For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Benjamin Granby

The spilled concrete and twisted steel girders tarnished the art-nouveau facade of the building. Burn marks were evident and scorched furniture inside gave evidence to the carnage the building had seen. It was Sept. 11, and I was taking a leisurely stroll among the bombed-out buildings of Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

In the bitterest of ironies, my war tourism was interrupted as I caught a glimpse of a Serbian TV broadcast of live CNN footage. A building was crumbling on live television, in New York City. I had left America, looking for war, and it had come to my homeland instead.

My friend and guide Jelena stood in silence. A 20-year-old student in Belgrade, she spent 70 nights in a bomb shelter in 1999 as NATO missiles hit targets around her city. She lost friends who were drafted to fight in Kosovo and an ex-boyfriend who slipped on the broken glass from a shattered McDonald's window and bled to death. Needless to say she had no affinity for the American government, but nevertheless felt horrible. Still, she was removed from the whole thing.

"We Serbs aren't bothered by much anymore," she said. "If aliens landed on Earth tomorrow, it really wouldn't affect us at all."

I had set out in early September to tour the war-ravaged Balkans. I followed some of the NATO deployment which was disarming rebel Albanians in Macedonia, and I focused my time on talking with young people about their experiences with war. The maturity of those I met impressed me. For Albanians in the town of Tetovo, which saw some of the heaviest fighting through the summer, war was but a brief interruption. Students at the local university took off from their studies to join the rebellion against Macedonian authorities and yet returned in time for classes to resume in the fall.

One 22-year old law student and former sniper was casual about his duties. "I had the chance to kill many, but I had mercy," he remarked.

Others seemed more tempered by their bonds forged in combat. At an Albanian National Liberation Army base in Dobrosht, a young man cried as he left the compound. An army commander said that with the end of the conflict, many decommissioned rebels had been quite upset to leave. While northwest Macedonia at times gave the impression of a summer camp with guns, the situation for civilians was much more frightening.

Most impressive was Ibrahim Zeqiri, an intelligent 17-year old high school student who was studying in Istanbul when fighting broke out in February. "My parents wanted me to stay in Turkey," he explained, "but I had to return. It is better to go mad with your family than without them." Then, on Aug. 9th, as fighting broke out near his home in Tetovo, he became an innocent casualty. As Ibrahim, his father and a neighbor boy headed for shelter, a rocket-propelled grenade struck a wall above them, spraying them with shrapnel. Ibrahim's legs, badly torn in the blast, required two weeks of surgery, and yet he had a calm understanding that it was just a case of bad luck. He seemed happy to show off the shell fragments of what nearly cost him his life.

Moving across the former Yugoslavia, where each state experienced at least some degree of conflict in the past 10 years, common themes emerge. Beyond the ubiquitous rows of burned-out cinder-block homes that dotted highways from Macedonia through Croatia, the youths wore looks of aged maturity on their faces. Girls sporting designer Italian fashions as they passed the shells of destroyed buildings in Sarajevo looked gleeful and carefree, although it was apparent that they had seen things a simple tourist couldn't comprehend.

Jena explained some of the social changes she observed. "The wars over 10 years made us grow apart. There is no need for early marriage anymore," she noted. "People are more comfortable being alone." It wasn't that social interaction had ceased; just that deep down, people had learned to depend more on themselves.

When the attacks of Sept. 11 had sunk in, I realized that world events grossly overshadowed my journey. I found myself unable to follow through with the interviews about ethnic conflict I had planned. I clutched the business card of an expert on inter-faith issues in Sarajevo, but instead of calling I sought only to lose myself among battle-scarred buildings and pockmarked pavement. It was good therapy.

I went to the Balkans to understand what few American civilians have experienced. Within days of the events the local papers flashed headlines about soccer and basketball, not America — yet NATO vehicles still rumbled down city roads. No one else stared at the passing armored vehicles; they were too busy quipping about sports stars. Despite residual hatred of America, Belgrade saw no real celebration on Sept. 11. Instead, its citizens reserved themselves for celebrating a victory in the European volleyball tournament a few days later. I had gone there concerned for those that died in events a great distance away, and then something similar struck close to home. Recalling the words of John Donne, the world suddenly became a much smaller place: "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."

E-mail Ben Granby at sarin at devo dot net.