In God’s Name
By: Steven Sharp ©2004
Kosovo, the place that once filled the news but now lay forgotten amid newer, more pressing military operations, surrounded me. No matter how much news coverage I’d seen, this had always seemed like some imaginary, distant land that was only as real as the images of fighting and poverty that played out on my TV screen. But, here I stood. No black and no white, just murky shades of gray that hung over what might have otherwise been a hilly, rural valley encircled by tall, tree-covered mountains. Like deep burn scars that mar an otherwise lovely face, there was no grace or beauty about this valley.
“You a contractor, or a DoD civilian?” A ruddy sergeant with curious brown eyes asked me.
“Contractor. I’m going downrange to field some equipment,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t start grilling me about exactly what I do—many, who needled me for details, felt pressed to understand what exactly I do. Those satisfied with the simple statement, “I work with diagnostic test equipment” often saved themselves from a long and boring explanation.
He grinned. “Okay” he said, and turned away.
The cool
September wind swept down the cracked tarmac. I stood there by my suitcase, and I
glanced around at the milling herd of camouflaged people that surrounded me.
Their mottled shades of green and black stood out against the brown and gray
hues of the dead grass and crumbling asphalt.
Then, the sight of a grimy man, trying to control a shabby herd of oxen,
stole my attention. Like muddy ghosts,
they emerged from a sodden dale and disappeared over a knoll on the other side
of the tarmac. No one else seemed to
notice the unlikely pack of earth-colored specters. They all continued to speculate about the
fate of the overdue buses, or remained engaged in tales of their exploits. I didn’t care about them.
My gaze kept falling upon a boy—a NATO solider—who fidgeted and readjusted his AK-47 as he paced around in front of a gate covered with warning signs and razor wire. I wondered if he’d even started shaving yet. So young. The boy looked like he should be out chasing girls and trying to sneak into bars instead of wearing a stern look and toting a big rifle.
A young soldier, hunched under the weight of the over-stuffed duffel bag on his back, caught my eye. He strained to look up at a tall black man beside him. “Sergeant Jones, where’s the pisser, inside?”
“The latrines are those port-a-johns right over there. We’re not allowed inside the terminal.”
“Why not?” I blurted my question at the tall man.
He turned, ready to tear into the wise-ass who’d asked the question. Seeing my civilian clothes, however, he softened. “Oh, the Russians control the terminal building, sir, and they decide who can come inside and who can’t. We can’t. Damned Russians.”
A low rumble of diesel engines drew nearer, and three silver buses convoyed down the road toward us. The gate guard clutched at his rifle, turning to meet the buses as they pulled up and stopped. After a short discussion with the guard, the driver of the lead bus climbed back behind the wheel and idled forward as the gate swung open.
A lieutenant turned and bellowed at the milling soldiers. “Buses are here! Let’s load up. Make sure you’ve got your gear. Keep your Kevlar on and snapped, put your flak jackets on, and let’s move out!”
I fumbled with the snap on my Kevlar helmet, trying not to look like a total amateur.
“How long’s this damned bus ride?” someone grumbled behind me.
“I hear it depends on traffic. My buddy said anywhere from two hours to four hours.”
I didn’t
know how the locals felt about these American soldiers traveling back and forth
between Pristina and
As I shuffled onto the bus, I got my answer. A nervous, black woman, wearing a private’s stripe, sat on the front seat. Her eyes were wide and round as she inspected the passengers streaming past her. Even in the blustery cold of September, small beads of sweat clung to her brow. She looked little bigger than the cold M-16 that stood between her knees. The magazine of her rifle bore a prominent band of red tape around it—a marking, I later learned, that signified that her rifle carried live ammunition.
The last of the riders settled in, and the uneasiness I had felt before grew into a wave of fear that washed over me as the bus rolled forward. We jerked and bumped along the uneven and potholed remnants of the road exiting the airfield. After a short drive, we turned onto an even worse road, half gravel and half-lumpy asphalt, and the view of smashed houses and buildings grew steadily nearer. The structures that remained bore the pockmarks and scars of the vicious house-to-house fighting that once engulfed the area.
Block after block of ravaged homes,
burned buildings, and piles of rubble that once provided shelter,
dotted the landscape. Then, in the midst
of an area where nothing else remained, a white stone church, untouched by
bullets or bombs stood with its prominent white cross and green shutters. Its
clean, pearly exterior stood in solemn defiance of the crumbling buildings that
surrounded it. Repeatedly, we passed churches that stood tall amid piles of
rubble and where no other buildings survived.
Along the road, the churches’ familiar peaks and naves adorned with
ornate, curling iron-work remained as they had for many decades; they alone
escaped the wrath of a war that had smashed every other thing in sight.
It might have seemed surreal, if I hadn’t been close enough to see the faces—dirty faces of hungry children clutching the scrawny hands of their mothers. Mothers’ faces pale and thin and pinched, helpless to fill the empty bellies of their babies. Along a concrete bench beside the road, a line of haggard, defeated-looking men had nothing better to do than pass their time muttering and watching the endless line of cars creep along. Streets lined with dirty, skinny people, scrabbling around in their colorless and joyless world, looked like the living dead. They wandered around in clothes that hung over them like stained hand-me-downs from a more prosperous time. Neither style nor fashion—not even cleanliness—posed much of a priority to these people. They slipped into whatever rags they had, anything that would cover their body, and set about another of existence, and with any luck, they might survive for another day.
We turned onto a highway and joined the bottled up line of cars, dammed up by some distant traffic jam. While sitting in traffic, the remnants of a two-story concrete building caught my eye. The ruins of the building left a cut away view of the inside, exposing the guts of the place. Tucked beneath the jagged ceiling, a woman tended to a kettle perched on an open fire, as three barefoot kids scurried around in the mud. My eyes snapped shut. The aching inside me forced my eyes to block everything. I feigned sleep—just an excuse to hide my inability, or unwillingness, to witness any more of the pitiful images that still linger and haunt me today.
The bus finally stopped and the passengers stirred. We sat at the gate of the sprawling compound that disappeared over the horizon. Guards and barricades lined the entrance and columns of dusty armored vehicles stood along each side of the road. Our armed escort conducted her business with the guard, and we rolled into the compound. Rows of camouflaged tanks, helicopters, airplanes, and troop transports stood like herds of sleeping green elephants on both sides of the gravel road. In the waning minutes of evening, a ray of sunlight peeked out from beyond a towering gray mountain that loomed to the west. Neat columns of identical, tidy dorms lined the middle of the compound, and we passed several grinning soldiers carrying ice cream cones and drinking sodas as we neared the processing center. The smell of charcoal and hickory hung in the air and the scent stirred a growling in my stomach. I wondered what they were grilling that smelled so heavenly.
The wave of unease that hit me when the bus left the airfield had crept away. Still, something deep inside me, something I couldn’t reach to comfort, was shaken. Along with the soldiers, I piled off the bus and processed in. Several of them were making their way toward the chow hall, so I followed them along the gravel rows between the dorms to find the origin of the succulent scent of roasting meat. I was supposed to meet my point of contact at the cafeteria at seven o’clock, and the time was getting close. I made my way through the serving line, marveling at the incredible selection of dishes.
“Sharp?”
I heard someone behind me call out as I looked for a place to park my heaping tray of food. “Mr. Hadly?” I called back.
“Yeah! But call me Bob. Good to see you.” The lanky man with a thick brown mustache extended a bony hand. “Come sit over here.”
We slid into a vacant table in the corner and I started shoveling food into my mouth, nodding at appropriate points in his rapid-fire offering of almost random bits of information about my mission.
“Quite a bus ride down here, huh?” he said, watching my expression.
That was an understatement. “Yeah, pretty sad. Didn’t think it’d be so torn up after this
long.”
“Yeah, they don’t have much,
and most of ‘em can’t afford to rebuild anything.”
“But the churches aren’t torn up, I noticed that.”
“Well, this was a religious war, basically—you know. Milosevic, being a Christian, guarded the churches and tried to destroy everything else.”
“I don’t know that I’d say Milosevic fits what I’d call ‘Christian,’ but if you say so. Murder, even if it’s buried under terms like ‘ethnic cleansing’ isn’t something the Bible advocates.”
“I’m not saying that he was ethical or moral. I’m just saying that his chosen religious affiliation is that of Christian as opposed to Muslim, Hindi, or Judaism.”
“So, you’re saying that he believes in Christ and God.”
“Right. Anyway, this ‘cleansing’ was committed against Muslims. So, his army was killing and destroying anyone and anything that pertained to a non-Christian religion. But, they didn’t harm the churches, and they guarded them so that no one else could damage them.”
“So, all this was done in the name of God.”
He stared at me for a moment, his mustache twitched, and he looked down. “In some people’s mind, I guess it was.” He paused for a moment and seemed lost in thought.
A dark skinned man in the white uniform of a cafeteria worker paused at our table. “Hey, Mr. Bob! How you been?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” The man smiled and then set about emptying the trash cans. He leaned close and muttered. “You know, they hire a lot of locals to work on this
base. They used to let them go home every evening, but now they have to stay on the base. They get to go home on weekends, though.”
“Why’s that?” I couldn’t imagine why anyone would care whether the workers went home or not.
“Well, see, the locals who work here make eight or nine dollars an hour. Workers were getting killed by unemployed people downtown to create job openings.”
Visions of those people downtown came swimming back with the force of a tsunami. My appetite drowned in the tide of smutty images, and I could think of nothing more than finding my dorm and sleeping. I excused myself and wandered outside. Throngs of soldiers stuffed with beef and potatoes and chocolate cake wandered by, chatting and laughing. The dim lights of the town below glittered like gems on the otherwise darkened horizon.
I stretched out on my bed and hoped
that sleep would overtake the images of desperate people that kept filling my
mind. Visions of famished people
stretching out on dirt floors, hoping the rats would stay away, hoping the
night would not be too cold, hoping that tomorrow would bring some ray of
hope. Maybe they wondered what it would
be like to live in another place—a place with heat and food and running
water. Maybe a place where kids went to
school and parents had jobs, and where they could believe whatever they wanted
to believe: a place where there was
something to believe in. They had
nowhere to go, and even if they did, they had no means of getting there. They could only lie down in the dirt and night, close their eyes, and pray that Milosevic hadn’t
taken God him with him when he left.