Sandstealers

Over the Vranac, they talked. Rachel told Becky about her soporific life in America and Becky described hers, on a sheep farm near a place called Piety, three hours from Perth, or as she put it, ‘three hours from Earth’.

‘Arse-end of the universe. Nothing and no one for a hundred miles, except sheep, of course. I spent months dreaming of going to the nearest town, let alone the nearest city, let alone the nearest country.’

Rachel felt bad for thinking Arlington was boring.

‘Dad was an alcoholic and mum was on the way there and, to be honest, I couldn’t blame them. I’d have been the same if I’d stayed. Look at me—probably am anyway.’

Piety was where she’d fallen in love with photography. An uncle had given her a camera for her fourteenth birthday.

‘I remember the day I took my very first picture. It was just a sunset—the same one I’d seen a million times and never even noticed—and suddenly it was beautiful. And when I got the print, I was hooked forever. I took pictures of anything that moved, which wasn’t very much in Piety’

Becky had left for England as soon as her parents would allow it, but even London hadn’t been enough for her. After all those years in Piety, she needed a bigger buzz. She traipsed around a few war zones and then turned up in Bosnia.

‘I wasn’t bored any more, but lonely as I ever was.’

Becky moved on to the Ballantine’s while Rachel, who was drinking almost nothing, started to feel uncomfortable. This woman she barely knew was opening her heart to her. She was an old hand in Sarajevo, brash and domineering, but she seemed to need a friend here. Almost as much as Rachel did.

‘Really? But you’re beautiful.’

‘Not the view of too many men, unfortunately. Reckon the job intimidates them—war-zone headbanger and all that. Maybe they think I’ll end up dying on them and they can’t be bothered with all the hassle of a funeral.’

They both laughed, but Becky was serious. For too long she had been unloved, unsexed, uncoupled. The only man who was in her life—or who she’d like to be—was here but out of reach.

‘Anyway, more mundanely: I forgot to mention there is one other thing you’ll be needing…’With that she took off back to her room along the corridor, returning moments later with a Marks & Spencer carrier bag. ‘We call it the water baby. If you’re planning on having any hot baths here—or even lukewarm ones—you’ll be needing one of these—’

Like a magician, she delved into the bag and produced a large metal contraption that looked like some sort of engine part. It was the element of an immersion heater to warm up bath water, if and when the power came on.

‘Usually takes about two hours, but for best results, leave it in all day. Don’t get in when you’re pissed though, else you’ll end up electrocuting yourself. And that, as dear Danny would say, would be a very fucking stupid way to die.’

‘Thanks so much.’

‘Oh, I’m only lending it to you for tonight. After that you’ll have to trade stuff for it—like everyone else does.’

‘Trade?’

‘You know, medicine, make-up, batteries, coffee—any little goodies you’ve got stashed away in that great big rucksack of yours.’

‘And what happens when there’s no water to heat up?’

Becky took a last hefty swig of Ballantine’s. ‘Horde it. When it’s running—which is not too often—you make sure you fill the bath, and the toilet, and any other bowl or bucket you can lay your hands on. Mind you, it’s not drinking water here, not unless you’re desperate. It’s browny yellow, a bit like pee.’

‘Yuk. Not cleaning my teeth in that.’

‘I’ve done mine with Coca Cola, even whisky. Oh, and one other thing…’

Rachel was growing weary of her endless list of tips, and feeling slightly patronised. She sensed they would be friends—maybe even good friends—but Becky was trying too hard.

‘Next time, bring your own plugs. This is the one hotel where they don’t exist. Big one for the bath, small one for the sink. Here you go, I’ve got a spare.’ Becky threw it to her as she left.

‘Good night, Rachel—nice to know you.’

Rachel supposed it was nice to know her too: she felt relieved to have met her, but daunted too.

Glad to be alone again, Rachel climbed into bed. She’d slept naked ever since she was a girl, but she quickly realised that in wintertime Sarajevo, nudity was not an option. The pile of discarded clothing was hastily reprieved and she dressed all over again, with the addition of a large woolly sweater. A bedspring dug hard into her back and she knew at once it would be an enemy.

In the narrow glow of her Maglite, Rachel opened up Daniel Lowenstein at page 108. It had been good to meet him, and yet—if she were honest with herself—slightly disappointing, too. He was not as she’d imagined. Like Becky, he seemed jovial enough, but she sensed a darkness in him. He hadn’t liked her, she was sure about that now.

She began a chapter about ethnic cleansing in Prijedor in 1992, and for the first time she could hear what he’d written in his voice, as though he were reading it aloud to her.

When the Chetniks came to the village, they had a wolf’s head stuck to the bonnet of one of their cars, and a refrigerated meat truck following on behind. Nermina, who was 12, had seen them coming and she was old enough to understand. She shouted out to her father Kemal, and he understood as well. He was the village doctor. He led Nermina and the rest of his family to the basement: his wife Reima, and their two sons Emir and Senad. Soon they could hear the screams and explosions outside: the Chetniks were tossing hand grenades into houses, machine gunning those who stumbled out of them. Kemal didn’t know whether to stay where they were, to come out and surrender, or to try and run. Then they heard men smashing down their front door and, in no time at all, the basement door as well. Nermina recognised the fat man who was with the Chetniks: he was the village policeman, Milan Krstic, and he lived only a few houses away. He was about 50 with a ruddy face, bad teeth and a big pot belly. She had sometimes caught him looking at her lustfully as she walked home from school.

Krstic had swapped his police uniform for that of the Serb irregulars. He took out a pistol and put it in the mouth of her baby brother Senad, who was only two years old. His little cheek was swollen by the barrel, like having a lollipop inside it. ‘Hello, Nermina,’ Krstic said. ‘Would you like to help your family? Otherwise it will be bad for them.’ Then he drew a knife and held it against her cheek and told her to take her clothes off. ‘Are you a virgin?’ he asked her. He said he liked virgins very much indeed.

Nermina was brave; she could do this thing, she had to do this thing. Once again, she understood. Her mother screamed and begged the policeman to rape her instead, but he ignored her. Krstic yanked down his trousers and the Chetniks cheered him on. Nermina was on the floor and weeping, and he was above her, with his unkempt beard and rotting teeth, and a half-smoked cigarette hanging from his mouth. This was what he had wanted, all those afternoons when he had watched her in her school uniform. But now, for all his desire, he could not make himself erect. The more he tried, the worse it got. His fellow Chetniks laughed and pushed him out of the way so that they could try.

Krstic was angry he had been humiliated. ‘Turkish whore!’ he screamed at her when the others had all finished. At first he said he was going to kill her, but then he thought of a crueller punishment: he would allow her to survive. One by one, he shot her family. Her baby brother first, then Emir who was eight. After that, and holding Nermina in his gaze, he shot her mother and finally the father she adored.

Krstic ordered the other Chetniks to leave her there, lying bruised and naked amid the corpses of her family. It was his punishment for her. The Chetniks were confused, but—as usual—Nermina was old enough to understand.

Rachel cried. She felt ridiculous and petty for having doubts about Danny: to unearth atrocities like these and recount them was journalism at its noblest. She wanted to meet survivors of ethnic cleansing like Nermina. She wanted to tell their stories to the world, so that it could know. Danny Lowenstein had not only been there and gathered this poor girl’s harrowing testimony, he had retold it with compassion.

She read a few more pages until the day overwhelmed her. She turned off her torch, put her hands between her thighs for some extra warmth, and drifted off into a half-sleep in which she gave thanks that the Bosnia Danny Lowenstein was describing with such power was no longer an ocean away: it was all around her.

4 (#u33ae17c6-68bd-57bd-82fd-9c44103daad7)

Post-Liberation Baghdad, 2004

At the Hamra, a clunk announced the death for the day of the air-conditioning system. Baghdad had devoured its paltry quota of power. There was less electricity than in Saddam’s time: for all their billion-dollar programmes, the occupiers couldn’t keep the lights on. Soon, the last of the artificially cool air would be gone, chased out of the room by the high fever of an Iraqi summer’s day, as overheated as Bosnia’s winter had been frozen. The thermometer in the kitchenette said 122 degrees Fahrenheit and the Junkies wiped their fevered brows.

‘Drink, anyone?’ asked Edwin, his baldness reflecting the sunlight that cascaded through the window. He fetched a couple of large bottles of water from the fridge which, like the air conditioning, was lifeless, as if it had died in sympathy.

‘You know what, talking about that Vranac makes me want a glass of wine.’ Becky poured some red into a tumbler, even though it was still the middle of the morning. ‘Rach, you want some?’

‘No thanks. I’m giving it a rest.’

‘Ciggy?’

Rachel shook her head again.

‘God, that took me back.’ Rachel was still smiling fondly. For a while it had seemed they were in Bosnia rather than Baghdad.

‘Feels like a lifetime ago.’ Becky, having barely said a word, was starting to talk. The wine was helping. ‘We were babies really, you especially. I’d forgotten what a baptism of fire it was for you.’

‘I’d forgotten quite a lot of things,’ said Rachel.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Like what a sweetheart you were to me. And what a pig Danny could sometimes be.’