Orion's belt, a Bosnian tale

He squinted up at the night sky as he breathed in the smoke from his cigarette. Like men of my father's generation, born of the early twentieth century, there was none of this holding the smoldering cigarette between two pincered fingers, ashes up and perpendicular to the hand. He cupped it, holding the filtered end between thumb on one side and index and forefinger on the other, occasionally rolling the yet unsmoked middle gently back and forth. The lit end sometimes dangerously dropped small hot cinders into his palm, but it was a palm roughened and scraped from many years of hard work or pain or torture, hardened so that he probably didn't notice a burn or two. Perhaps it's more of a comfort when you burn yourself than when others burn you.

Come, as you are. As you were.
As I want you to be. As a friend.
As a friend. As an old enemy. Take your time.

(crossposted at Dailykos)

Manly men. Shipyard men, dockworker men, laborers. Bogart men. Men who don't hold their cigarettes like most men and women do. Old men with cigarettes smoked down so far the idea of a filter obviously never occurred to the cigarette or the smoker. There's irony in the fact that to hold the cigarette that way, the little finger, the pinkie finger, sometimes starts to rise up, delicately. For the man to remain manly, there has to be a bit of subconscious effort to keep that last errant digit in place. I've never seen a women hold a cigarette like that. Women usually always hold their cigarettes tweezed in between the index and fore; quicker to the lips that way and possibly more sophisticated. Most male smokers hold their cigarettes the same way nowadays. How do such habits and perceptions evolve?

He had a cap like an old, run over catcher's mitt, filtered honey in color and stained and shaped to the large, flat plateau of his head. I thought he was a lot older than I when we first met. A Charles Durning look to him, solid, serious, personable. His hair was fully gray, his eyes, while not so old appearing, had an aged look in them, a sometimes fixed look that time and seeing too much can manufacture. But when he told a story, and he always had a story, and a vodka shot in hand when ever I saw him, his eyes were focused out, not turned inward, warm and close to merry. I think I saw a cultural irony in his eyes, a perspective I fancied a common one in immigrants I've met from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. Maybe I romanticize. I think there is a backdrop there, a scenery in the soul that an American born and raised cannot fully grasp. Shots of constantly proffered vodka and whiskey from Sarajevo help, but one can only float on fumes so close to knowledge of the soul of a Bosnian.

As a friend. As an old enemy. Take your time.
Hurry up. The choice is yours. Don't be late.
Take a rest. As a friend. As a old memory, memory, memory, memory.

That night we talked of the stars. He looked at Orion in the sky and told me a tale of how the archer's aim was not true anymore. The constellation holds his muscular arm cantilevered behind him, straining from real weight of the dreams molded to the shafts of his arrows. He is not a hunter after all, but a seeker and a dreamer; he fires dreams into the night sky from his heavenly stance.  His quiver holds all the dreams that are unfulfilled. The passage of celestial time has cloaked the dream quiver in darkness and then transparency – we on earth can no longer see the quiver, the unfulfilled dreams.

"These dreams are now beyond our hearts. They would be too much for our hearts to hope for. So we cannot see them."

Ibrahim had a curious habit while he spoke of Orion and dreams and quivers and the Dipper. I was compelled to watch his face, but I was also captured by how he disposed of his cigarette, allowed himself to smoke it to a point so close to the edge of the Marlboro filter you'd think there was no more tobacco. He'd throw the stub to the ground and step on it with his slightly alien shoes.

Perhaps you know what I mean by alien shoes – nothing pejorative, certainly. But his shoes somehow marked him as a man whose shoes were not American made; their style was a work boot style, not a familiar Redwing, Merrill, or Timberland, or whatever work boot long haul truck drivers wear nowadays. They hinted of European style, something about the closeness of the top leather to the seal of the sole of the boot and something in the way the toe box was formed. Not that this matters, but it sets an image and it's one I often pay attention to. The shoes people wear can be as much a window to whom they are, as much as the eyes, old eyes, are windows to a soul. I digress.

Stepping on the cigarette stub with his alien shoes, he'd roll his foot across the flattened butt, drawing his foot back towards his other foot on the ground, then he'd roll it forward. Lifting his foot, he would then drag it across the now tightly twisted stub in a crosswise fashion, left-to-right. Then right-to-left. A small pea-sized white piece of debris would be fashioned – strangely symmetrical and cube-shaped, unrecognizable as the butt of a cigarette. Ibrahim performed this act several times over the course of the hours we spoke, near chain smoker that he was. It verged on the obsessive; he was both casual in this act, but precise. Again, how are such habits formed and was there once a utilitarian reason why?

He lived on a street in Sarajevo, in a neighborhood that was mixed ethnic, Serbs close to Bosnian Muslims, Muslims neighbors to Serbs, before the war. Which war? When I spoke with Ibrahim, I thought I knew it was the war after Tito. But we've talked on and off, and sometimes I'm not so certain. For a Bosnian, or for a Serb, or any of the other political-ethnic-secular-religious groups in a yet-to-recover land, time itself wipes all hostile conflicts into a single pain felt in different parts of the ethnic consciousness of different peoples. It's a multiple choice question with an "all of the above" answer.

As in Iraq, the hostilities and political and violence in the former Yugoslavian Republics have perpetuated a churning pot of anger for centuries. Sometimes the lid is held on by an extraordinarily autocratic regime. When the lid is taken off, the contents of the pot fly out as from a centrifuge; everyone gets splattered, no one remains untouched. The lid might be put back on, but the anger is still bubbling beneath. This anger stew has cooked so long no one remembers what the ingredients are and why it tastes so bad.

And I swear that I don't have a gun.
No I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun.

Memory, memory, memory, memory (don't have a gun).

"We are born angry, all of us. This was not learned, we have it in our blood; that is the only explanation for me." This land started a world war once, and Ibrahim is convinced another one will start because of it again.

"In 1992 this lively, joyful, cosy and progressive Sarajevo then became the longest besieged town in world history. An improvised tunnel under the airport runway, 800 m in length, 1.50 m high and 1 m wide was the only means of escape for many people who had to leave the city and the last hope for many hungry townspeople. Today it is a memorial and reminder of a courageous way of life. Bombarded every day from 1992-95 and transformed into a city of death by snipers from the surrounding hills Sarajevo – without electricity and water – lost many friends, relatives, inhabitants and buildings but it never lost its pride. Even during the times of the worst attacks theatres, clubs and concert halls attracted audiences in sheltered cellars. Sarajevo was injured and wounded, but it survived. "
Sarajevo, My city blog

When Ibrahim came to the States, he was skin and bones, and so was his wife and his three sons.  He and I have at least one thing in common and it’s a curious thing. All of his sons, two fraternal twins and an older son, are named with the starting letter "E". My three daughters names are all "K". Why are people attracted to patterns? Even trivial patterns. Do we attempt to tie fragile strings of connection one-by-one between our offspring in traditional, miniscule and pitifully human ways; do we unconsciously fear that larger connections will be damaged by the whims of uncertain gods and rulers?

Ibrahim's neighborhood was in a suburb of Sarajevo. I couldn't nail down what area – his English is not so good, and my Bosnian nonexistent. I attempted to get my daughter to decipher what he said, but it was unclear to her. As close as I can tell, they lived near to what became known as Sniper's Alley, based on what Ibrahim's son used to speak of occasionally and landmarks he describes. It is speculation on my part.

And then the knocking at the door, the breaking in, the taking away of all adult males and youths in the neighborhood. Ibrahim was taken to a camp run by the Serbs. He was not heard from by the family for almost a year and they believed he was dead.

Boys running through the streets at night for water. Hungry all the time, because there was too much sniper fire and no way to get out to find food. Families melted away in escape. Dogs shot in the street. Bodies along the curb unclaimed - too dangerous to venture out to retrieve them. Mines left in the street. Some days safe enough to go out to market. Most days not. Bombing runs, sirens, no electricity or running water. No medicine. A majestic, European city, an Olympic city, historically proud and architecturally beautiful, a city of rubble and destruction, anger rained down from all sides, by all sides. From the sky, from hillside bunkers and sniper posts, from building roofs, from abandoned and cleansed houses. Anonymous gunfire for the hell of it. Mortars indiscriminately fired into civilian housing. Neighbors, familiar friends, suddenly enemies. Anger lurking, aged, historical, generational anger simmering.

And I swear that I don't have a gun.
No I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun.
No I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun. Memory, memory...

The family was evacuated to a refugee camp and spent a full year there. There was not enough food there either, though it was run by both peacekeeping forces and attended by the Red Cross. It was cold almost all the time. Muddy in the Spring. The boys had to leave their dog behind. The mother went without food and her portion was available for her sons.

One of the twin sons of Ibrahim was my daughter's boyfriend for a time. He bears a close resemblance to a young Mark Walhberg, and his presence displays a similar charisma and a mix of on-the-edge, but quiet solidity. But there is anger there and it is in the drinking. I'll leave it at that. I like him a great deal. He was one of the few young men who've been able to look me in the eye and listen and respond with respect when I'd yell at both of them for the dangerous things that teenagers do stupidly, but so well.

Ibrahim walked through the camp gates of the UN refugee camp one day, along with a handful of other men. Where they were, where they were taken, no one knows and Ibrahim has never confirmed a location. They were transported by truck a few miles from the refugee camp and dropped off apparently. In a few months, the family was given the chance to emigrate and their choices were either America or Germany.  Ibrahim gave his sons the decision on the direction to take. The boys, the "E"-named boys, wanted to go to the land of Nirvana and they wound up in Seattle.

Come, as you are. As you were.
As I want you to be. As a friend.

They all have a life they could not lead in Bosnia. Ibrahim is a long haul truck driver and makes a good living – enough to own his own house and his own big rig truck. They have lived here in this country since 1994 and arrived with little or no English; only the older son and one of the twins spoke English which they had learned at school when younger. I have lived in this country all of my life and still do not own my own house at the age of 48. As a truck driver, he has seen more of this country than I have.  Ibrahim, the man I thought was older, the man who has seen so much and never spoken of it directly –not to his family, certainly not to me, not to a counselor – is only four days older than I am. His son has seen some sign of torture on or in his father. Ibrahim was always cheerful in my presence. But this is not Bosnia.

Skies and worlds and planets have shifted and the target Orion once aimed for and often hit true is fallen over. Like a bullseye on an archery range lying flat on the ground, the Big Dipper was a target that is no more. Dipper was the destination of dreams once, and it faced fully to Orion's keen eyes. Parts of the sky fell, the world could no longer spin fast enough, bits of fire rained down, and spectral smoke obscured the Archer's eyes. When smoke fell away, Orion's target, the Dipper target, had fallen away, and captured Dipper dreams were gone.

There was always vodka to be pulled out and placed on the table, and strong Bosnian coffee, served in demitasse, sugar cubes perched on the saucer to be placed on the lips to strain the coffee through or stir into the syrup of caffeine. Strong, dried Bosnian beef like dried pastrami served with fresh baked bread. Marlboros on the coffee table, a big screen television with a satellite-fed Bosnian channel playing Bosnian disco dancing in the background. Anytime, in the morning or at night, vodka on the table. Always hospitality, a never-flagging welcome.

He thought it greatly funny when I gently pointed out that the "Bosnian" whiskey (for the label was that and in the Latin Bosnian script) said "made in China" in small English letters on the back of the label. Always cheerful in my presence.

The belt of Orion holds three stars. Ibrahim thinks there were more stars in that belt at one time. Those three stars are the dreams that the Archer has claimed for himself, and for his heart; they are equal in importance and balance. He'll not place them in the bow to fire away. Unfired, they are unrealized; the Archer knows this. As long as they adorn his belt, Orion can still dream. But he cannot let them go. As long as they gird his loins, he is tethered in place in the sky and he cannot move to a place where he can hit his target. It is a conundrum of tragic and celestial proportions.

What are the dreams of Orion?

Memory, memory, memory, memory

(Come as you are, excerpted lyrics, Nirvana, Kurt Cobain.)

Comments

I visited Rowena at an art show in Chino Valley. Roberta's beauty was the first thing that caught my eye. The second fascinating element was the electronic cigarettes that were being showcased for the first time

Do you have anymore info on ways to quit smoking

More...

Very interesting. I like your style

* Smoke Anywhere, tobacco free* with blu Electronic Cigarettes: