| walls and listening to every drop of water, I found myself at the
library. Its hollowness echoed and I could not penetrate it.
As it burned I understood that he had been here all along, he had worked with the group, lived in their dom,
their building, had used the water as his language. Yet when the water stopped he found a voice carried by smoke.
The echo of this building shell was his lament and I heard it for the last time that night as it burned. The man in
the striped shirt appeared at the corner and ducked away, the fat woman with her red
purse was eating cevapcici at the cafe across the river, the
photographer was taking picures of the bald man in front
of the mosque. All of them watched me as I turned towards bascarsija and walked away.
I left the city as I had entered it, unnoticed. |
My son is with me now, he came later, sick from the promaja that had
carried him through the cracks of the boarded up windows. We do not speak the same language yet but we understand
the sound of the water that clanks through our pipes. We know the value of windows that open and close. We remember
the group from the time of glass. And welcome the smoke into our rooms as the fireplace warms us.
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