NOTE: This is the continuation of a previous entry written over a year ago. Click here to read it.

It has taken me too long to finish this story. There is a reason. It is a difficult story to tell. It is still as fresh in my mind as the day it all occurred, nevertheless it is still a tough story to tell, but I will do my best…

We all climbed back into the car as Harun turns us down another impossibly narrow gravel path that the little car starts to slowly climb. I break the silence in the car with a question about his family, how did Harun’s wife manage? He says he cannot speak for his wife, but he knows it was difficult. His son, now almost 20, was just 4 months when the siege began. “There was no food for him, but he grew up to be beautiful,” he said, giving all the credit to his wife’s stamina and perseverance during those years. He said that they would solider for 24 hours than take 24 hours off, at which time they would return home. I did not have the chance to speak with his wife and I do not pretend to understand what it would be like to say goodbye to your husband, friend, lover, father of your child, every other day knowing it could be the last time you see him.

A flat patch of pavement appears on the side of the road and we pull into it. Harun turns the car off. “We walk from here,” he informs us. He warns us again, “Stay on the pavement of the road, there are still many mines.” As we start to walk he points out holes in the ground where mines had recently been detonated and burnt sections of the forest, a method used to find and explode mines.

As Harun points out these sites, I am lost in my own internal monologue. Finally,  I ask the question, “Are you angry at NATO and the international community for not acting sooner?” He smiles and says how can he be angry. If NATO had not come the siege might have lasted 7 years or Sarajevo might not have lasted. “But I am angry. I am angry that it ever happened,” he says. Then Harun looks me straight in the eyes and said, “I no longer believe in God. After what I saw, I stopped believing. I know there is not a God.”

We spend the next 15 minutes walking along the road, noticing the tank tracks that disfigure the road and the view of Sarajevo. We stop unexpectedly and I almost fall off the side of the road. Harun is just standing there looking to his left down a steep slope and to his right at what are the remains of a Serbian stronghold. “It was here that he died,” is all he says. We stand in silence for I don’t know how long, but Harun finally breaks it by telling us his story. “He would always save the chocolate for his 5 year old little girl. Whenever we received the humanitarian meal pack, Marco would save the chocolate for her. I remember because he was killed that day after we ate our pack meal as we were climbing this hill. He had the chocolate in his pocket for her when they killed him.”

I feel my jaw tighten and my eyes start to well, this is getting to be too much. Harun looks up and he catches sight of my impeding emotional breakdown. He walks up to me and says to the group with the slightest of smiles, “Down we go.” So down we go.

My self-involvement is quickly cut short when, instead of heading back down to the city, we stop again. This is the last stop, Harun announces to us. “Stay close and go where I go,” are the instructions from Harun as we follow him on what barely looks like a trail.

After five minutes of walking we come to a clearing where two bullet-riddled, bombed-out buildings stand. It is the Bosnian Observatory, or what was once an observatory. Harun starts to tell the story of how he was part of the unit that took these building back from the Serbians. But only briefly because when the Serbian reinforcements arrived, all they could do was run. He tells us that he watched friends jump from the building to avoid the bullets and shells, down the side of the hill, only to land on mines. Twenty of his comrades died that night.

As we walk inside, he says he did not know how he survived. And I can see what he means. Whole sections of the wall are missing from the cylindrical building and what walls are left, are covered in bullet holes. The stairs leading up to where the telescopes would have been are destroyed. On top of these walls sits fresh graffiti. Some sayings in Serbian and even a Nazi swastika adorn the walls. After half an hour of carefully wandering we begin a slow march back to the car.

Back at the car Harun turns and asks if we have any more questions. This is it. I finally have the opportunity I am looking for to ask the question I wanted to ask ever since he invited me on this “tour.” “Why are you doing this?” I query. He pauses for a long moment and begins by saying that there is the monetary reason of course, but it actually springs out of an encounter with two Norwegian girls who stayed in the hostel just two weeks before. He says that the two girls arrived to the hostel after staying a few nights in a hostel in the Republika Srpska part of Bosnia. One evening he sat with them and at their urging started to discuss the war and his experiences. After hours of talking the girls said that they knew what he said was true, but that they knew there are still people who do not know. They told Harun that the night before they spent the evening chatting with the owner of their previous hostel and when he found out that they were traveling next to Sarajevo, he asked why. He told them there was nothing to see. He told them that nothing had happened there. And what did happen was actually perpetrated by the Sarajevans on themselves to attract sympathy from the international community. He told them that Republika Srpska, Serbia, and Serbians were the real victims.

I can hear the anger in his voice increasing. He says that he barely slept that night and in the morning was still distressed. His son then encouraged him to show people the truth, evidence that could not be denied. Because Harun had grown up on these hills and fought on them, he knew them better than the experts. He tells us that he is up there almost every day, looking for mines to mark, collecting remnants of the war and even picnicking with his wife. So his son figured if anyone could provide people with confirmation of what really happened, Harun would be the best to share that knowledge.

A few days later he started bringing up others and telling them his story. “It changes every time. I see something that reminds me and I speak about it. I say two hours, but today it is three. Tomorrow it may be four. I do not plan, I just speak my story.” We climb into the car and he looks at me in the review mirror like he did at the start of the trip, “You hear my voice shake. I am angry. Not at you, at those who lie about the truth.”

Back down the hills we go, racing away from the memories.

Upon returning to the hostel I have to rest. Just as I sit down, Harun enters, “We go for picnic in the hills now,” he says with a smile. The look I give him must be one of confusion because he looks at me with the softest eyes and says, “I learned to love every moment.” We should be dead he said, but we are not. “We know that it can all be gone, whether by bomb or sniper, and so we see beauty. My wife is beautiful, my son is beautiful. I love my neighbors. I love life.”

My heart suddenly starts to hurt. I feel like I am seeing what love is supposed to be like, all-encompassing and all-enveloping. So no apologies are needed. The only thing he asks is that I tell others. And so I am.

Carly