Category: Uncategorized

Zagreb and Puglia, Italy – Spring & Summer 1995

I imagined a blissful pregnancy but instead my body ached and even at a few months, I had the sensation my baby might slip out of me. I walked like an old lady, one hand supporting my back and the other holding my middle, already heavy. We were having a girl! As the months passed, she seemed to be shoving aside my parts to make more room for her own.

Getting on and off airplanes and helicopters and driving on potholed streets was certainly more stress and bumps than recommended for a mother-to-be. My work with UNICEF-Croatia was mostly travel on lousy roads. I visited isolated villages to deliver vaccines and school supplies and met with local authorities to discuss their community children’s education and health needs. Mostly men, they badgered me to celebrate the impending birth with toasts of their homemade brew, slivovitz. I declined, instead lifting glasses of sok – a neon-orange soda they called ‘juice’ that was probably as lethal.

Alone in dreary hotel rooms, I listened to the sounds of fighting and explosions that no longer felt far enough away and wondered what the hell I was doing there. I should be living near my girlfriends who might advise me on my pregnancy and throw me baby showers. I should be home – although now I was beginning to wonder where home might be. At least I should be safely in Zagreb with my husband who pampered me with hot baths, delicious meals, propping me up with pillows. As my belly swelled, so did my sense of being in uncharted territory without a map and on these field trips, I felt really lost.

 

Six months into my pregnancy, Neil came home from work manic with excitement.

“They offered me a post in Italy! They’re setting up a new UN logistics base in Brindisi – right on the sea, sweetheart! I’d being doing what I do here — manage all the local vehicles and civilian transportation – only in ITALY. What do you think? Of course we’ll go, right? Italy, darling – Italy! We get to live in Italy!”

“Wow,” I rubbed my stomach as the baby shifted inside of me. “That’s fantastic,”

Living in Italy was one of our favorite fantasies and we often drove the 2-hours from Zagreb to Trieste just to eat lunch and absorb the joy and light of the country we’d come to love. But since becoming pregnant, I longed to return to the States to be near my sister and friends. I didn’t want to be lonely no matter how charming my surroundings were.

“I guess that means we won’t being going to the States.” I tried not to sound disappointed.

“We can always go there, sweetheart. But how often do we get a chance like this? We’ll be right at the port of Brindisi, we’ll have the sea, Italian food! What a great place for the baby. What do you say?”

“I agree, it sounds great – it’s an opportunity we shouldn’t pass up.” I tried not to sound disappointed. And he was right. “When do they want you?”

“That’s the thing – I’d leave in about ten days time. I hate to leave you…”

I cut him off. “Don’t be silly. I’ll be fine. You can get everything set up. I know you’ll find us a great place. I’ve still got two more months until my maternity leave kicks in so I won’t be able to leave until then.”

In fact I liked the idea of some time alone to contemplate my imminent new life.

“I’ll try and come back on most weekends. Are you sure about this honey?”

“Yes! I’m sure. I’ll call Chloe and see what she knows about the hospitals around there.”

Chloe was a UNICEF consultant and midwife based in England and we’d become friends on her last trip conducting breastfeeding seminars in the UNPAs. I liked her no-nonsense personality tempered by warmth and she’d agreed to deliver our baby at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where she was based. I’d move there about two months before my due date, take Lamaze classes, shop for baby clothes and start nesting. Should I now change my plan to be in Italy? I called Chloe to update her and ask advice.

“What do you think about me staying in Italy to have the baby rather than travel to England? I mean I know that I don’t want to give birth in Zagreb; I’ve been in that hospital, but what about Brindisi? Do you know what it’s like there?” I asked.

“Yes. And honestly, if you are really thinking of giving birth in Southern Italy, you might as well go back to Sarajevo. The Italians are not very modern thinking when it comes to women and Southern Italy is poor – they don’t have the best facilities. I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said.

“That bad, eh?” I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed.

“It’s really not the best,” she said diplomatically.

We decided to stick with our original plan: I would go to Italy for a few weeks in July before traveling to England where, as planned, Chloe would deliver our baby. Maybe I’d be lucky enough to get one of the birthing rooms with a Jacuzzi we’d peeked in at during our visit to the hospital a few months earlier.

 

Zagreb’s relative peace unraveled a few weeks after Neil’s departure. Word around UNPROFOR was that the Croatians were fed up with the UN-maintained status quo and were going to take back the Serb populated areas (UNPAs) once and for all. As a last-ditch effort to keep the Croatians at bay, the Serbs retrieved the heavy guns and artillery supposedly under UN lock and key, and began lobbing shells into the center of Zagreb. This provocation was just what the Croatians needed to begin their counterattack. The war, only simmering in this capital city for the past few years, began to boil.

With each wail of the emergency siren, the elevator in my office building shut down and I lumbered behind my colleagues, climbing down 17 flights to the garage to wait for the shelling to stop. International staff, mostly veterans from Sarajevo and other battlegrounds, took these bombardments in stride, matter-of-factly speculating on the launching and landing points of mortars crashing into the city. Our Croatian staff members with homes and families in Zagreb were not so nonchalant. In fact, during these attacks, six people were killed and about 200 wounded.

 

As I leaned against a UNICEF Land Cruiser waiting for the okay to go back upstairs to my office, the director of personnel joined me.

“How are you feeling, Tricia?”

“Well, I am getting my exercise,” I gestured towards the stairwell.

“I was speaking with New York about the situation here and they agreed it would be best for you to take an early maternity leave. Starting next week. Do you agree?”

Feigning concern about my work, I tried not to let on happy I was for this get-out-of-town pass. Since the escalation in fighting, it was impossible to deliver vaccines and supplies or attend meetings with my Serb counterparts so I spent most days stuck in my office trying not to fall asleep at my desk. Besides, I was ready to be done – done with the war, done with the shameless-hatred between these cousins – all of them: Serbs, Croats and Bosnians. No longer did I have any illusion that I might be a vehicle for change. When I moved to UNICEF and began doing humanitarian work, I thought I would feel like I was contributing more. But in the end, I felt like an international social worker, providing band-aids to gaping wounds. Only changes at a political level would change anything. Disillusioned by my work, I was ready to focus on my life, my baby, constantly pushing and kicking inside me, she seemed to be urging me on as if to say, “let’s get out of here!”

 

Neil rented a large villa in Ostuni, a small town perched on a hill about 40 minutes up the coast from Brindisi. In one of our evening telephone calls he described it in detail.

“When you walk in, there’s a big, heavy wooden table that will be perfect for dinner parties. The floor is red tiled – just gorgeous and it helps to keep the place cool. The one bad thing is the kitchen was not designed for tall people. The ceiling is so low I can’t stand up straight in there so you’ll have to do the cooking and washing up!” he laughed. “Just joking, darling! I’ll help. But honestly, the ceiling is barely 6 feet. The rest of the villa is perfect. On the second floor there’s a big sitting room that has a fireplace and French doors opening onto the veranda. I’m sitting here now and the scent of the rose gardens is wafting in with a gorgeous breeze! I wish you were here now, darling! And we can eat out on the veranda. And the food is delicious – think about it: no more gristly meat and cabbage!”

I worried about the extravagance, but a week later, when Neil drove me through the automatic gates to the stucco villa, I was enchanted. I spent my days wandering from corner-to-corner of the house and puttering in the gardens filled with fruit trees including a hidden garden with a small grove of lemon and lime trees. In the front of the property were blooming rose bushes. I had landed in heaven.

After Neil left for work, the day stretched before me like a big question mark. For the first time in a decade I had no job to go to. My purpose was simply to wait, to hatch my girl. I passed the hours cleaning, furiously washing dishes, sweeping the tile floor of the kitchen and doing laundry. The clothesline was on the roof so I lugged the basket up the steps, dropping it at my feet. The heat was so intense, the black tar of the roof oozed up between gravel. A strange wind whistled in my ears. The Scirroco blowing in from the Sahara bringing heat and sand across the Mediterranean amplified the scorching summer heat of Southern Italy. My dress wrapped around my legs as I pulled a sheet out of my basket, gathering the damp fabric to spread over the clothesline as a fierce gust whipped the sheet out of my hand flapping into the sky towards the edge of the roof like a sail. I just managed to grab it, wrestling with the wind as I flung the sheet across the line and quickly clipped on half a dozen pegs to keep it fast, my hair flapping around my face.

The house echoed when I pulled the door shut behind me. Usually, I preferred light filled rooms, eschewing curtains or shades. Not here. Like my Italian neighbors, I drew the shutters closed against the heat and scorching wind. I crawled into bed and immediately fell asleep. My dreams were intense, fanned by the bizarre winds and woke sticky with sweat and anxiety about giving birth. I had barely thought about the details of what my body needed to do to deliver this baby. I longed to talk to friends, to have someone to compare notes with. Soon I’d be in England and without a language barrier, imagined bonding with other mothers-to-be in a Lamaze class. And I’d finally get around to reading those last frightening chapters of my pregnancy books.

The baby always felt like she was sitting very low on my pelvis, but these days I felt even more uncomfortable and the slightest exertion exhausted me. I passed hours prone on the veranda, gazing at the golden fields and the Adriatic sometimes visible, as a hazy ribbon gleaming between sky and land. But mostly I focused within, imagining my future child. What kind of person would she be? Would she look more like her father or me? We would show her the world! She would know she was loved and that her parents loved each other. If only we could agree on a name. One evening I looked up from the book I was reading and said to Neil, watching television beside me, “What do you think about ‘Willa’?”

“Naw. Sounds like a bloody tree.”

“Antonia?”

He dismissed these suggestions. Katie and Claire and Molly, were his current favorites. Molly Fiona was the only name we agreed upon.

 

A week later, almost 2 months before her due date, I gave birth in Ostuni’s little hospital. With no facility to handle premature babies, my baby girl was swept away for the 30-minute ambulance ride to Brindisi hospital. I’d barely gotten a glimpse of her. Craning my neck from the table where the nurses stitched me up, I watched the doctor examining my baby – her body still pink with blood, stretched out for the first time on a counter to my right. “Is she okay? Is my baby all right?” Neil had refused to budge from the doorway, when the nurses tried to chase him away, and called to me reassuringly, “She looks perfect! Look at her long legs. She’s gorgeous.” He followed the ambulance and when they arrived to the intensive care unit for premature babies and asked for her name, he named her: Molly Fiona.

Three days later I was released and would finally get to meet and touch my daughter. Driving to Brindisi to see her, I felt like I was going on a blind date – freshly showered and dressed up, excited but full of trepidation. Neil held my hand as he led me through the hospital halls to the Neonatology wing. Neonatology – a word I had never used in English and now I knew in Italian. He was already friends with all of the doctors and nurses and now gallantly introduced me as “the mama”. He showed me where to don a green gown and how to scrub my hands with the special soap, then led me into a small room full of beeping equipment attached to one open-air incubator. My baby. I had no idea what to do. The wires and tubes attached to every limb and the oxygen flowing into her nose made it impossible to embrace her – and besides, she was so teeny. Neil’s two daughters in England were now adults, but he remembered. Confidently, lovingly, he touched our little girl, one of his big hands large enough to cover her body. He held her head, gently whispering to her, “Your mum’s here, Molly! And Dadda’s here too.” He turned to me, “Go on, you can touch her – she’s yours! She’s your baby.” Stepping back from the incubator he drew me into his spot next to Molly.

I stroked the translucent, yellow skin of her cheek. I wanted to see her eyes but a gauze mask shielded her from the glaring lights for counteracting jaundice. Tubes came out of her ankles and her head and strapped to her foot was a small monitor that Neil told me was measuring her heart rate. I thought I might crack in two from the ache I felt looking at her. Why wasn’t she still inside of me where she belonged? I touched her miniature hand with nails like a little animal. She gripped my finger.

 

Over the next weeks, I remained in a dreamlike state spending every day at the hospital sitting next to and touching Molly. I joined the other mother’s diligently pumping our breast milk determined to do what we could to make our babies strong. After a week some of the tubes were removed from her ankles and I was able to hold her in my arms while the nurses changed her bedding. I gazed into her startling blue eyes and fell more deeply in love than I had ever been in my life.

I lived in a bubble – a surreal mix of trauma, new love and obsession, I rarely left the hospital. One day I took a short walk around Brindisi, an old port city and gateway to Greece, but soon turned and retraced my steps quickly back to the ward as if drawn by a magnet. My world and I had changed forever – I barely noticed my surroundings or other people. I only cared about getting my girl healthy. Neil went to work each day and came to pick me up in the evening, entering the ward like a tornado, showering us both with kisses. He flirted with the nurses, practicing the new, usually rude Italian words he’d learned and they laughed uproariously, charmed.

Evenings, Neil took me to a tiny restaurant near the ferry dock to sit outside in the evening breezes. The owner Roberto, had become our friend and like a doting uncle, personally chose and prepared my meals and then as he set plates of scrumptious grilled fish and garlicky greens and fresh salads, listed all the important amino acids and rich nutrients in each dish and explained how important they were for me to eat post-birth. Neil showered me with trinkets he’d bought during the day; a new dress, a gold heart engraved with ‘Molly’, a turquoise bracelet. At home he filled vases with fresh flowers, sat me in the cool breeze on the veranda and served me milky tea, kissing me as he set the tray in front of me. We fell more in love with each other during those hot June nights, newly alert to the preciousness of life. Climbing into bed I ached with longing for my baby, heartbroken at the thought of her swaddled alone in a hospital bassinet in Brindisi.

The neonatology unit was separated into three units, each marked the progress of our baby as she graduated from one to the next, determined primarily by the baby’s weight. Molly still looked like an undernourished child from a war-zone with limbs that looked strangely adult without the dimpled knees or knuckles I associated with babies. After 2 long weeks she made it into the last room. Meanwhile, newly admitted babies with mothers looking as shell-shocked as I once felt, made me feel like an old-timer. As the summer heat kicked into full throttle, the nurses rattled down the metal shades in our room early in the morning, and the windows stayed covered till evening. “Fa caldo!” we greeted each other by 8 AM, ready for our day’s work united by our focus and complaints about the heat.

Each day the other mothers and I waited anxiously for the doctor’s visit, standing like guards beside the plastic bassinets as the nurses brought our babies to the examination table at the center of the room. The doctor listened to lungs, poked and flipped our tiny babies as we all watched, hoping for him to say, “La bambina si puo portare a casa domani.” The doctor turned to me with a smile and I hear those words: that Molly was ready – tomorrow, she could go home! On July 4, after more than three weeks in the hospital, it was our turn. I called Neil excitedly, “Neil! It’s Molly’s independence day! She can come home!”

 

For the first few years of Molly’s life, as the heat of June cranked up and my little girl’s birthday neared, I flashed-back to those frightening first days when I wondered whether my child would survive. It seemed to me those steamy weeks in Southern Italy when she lay alone in her cot stuck with needles and attached to tubes, should have absolved her from any further childhood suffering.

 

Zagreb, Sarajevo and the Seychelles, August 1994

 

We would marry in Sarajevo in August. This impossible destination absolved us from choosing between divorced parents who refused to see each other, estranged siblings and extended family we never spoke with. Everyone would receive an invitation but no one could get into the city now under the longest siege in modern history. Instead, we would celebrate with mostly Neil’s friends who were either working or trapped in the city. Looking at photos of the wedding, I barely know anyone’s name but for the rest of our lives, we’d have a great story to tell.

Dropping a fortune on a dress I’d wear only for my wedding seemed ludicrous and never crossed my mind. Instead, I searched Zagreb shops and found a flowing, wrap-around silk skirt in buttery white. On one of our trips to Italy, I found an elegant ivory jacket with a collar of silk flowers in Bologna and a pair of soft-suede vintage shoes with a much higher heel than I was used to wearing. They were adorable and I could suffer them for a few hours for the enjoyment of being a little closer to Neil’s height. I felt proud of myself for cobbling together a wedding outfit for a pittance of what most women dropped on a dress. Neil, much more of a fashion plate, initially planned on wearing a gray name-designer suit but when a Scottish friend offered to loan him a kilt, he decided to wear that instead. He’d change into his handsome suit for the party afterwards.

Strapped in close to Neil on the plane to Sarajevo, I recalled my departure over a year ago, leaving depressed and defeated. Lacing my fingers through Neil’s, I felt victorious: committed to love even as this terrible war continued to rage. Our heads tipped together as we peered out the tiny window, down at the green mountains that hid the guns of the warring factions, a déjà vu of when we first met.

The airport was hot and gritty from the sagging sandbags snaking around the boarded-up buildings. Fellow UN staff members in Sarajevo knew of the unusual wedding taking place in this city of rare, happy occasions, and the Norwegian soldiers still manning the airport, greeted us warmly. Standing in the sweltering sun, I flashed back on the frigid winter day when I arrived in Sarajevo for the first time. I had waited in this same spot with other UN staff, for an Armored Personnel Carrier, a tank-like windowless vehicle to deliver me safe, but miserably uncomfortably to Kiseljak. Today, I climbed into a UN “soft-skinned” as opposed to armored, pickup truck.

Ducking into the driver’s seat Neil leaned over and kissed me. “Well, we’re here my love, and tomorrow we’re getting married!”

“I know! I can’t believe it!” I beamed at him, over the moon to be launching into life with this mad, magnificent man.

The road from the airport was still a treacherous stretch of no-man’s-land. A Mad-Max landscape of destroyed cars, buildings and graffiti marked rubble left from years of mortar hits and gun battles. Once again, I was grateful for Neil’s speed as he swerved around massive potholes towards the center of the city.

The Holiday Inn hotel staff greeted us warmly and exclaimed how fat Neil had become. Just like the old days, he doled out cartons of Marlboros as he collected the key to his former room. Neil ran around excitedly checking on bullet and shrapnel scars, switching the TV on to find out what channels were available, turning the water taps (there was water!) and checking the view out the window. Flopped across the bed, I watched him, in his element on the frontline.

That evening Victor hosted a small party at one of the restaurants still in business supplied by the black market availability of food and booze. Afterwards, drunk from too many toasts of Russian vodka, we returned to the Holiday Inn and fell into the familiar lumpy bed, Neil repeating, “I love you, I love you.” The snipers and big guns were silent, although I doubt we would have heard a thing.

The next morning, wanting time alone before the noon ceremony, I set off to find someone to do my hair. Even in the smallest hamlets in these countries of Former Yugoslavia, when every other storefront was closed from lack of goods, supplies or electricity, there would always be one place still in business and often full of laughter and chatter: the hairdresser. In any town or city, women attended to their locks, peering into mirrors lit by candles or the light of an open door. Young women were stunning in all the countries of former Yugoslavia taking great pride in their appearance in spite of bombings or sanctions. Sarajevo was the ultimate style capital – even under siege I knew I’d be able to find some place to brighten up my usually limp ‘do’ for my wedding day.

Stepping out from the shadow of the hotel out to the open street, the heat of August hit me like a wave. I imagined every sniper’s gun in Sarajevo trained on me. A ceasefire wouldn’t stop some drunken sniper from taking a potshot for entertainment. The street, wide as a boulevard was completely empty. Nicknamed Sniper’s Alley, this stretch was literally the front line. Heat shimmered in waves across the desolate stretch, an urban desert scene. I passed the towering, skeletal remains of office buildings sure I was being watched from the dark interior. I wanted to run but feared drawing more attention to myself – as if that were possible. There was no one else in sight. Neil had offered to give me a lift and I felt foolish for deciding I needed to walk on the most dangerous street in the city like a lost tourist who’d taken a wrong turn. I had wanted some time alone to reflect on marrying, to prepare myself for this next chapter of my life. It was all I could do to calm the beating of my heart, every sense alert as an animal, a sense my life was on the line.

Eyes on the mortar-pocked pavement, I lost count of the permanent splatter marks coined ‘Sarajevo roses’. How many of these concrete scars marked someone’s death? I looked ahead to the smaller buildings up ahead where Neil had told me I’d be out of the range of the snipers and stepped up my pace, jogging the around a corner, breathless and sweaty. The storefronts were dark and closed but for one doorway. Two middle-aged women in smocks sat on the stoop, as if they were expecting me. The sign above their heads read ‘Frizerka’ hairdresser. They looked at me with surprise, an obvious outsider. I greeted them excitedly, “Dobor dan! Ja sam treba hitna pomoc!” ‘Hello! I need emergency assistance’. They laughed, stood up and looping their arms through mine, led me into their dark shop. I mimed putting on a ring, and with the odd Bosnian word I knew, explained why I needed to look beautiful. The women kissed my cheeks in congratulations as if we were old friends and ushered me to a basin in the corner. Using buckets of precious water – perhaps collected rain or hauled from the only well in the city, carefully scooped out of a garbage bin, they washed and rinsed my hair. I was their only customer so they both pitched in massaging my scalp, laughing and joking in whatever snippets of language we understood between us. My racing heart, slowed and by the time they finished, I felt beautiful, my brown hair softly framing my face thanks to a blow dryer fueled by a car battery. The women kissed me again and wished me well, waving from the shop doorway as I made my way, a little less nervously, down the deserted street and back up sniper alley to get ready for my wedding.

 

A few hours later, we drove the pick-up truck to City Hall where we made our way through the dark hallway to the marriage office followed by a lively parade of friends and coworkers. Sarajevo citizens on their own business stared in disbelief at this weirdly jovial scene. We entered a large carpeted room decked out in heavy curtains and Bosnian flags and crested bunting. A man and woman of about 40 sat behind a large ceremonial looking desk from where, without cracking a smile, they conducted our wedding. A woman who worked as a UN interpreter translated the Bosnian vows, prompting us to say “Da” for “Yes” at the appropriate times, the only words we spoke during the ten-minute ceremony.

 

I never imagined myself marrying, never fantasized about walking down an aisle, facing my partner in front of others, declaring my love in public and vowing to make it forever. The wedding scenario, supposedly the pinnacle of couple-love was completely missing from my repertoire of dreams. I knew only a fraction of the people filling this grand room and counted fewer as friends. Still, there was an atmosphere of excitement and when I glanced over at Victor’s warm smile, I felt reassured. In the stuffy room on this August heat, my left hand clutching the small bouquet was cold while my right rested warm from the heat of Neil’s firm grip. Finally, we exchanged rings and kissed, sealing the deal. The crowd, staff from Sarajevo’s UNICEF, UN and the ICRC offices and a few journalists, burst into applause.

As we stepped out of City Hall, we were pelted with handfuls of rice courtesy of the World Food Program. An Associated Press photographer asked us to pose against a wall gouged by shell and shrapnel marks and Neil obligingly pulled me into his arms for a kiss. This photo, Neil in kilt practically lifting me off my feet, was printed in newspapers and magazines around the world. An English newspaper quoted Neil, “We wanted to get married quietly and someplace where our families couldn’t come.” CNN ran a piece with the anchor noting how unusual it was to be reporting “good news from Sarajevo”. We both look happy climbing into the little white pickup truck. Driving away from city hall, I remember both happiness and relief it was over.

 

We honeymooned in the Seychelles wandering the gorgeous islands, diving into the waves of the Indian Ocean. Neil signed up for every adrenaline-inducing sport on offer while I read my book safely on the beach. I attempted scuba diving but strapped into the heavy gear, made it as only far as the swimming pool practice before being swallowed up in a wave of claustrophobia and pushing up to the surface in near panic. Instead, I happily snorkeled in shallow waters as he explored deep-reefs and later went paragliding amidst the clouds. Flopping down by my side after one trip into the sky, he tried to convince me to join him.

“Come on, give it a try. You’ll see – you’ll love it. It’s so beautiful – it feels like you’re flying.”

I considered it briefly. Why couldn’t I just try it? Why couldn’t I be more of a risk-taker like him? It looked amazing but even thinking about getting into one of those harnesses and lifting off the ground made me ill.

“I’m just so terrified of heights, honey. I can’t. I think my heart will just stop. You don’t mind, do you? I’m really happy here with my book.”

“So it’s okay if I go again?”

“Yes! It’s fun to watch you.”

“Right! I’ll blow you kisses from the sky then!”

Even thousands of feet up, he struck a funny pose for me as I watched below.

A few months later we were in Florence for the weekend and picked up a home pregnancy test. Neil paced the hotel room while I went into the bathroom to pee on the strip: it immediately turned blue for ‘si’ and I ran out yelling, “Yes! Si, si, si’!” and tumbling into his arms, we fell on the bed and held each other tight, arms and legs around each other as if to seal in this new joy. My dream of a family was coming true.

 

 

 

 

By the end of the summer, Neil had a job as Transport Manager for the peacekeeping operation at Zagreb headquarters. Each morning he proudly dressed in the khaki colored military style uniform UNPROFOR civilian staff members were now expected to wear. The night before, he’d iron the shirt and slacks and shine his shoes as he’d been taught during his days in the British Army. Neil arrived early to his job, reveling in the responsibility and visibility of managing a staff of drivers for the fleet of UN cars in Zagreb. His desk was neat and organized and decorated with UN paraphernalia and plaques from countries in the mission – from Jordan to Nepal. He swaggered around the base like he managed the entire mission, teasing everyone from high-ranking UN personnel to the local cleaning staff, as he made one of his many trips to get coffee from the cafeteria or grab a cigarette in the courtyard. The vibrant man I’d fallen for in Sarajevo was back.

 

Unlike Neil, I was glad I was able to dodge the new UNPROFOR uniform requirement. I had landed a new job at the UNICEF, a humanitarian program supporting women and children. After months of paper pushing in the press office, I hoped as a field officer in the Serb held parts of Croatia, I’d finally feel like I was making a difference. My new office was on the opposite side of the city from UNPROFOR. I loved the 30-minute walk from our apartment each morning choosing different side streets, crossing cobblestone avenues and dodging speeding trams as I breathed deeply, smiling at strangers and myself about how perfect my life felt.

We’d also moved into a gorgeous apartment in a small house at the top of 100 steep steps that left us huffing and puffing by the time we crossed the threshold. We were rewarded by an airy apartment furnished with gorgeously shabby antiques with a view of rooftops and sky. It was also walking distance to the main square where a year earlier, Neil and I met for our first date. Depending on the evening, Neil cooked up a simple meal or we’d visit a local restaurant to share plates of local meats and a bottle of wine. Our more fulfilling jobs also allowed us to have most weekends off to enjoy each other, lingering in our sunny little bedroom on a Saturday morning felt like being in a tree house above the city.

 

In early in July we made the hour flight to Dubrovnik for a romantic weekend. Although badly shelled at the beginning of the war, Dubrovnik remained a gorgeous stone fortress of cobbled streets. Waves of the Adriatic lapped against the ancient walls surrounding the old town filled with cafes and seafood restaurants. After swimming in the crystalline waters for hours, we wandered the polished limestone streets.

The moon was full and the air beginning to cool after a sweltering day. Walking the short distance from our hotel just on the outskirts of the walls of the old city, Neil led me past the sculpture of Saint Blaise standing guard at the gates to a small harbor. Taking my hand, we stepped across the rough stones. Moonlight glimmered on the pulsing sea and buoys clanged gently.

I felt giddy but also weirdly detached, almost uncomfortable with the perfection of Neil’s barely hidden plan to take the once-promised knee. At the end of the pier less than 10 feet away from where we stood I noticed another couple that seemed to be fighting. The woman was yelling in Croatian at the man who was looking away from her, out to sea, his body language clearly indicating he wished he were anywhere else. Did Neil see them? I wanted to move away from what seemed to be the dissolution of this unknown couple’s relationship, but it was too late: Neil crouched before me.

“Will you be my wife? Will you live with me for the rest of my life?” Neil glanced around as he spoke, as if hoping someone else beside me were witnessing his beautifully choreographed scene or did he hear the woman’s angry voice growing louder? He opened the ring box and removed the simple little diamond set in a gold circle and slipped it on my finger.

“Yes, yes! I will!” I said quickly, distracted by the fighting and now anxious for him to get up. I kissed him and he pulled me to his chest, apparently still unaware of the drama taking place just feet away from us. Even with Neil’s warm lips on mine, I watched the woman’s gesticulations grew more dramatic and now the man held his head in his hands. This did not look like just a squabble – she looked like she was finishing it. I pulled Neil away from the harbor annoyed with myself for not ignoring those strangers and embracing the romance of my own experience. Why couldn’t I do that? Why did I feel like we were actors on this picturesque stage? Was it my ambivalence about marriage? Or because we had already agreed to marry and this dramatized proposal felt contrived? It was as if I’d just auditioned for a part, and although a terrible actress, was still given the role. The ring on my finger proved it. Neil on the other hand seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself: he knew he was the leading man. When I told him about the drama few feet away from our romantic vignette, he laughed and said he hadn’t noticed.

 

 

 

 

 

My day at work began at 9:00 and I woke early to eat breakfast and leave plenty of time to catch the tram. After staying up glued to the television into the early morning hours, Neil rarely woke until the afternoon. Before leaving for work I’d suggest reasons for him to get out of bed.

“Come meet me for lunch? You can stop by personnel and remind them you are here still waiting for a job,” I whispered encouragingly, bending over the mess of sheets and blankets to kiss him goodbye.

“Hmm.” He barely lifted his head pursing his lips up to me without opening his eyes.

When I returned home around 6 PM, he was usually in front of the television. As far as I could tell, his days were spent watching TV, breaking for naps and smoking cigarettes on the small balcony overlooking the neighboring buildings.

“Don’t worry, I won’t smoke in the apartment. And I swear to God, I’m quitting as soon as I get a bloody job,” he assured me.

I didn’t expect living with a boyfriend to be an easy adjustment, but nagging doubts followed me out the door each morning. Was he really the guy for me? What if he never got his act together? I rationalized that everyone goes through periods of doubt in relationships especially during down times. I’d also had a tough time when I left Bosnia. I needed to support him through his. This is what couples do.

Rather than search through my messy shoulder bag for my key, I rang the bell so Neil would have to buzz me, decreasing the chance of finding him still asleep in bed like I had earlier in the week. Today, my worry was unwarranted. Neil greeted me at the apartment door fully dressed.

“Welcome home, my darling,” he kissed me then guided me into the dining room where the table was set with candles, silver, napkins and wine glasses. The apartment was filled with smells of garlic and rosemary.

“Aw! How lovely! I guess you kept yourself busy today.” As the words slipped out, I berated myself for the innuendo.

“I had to do something! I’m going mad just sitting around. You know, I’m a real grafter. I need to be working. When are they going to call me? Never mind, I won’t spoil our evening. Today was a good day! I went down to the market and picked up some gorgeous veg and stopped into the butcher next to the square. Turns out, the butcher speaks German so that was handy. Wait until you see the steaks! Tonight my dear, you are eating like a Queen!”

“I can’t wait. Let me go wash my hands. I’ll be right there.” I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I shouldn’t doubt him. He’d just given voice to all my worries. We just needed to get him a job. I shook my hands and reached for one of the hand towels neatly folded next to the sink. These little touches were so charming. He kept a great home. For the first time in my life I shared a home with my lover – I needed to learn to relax and enjoy it. What was there to worry about? He would get a job soon. I made plenty of money. I should give him time and just relax and enjoy being taken care of. Folding the hand towel, I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled before joining Neil in at the table. He pulled out my chair and bowed while handing me a white linen napkin.

“For your starter, there’s boeuf consommé,” he said in a terrible French accent.

“Wow! Did you make it?” A clear broth with snips of chive steamed in the white china.

“If you call opening a can ‘making it’, yes!”

The steam from the hot broth smelled nourishing and tasted of beef. With a flourish he replaced my empty bowl with a plate of tiny roasted potatoes, brightly colored green beans with a drizzle of butter and a massive steak that sliced easily and was beautifully pink. I closed my eyes in pleasure as I slowly chewed the tender meat with just the right amount of saltiness.

“I can’t remember the last time I ate such a delicious meal, even when we were in Italy!”

“See! And they say the English can’t cook! You just wait and see the special meals I’ll make for you, my darling!”

We ate and filled each other’s wine glasses until the bottle was finished, then kissed over our empty plates until he lifted me from my chair, and with one hand, left my summery-skirt and blouse strewn across the floor on the way to the bedroom.

 

Some evenings we walked into the center of the city to sit at cafes on the main square. Neil gripped my hand as we sauntered down the narrow sidewalks, pausing to peer into shop windows. Zagreb felt like any normal European town with couples and families milling around the fountains, children chasing pigeons. It was easy to forget that only miles away, Bosnia was imploding. We sometimes rented a car and drove out of the city on weekends. I loved these adventures although Neil’s driving sometimes terrified me.

One Saturday as we hurtled towards the Croatian coast at his usual breakneck speed, the road twisting in an endless arc, up and down hills – trees, rocky cliffs, houses only a blur, I followed every curve of the road as if my visual vigilance might avoid the horrendous accident lurking in my imagination. When did I become such a worrier? The threat of shelling and snipers in Sarajevo never made me as anxious as Neil’s driving. I was sure he would kill us on these picturesque roads. Careening along the narrow route, I tried to believe, as he told me, that he was an excellent driver. The best. This is just the way they drive in Europe, I told myself gripping my seat for dear life.

“Please slow down. You’re making me really nervous!”

“Everyone drives this speed! It’s dangerous if you go any slower, I promise you. Don’t worry, love, you won’t find a better driver than me,” he said, squeezing my knee reassuringly. He lit a cigarette and sucked hard, holding his breath until he’d opened the window to release the cloud of smoke. He knew I hated the smell but I was so nervous I was barely breathing anyway. Only a few months ago, I appreciated Neil’s driving as he flew through Sarajevo and Central Bosnia, the better to dodge bullets. Now on these peaceful roads, it felt insane.

A pattern of light shimmered through the trees onto the pavement. The scent of sea and eucalyptus meant we were almost there. I closed my eyes and turned my head towards my open window, inhaling the reassuring fragrance. I thought about our destination. Maybe the Adriatic Sea would be warm enough to swim in.

Bang! My body lurched to the left hard against the belt, my neck snapping like a whip. With the sickening violence of scraping metal against metal we came to a stop.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?” Neil asked, frantically checking me for injury.

“I think I’m fine. Maybe my neck, but…are you okay? What the hell happened?”

“I didn’t see him coming. I couldn’t even see there was a bloody road there.”

Shaking, I got out of the car. Neil went to the other vehicle. A Croatian couple with a young boy got out of the Mercedes, apparently uninjured and their tank-like old clunker was only minimally damaged. The front-end on the passenger side of our rental car was completely crumpled in against the tire. The family, perhaps thinking they might be held responsible and maybe unaware of Neil’s outrageous speed, left hurriedly, promising to call us a taxi from a nearby village.

Circling the wreckage of our car I exclaimed, “We could have been killed!”

“I know. We are bloody lucky.”

“Lucky? Luck has nothing to do with it, Neil. Your driving was crazy. You were careless with both of our lives. You were going way too fast. You always drive too fast!”

He didn’t respond, his lips drawn into a thin line and his eyes downcast. He unloaded our bags and put them by the side of the road.

“I mean do you have a death wish or something? You may have, but I don’t so please leave me out of it!” In our months together, I had yet to lose my temper but now could not contain myself.

“The taxi’s here,” he said, picking our bags up, hurrying to get away from the site of disaster and my wrath.

The taxi dropped us at a small hotel perched at the edge of the water on a cobblestone street. Neil stayed in the lobby to call the car rental company and deal with the mess he had made while I escaped upstairs, still trembling. Our room glistened with light from the Adriatic Sea, so close to our windows that waves seemed to be crashing against the foundation of the hotel. A stunning spot – but how could I possibly enjoy it now? My neck was already stiff. Suddenly exhausted, I climbed into the bed. Burying my face in the pillows, I curled into a fetal position, my back to the door.

When Neil came into the room and dropped our bags in a corner with a thud, I pretended to be sleeping. Without a word, he climbed in next to me. The bed sagged under his heft and I clung to the mattress edge to avoid sliding towards him. The accident replayed itself in my head, speeding around that blind curve and the crushing sound of metal against metal echoing again and again. Finally, I slept, waking often from disturbing dreams involving speed and fleeing.

The next morning, I woke to slapping waves and momentarily felt happy until I felt my body aches and the accident edged back into my consciousness. I tried to visualize the slow-motion images washing away with the tide. Turning in bed, I looked at Neil’s back. I would make peace. Stroking the hair cut short against his neck, I sidled up behind him and whispered “Come for a walk with me. It’s a gorgeous morning.”

Rolling towards me without opening his eyes, he kissed the air answering,

“I’m going to sleep a little longer. You go. I’ll find you in a bit.”

I drew back from him and yesterday’s anger flooded in the space between us. Throwing the blankets aside, I jumped out of bed.

“Don’t bother. I’ll just walk by myself. You go ahead and keep sleeping,” I said, silently added ‘jerk’ to myself and quickly pulled a pair of jeans on. As usual, he probably wouldn’t get out of bed until almost noon. I let the door slam behind me as I flounced out of the room.

 

The sky and sea were a wash of blue. I jogged towards the water, filling my lungs with briny air. Climbing onto a rock, I sat down and rolled up my jeans, savoring the heat on my calves. Edging down the sloping stone, I slid my feet into the icy water. Not even the Caribbean was as dazzling as the Adriatic Sea with its magical blend of greens and blues. I tried to focus on all this beauty to calm my doubting heart.

Lately, there were things that bugged me about Neil, but sleeping all the time was the worst of it. No matter how I cajoled him, he rarely got up with me in the morning. And it’s not like we were having any great action in bed either or I’d be there with him. As movie star handsome and affectionate as he was, with his sweet way of wrapping his body around mine at night and not letting go, that crazy, intense electricity I always associated with love, was missing. Recently, too many nights he simply kissed me and continued to watch television while I slid between the sheets alone.

I stepped off the rock onto the beach and kicking stones along the way, walked to the end of a sandy stretch to a jetty. I sat against a boulder, the warmth seeping into my sore back. I rubbed my neck, stretched my legs out, closed my eyes and turned my face to the sun. A fishing boat chugging out towards the horizon made the only sound besides the waves.

Yesterday’s crash replayed itself again and again. I opened my eyes and looked at the horizon. It had been an accident. The roads were treacherous – anyone could have crashed on that blind curve. Why did I get so upset with him? I couldn’t have it both ways: Neil’s crazy fearlessness made my last cold months in Bosnia bearable. Shelling or gun battles never daunted him, he protected me, always sleeping nearest the window and covering me with bulletproof vests at the first cracking sound. And he left his exciting job in Sarajevo to follow me, quit his job to be with me – I mean, how many guys would do that? I shouldn’t be upset with him for loving me so much. Funny, warm, generous, affectionate, considerate: Neil had practically all the qualities I wanted in a man. Of course I hated his constant smoking but he never smoked in the apartment and swore he would quit as soon as he was working. We were both stressed by his unemployment and he was a little depressed, that’s all. I picked up and released fistfuls of warm sand.

Besides, if I wanted a family I needed to get started. Neil promised children and continued adventures. Isn’t that exactly what I had wanted? I just needed to adjust to living with someone, to loosen up a bit. I stood up and walked to the water, wiggling my toes, I watched them disappear beneath the stones until the freezing temperature began to hurt. Leaping back onto the beach, I headed back to the hotel. Surely, this new anxiety knotting my gut since we’d lived together was about my own issues and fears and these would probably go away when Neil found a job. I headed back towards the hotel, the sand slipping beneath my feet.

“Good morning beautiful! I’ve been waiting for you,” Neil called to me from a little table set against a sunny wall of the hotel, the waves of the sea breaking only a few feet away.

“Actually, it’s afternoon by now.” I wanted to retract my snide retort as soon it came out, but Neil took no notice. He gallantly waved me into the chair next to him.

“I don’t remember seeing this table here before,” I said.

“I know. I had the guy from the caf’ help me carry it all out. What a waste that they don’t use this spot, I mean, look at the view!” he got up and slid the chair beneath me and kissed the top of my head.

The table wobbled on the cobblestones as I reached for the cup of cappuccino. How many guys would bother to set up this romantic scene at this hour of the day? He never failed to surprise me when I least expected it. I looked at him, wide-awake and smiling at me. Nuzzling my cheek, he whispered, “Let’s enjoy this beautiful day together, shall we?”

“Yes.” I smiled back at him, my worries already washed away with the waves.

It was simple: he loved me and shared my longing to have a baby. He would start working again and everything would be fine.

 

 

Zagreb, Spring 1993

 

In Zagreb, water flowed with the turn of a faucet and lights with a flick of a switch. I’d found an apartment on the opposite side of town from the UNPROFOR headquarters. A chipping stucco building from the outside, inside the heavy doors, the old Austro-Hungarian influence of the city shone with a grand marble staircase and thick beautifully tiled walls. The apartment was well furnished and airy with parquet floors and metal shutters that could be pulled down to keep out the heat of the sun. I never did that, welcoming the light. Returning home in the evening, I spent a few seconds searching for matches to light the candles before remembering, I no longer needed them. The normalcy of everything – people walking without worry of snipers, tulips blooming on the square – seemed unreal and almost wrong. It felt odd for cars and trams to be honking and clanging through the streets. How can life go on like this with war raging so close by?

Random moments triggered my tears. Inhaling the scent of a rose blooming in one of the squares, glimpsing a father holding his young child’s hand as they walked down the street, set off sobs. I sought heat as if to thaw my spirit frozen by Bosnia, crossing to walk on the sunny side of the street, turning my face upwards towards the light. At home, I let the hot water rush over my hands as I washed the dishes and took long, scalding baths that left my skin raw as if I might bake and steam my sadness away.

Mornings I squeezed onto a crowded tram for a 20 minute ride to the UNPROFOR headquarters where I reported to the Civil Affairs and Press Office. My new assignment was to answer phones and file papers. Dull administrative office work that I wasn’t very good at. Making copies of Security Council Resolutions, I inevitably mixed up the pages, feeling like a dunce not even able to manage the copier. I was miserable.

Peter, the personnel director who’d urged me to leave Bosnia, now insisted I speak with an UNPROFOR mental health profession. Peacekeeping operations are supported by nations around the world and for the last few years of UNPROFOR, the United States was responsible for medical care of troops and staff. I would be seeing a MASH shrink. I went into the first meeting with trepidation, uncomfortable with the idea of a uniformed American officer probing my feelings.

His office was in a building I’d never been to in the far corner of the UNPROFOR grounds. A man in his 50s in military uniform stepped from behind a massive wooden desk to greet me. I sat awkwardly in the vinyl-covered chair across from him, and momentarily felt like I was in the Principal’s office but he soon put me at ease.

“Call me Ken. What part of the States are you from?”

“New York. I was working at headquarters for 4 years before joining UNPROFOR last June. It’s been about a year now.”

“So you’ve seen some rough stuff?”

That’s all it took for me to dissolve into tears. He leaned across the desk with a box of tissues – Kleenex – not the cheap local stuff. I took two and they were soon soaked. I told him about the incidents in Kiseljak between sobs.

“Clearly you’re experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“Really? How could that be? Compared to the experiences of many of my colleagues, not to mention the victims in this war, my life has been sheltered.”

“Look, you’ve witnessed bullying, terrorizing and have been witness to the aftermath of violence regularly.”

“I guess… there was that woman who lay for days by the road on the way to the airport. She looked about my age. It’s like she just was part of the apocalyptic landscape until someone finally ventured into that no-man’s land to retrieve Her. I thought about her there stiff from cold and death – who was missing her? Where was she trying to get? What right do I have to be experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder? We drove right by, safe in our fancy armored car!”

“Well, first of all, how many hours are you working? Do you take down time?”

“Seven days a week and average of 10 hours a day, sometimes more. But that comes with the territory of being on mission, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s expected of us.”

“Well, in the end I think we’re seeing that the hours you spent at your job and your commitment to your boss goes above and beyond and is not healthy for you. That’s also what might be happening here. Burnout.”

“But since meeting Neil, I’ve been much happier – although also more resentful of how little time we have together. But what am I expecting – a normal life here? I feel like that’s wrong. I mean I knew, more or less, what I was signing up for. Lately I’ve felt so disheartened but how little I can do.”

“Well, I suggest you try to be conscious of setting boundaries.”

He pushed his glasses onto the top of his head as he looked across the desk at me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“By boundaries? You don’t seem to draw limits in your relationships, at least certainly not with your boss. What about your boyfriend? So far limits have been set for you by circumstance but will you be able to be clear with him about what you need and say ‘no’ when you need to? Or will you give, give and give until you make yourself sick? I think you’re experiencing the results of doing that now.”

“I’ll have to think about that. But as for Neil – he’s the one who takes care of me,” I answered, thinking about how he spoiled me and made me feel so safe when we were together in Bosnia.

“Good, good, that’s fine. I’m only saying it’s something to be aware of in the future.”

 

I nodded to the guards at the compound gate and turned left to the street where the tramline ran so perilously close to the sidewalk, I sometimes imagined myself twisting an ankle and falling off the curb onto the tracks as the tram approached. Did that mean I had a death wish? My session with Ken had me second-guessing myself. I’d never thought of myself as a pushover as he seemed to suggest. I had a good work ethic so of course I never said no to Victor about working when he asked me to work on weekends or stay late to work on a report. He was my boss, I liked and respected him and for most of our time together, I was genuinely compelled by the work. It felt important. This was what everyone did here in this crazy war-world. We did whatever we needed to do.

But to Ken’s point, could I recognize and speak up when enough-was-enough, or did I have to fall apart? Did this relate to my relationship with Neil? I didn’t feel like it. He provided me with joy in this bleak world. Generous and warm, he put me at ease, made me feel loved – not like I needed boundaries. In fact, lately I’d thought it was about time to let down my guard when it came to love, about time to risk in a relationship like I was risking in this war zone. Neil and I would be fine: we loved each other. From down the block, I heard the rumble of a tram approaching, stepped up my pace to reach the nearby stop, and climbed on.

 

The tally of romantic liaisons I’d had in my life made me cringe, mostly short-lived episodes, high on drama and low on commitment. I’d never taken the plunge of living with someone while even the most unconventional of my high school and college friends were now married and having children. I never made that kind of connection with someone until now. At 34, it was about time. I couldn’t wait for Neil to join me in Zagreb.

 

Gradually, I grew used to the relative normality of my life. The war in Croatia had yet to spread beyond an occasional skirmish in the UN protected areas, circumstantially far away from this cosmopolitan, charming city. Walking freely through the streets, wandering the market, eating good food, I began to relax. Sometimes I met up after work with others from the Civil Affairs office. We spent hours at restaurants where whole lambs turned slowly over an open flame and shared chunks of roasted meat and grilled trout, their hollow eyes staring up from the plate. We drank multiple bottles of wine. Tipsy, I returned to my apartment to watch the non-stop news, following reports of battles only miles away across the hills. My relief at being in a warm, lit room was pierced by pangs of guilt.

Every Friday, Neil caught a flight up from Sarajevo. We went to fancy restaurants where he flirted with waitresses and befriended waiters to ensure the best service and because he couldn’t resist. After too many glasses of wine, we stumbled home to the flat and fell into bed. Hungrily, we rediscovered each other. Curled against his beating heart, I faded into sleep. On Sunday, he’d return to Sarajevo. These interludes brightened my weeks, but it became harder and harder for Neil to leave.

One Sunday evening, hours after we’d kissed each other goodbye, I sat reading in the front room. I imagined Neil in the Holiday Inn watching Star Trek or playing poker with the journalists, when the buzzer rang. I looked out the window and there he was, grinning up at me.

“What are you doing here?” I said, surprised at the panic in my voice. I froze at the sight of him on the sidewalk, his bags beside him. Why was he back? What happened? Turning away from the window, I pressed my back against the wall as if dodging a sniper. This was it. He was really moving in. I hesitated before leaning back out the window and calling down to him, hoping that I sounded excited, “Just a minute, I’ll throw you the key!” With a flourish, he caught the key ring. I opened the apartment door and listened as he shifted all his bags into the entrance hall, the heavy apartment building door banging shut, his footsteps on the wide marble stairs as he climbed the two flights.

He stepped across the landing, dropped the bags, spread his arms wide and said, “I’m back!” in his Jack Nicholson Shining imitation. He grabbed me, kissing me so hard on the lips I had no chance to respond.

“I know I probably should have warned you, but I decided so quickly. I got down to Sarajevo and it was so bloody depressing. I’ve had enough. So I picked up all my stuff from the hotel, caught a lift to the airport and here I am!” he explained while piling his bags inside the door.

“So you quit? Just like that?” I asked, the pinch in my stomach getting tighter.

“I left Philippe a note.”

“You didn’t talk to him? You left your boss a note? Are you sure that was the best way to do things?”

“Well, the UNPROFOR personnel office said there will definitely be a job for me so I figured why be away from my darling any longer? Right? I’m dying for a bath. You get so filthy on those planes and today I got a double dose, didn’t I?” He said proudly.

I went into the bathroom to run the water. Why was I shocked? Only weeks earlier I also left Bosnia abruptly. Except my boss told me to leave. I never would have quit my job without some kind of notice. It felt irresponsible and foolhardy. My stomach was in knots. Was this how he operated? It was too late. He was here and it was time to begin our life together and ultimately, to start a family. This was the dream I’d had and it was happening starting now. The water turned hot. I pushed the rubber stop into the drain. Sitting on the edge, I watched the tub fill.

 

 

 

Italy and Zagreb – Spring 1993

 

A day later I boarded a cargo plane from Sarajevo to Ancona, Italy and from there took a taxi to the resort town of Senegalia, populated in this off-season by relief and UN workers on leave. The hotels facing the beach were shuttered except for a bright blue building with doors propped open as if they were under-construction. I slipped in past the plywood into a lobby with sheet-covered furniture cordoned off like a crime scene. The owners, a smartly dressed middle-aged couple, greeted me warmly and explained in perfect English that they were painting for the upcoming season but I was welcome to stay in one of the rooms they’d already finished. The strange desolation suited me. Still feeling the vibrations of the military plane, I followed a maid to an airy room that smelled of fresh paint.

 

Less than 48 hours earlier I’d stood alone in my sandbagged office dialing the number for the head of personnel for UNPROFOR. We’d spoken only the week before about openings in the mission area, someplace where Neil and I might be sent together. He had seemed irritated with me for badgering him and I didn’t blame him. He had other things to worry about besides keeping lovers together.

“Peter? It’s Tricia calling from Kiseljak.” Merely saying the name of this town I broke down before composing myself together enough to launch into a rant.

“Listen, Peter, I can handle hardships like living without water and electricity, I can handle the shelling and snipers, but I can’t take being a silent witness to the ugly violence happening here. It’s horrible and we are doing nothing!” I hyperventilated between sobs.

“Okay Tricia. Tricia, pack your things and catch the next plane to Zagreb. Okay? Don’t worry about what’s next, for now I want you to leave immediately. Does Victor know?”

“Yes, he told me to call you.” I blew my nose into my soggy tissue.

“Good. Leave today, is that clear?” He sounded worried.

Sobbing my acknowledgement, I hung up the phone before putting my head on the desk to weep some more. I felt defeated and ashamed. And where would I go from here? I needed to tell Neil I was leaving without him. I took a few calming breaths and dialed the number to the ICRC office, hoping the phone lines to Sarajevo would be open. Neil picked up.

“Good morning sunshine!”

“Oh Neil!” I started crying again.

“What? What’s happened? What’s wrong sweetheart?”

“I’m sorry. I’m a wreck! I’ve got to get out of here. I called Peter and he said to pack up and go. I’m leaving Kiseljak today.”

“Leaving? Where to? What happened? Are you okay, darling?”

“Yes. Well, no. I think I’m having a little bit of a nervous breakdown. Last night these motherfuckers took a guy down the street away from his family. It was so horrible to watch. I watched and did nothing.”

I described the miserable scene I’d witnessed that I knew was being repeated in villages, towns and cities across Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia along with rape, torture and murder, minutes from where I lived. What house or factory did we pass every day that hid these crimes? Knowing how close and how impotent I was, we were, became unbearable to me, as was my silence. I was here under false pretense. I could save no one except myself.

“Come to Sarajevo. I’ll make you feel better. And there’s a party at the hotel tonight for one of the journalists. Then you can catch a flight to Ancona and I’ll meet you there for the weekend.”

“Okay. I do want to see you. I’ll go home and pack up and meet you at the Holiday Inn today.”

Sarajevo, a city relentlessly under siege as a destination to escape to – how bizarre. I went back to my apartment and within two hours had fled Kiseljak.

 

And here I was in Italy. I had escaped. I opened the window and a chiffon white curtain billowed around me on a gust of humid, salty air. I looked out at the empty beach, a stretch of sand leading to the shifting horizon of waves, barely audible. I breathed deeply and leaving the window open, pulled off my grimy clothes and stepped into the shower. As the hot water beat down on me, I began to bawl. Scrubbing my body roughly with a soapy washcloth as if I were filthy, trying to scrape my guilt and grief away. Wiping the steam from the mirror, I looked back at my swollen face. My mouth a grim line, blue-eyes rimmed red, skin pasty. I pulled a sweatshirt over a t-shirt and jeans and clutching my journal and book to my chest, went out to the beach.

I tried to focus on the pages of my book, but could not stop staring across the glistening Adriatic towards the madness I had left. With every breath, I tried to release the twisted knots inside of me. I closed my eyes but the sun turned my lids into disconcerting bloody red kaleidoscopes.

When my hunger grew unbearable, I found a restaurant. Pulling my hood up and wrapping a scarf around my neck, I sat outside in the wind with a bowl of pasta and espresso, grateful to be able to relieve at least the void in my stomach.

As dark descended, I missed Neil. Alone between the crisp, white sheets, I longed for his big arms to pull me tightly against his chest. Hugging a pillow, I listened for the sounds of tanks and shooting and heard only the waves of the Adriatic.

 

The next day I fell asleep on the deserted beach, my hands and feet dug into the hot sand, comforted by the sound of water gently hitting the shoreline.

“Hello my sweet. Did you miss me?” I opened my eyes to Neil’s heavy boots beside me. Dropping his pack he flopped down and pulled me towards him for a kiss.

“How did you find me?”

We’d agreed to meet in Senegalia but had made no plans beyond that.

“Easy. There aren’t too many places open and I went in to every one that was and asked if there was a ‘bella Americana’ there. They told me at the front desk that I’d find you out here. Looks like a nice hotel.” Neil pulled off his shirt and lay back on the sand sighing with pleasure.

I watched him surrender to the sun and felt a flicker of disappointment. I looked at his profile as he settled back, head propped on his backpack, his eyebrows spiking crazily against the cloudless sky. Why were we not scrambling across the street to the hotel to rip each other’s clothes off? I felt so numb, I wasn’t inclined myself but I hoped he might save me from this paralyzing funk. I tried to explain myself to him.

“It’s lovely, but I can’t shake off this terrible feeling. I’ve been looking across the water and all I can think of are the hideous things people are doing to each other – right over there!” I gestured towards the water. “Entire villages destroyed. No electricity, no water, not enough food. And here we are in this beautiful place less than an hour away and there is no sign of any of it. Everything is normal. It’s surreal to me that we’re so close to such insanity. I can’t wrap my head around it. I feel angry, guilty and …so sad!” I almost started blubbering again.

“Well, let’s enjoy it while we can! And anyway, you’ll be based in Zagreb now and soon, so will I. From now on, our life will be better,” he said without opening his eyes.

“Yes, our lives will. But I feel like it’s wrong for me to be able to escape while so many innocent people are stuck there.”

“I know, it is terrible,” he mumbled sleepily, squeezing my hand. I could sense he was getting annoyed by my dismal mood and had no idea how to talk me out of it. Besides, he was here for a holiday and didn’t want me ruining it. He sat up.

“Let’s go to the hotel so I can drop my stuff off. I’m parched and dying for a good cup of coffee and some decent Italian food.”

We gathered our things and headed across the sand to the ghostly hotel where we were the only guests.

For the next few days, we ate and drank too much, let our skin turn an angry red in the sun and slept past noon. I seemed to have lost the ability to feel pleasure. I embraced the excess hoping to feel something besides the twisting in my stomach and weight on my chest. At meals, I sometimes cried over my pasta. After two days of lying in the sun, Neil’s touch on my livid skin became unbearable. Making love hurt but we did it anyway.

Neil seemed relieved when it was time to leave, happy to be heading back to his adrenaline packed life in Sarajevo. He seemed to feel purposeful and thrived on the excitement, the constant danger whereas I felt exhausted and defeated by it, like I was giving up. We sat side by side on a roaring cargo plane, this time, holding hands. The Italian cargo plane was loaded full of relief supplies so we had to prop our feet on the boxes piled high and wrapped with heavy rope netting. Flying away from Ancona airport, Neil spotted the beach where we’d been hours before – and in less than an hour, we were over the snowbound mountains of Bosnia. I could feel his excitement at being back to the heart of the war while I was relieved to be moving on to Zagreb.

 

 

Bosnia and Croatia – Spring 1993

 

My solitary nights in Kiseljak became harder to bear after Italy. Winter dragged on into what should have been spring and for days on end my apartment remained without heat, electricity or water, the phone line – dead. I crawled into bed early for warmth and read by candlelight, falling asleep as a way to pass time. As I shivered between the ice-cold sheets I craved the reassuring warmth of Neil’s body beside me, the comfort of his voice. During days when the sun made a rare appearance over the mountains I felt the promise of spring, but nights remained long and frozen. Listening to the terrifying grumble of tanks rolling through the darkness, I wondered what the hell I was doing here alone in this terrible place? How was I any kind of “peacekeeper”? What made me think pushing a pen at my desk could change anything for the people here? The expectation I should at least try was set in my childhood.

 

Swept along in a sea of towering adults protesting the Vietnam War, I gripped my father’s soft, papery hand with sweaty fingers. I hoped he might notice my fear, and as if willing him to look at me, I locked my eyes on his profile afraid I’d otherwise be lost in this shouting crowd. I dared not tell him I was afraid. I was 7. My English teacher parents often brought us kids to marches and peace rallies. Personally and emotionally, they followed the up-tight Irish-Catholic script of the 1950s, getting married at twenty and producing four children within 5 years. But socially and politically, they were proudly liberal and would join rather than cross, a picket line. Grievances at home were muted and mostly involved slamming doors and long angry silences, while out in the world we were encouraged to speak up against social injustice.

We lived in a non-descript apartment building in the nicer part of the Bronx. My brothers squeezed into one tiny bedroom, my older sister and I shared another. When we wanted to speak at the table, we raised our hands to be recognized by either of our teacher-parents. While shoveling forks of pork-chops and potatoes into my mouth with one hand, my left hand would be stretched high, waiting my turn to be recognized. After dinner, we watched the news – gunfire and dead soldiers in black and white images of war. Growing up with a war felt natural, and it was understood that I should speak up against it, that I should do something.

Idealism ran through my veins and anti Vietnam War protests were my training ground. But this was the real thing and I was losing heart. Just as I hoped my distant father might lift me up above the terrifying anti-war crowd and hold me tight, I wished for Neil to sweep me away from the darkness of this war. And he seemed ready to step into that role.

 

My flat in Kiseljak sat on the main road of a predominantly Croat populated town in the violent patchwork of Central Bosnia. I heard everything. Nights, I hid under a ridiculous number of blankets as much to muffle the drunken shouting and yelling of local soldiers in the street as to keep warm. I knew I’d be reading military reports at work of Moslem families being bullied from their homes, men taken away in the night. That is, if anybody paid attention. I wasn’t alone in listening-but-doing-nothing about the evil soundtrack of those sleepless hours, was I? What about my neighbors, their neighbors? These people had lived side-by-side for generations and now, under the veil of darkness, families who’d always lived together were forced from their homes. The Croats were ethnically cleansing the town of their Moslem neighbors right on the doorstep of the UN base, supposedly here to protect them.

Man’s inhumanity to man being played out so close around me, clouded my excitement of my new love. Instead, an icy fear and anger clutched at my throat, tightening with every night. Years later I remain haunted by that Bosnian-Croat town – the dark secrets and nights of violence spilling into daylight. Of course a love born in such a place harbored grim secrets.

On a March morning I stood on the corner waiting to cross the road to headquarters. Closing my eyes to soak up the feeble rays of morning sun, my feet cold in dirty slush, the momentary pleasure disappeared with the sound of yelling and commotion in front of the UN gate. A Danish soldier was yelling at three men wearing green uniforms who were yanking a man in ill-fitting jeans, a jacket to thin for the frigid weather, and unkempt hair, out of a beat-up black Zastava. Laughing, they began punching him.

“Stop! Stop it!” The UN soldier yelled in English. The Dane waved his gun but did not leave the UN HQ entrance security booth, steps away from the fracas. A group of villagers gathered, joining me to watch the violence. Others hurried away. I stood, frozen liquid seeping through my boots, unable to continue out of the dirty snow drift to cross the street, not wanting to draw closer to the violence. Nor did I want to turn away. Where would I go? There was no one to call from my empty flat, even if the phone worked. No calling ‘911’, no police. The perpetrators wore uniforms.

I told myself to scream, ‘Leave him alone!’ but my protest stuck in my throat. I remained silent. The thugs ignored the young soldier in the blue helmet whose face crumpled in horror as he yelled from the UN booth, “Fucking, stop it!” More Danish soldiers joined the guard, now all of them yelling from the gate. The international soldiers clutched the sidearm to only be used in self-defense, screaming first in Danish then in English, their voices cracking in the cold air. The thugs did not even glance up, instead laughing, enjoying the audience as they continued to hit and kick the man in the snow.

Finally, they shoved their now-bloodied victim off onto the shoulder of the road and squeezed into his car. Flooring the gas, they took off with smoke belching out of tailpipe leaving a gray cloud hovering behind as the car disappeared. The man lay in a bank of snow, his limbs at strange angles. Was he dead? I should help him, but what could I do? It was as if my feet were nailed on this spot. For what seemed forever, he remained completely still. Finally, he stirred, his face a bloody mask. Pulling himself out of the snow, he held his head up high and limped away from us silent witnesses, following the smoke of his stolen car.

The smear of blood would remain visible until the snow melted. The man, at least for now, had his life but his car and dignity had been stolen in broad daylight in front of the United Nations and me.

I willed myself to cross the street, flashed my ID and passed through the gate, gaze down. The Danish guard who usually greeted me with a jolly good morning, avoided eye contact, but I felt our shared shame of the United Nations – or for that matter – the human race. My eyes blurry, I stumbled down the stairwell to my office, every bone in my body heavy. I wanted to sleep. It was the fastest escape I could think of from this terrible place. This was a minor incident especially compared to what was happening elsewhere, everyday. I knew that. Accusations that the United Nations in Bosnia was doing nothing here were true. I had done nothing. Not even raised my voice.

 

I began to dread my basement office – the orange room with taped up windows and a wall of sandbags to absorb shattered glass. Roundtrip rides into Sarajevo where I might see Neil but still be able to get back to Kiseljak for work the next day, were not always easy to find. I spent hours pushing papers in the musty cell, returning home alone to my flat. I had been on this mission for more than 9 months. The initial hope and idealism I felt in the beginning was now hard to muster.

 

For the first six months I was based with Victor in Knin, the self-proclaimed capital of the Serbs in what was officially Croatia. Every day felt like we were on a ‘mission’ as we drove around the stark but gorgeous landscape to meet with local leaders from opposite sides, trying village-by-village to build peace. Once old friends, even relatives, sometimes enough middle ground could be found to allow for check-point meetings, prisoner, or sadder – body exchanges. But since being posted to this isolated town in Bosnia, the futility and my feeling of impotence had become depressing. And now in love, I began resenting the 14-hour -7-day week requirement. Neil had applied for a job with the UN so we might be posted somewhere together. I would request to be sent wherever he went and a bit guiltily, we hoped it would be in a place like Split, one of the cushier-posts with views of the Adriatic Sea.

Most mornings I woke early enough to join the Danes and other UN staff for breakfast at the base – a smorgasbord of pickled fish and dark breads, cereal and coffee. But lately I slept fitfully and as a result, found it harder to pull myself out of bed in time. Those days, I stopped into a bakery near my flat and picked up a cheese burek for breakfast. I liked this shop because the family, two women who looked to be mother and daughter, always greeted me warmly – a rare thing in this cold town. “Dober dan! Kako ste?” We asked after each other, our conversation limited to greetings and the weather. I nodded as the younger woman chatted to me as if I understood. She wore her dark hair pulled away from her ruddy face, a smock apron tied neatly around her waist. Sometimes a little girl was there too. “Moja kci.” The middle-aged woman said proudly holding her dark haired daughter’s little shoulders, beaming proudly. A flowery curtain was usually drawn across the back of the shop but on a recent morning, it was open enough for me to glimpse a man who looked in his thirties with dark curly hair, sitting at a table. At first he peered back at me nervously, his eyes haunted as he flipped worry beads with one hand and clutched a little coffee cup in the other. I smiled and waved at him and his face brightened as he flashed a smile of crooked teeth and nodded.

A few nights after the assault and theft outside of headquarters, I woke to yelling. My heart in my throat, I peered out from behind the bedroom curtains. The noise was coming from about five buildings down the street from me. Four men in uniforms standing between a Yugo and the bakery entrance were restraining a man dressed in a t-shirt and sweatpants. The mother and her young girl ran out of the building, weeping and clutching at the man I’d seen behind the curtain. He was being dragged to the car.

“Stanite! Molim vas, stanite!” Stop! Please stop! The woman begged. “Pustite ga, molim vas. To je moj muz molim. Moja muz!” My husband!

“Tata! Taataa!” the little girl wailed.

There was no other movement on the street but I knew others were probably watching this terrible drama from behind their dark windows. The man from the bakery was shoved into the back of the Yugo by one of the men in uniform, who then hit him with the butt of his gun. His family screamed and wailed as the soldiers drove off with their husband and father. The daughter held onto her mother as she collapsed in the road, her cries echoing through the street. The grandmother came out and led the two back inside. I stared at the deserted street.

Bile filled my mouth. I crawled back to my bed as if I might be seen, as if they might come for me next. Shaking under my covers, I wondered where they would take him, what they would do to him? What had he done? I suspect he was one of the remaining Moslems in this nationalistic Croat town. I remembered the hunted look I’d seen on his face a few mornings before.

Teeth rattling, I wept into my pillow until the first signs of light. How could these neighbors so shamelessly inflict violence on each other? What was I doing here? My presence was a farce. I needed to leave.

I walked the short distance to the UN base. The bakery remained shuttered. The normalcy of everything in daylight was disconcerting. And a lie: this place was not normal – it was wicked. I searched the faces of the villagers. The scowling lady selling candy and sundries from a corner shop, the grizzled man leaning on cane with a cat by his side, the mother with a young child on her hip. As I passed them on my short walk to the UN base, I wondered how they could let this happen around them every day and night? Were the men in uniform their sons, their husbands? Once, before this war, maybe the man in the bakery had been their friend. Certainly his daughter played with their children or grandchildren? I hated them but even more, I hated myself. Fear and secrecy permeated every corner and I too was afraid.

Victor was at his desk when I got to the office. I barely stepped through the door before sobbing and recounting last night’s drama.

“Oh the creeps! They are creeps! The bastards. I’m so sorry, Treesha,” Victor exclaimed, putting an arm around my shoulder he turned me to look me in the eye, hands on both my shoulders. “Call Zagreb. You have had enough. They’ll give you a post another post. I don’t want you to leave but I understand. It’s time for you. Listen, I need to go to my morning meeting with the Chief of Staff but call – call personnel and tell them you need to go. Tell them that I said so. Everything will be okay.”

Grabbing a pen and pad of paper for his meeting, he gave me a hug and hurried out the door.

I agreed. I’d had enough. I wanted to get out of here before witnessing worse and more hideous crimes. Before I lost my soul.

Bosnia and Italy, February – March 1993

 

Less than a month into our relationship, we were having a rare evening telephone call. Lines between Sarajevo and Kiseljak were usually down, communication another casualty of war. Huddled by the fireplace with the receiver balanced between my shoulder and ear, I poked a glowing log until it flared in an attempt to get some heat into my frigid flat.

“So when are we going to get married?” he asked nonchalantly.

I responded to Neil with a nervous giggle. I hadn’t thought about getting married. The idea of it almost embarrassed me. I’d never harbored fantasies of wedding.

 

The dysfunctional family I grew up in provided me with no blueprints for love. My parents always seemed vaguely annoyed with each other although it was mostly my father with my mother who also was perpetually irritated by us kids. It should not have surprised me the day my father announced he was moving out. Between alarming sobs he explained he wanted to live alone for the first time in his life at 40 something, to pursue his dream of writing a book. A lie – of course it was another woman. My three siblings were at college. My mother had left town instructing my father to deliver the news to me and then move out. Sitting cross-legged on the scratchy love seat next to the wingback chair where he held his head in his hands, I awkwardly offered my father comfort, reassuring him that I understood and it was okay. I was seventeen.

Wiping his face he thanked me, patted my leg and began packing, first removing the knock-off Van Gogh prints from the walls and packing up books I’d never identified as ‘his’. After loading up the Chevy Vega, he drove away forever. My remaining months of high school in the stripped-down split-level were excruciating. Glass of booze-soaked tinkling ice always in her hand, my mother wept bitterly and confessed her fear of growing old alone. To my teenage narcissistic self this seemed an awful reason to stay in what I perceived as a loveless marriage. I vowed I would never to be like her – fearing solitude.

But now in my third decade, I didn’t want to be alone either.

 

I reached for another log, the receiver wedged between my neck and ear as I placed it in the fire.

“I’m serious. I want to get married and have a baby and so do you, so when are we going to do this?” Neil asked.

“Aren’t proposals supposed to be done in person? Shouldn’t you be on your knee?” I teased.

“I will, I promise. Darling, get ready for a lifetime of romance! You’ve never met such a romantic guy as me!”

Neil’s promise of commitment was a first for me with my history of flakey boyfriends. His open determination to be with me both flattered and terrified me. I deflected his casual proposals with jokes, never giving him a straight response, acting as if he were only playing a game. But he was serious. He wanted a wedding. Could I see myself marrying him? Did I want to commit to a lifetime with this man? Was he the father I imagined for my children? Our lives in Bosnia were surreal and sometimes I felt like we were playing roles in a movie – Neil’s movie.

I had doubts. Although affectionate and warm, he avoided intimate communication. The focus of our connection was fun. We never gazed into each other’s eyes. We never had heart-to-heart talks about our deepest dreams, hopes and never – our fears. What I knew of his past was a collection of mostly amusing anecdotes. Nor did he ask enquiring questions of me. How much did we know each other? Was my perception of our relationship being skewed by this dangerous place so full of sadness? He brightened my days and made me feel safe.

In his lumpy bed at the Holiday Inn, flak jackets on the floor beside us just in case of a nighttime mortar attack, Neil pulled me close, muffling the gunfire blasts with his kisses and holding me in what he called ‘spoony-style’ as we watched fuzzy episodes of Star Trek. Sounds of battles and my doubts became muffled behind heavy blackout curtains, as we got lost in each other’s arms.

Neil was always surprising me. When long days in the office and the relentless misery of war and winter felt overwhelming, he appeared bearing gifts. I was as if he knew I needed cheering up. Snow lay thick on the ground the day he showed up with a bouquet of flowers he’d found god-knows-where in shattered Sarajevo. Love letters full of longing and sweetness were delivered by Danish transport soldiers who drove the armored personnel carriers between Kiseljak and Sarajevo. Our lines of communication were limited so he enlisted the help of a cast of characters to pass along his messages of affection including The New York Times reporter, Pulitzer Prize winner for that year, John Burns who said as he passed me in the hallway, “Neil sends his love!” He religiously tried the telephones and when they worked, we talked for hours. He was right: I had never known such a romantic guy so determined to convince me I was loved.

We planned weekend get-away to Italy for the end of March. From Kiseljak we would drive through the mountain roads to Split and catch the ferry across the Adriatic. On the morning of our departure, we woke to a blizzard. The mountain passes of central Bosnia were treacherous at the best of times, but Neil was undeterred. We loaded our bags into a UN Land Cruiser and headed into a wall of white for what should have been a few hours drive.

The car slipped at every turn. Sometimes the road completely disappeared in drifts as we climbed up and down mountains. Entire convoys of trucks were stalled on the icy roads and Neil barreled past them, protectively reaching his long arm across my chest as he ploughed through drifts. Wildly shifting gears, he made the car leap over flooded roads. He was fearless – or maybe reckless – but I was in the flush of new love and thought it fantastic. We were escaping! As darkness closed in on the mountains, we stopped at a village where the ICRC had an office and an extra bed. Squeezing onto a narrow mattress, we held each other tightly, quietly making love before collapsing into sleep. The next day was clear and sunny and the roads more manageable. We arrived to the snow-free, coastal town of Split in time to board the ferry.

In Italy, we packed our flak jackets and helmets into the trunk of a tiny Fiat rental. In the 1980s, Neil toured through Italy with the English group Spandau Ballet and he remembered these roads. Stopping at highway rest stops, we savored cappuccinos with pastries and in contrast to the deprived world we’d left little more than an hour ago, marveled at the treat-packed shelves – an infinite choice of coffee, cigarettes, beautiful breads and candies. In Rome, Neil sped through the narrow streets to a hotel near the Spanish steps.

“You’re going to love this place. We used to stay here with Spandau and they treated us like royalty. Bring your flak jacket and helmet – they’ll help to get us a great room.”

Our bags flung over his shoulder, he scooted ahead. I followed, clutching my purse, flak jacket and helmet. Never would I have ventured into such a posh hotel on my own. Covered from the dust of our travels, I followed Neil past the doorman and ritzy entrance pretending not to be intimidated by the fanciness of the place. He strode up to the front desk.

“Buon giorno,” he greeted the scowling man. “I wonder if you could help us? We work in Sarajevo and have been living without water or electricity for months and we’d like to book a room for a few days to recover. What have you got for us?”

“How many nights do you wish to stay sir?”

“At least two. And can you give us something special? You know, I used to come to your beautiful hotel years ago when I worked with the bands. Maybe you remember? Spandau Ballet?”

The man listened politely but registered no reaction, peering up at Neil over his tortoise shell glasses.

“There was a fantastic room with a balcony that had incredible views of your beautiful Roma. Any chance you could let us have that room, mate? At a reasonable price, por favore, signore?”

Simultaneously embarrassed and impressed, I stood back and watched Neil do his thing. I’d never been any good at bargaining and certainly not in a place like this. By myself, I would have sought out a tiny room in a crumbling pensione on the outskirts of the city. Neil was undaunted by this expensive hotel or snobby man. He believed we belonged here and his charm and confidence worked. Finally, the man seemed amused by their exchange and handed Neil a ring with a large, old-fashioned key on it.

“Thanks mate, or rather: Grazie signore! Come on darling, I’m taking you to the most beautiful room you’ve ever seen,” He bellowed so anyone in the hushed lobby might hear.

We followed the bellhop to a tiny elevator that took us to the penthouse suite. The room was elegantly furnished, the bed bursting with pillows and stunning views even from the bathroom window. We stepped out onto the terrace.

“There! The Colosseum is over there – isn’t this beautiful?” Neil grabbed me by the waist and pulling me against his chest he rested his chin on the top of my head as we looked out across the Roman skyline together.

“Wow. It’s hard to believe that a few hours ago we were in Bosnia and now we’re here,” I whispered.

“Isn’t it amazing. I knew you’d love this.” Neil squeezed me. “Get ready for a fantastic weekend! There’s a restaurant I know near the Trevi fountain where I’ll take you to dinner and after, we can make our three wishes.”

Cuddled on Neil’s lap, we paused kissing only to sip wine. I could not imagine what else to wish for. In Rome with this handsome, confidant, affectionate adventurous man who loved me and wanted babies completed my fantasy.

Even the weather was perfect, the air fresh and balmy enough for us to lounge in bathrobes. After a long hot bubble bath together, we took turns posing for goofy pictures in the hotel’s plush robes worn beneath our flak jackets and helmets against the panoramic landscape. As the sun went down over the city, I relaxed into the luxury. Only an hour’s flight away, people were suffering but we were in love and we were in Rome! Why shouldn’t we treat ourselves? I pushed guilty thoughts of suffering in Bosnia out of my head and the weekend flew.

 

We stayed until the last possible hour before boarding a sleeper train that hurtled us through darkness back to Croatia. The plan was for Neil to pick up an armored car from the Zagreb ICRC office so we could drive to Sarajevo together. Driving seemed a better idea than counting on the unreliable United Nations ‘Maybe Airlines’. Heavy fighting around Sarajevo meant the airport might stay closed for days.

The next morning, groggy from a night of travel, I sat and read in the ICRC Zagreb office while Neil prepared what he needed. Charging from room to room, he left a wake of laughter. But when he discovered things were not in order he became uncharacteristically serious.

“The Land Rover they sent from England doesn’t have any bloody spare tires. There’s no way we’d find them in Sarajevo and I refuse to make the drive without a spare. Let’s go get something to eat while they work on this. I’m starving!”

“Okay, but I’m kind of anxious – I know Victor is expecting me. Maybe I should go ahead and try and fly to Split on my own. I could probably get a ride back from there.”

I had already taken a longer weekend than usual and felt like the need to get back to work. I know Victor counted on me. Neil’s face fell.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t drive without the spare. If anything happened we’d be buggered. And these wankers don’t have a clue about what their doing. I keep hounding them to call different garages to find the right tires but they take so bloody long, it’s really winding me up.”

“That’s okay,” I answered weakly. “Can I use the phone here to see if I can catch a flight?”

Neil sprang out of his chair.

“Let’s go. I’m going to go find the bloody thing myself. Vesna darling, give me some Deutsche Marks. Those guys in procurement are useless.”

Vesna, manning the desk in the front office, peeled off some bills and had Neil sign multiple documents of receipt.

“Bloody hell! You’d think I was signing out the Queen’s jewels here,” he said and Vesna tittered.

“Come on sweetheart. Let’s go show them how this is done.” Taking my hand, he led me to where the fancy new armored Land Rover was parked. With racks atop the roof and the steering wheel on the opposite side it felt like we should be heading off to safari, not driving through the streets of Zagreb. Neil pulled into every petrol station and auto repair shop and with a mix of Croatian, German, English words and hand signs, asked for the tires to no avail. After about an hour, we headed back to the ICRC office when Neil stepped on the gas to speed through a changing light, maneuvering the heavy Rover past beat-up Yugo’s and Zastavas to another Land Rover ahead of us in the farthest of four lanes of traffic.

“Hold on tight!” he yelled, as always, putting his arm in front of my body protectively. “Hey, molim!” The windows on the armored car could not be rolled down so Neil had opened the door as he pulled up alongside the other truck from his English, left-sided driver seat. The driver looked at him wide-eyed.

“Hey mate! I’ll give you Deutsche Marks for your spares! Dobro?” Neil had struck gold: tires were piled on the roof. He motioned to a side street and within minutes, Neil made a quick transaction through a cloud of shared cigarette smoke and his usual creative cobbling together of languages. Watching him from the warmth of the car, something shifted inside of me as if my future had clicked into place. I would do this! Life with this man would never be dull. I felt giddy with my new clarity, a decision: I want to be with Neil. I do want to share his life, be in on his capers. As we’d done over these past few days, I wanted to live bravely, travel the dangerous roads ending up in either fancy hotels or share a narrow cot in the middle of nowhere – it wouldn’t matter. Together, we’d find joy in any situation and out of this joy, make our family. Neil’s indefatigable quest for tires inspired me. Like him, I never wanted to be defeated by my circumstances.

“What do you think of that? That’s how you get things done now, eh?” he said grinning.

I laughed, “You’re incredible! I can’t believe you spotted this guy and bought those tires right off of his car.”

“He probably would have jacked up his car and taken off the wheels for the amount of Deutsche Marks I gave him. I don’t know how happy the ICRC will be, but he’s pleased as punch and we get to hit the road back to Sarajevo.”

“Well, I’m impressed. So we can go now?” I wanted to start the long trip back to Bosnia. Victor would be wondering where I was.

“I need to stop back to the office for a few minutes and we’ll be off,” he said and leaned over to kiss me and whispered, “I love you.”

“I love you!” I practically shouted.

Bosnia – January 1993

 

Back at my desk on Monday, I read though a stack of grim situation reports and a wave of guilt flooded out the thrill of the weekend. While I was drinking cappuccinos and cavorting with Neil, families hid in basements while mortars destroyed their homes. Deliveries of food and medical supplies and evacuations were blocked in places the UN had just declared ‘safe areas’ while we, the international community, had done nothing to make them so. I punched holes in the slippery fax paper and filed more terrible stories away in my binders. Looking past the sandbags in the windows, I replayed scenes from Zagreb as if remembering a dream, the warmth of my hotel room at the Intercontinental, the softness of the sheets, room service, Neil.

The hotel door clicked shut behind us, we dropped our coats onto the thick hotel carpeting, and Neil steered me to the wall. His hand behind my head as a cushion, he kissed me hard as I stood on tiptoe to reach his warm lips. Eyes closed, I grasped the jam of the bathroom door to steady myself. He pulled away for a moment and gave me a mischievous smile.

“Just a cuddle, eh?” I said breathlessly.

Laughing, he lifted me up, kissing me while stepping with two strides over to the gigantic bed where he gently lay me down, peeling off our winter clothing, first his own – pulling his jacket off, snapping his ascot off with a flourish, unbuttoning his shirt, then turning to me, my hair crackling with static as he slid my turtleneck over my head. In bed with this long and big boned man, I felt petite and safe as I burrowed into his chest, exhaling in relief after months of guarded living. We explored each other’s bodies. His skin was soft, just the right amount of hair on his chest, Sean Connery style military tattoos on his forearms including a heart with the words “True Love Roslyn” etched in the middle. I held his arm out and pointed.

“Roslyn?”

“That’s ages old! My ex-wife. I’ve been meaning to get that taken off. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about her now – I only have eyes, and lips and …”

 

“What are you day dreaming about, Treesha?” Victor came bustling into the office. “A good weekend?” His eyes twinkled. He already knew. Of course, he did – UNPROFOR was such a fishbowl and one of the Russian officers from Kiseljak had been checking out at the same time I did, with Neil by my side.

“Who told you?”

“Ah, I have my sources! I’m happy for you. It’s good to have love in the midst of this mad war. We need to go to Pale after the my morning briefing – half an hour?”

“Sure. I’m ready when you are.”

Neil did not, as I expected of men, disappear behind what would have been the believable excuse of the usually dead-phone lines or long workdays. Instead, he came up with reasons why the ICRC needed to travel to the UNPROFOR base 20 miles of muddy roads through military checkpoints to visit me. And when we had meetings in Sarajevo, I could spend the night in Neil’s room at the Holiday Inn.

A bright yellow box of a building right on the front line along ‘sniper alley’, the Holiday Inn was a strange flash of color in the grey landscape. Only the side facing away from the Serb neighborhood of Grbavica was considered safe enough to stay in. UNHCR plastic covered the blasted windows like bandages. Neil’s room was on the second floor.

“Look at all the souvenirs I have in here. There’s some shrapnel lodged in this corner and I pried a bullet out of here – you can still see the hole,” he said, proudly pointing out the scars in his walls.

He pulled the heavy blackout curtains tight across the windows meticulously making sure there were no cracks of light to attract alcohol-stoked-soldiers on sniper duty. Popping a ‘Phantom of the Opera’ or Freddy Mercury CD into his boom box, he opened two beers and we settled back into his double bed, piled with extra pillows he’d cajoled out of the housekeepers.

“What do you think? Not a bad setup, eh?” He grinned at me proudly.

“It’s very cozy. You have everything you need, don’t you? More than I do in my cold little place.”

“Now that you’re here, I do.” He said reaching for my bottle and setting it on the side-table then pulling me close.

“Time for cuddles,” he whispered, swooping me beneath him and lifting my sweater up to lay his warmth against mine. I lost myself between his kisses, beneath his heavy limbs, intoxicated by the still-new but already familiar scent of him. Our skin pressed close and damp, the battles around us melted away in the heat of our love. Pressing my face against his chest, I felt home even as machine gun fire echoed through the streets outside.

After I untangled the knots in my hair, we floated hand-in-hand down to the window-less dining room at the center of the hotel. The carpeting and moveable walls muffled gun battles but mortar shell hits sometimes rattled the china. Tables were set with linens and the waiters wore mustard-yellow jackets with black bow ties. Neil knew them all.

“Kako ste, moja Muslima friend?” He teased a favorite waiter, affectionately grabbing him in a half-hug. The waiter, like the rest of the hotel staff, seemed genuinely fond of him. Neil explained that he “looked after them” regularly bringing them presents of cartons of Marlboros and bottles of Johnny Walker for use in place of the useless local currency or to feed their own habits. Everyone in his orbit seemed to enjoy Neil’s kooky humor and the waiters always offered him an extra portion of instant mashed potatoes or butter when others were told nothing was left.

Dinner at the Holiday Inn consisted of dubious meat and overcooked vegetables but we ate with pleasure with Neil’s ICRC colleagues and other humanitarian aid workers and journalists. Christian Amanpour might be at the next table, Bianca Jagger once made an appearance and Susan Sontag was a regular, parked in the same corner each night, deep in discussion with her journalist son David Rieff.

 

The Holiday Inn felt the center of the world but I felt like a fraud there. These journalists regularly lambasted the UN as being idle witnesses to the war, or even complicit. I was beginning to agree. I’d filled books of meeting notes on the front lines of this mission, repeats of the same entreaties, accusations, atrocities, and the sense of doing any good had faded. I felt increasingly frustrated and impotent. I wanted to do more and envied my colleagues working in humanitarian relief. Earlier that week, to placate me, Victor assigned me to, along with a US civil affairs officer, meet a young girl who’d come to Kiseljak headquarters to ask for petrol for their car to escape to Moslem territory as tensions and violence was building in the Croat run town. The girl was sixteen – sent as her families’ emissary because she spoke the best English. The family was frightened. The answer was no. UNPROFOR could not be seen as assisting in ethnic cleansing, it was not in our mandate to provide petrol to individuals. I felt sick. And sitting at the Holiday Inn with journalists and relief workers that did provide real aid, I felt like I was on the wrong team. I kept a low profile, not engaging with anyone but Neil and his coworkers, ashamed and also wary about saying anything that might show up in an article.

We usually sat with the more staid, ICRC table. “Bonsoir,” Neil’s colleagues greeted us as we joined them for dinner. Like the hotel staff, they appreciated the crazy Brit responsible who got them safely to and from meetings and prison visits while cracking jokes, enjoying the comic relief he provided during and after a grueling day in the field. My favorite of this crew was Alberto*, a soft-spoken Italian who specialized in helping new amputees adjust to their prosthetics. He had taken leave from his usual post in Afghanistan to help out in Bosnia for a few months. Neil regularly harassed Alberto on the madness of this.

“How many people take a break from one war zone to work in another? My friend, you’re either a saint or insane,” Neil regaled Alberto, who smiled and shrugged, adjusting his rimless glasses while answering softly,

“It’s what I do. But I miss Afghanistan, I can tell you.”

“You’re taking the piss, right? You’re from Italy, one of the most beautiful countries in the world and you’d rather be in Afghanistan with the mujahdeen?”

“I’m serious. I’ve been here almost a month and I miss the people and my work there. The Afghans are the warmest you’ll ever meet in your life.”

“Bloody hell! Isn’t this place something?” Neil shook his head.

Alberto made a point of trying to engage Neil beyond his jokester persona, gently urging him to cut back on his smoking, questioning him on why he chewed his fingernails to the quick. Alberto worried about Neil even as he chuckled with the others at his comedic antics.

 

After dinner, we climbed the steps back upstairs to his room (the elevator never worked) for a cup of what he described as “proper English tea” made from his stash of PJ Tips, just in time to catch Star Trek on television. Neil had literally taken control of the hotel’s television selection by sneaking up on the roof of the Holiday Inn to tilt the satellite dish while communicating via ICRC radios one of his Sarajevo colleagues who sat on the bed and guided Neil while risked sniper danger and tilted the satellite dish until Star Trek reception was just right. The next morning at breakfast, Neil laughed into his coffee as a CNN reporter complained to the hotel manager, “Hey man! What’s happened? We can’t get our news station anymore. You need to get that fixed. I mean we’re paying for almost all the rooms in here.”

“I’m very sorry sir, I don’t know what happened. The satellite must have shifted. I’ll see what I can do.” The manager looked at Neil and shrugged. Eventually, CNN and Sky News dominated the screen again but not until more complaints came in and someone else was willing to brave the snipers.

 

Entering the UN offices in Sarajevo together, Neil draped his arm over my shoulder, leaning down for a kiss as we neared the gates manned by French Legionnaire soldiers. I squirmed at his public display of affection but he tightened his embrace, as the soldiers hooted approvingly.

The French Legionnaires are a special French army unit of volunteers from many countries. Some were fleeing a shady past, like the Texan who told me he held a degree in graphic design and hinted at trouble with the law. He’d previously been a mercenary in Central America before deciding he wanted the more formal structure of the Legionnaires. This exotic army of renegade soldiers spoke French between themselves but when talking to us, often broke into English that revealed a twang or brogue. Once, crossing the parking lot of the PTT building with helmet in hand instead of on my head, a Legionnaire yelled at me from his guard post with a Cockney accent, “Eh! That’s no’ a bloody pocket-book, y’know!”

Neil struck up a friendship with a freckled soldier from Belfast, the name O’Connell incongruously embroidered above the French flag on the sleeve of his uniform.

Twenty years ago this Belfast soldier and Neil had been deadly enemies. Neil joined the British army at 17 to escape the boredom of the West Midlands and landed right into the killings of Bloody Sunday. Neil was armed with a rifle to O’Connell’s rocks and Molotov cocktails, both only boys. They shared cigarettes and stories and when they thought me out of earshot, talked about women.

“Did you see that bird there? ‘Caw, she’s lovely,” O’Connell commented as a group of local women who worked in the kitchen and as interpreters passed through the security check outside the former telephone company building that had been taken over by the UN.

“Not my type,” Neil answered, “Besides, I have my love from New York.”

I sat in the ICRC car with the door open, pretending to read. Neil blew a kiss in my direction then turning away from me, continued in a lower voice,

“Although there’s an interpreter in the UNHCR office that if I weren’t with Tricia, I wouldn’t mind doing.”

What the hell? But I knew he was a flirt and it’s not like I had exactly stopped checking out the multitude of men around me. How could we not? I chuckled. In fact, eavesdropping on these former adversaries sharing cigarettes and banter on a cold Sarajevo afternoon comforted me. My Brit and this Irish man were proof that the terrible generational cycles of hate and ancient wounds could heal. There was hope for this torn land too.

Neil clearly bore deep wounds from his military service but was uncharacteristically mum about the time he served. When I pressed him he said what he had seen and done were too awful to tell. But sometimes I glimpsed his torment when I woke to him sweating and flailing beside me. In his dream, he was fighting for his life and he always worried he’d hurt me by mistake. I never pressed him for details about his nightmares unsure I wanted to know about what haunted him.

* Alberto has yet to lose his love for Afghanistan and in fact was just awarded citizenship there! Check out his TED talk to get a sense of what a special man he is. https://www.ted.com/talks/alberto_cairo_there_are_no_scraps_of_men?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

 

Zagreb – January 1993

The next day, I rifled through my backpack as if a more flattering outfit than my faded turtleneck and corduroys might miraculously appear. I felt frumpy compared to the elegant women in Zagreb. People in Europe seemed so easily stylish. Even in under-siege-Sarajevo, with no electricity and running water, the women were stunning with coiffed hair and perfect make-up. Sighing, I swabbed on more mascara and coated my lips with tinted balm. After some fussing, I finally pulled my hair back in a bun to accentuate my blue eyes. As I passed through the lobby I glanced at myself in the glass doors. I looked fine.

Crossing the long blocks to the city’s main square, I turned my face up to the sky to feel the sun’s warmth.  We had arranged to meet at 3:00 at Zagreb’s standard rendezvous point in front of the saber wielding man on a horse. Jelacic Square bustled with people meeting friends and lovers. Everyone in Zagreb seemed to be out on this fluke, warm winter day. I saw him from a distance, tall and handsome. Even amongst this crowd of attractive people dressed-to-the-nines, both men and women did a double take, like maybe he was famous. I walked faster as if to keep up with my racing heart, pigeons flapping out of my way. Neil bent to kiss me on the cheek. He smelled of aftershave. Around his neck he wore a red ascot neatly tucked into a pressed white shirt poking out from under his jean jacket.

“Hello! I’m happy to see you again. You look beautiful!” He took my hand. “Let’s sit outside,” he said, steering me towards the tables set up in front of one of the coffee shops where young and old couples, entire families and groups of friends sat enjoying the sun.

“It’s nice to be able to sit in the open. Can you imagine doing this in Sarajevo with all the snipers?”

“It’s too bloody cold there. But yes, there are actually a few little places tucked away. I’ll show you when we get back.”

I loosened the scarf from around my neck. Was it the sunshine or his presumption of a future between us warming me up?

“Dva kava molim!” he called to the waiter as we settled into a table in the last patch of light. “You want coffee, right? I’m sorry, I should have asked. I love the local coffee but maybe you’d prefer a cappuccino?”

“No, I like the coffee here too.”

The waiter delivered our order, barely a shot glass full of thick coffee in little cups. I watched as Neil piled an alarming number of sugar cubes into his.

“When I first got here, it took me a few cups before I managed to not end up with a mouthful of muddy sludge from the bottom of my cup.” I was chattering, still stirring my one cube of sugar into the cup and he’d already downed his and was waving at the waiter for another.

“So what were you doing before you got into all of this craziness?” I asked.

“I worked in the film game.”

“Cool! Doing what?”

“Ducking and diving. I doubled for a lot of the taller actors and sometimes did stunt work. But I don’t think I’ll go back to it. The business slowed in England; there’s not much happening at Pinewood Studios these days.”

He puffed on his cigarette, looking over my head and across the square, turning the dregs in his coffee cup round and round.

“What actors?”

“Let’s see, Chevy Chase, Christopher Reeves, Jeff Goldblum (he’s kind of a pratt). I did all the shite that they didn’t want to do or that their contract won’t allow. The last film I worked on was Hamlet with Mel Gibson. I was a Queen’s guard. Mel’s a nice bloke, good fun. Loves to take the piss. I also worked on A Fish Called Wanda, The Tall Guy… loads. For a few years I was also a minder with a couple of bands. Do you remember Spandau Ballet?”

“I can’t place their music but I know the name. Maybe they weren’t as big in the States. It sounds exciting – why did you stop?”

Neil lit up another cigarette and exhaling slowly, stared at the disappearing smoke before answering.

“I got tired of it. I was watching the news about everything going on over here when the war started and I wanted to do something. That’s just the way I am. Remember when they discovered all those neglected orphanages in Romania? No one else could get in and I made it through with a convoy of supplies. When things blew up here in Yugo, I called the ODA (Overseas Development Agency – a UK relief agency) and they hired me straight off. Years ago I was in the military so they jumped at my experience. And when the British offered to supply the ICRC with armored cars, I applied to be their man here. So now I’m a minder for all of the boring Swiss Delegates in Sarajevo.”

He lit another cigarette. I tipped my espresso cup to my lips in search of a last bit of liquid but only the bitter residue of grounds remained.

“Are you getting cold? Should we move somewhere inside?” He downed his second cup then tossed some crumpled bills on the table and gallantly stepped around to pull my chair back for me. I shivered and tucked my scarf closer around my neck. The sun dropped on the horizon and like that, winter’s cold returned.

As we crossed the square, he took my hand in a gentle, almost tentative grip. I curled my fingers around his massive ones. Matching his long strides as we walked down a cobbled street, I began to feel taller than my 5’ 6” as I kept pace with him.

“Where should we go?”

“How about the bar at the Intercontinental?” He glanced at me coyly as he said the name of my hotel. “You know, the one on the top floor. There’s a nice view of the city from there.”

He was moving fast now. Why not?

“Okay. Should we walk?”

“Let’s grab a taxi.” He ushered me to a line of old Mercedes waiting on a side street.

The hotel bar was empty but for the bartender. We could see all of old Zagreb tinted by the last glow of the day. Neil ordered a whiskey and I asked for a beer.

“I don’t actually drink that much,” he said as the bartender set our drinks in front of us.

That information went into the ‘positive’ column of my mental checklist about him. Most of the men I’d been with loved drinking and in the past, getting drunk became one of our primary activities. Recently, I’d been trying to limit myself rather than become like my mother who fueled decades of bitterness after my father left her, by rarely making it to 5:00 PM before she started to slur.

“I’d like to tell you something,” Neil said, lighting another cigarette. He appeared to have an endless supply of these gold packs tucked away in his jean jacket.

I looked at him expectantly. He drew in a smoky breath followed by a swallow of drink, his eyes on the bottles behind the bar. I wondered if I’d heard him correctly because now he didn’t seem to want to tell me anything. A wave of dread rose from the pit of my stomach. Here goes: he’s probably married. Didn’t he say on the plane yesterday he wasn’t? I shifted back in my chair.

“I didn’t tell you the whole story of why I came here.”

“Oh?” I waited hoping my face looked neutral, like I expected nothing from him although my heart sunk.

“I had this problem … it started after working in the film and music industry,” he paused again.

“What kind of problem?”

“Blow.”

“Excuse me?”

He turned to me and laughed, tension draining out of his face. I didn’t understand.

“Blow what?” I asked.

With a nervous chuckle he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, drew his chair and body closer to me.

“Charlie. Cocaine. I had a problem with cocaine. I was working with the band when I tried it. One of the guys offered me some and that was it. I got hooked.”
“Oh.” What else to say? What was I to do with this information? I’d always been leery of trying drugs when there were plenty around in college and the restaurant business where I’d logged many hours. And I didn’t understand how people became hooked on, well…anything. That wasn’t my personality.

“I got pretty messed up with it,” he continued. “So about nine months ago I checked into rehab for a month and when I got out, decided to stay clear of the film and music business since charlie is everywhere there. It was bloody hard.” He turned to me with a triumphant smile. “But I’m okay now!”

“Good for you!” I answered with enthusiasm mostly from my relief that the news was not about the existence of a wife or beloved girlfriend.

“For some reason I wanted to tell you.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said as I peeled the soggy label off my beer bottle.

“I mean I feel like we could have something here. I find you attractive and well, I want to be honest with you from the start.” He swirled the whiskey in his glass.

“I appreciate it.” Rolling my beer label into a ball I tossed it into Neil’s ashtray.

The bar was still empty. Neil torpedoed his cigarette with a sizzle into the damp paper ball in the ashtray and leaned in for a kiss. He tasted like cigarettes and whiskey, neither flavors I liked, but he was a good kisser. I thought of the spacey potheads I’d known over the years – my only close-up experience with drugs. Drunks were my expertise. As Neil’s tongue searched my mouth, a surge of desire swept all the way to my toes. He pulled me closer and breathing felt unnecessary as I lost myself in his warmth.

Sitting back in his chair with a smile, he said with a sigh, “That was nice.”

“Yes.” I felt dizzy.

“So…what are the rooms like here anyway?”

“Really?” I pretended to be shocked.

“Well when you know something is right…” he looked at me expectantly.

“Do we know that?”

“I do.”

“How can you? We haven’t even spent 5 hours together.”

“I just do. I know that you’re the kind of girl I’ve been looking for.”

I looked at him skeptically. What did he mean? A girl who doesn’t know what ‘blow’ is? Is he for real or yet another sweet talker? I wasn’t sure what to make of him.

“I only want to cuddle,” he cajoled, taking my hand.

“All right. Let’s go.” I took my bag off the back of the chair and stood up.

He grinned. “Hey mate! Can we have the check, molim?”