile they would start construction from.

Her gaze saw feet and pieces of bone sticking out at the bottom of the pile, a tear rolling down her cheek. A thought ran through her head. It had been their best friends who had lived in that house.

'Miroslav, take your sister and just run. Run as far as you can from here. Do not look back, and never come back. Promise me that.'

Her voice cracked, tears fell down her cheeks, she wrapped both children in her arms.

'What's going on?'

Miroslav tried again, once again he was met by a silence from his mother that frightened him more than the noise from outside the house.

His sister cried uncontrollably on her mother's shoulder as he tried to pull the little girl away. She did not want to let go, her mother was the only thing she wanted, the only thing that could comfort her.

Anica grabbed the children, holding them at an arm's length while she looked them deep in their eyes. Finally, she expressed what she really did not want to tell them. That they were in a danger that no children should be exposed to in their lives.

‘The Serbs are coming, the UN soldiers have given them free passage and let them attack us.’

Miroslav was about to ask why the Serbs would do such a thing, why would they attack Srebrenica? Some of his best friends were Serbs. His words stuck when the front door flew open and their father was standing there, his body covered in blood with eyes filled from a mixture of pain and fear.

‘Damn it, woman, I told you the kids had to run. It's almost too late now!'

His dark voice was loud and full of anger, the anxiety he had within himself that the children would be harmed made him upset. He did not know what to do if something happened to them.

‘The southern border has fallen, the Swedes had just opened the doors down there, turned their back to the refugees and let everyone take care of themselves. Mladic's men are just minutes away, some have already started rolling in.'

He fell to his knees, pulled the children into his arms and hugged them tightly. He knew it was the last time he would see them, but he did not want to tell them. Then he stood up proudly and opened the back door.

‘Never forget how much your mother and I love you. Carry it with you forever. But now you have to run. Run fast as hell, as far away as you can! And never come back! Run!'

Terrified and crying, the children ran as fast as they could into the woods, they ran as if they had a fire in their buttocks. The children’s hands stuck together, a security so that they did not lose each other on the road. They did the only thing they could, to do as their parents told them to do.

Enrico Vldic watched them disappear and sighed with tears in his eyes as he slowly closed the door behind them. As he turned around, he saw the front door was still open.

He was about to close it when it was kicked in with such a violent force that the hinges whined from the treatment. A tall man dressed in a Serbian uniform stepped in through the open door to their house.

The soldier saw a man approaching him, out of pure instinct he raised his weapon and fired. Pop-pop, two bullets hit the father who fell like a pine down on his knees, the blood flowed from one thigh like a torrent, the artery had been hit. He did not have much time left.

Anica screamed as loud as she could, she could not believe that her husband had been shot so coldly. Her insides were burning in anger, but she could do nothing. The muzzle of the pistol aiming straight at her.

The Serbian soldier smiled at her as he clenched his fist. She was surprised by his smile, it blinded her vision when the fist came flying and landed in her stomach. He had hit her as hard as he could. The pain shot through her body, she lost her breath, doubled over and crashed to the floor, gasping for air.

Her eyes filled up with painful tears from what the soldier had done. She saw two more soldiers enter their house. The first one that had hit her was apparently their leader, he gave an order to secure the man while he took care of the filthy slut. One of them wrapped a belt around Enrico's thighs, then pulled it tight with everything he could muster. They needed him later, his life was worth saving for a few more hours. At least until they had finished playing with his wife.

Anica tried to stand up but was met by the soldier's wild kicks, over and over again. Thousands of black spots exploded in her eyes as she began to lose her sight. She rolled around on the floor, receiving the cruel violence the soldier laughed at.

It hurt too much to breathe, several ribs had been broken from the kicks. Every breath sounded like a long hiss, the surrounding soldiers were laughing loudly at the sound.

The clothes ripped from her body by the powerful man, that she was injured, he did not care. He was high from the pain inside, the pain that she barely could let out. When she tried to cover her naked body parts with her hands, he laughed at her in such an evil way, it sent icy shivers through her spine. Anica watched him pull the belt off, wrapping some of it around his hand. Then she felt the stinging brutality when he began whipping her back with it. She tried to move, it hit her behind, her breasts. The soldier kept hitting in between his laughs.

Anica tried to crawl away from what was happening, but her breathing became harder and harder, she could barely move without it hurting. Knives were galloping inside her body and there was no finish line for them but to extort even more excruciating pain on her.

A hand grabbed her hair tightly, forcing her head up. Her panic-filled eyes searched for her husband. She found him sitting on a chair next to the front door, bleeding from her thigh, his hazy eyes looking sadly back at her.

Without hesitation, the soldier pulled her by the hair over to the sofa, her aching body bouncing on the floor until she felt him lift her up in his arms. Then she flew through the air like a sack of potatoes, screaming as she landed hard on her stomach.

She felt the soldier straddle her legs, the panic increased within her, The little she had left inside her tried to break free. The instinct within her told her what was coming.

The soldier hit her hard in the back of the head with her fist, laughing out loud, she heard him shout that she had no way to go, just to lie still like the ugly little whore that she was.

She heard the rustling of clothes, then she felt the naked skin of the soldier as he laid down on top of her. Her body tried to move, avoiding the man's pressure.

He was too strong for her weak resistance, she felt his hand between them. It disgusted her, she knew what was going to happen. Something hard and massive pressed against her sex. She heard the soldier mutter to himself as he moved his hand. Somehow he managed to direct his hardness where he wanted, his excitement was so enormous, it scared her more than the violence she had endured so far.

The last air in her lungs screamed her pain out in the room as he violently forced himself into her behind.

For Anica, it felt like an eternity, for him, it was over too fast. The humiliation she felt was something she had never felt before, her husband had seen how she had been taken by the soldier. Their eyes had met several times, as one they had shed tears for the other.

When the soldier finally was done, he patted her on the buttocks and laughed irritatingly. He quickly pulled out of her, wiping his manhood with her hair before getting off her.

His boots had not even landed on the floor before Anica heard him order the other two soldiers to do what they wanted with her.

It was like throwing fresh meat to hungry wolves. The two soldiers were over her in a flash. It was as if they had just received a new toy.

She could not protest anymore, could not even scream, mentally she was gone. Her body just laid there until the abuse ended, until the two soldiers felt satisfied enough.

The soldier in charge went over to Enrico and gave him a slap across his face. He turned to the other two, ordered them to take him back to the camp and throw him with the other prisoners.

They obeyed without saying anything, took Enrico under one arm each, carrying him with them as they left.

The soldier who was left alone took a cup of water, drank a little himself before throwing the rest in Anica's face. Her chapped lips tried to move, her swollen eyes could only see a contour in the fog.

The soldier gave her a resounding slap, shouted at her loudly to look at him. When she did not do what he said, he pushed the barrel of his gun into her mouth.

He saw her reaction, the panic as she tasted the cold steel on her tongue. She tried to spit it out of her mouth, it disgusted her. The smell alone made her want to vomit.

His hand grabbed her hair, pulling it all he could. Anica's head jerked backwards, her eyes widened as much as they could.

With a huge smile on his face, Zoran Erdemović fired his gun.

He stood there and watched her head explode over the sofa behind her, she fell heavily backwards and landed with a thump on the sofa. He nodded his head in a pleased gesture, muttered well done to himself. It was time for him to return to his base.

If he had only turned his head to the right for a second, he would have seen a young boy with wild eyes staring at him through the window.

Miroslav being the kid he was had broken his promise to his mother, he had left his sister by a tree in the forest, then he had sneaked back to the house.

From his position he had seen everything that had happened, it had burned into his brain. He promised himself that he would make sure the man paid one day.

The soldier's face was a face he would never forget.

PART 2

The root of suffering is attachment

BUDDHA

ONE

There are moments in life that can change a man. In an instant, joy can become sorrow and cut out your heart like an ice-cold ex. A moment that I would experience without having asked for it.

My colleague, Martin Hansson, and I were sitting in our trustworthy but old and rusty Volvo 740 on another surveillance. It had been navy blue once upon a time. Now it was faded by the sun and the color had flaked, making it almost gray.

The inside smelled of greasy food and other things we had no idea what it was. It was a pigsty, but it was our pigsty. We were not the best at cleaning up after ourselves, one day maybe we would think about taking our time and do something about it.

The people we were looking at hid in an old farm house out in Spånga. They were set up on a parallel road to the E-18 where two small side streets met, a perfect location for setting up a criminal work shop.

My partner was a year older than me but with two months more as a Detective. Something he liked to tell me time and time again. Weirdly enough, he liked being the oldest.

Always tanned, nicely dressed and polite to everyone, Martin was a popular person, it was rare that anyone talked badly about him. When you saw him, you realized that he was not the type of person that people wanted to quarrel with. More than six feet tall with a weight more than enough to match. Not because he looked fat, on the contrary, he had more muscles than many others. And he knew how to use his fists, he had done it many times. Both on duty, and off.

My name is Mikael Karlsson, just a midget compared to Martin. Normally I tell everyone that I am five seven on a sunny day, but I am many, many pounds lighter than Martin.

I got a really pale skin, calling me white is an insult to being white. When the sun comes out and is burning hot, I turn red, just like a lobster in boiling water. There's no middle ground for me, I'm either paper white or burned. When I was growing up, my mother always said that I forgot my pigments when I was born because I was in such an incredible hurry to get out of her.

So there we sat, me and Martin. Chewing away on a Snickers bar, I looked at the house through the sturdy binoculars Martin had brought.

It was not the easiest place to watch. It was a completely open ground from where we stood to the house, a few trees were standing tall and skinny closer to where the house was, not where we parked. Where they were needed.

The people we were interested in were some really nasty characters. We knew that at least two of them were inside the house, there could be more. We had no proper intel to go on, everything was sketchy. Anonymous sources, it had said.

It was the kind of people who shot first and asked questions afterwards, we were after. Our boss had shouted at us to be more careful than usual, not to do anything unnecessary like we normally did. But please, he repeated that word several times, please! Wait for reinforcements if shit goes down.

What happened next is something that cannot be forgotten. Something I did not think I would ever experience.

Everything just keeps rewinding itself in my head, like a bad movie on TV that is shown over and over again.

That was the night my partner died.

TWO

Without warning, of course, it began to rain. Just like in all the lousy police movies of the last twenty years, the flood gates opened up and banged on the car like a heavy metal drummer doing a solo.

We barely saw the hood of our car, we couldn’t even hear ourselves thinking. It was useless to sit around when we had no visual image of the house. Trying to make a decision what we should do, I picked up the mic and contacted dispatch. A few minutes went by, they returned with a green light for us to leave the place and wait for a message to return.

Martin shrugged, at least he would sleep in his own bed instead of the car. That was the last thing he said to me. He sounded so happy that he could go home. Even a smile crossed his face.

He turned the key to start the engine. The lights came on and showed us what it could. Almost nothing.

Except.

A dark shadow figure stood right in front of the car. Like a ghost had arrived. It moved. Shots rang out. Automatic fire.

The windshield exploded in pieces, Martin's body slammed into the seat when bullet after bullet tore him apart.

I had my door open when a bullet graced my left shoulder. Just a scratch, it hurt like hell, I managed to dive out of the car without more damage.

My right hand held my reliable Glock 17 when I hit the ground. I saw a pair of legs moving around the car towards where I was.

With water in my eyes, I aimed at the ankles, there was not much more to hit. My finger pulled the trigger, over and over.

A loud scream echoed under the car, the person fell heavily to the ground on the other side of the Volvo.

Fast as I could, I got to my feet and ran around the car. I don’t know what kind of sounds he was making when he saw me. I didn’t recognize any of them.

Grabbing him, I pressed his body into the wet ground, holding my gun to his head. It burned inside me, a feeling I had never experienced before.

It was one of the suspects we had been sitting on who was laying there. He whined loudly as he looked around for his weapon, stretching his arm to reach it.

I saw it too. An AK-47. It was not a common weapon to be used by a gangster in Sweden.

My eyes found his, I smiled as I pressed my foot hard on his ankle that was bleeding from the open wounds my bullets had caused.

Screaming in pain, he saw me holster my gun and pick up the rifle.

I politely asked him how many more there were in the house. When he did not answer, I did the most logical thing I could think of. I kicked his bleeding ankle with all my might. Something had taken over me, I was no longer a policeman on duty, I was an avenger on an assignment. Between swearing and moaning, he got out that it was just his brother in the house. There was nobody else.

It would have been so easy to just put the handcuffs on him, and then throw him in the trunk of the car. But my eyes found Martin's dead body behind the wheel. All rules changed. The darkness within me swallowed the last pride I had, it drew me across the line to the other side. It was too late to return.

‘You … ’

The man on the ground tried to crawl away from me, escaping the end. He heard the click from the safety on his former weapon that I was holding in my hand.

Pressing the barrel hard into his back, making him scream of terror.

Without further ado, my finger pulled the trigger, I emptied what was left in the magazine on the AK-47 into his body.

THREE

Weird as it was, the radio worked, strangely enough no bullets had hit it. Holding the button, I heard myself say, man down, one in distress, at my location.

With tears in my eyes, I looked at Martin again. There was no need. Half his head had been relocated.

I released the hold and left before dispatch got back to me.

I pulled my Glock, holding it tightly, before I began taking quick steps towards the house. All the lights went out at the same time, as