A Maiden's Prayer

By Bondan Winarno

Astaghafirullah! Azra Kozaric was startled. An explosion from the end of the alley. Again. It resonated deep in her chest. She felt pain. Inner pain. How many people had been scattered by the blast? At the end of that alley? A blood bath. Surrounded by people wailing, realizing that their loved ones were no more.

Such a thin line between life and death. People who had but a second ago been inhaling cigarettes now lay scattered, lifeless. People who had been felling trees for firewood now lay dead. In a pool of blood.

Azra felt her chest contract. She wiped her face clean of the dust shed from a sky rocked by the tremors of the explosion. Azra heard a repeated crack of gunfire ring out from the hill. No return fire from the city. For a long time had Bosnian Moslem fighters let Serbian soldiers spew forth ammunition, showering Sarajevo with death.

Silence fell. No more shots. A gripping silence. A silence which Azra hated, because suddenly the bullets fly again, exactly when people started leaving their shelters.

The long silence was broken by people mourning the victims at the end of the alley.

Rapid footsteps pattered in the front passage of the house. Azra got up from her shelter in the kitchen and walked to the window opposite her. Like the windows of the multistoried houses along the alley were smashed open. The bombs falling on Sarajevo over the two years had destroyed most of the windows.

From the window of the second floor Azra saw people hurrying to the end of the alley. Not many people left. More than half of them had left Sarajevo. Some had been fatally hit by ammunition or bomb splinters. Of the few who still lived there, not all where unmaimed. A leg gone. An eye lost. Skin peeling off in strips, scorched by pulses of fire.

Azra saw Amna Silajdzic down in the alley.

"People say Galija has been hit by a bomb," Amna shouted from below.

Galija was at the pizza parlor at the end of the alley. Yesterday, Vjecnica, Sarajevo's old library, had been hit by a bomb blast. And tomorrow?

"A bomb hit Galija, Mama," Azra shouted to her mother who had just emerged from the underground shelter.

Mama stopped on the highest step of the staircase. She was gasping for breath.

"Astaghafirullah!" she wailed. "Go there quickly. See if Aunt Jasmina is well!"

Mama's voice was trembling, she wept uncontrollably. Her body shook with her wailing.

Aunt Jasmina Turajlic was Mama's younger sister. The only close relative alive -- God willing, if the bomb had spared her. Uncle Mirko, Mama's elder brother, had been killed in an attack on the Serbian political headquarters in Pale. Uncle Malik, Mama's younger brother, had died when a bomb destroyed his office.

"Wait for me!" Azra shouted to Amna down below.

Her shoes were too small, squeezing her as she ran down the stairs. She was only 16 when war broke out. That was the last time Mama could buy shoes. Meanwhile, Azra's feet had grown, with or without the war.

Half running, Azra and Amna went to the end of Dalmatinka alley. She was trying to imagine Galija at a time before the war. She imagined a delicious meal of pizza. She saw herself eating pizza with Zijad Pehid. Zijo. Oh, Zijo, I love you!

The wicked war had separated Zijo from Azra. Azra was isolated in Sarajevo. Zijo had joined Moslem fighters to defend the Posavina corridor. Oh, Zijo, I love you!

Galija had closed because of the war. Only Aunt Jasmina was still working there, helping the owner to make pizzas orders for delivery to the houses. For those who could pay in foreign currency. Fifty deutschemarks for a pizza garnished only with a few slices of sausage and some leek. And only when there was a lull in the gunfire from the hill.

From afar Azra saw that Galija's roof was almost level with the ground. She yanked Amna's hand, urging her to quickened her pace. She no longer felt pain in her feet, despite the squeezing of her shoes. Azra's only concern was Aunt Jasmina. Oh, unlucky Aunt Jasmina. How could she have eluded death in such a cruel catastrophe?

Azra's face was wet with tears when she arrived at the end of the alley. Amna's hand held hers firmly.

"Take heart, Azra," Amna said softly. "Who knows, maybe Aunt Jasmina was not there when it happened."

Silently, Azra hoped that what Amna said was true. She could not envisage Mama's breakdown if Aunt Jasmina became a new statistic of this endless, insane war.

Some men were lifting the debris, looking for people trapped in the ruins. UN troops in their light-blue steel helmets who just arrived also helped in removing the debris of Galija. Armored ambulance cars arrived with their whining sirens. Circles had been drawn around their scattered bodies. Some had ceased to move. Others howled hysterically in an infinite pain.

The stench of death was spreading. The smell of charred flesh reminded Azra of cevapcici, roasted rolled beef. Ah, how evil to imagine cevapcici when Aunt Jasmina's fate was still a mystery.

War, the misery it caused, and the ever nagging hunger, always made Azra imagine delicious food. It was not rare that Azra would look at photographs of dishes in cook books if her stomach rumbled. Three hundred grams of bread every three days? Even if there was no shooting, the armored cars of Unprofor would ration bread. How sorrowful!

And how bitter the reality was when Azra saw Aunt Jasmina's charred body lifted from under the debris. Motionless. Amna screamed, embraced Azra, and then covered Azra's eyes with her hand. No, Azra should not see it. Let Azra only remember Aunt Jasmina as a beautiful woman, good hearted, and who would now leave her clothes and shoes to Azra.

Amna led Azra sobbing, down the alley. The alley abandoned by the people who once lived there.

And, ah, what would Azra tell Mama? Were there words to soften the reality that Aunt Jasmina was no more? That Aunt Jasmina had been destroyed and buried under the debris?

Apparently Mama had heard about Aunt Jasmina. Nobody was at home when Azra arrived. And Azra did not know what to do. Should a girl of 19 know what to do? When her aunt died? When Mama would cry hysterically for the loss of her younger sister? And when there had been no news from Papa ever since he had said goodbye to leave on duty as a militia police officer at Grbavica?

War, war, war. How wearying Azra found the disaster. Over two years without an end. No more hope that the war would end some day. Hope after hope only piled up feelings of despair when they never came true. The inhabitants of Sarajevo seemed to be resigned to living as targets of the shootings from the hill. They seemed to have lost any feeling in the hands of political actors. Despair had reached its peak in Sarajevo.

Tomorrow, the Osloblodjenje daily would report the number of victims. Tomorrow people would hurry to the shelters when shots from the hill rang out. Tomorrow, Sacrifice Day would not be recognized for the third year in a row. The prayer service would not be conducted in the mosque. There would be no sacrificial animal in the field. How wretched it all was!

Azra took down the sandbag covering the small hole in the kitchen wall. She peeped outside. The bridge over the Miljacka river was still there. No traffic. No one was seen on the bridge. They were afraid to be the target of sharpshooters from the hill.

Silently Azra was hoping to see Zijo on the bridge. Like she used to see him walking bravely on the bridge. Azra imagined Zijo running from the direction of Bascarsija. Running to avoid bullets. Running to steal an opportunity to see Azra. Oh, how strong was her longing for Zijo. Azra swallowed the lump in her throat.

God, stop the war. Her soul was crying out. Was there not enough sacrifice already, Uncle Mirko, Uncle Malik, and now Aunt Jasmina? Was that not enough? "I am tired, God. I am tired, really tired," she said.

Azra Kozaric wore her mukena (prayer outfit). In the corner of the kitchen behind the stack of sandbags, Azra was preparing for prayer. She was oblivious to Mama's lamentations, who had just returned. Moanings which cut deep in one's soul. Mama was deploring Aunt Jasmina's passing. She did not care when a new series of machine gun shots rang out from the hill. Before God, was there something to be afraid of? Allahuakbar (God is great).

"Oh, God, oh, Lord. Stop this war, oh God. So that Mama can again make sweet hurmasice cakes. So that I can eat again delicious cevapcici and tasty pizzas. I am hungry, oh God. And I am tired.

"Oh, God, oh Lord. Stop this war, oh God. Give us Papa back, especially now when Mama needs him very much.

"Oh, God, oh, Lord. Stop this war, oh God. Return Zijo to me. Zijo my love. Let me love him. Let me wipe his face. It is dirty by the dust of war."

Then, a bullet went through the hole in the kitchen wall, hitting Azra from behind.

There was no more need for her prayer. God had freed Azra from the suffering. God is great!

Manhattan, May 1994.

The title of the story was inspired by La Priere d'une Vierge (A Maiden's Prayer) composed by Thecla Badarczewszka.

Translated by S.H.

Bondan Winarno was born on April 29, 1950 in Surabaya, East Java, and had lived in the U.S. for five years. At the age of 10 he won a writing competition organized by Kuncung children's magazine. He has published several books and two of his novels were filmed. Bondan, who works in the fisheries industry, is also a columnist. He attended to several schools but never officially graduated. He has been granted a Satya Lencana award for development for his services to the State. Doa Seorang Perawan (A Maiden's Prayer) appears in Pistol Perdamaian: Cerpen Pilihan Kompas 1996 (Pistol of Peace: An Anthology of Kompas Short Stories 1996). It is printed here with permission of Kompas.