Sarajevo Marlboro Read Online Free PDF

café, which is nowadays the watering-hole of Chetniks rather than lorry drivers. I agreed a price with Miloš without fuss. He obviously wanted to be rid of her as quickly as possible. In his village the least expensive car wasa Golf, so having a rusty old Beetle around the place was kind of an embarrassment.
    It was already dark by the time we drove back from the Romanija, through Pale and the tunnels on the outskirts of Sarajevo. Emblazoned in neon lights on one of the concrete flyovers was the legend, “Tito’s crossing the Romanija . . .” I was always confused by the three dots. I had a feeling they meant something rude. But my Nazi frau ignored the revolutionary message as she grumbled noisily but in rhythm like a Buddhist nun.
    I found a parking space in front of my house. I should say that I live in a rather steep neighborhood unsuitable for cars, but it has an excellent view of the hills around Sarajevo, which are dotted with white Turkish tombstones. It was the first time in her life that she was ever tidy and clean. Squeezed in between all those Mazdas, Hondas and Toyotas, she resembled an architectural model from the golden age of romantic futurism. My neighbor Salko observed that we made a perfect couple – me with my big head and stocky body, her with those gentle curves. Other people reckoned that I could have done better and they said she wouldn’t last more than three days.
    I bought her the cheapest car stereo I could find – it was the sort of junk nobody would steal – and I played our tune again and again, partly to block out the noise of the engine and partly because I wanted to have a continuous wall of noise in the background. Somewhere on the road to Kakanj, Nick Cave’s icy melancholy pulsed in time withthe flawless Nazi machine, evoking more clearly perhaps than intellectual concepts, painful ideologies and climactic histories the importance of believing in a harmonious view of the world that is unaffected by revolutions and apocalypses. After the beheading of Marie Antoinette, for example, the people of France discovered Baroque. After Lenin killed the Romanovs, a baby’s pram rolled down the Odessa Steps of Eisenstein’s cinematography. After Hitler, I discovered my own rhythm in four beats to the bar and a 1300cc engine.
    Now and again her gas supply would be blocked and she would suddenly cut out. I remember her clutch gave up on one occasion. Also, she guzzled huge quantities of gasoline, as you’d expect, and she did have a tendency to get dirty very quickly – but she never had any serious breakdowns. In any case, still having a grip on my imagination, I only drove her around town for pleasure, so these flaws seemed rather trivial. It wasn’t as if I needed the car to escape anywhere or make a getaway.
    On the second of May you could hear the thunder crashing on all sides. The bombardment started about midday. After going for a quick spin around town and leaving the car in the parking lot, I drank my last prewar Coca-Cola and then ended up in a cellar somewhere. The shelling continued beyond nightfall. I sat in the dark belly of a building and spoke to a bunch of people I’d only just met. It was a crowd of accidental passersby – a woman on her way home from the market, young children on roller-skates, that sort of thing. I guess the shellingsounded even more terrifying in the darkness. Is that why I became so worried that it wouldn’t leave anything in its wake? I couldn’t help wondering about the first casualty – would it be my house or my Beetle? Of course I wanted both to survive, but it was as if I was obliged by the persistent booming to make an impossible choice. Having stayed awake all night turning the dilemma over and over in my mind, I finally opted to save my home. I think I already had a picture of the Beetle as a dark metal skeleton, but I’m not sure. Perhaps I just imagined that conjuring up