Strong Coffee

This is a story a friend had told me. I will describe it here by talking in first person.


The shameful Fikret Abdic's betrayal and breakaway led to disastrous, fratricidal war between his supporters and the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. What we are talking about here was one of the most obscure ever moments of the war in Bosnia.

In the area of Una-Sana Canton – more people died during the clashes with Abdic's forces than after all the fights with Karadzic's troupes that were holding the whole area under the siege for four years.

During the last years of war, I was working as a communication technician responsible for maintaining many devices and secret codes in the headquarter of a brigade of the V Corpus.

Because I was an excellent student in school, they gave me a very complicated and responsible job that consisted of being awake night after night and keeping the connection with our troupes on the frontline. The place we were stationed in was actually one of the Abdic's chicken factories where, in the times of peace, countless chickens ended their path before turning into delicious paste - in the noisy warehouses packed with sophisticated slaughtering machines. In addition, the place now served as an Army brigade headquarter.

My job consisted of being at my desk, with various devices turned on, and solving coded messages received from all over front lines. The room where I was working had once served as the main office of a chicken sanitary inspector. I think I had left that room maybe only for a few times during those months.Thats how I recall about it.

One day, at my utmost surprise, the officer in command assigned me with a new task. He told me that morning that I needed to take tree prisoners out with me and keep an eye on them as they were going to put some cables all around the chicken factory or our building. I accepted the assignment with an enthusiasm and not showing any reluctance. It was a war time after all and I was ready to do whatever it took – just to contribute in some way.

They gave me a riffle, the old and long piece of junk but keeping the spirits up was much more important.

The job that needed to be done was quite dull. All we had to do was to get out of the factory's fence and spread the large wheel with cable around the place. However, one thing worried me much more. A village we were in; we were surrounded with people inhabiting the surrounding area among whom the 90% were blatant Abdic's supporters. It was like taking a tour around our enemies' nest.

Therefore, I was about to leave that day the green oasis of my chicken building and to enter a desert of surrounding houses full of the people not in love with the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina of which I was a proud member.

Not long after we started with work and had spread maybe 100 meters of cable - one guy from the house we were passing by had invited us all for a coffee by saying, "Hi commander can we have these people just for a cup of coffee, and let them to take a break please just for 10 minutes?"

Therefore, the guy actually only cared for my three prisoners to get some refreshment, and obviously didn't care that I liked caffeine too."

That man had a nice wooden table in the summer garden of his house. "Just seat here please and coffee is coming in a second," he said.

"Ok," I said, "but let's make it short." I took a seat at the table, but I didn't allow for my tree birds to join me at it. "You are not going to seat here with me, take a seat in the corner here," I ordered. It was a summer time and very hot as well; as a result, the chances for them to catch the cold by seating on the ground were negligible.

But our host, the guy who was already bringing the coffee as well as my prisoners – they all had found my decision to be a supreme humiliation for them. They just couldn't accept the fact that an 18 year old kid is now in charge, and that whatever I say must be obeyed.

"Oh why you didn't let them to seat here at the table. Don't worry this guy is my cousin," said our coffee provider.

"I'm not going to let them and that's it, please, do not ask me anything more," I responded.

Consequently, everybody had a coffee, and I had a brief conversation with the man in whose garden we were all at. He said that many of his close relatives are on different sides. I believed that story because the conflict between the Abdic's people and the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of the most bizarre and tragic accidents in the history of warfare. There were so many cases where you had a son and a father being on the different sides of the fire lines. It was a conflict that had divided families into the members of the opposite sides in the war. I witnessed, later on, the case of a father who was brought up to our chicken headquarter as a prisoner of war and later was being watched up by his own son as a prison guard.

Luckily, our coffee time ended up without any more mayor disturbances except for the anger that was so easy to recognize from the faces of my tree birds and their coffee savior. Mine not letting them to seat at that table has filled them with an obvious outrage. Nevertheless, they were silent and we had some cables to do.

The episode ended up more or less painlessly, and soon we were back to one of the warehouses full with the chicken incubators.

The months had passed and the most of the prisoners of war that we had held at the factory were now rehabilitated and joined to the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

One of them was the guy, who had helped with the cables, and was monitored by me that day. I start seeing him driving the weird vehicle out of which clouds of fumes were rising up in the air. He was driving a slow vehicle transporting the hot food. Once a prisoner, now he was in charge, together with a few other guys, for bringing the food from factory to the front lines.

I was surprised to see him doing that. A few months had passed from our cable incident, and I didn't see him meanwhile. He must have been somewhere else, and now he was here again holding in his arms more than a dozen of pieces of bread.

On one occasion it was impossible to avoid him. I was just coming back from a short home break, and he was there on the factory's entrance, getting ready for another dangerous trip to the front lines.

When he saw me, he said hello in a very friendly manner. He started talking with me and said that he was lucky that lately there is not much going on regarding the amount of the danger on fire lines.

"Looks like everybody is taking a break and that's good," he said.

"I agree it must have been good: Short breaks are always nice."

In a very friendly manner, he invited me for a diner with his family, in a house that was only five minutes away. I was stunned – I didn't expect this and at the same moment he pronounced his invitation I recalled the way he had looked at me, on that cable day, with a look of an obvious despise and anger, after I ordered him to sit in a corner, on the ground.

I said, "Yes," I am going to accept the invitation.

At quarter to seven I made my way toward his house. After I knocked, he opened the door for me and revealed the room that smelled worm and intimate -because his wife was there as well, together with their small boy. There was no electricity, supply had stopped already for a long time; a pair of plain oil candles was burning. Something smelled well out of the stove, and the cracks of burring wood were promising some consolation.

We started with a coffee first, as it is usually the case. We both lighted our cigarettes and not long after the first words of usual guest-host courtesy were exchanged, he said the following:

"You see, you probably know that I am one of the 'rehabilitated' and something more than a few months ago I was in the factory, in prison. It was OK, nobody beaten me there and there was some food for us too. But one thing I remember as particularly awful – there was one greenhorn guy who took us one day to put some cables around the factory. He hardly accepted the kind offer of one of my neighbors who only asked to get a cup of coffee for each of us. When he finally has set his mind to let us get some refreshment and drink the damn coffee he requested us to seat on the ground, in the corner, like dogs. Can you imagine the jerk? We had to be humiliated by this idiot kid.

He had told me this while looking straight into my eyes, with an expression of someone who has just made a confession full of trauma.

"Unbelievable," I said, "that guy was a real jerk," and then the dinner was ready. His wife invited us to take seats.