Flex Mentallo

A little while later, we entered the ruins of the famous Bosnian Library that had been shelled by the Serbs, all its many treasures burned.

Walking across this other bridge with Misha, I suddenly recognised BBC War Correspondent, Kate Adie crossing the bridge in the other direction. She took me for a local, and struck up a conversation. “The war may end”, she told me, “but the hatred never will.”

Don't take people's silence as disapproval. It's more like astonishment. This thread is awesome and will go down in history as one of this boards greatest reads. (thumbs u Thanks Roy - I thought long and hard about this before deciding to post! Here is the next chapter...

Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo "Excessive Bosnian Army bureaucracy had kept us away from the front line. After lunch, I hooked up with Japanese freelance TV cameraman and a Washington Times journalist. Together, we cruised the city looking for something different. Everywhere we went in Sarajevo ended in frustration. Before calling it a day, however, we decided to check out the front-line around the Vrbanja Bridge. There was a small battle going on, with Bosnian forces firing at a group of Serb soldiers near the ruins of the Union Invest building. Suddenly, a Serb tank appeared 200 meters in front of us, and fired over our heads. We scrambled to the next apartment house, and found ourselves holed up with a group of Bosnian soldiers. One of the soldiers yelled at me to look out the window, pointing at a young girl and boy running on the far side of the bridge. I grabbed my camera, but it was too late. The boy and girl were shot down. Bosnian Muslim Admira Ismić and Bosnian Serb Boško Brkić, both 25. Their bodies remained in the no-man’s land for nearly four days before being recovered.” Mark H. Milstein The bodies of Admira and Boško lay on the bridge for days since no one dared to enter Sniper Alley and recover them. A documentary was later made about their deaths entitled Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo

In the following days she became our guide to Sarajevo. One day, on a bridge crossing the river, she suddenly stopped and said, “I was crossing this bridge one freezing cold day last winter. Suddenly I heard the sharp crack of a rifle, and a bullet hit the bridge just in front of my feet. I knew I was done for. So I simply stood there, unable to move, and waited for the one that would kill me. The next bullet hit the bridge behind me. I waited but nothing else happened, so eventually I started walking again. The sniper was just playing with my nerves.” Others had not been as lucky.

...remember the first scenes in Vertigo? Somehow I managed to cling on, and so did the cat. But then to my horror, the cat started to back away, hissing and spitting as it did so. It backed away to the very corner of the roof and looked down. Then looked back at me, hesitated in a very human fashion before suddenly launching itself at my throat, where it clung for dear life, claws out, digging into my neck. It was all I could do not to tear the damn thing off! Stretching up, I was just able to deliver it into Nigel's outreaching arms. He in turn handed the cat behind him to Bobby. Then he reached out again, looked squarely at me and said, "Okay, jump". Had he not caught my hand I would have made a very messy swan dive into the waiting car park. Only afterwards, when I looked at Bobby's chalk white face, did I pause to think what I had just done. But refugees do that, don’t they? We never told Misha what had happened.

I can remember watching a Batman serial at the old Gaumont Cinema every Saturday morning. And there was an episode where the Bat mobile goes over a cliff taking the duo to certain death. I waited a full week for the denouement - only to find that the cliffhanger ending had been written out and the car never actually went over the cliff at all! I promise that doesn't happen here. More later!

I'm grateful for the positive feedback! I know many boardies are reading, but not many commenting so far, though I've had a fair number of pm's.

Thanks Roy - given the depth of the boards I expected to find one or two others who had direct experience of the war. I have a couple more chapters to post and will be back later today with the next one.

Found one on the net.

I agree. Beautiful books, but Superiors are not meant to be slabbed. Their weirdness should shine forth untombed! That's why I love 'em in low grade as well as high! I used to own most of them long ago and I think the average grade was fair to good! Most of the stories are absolutely bonkers! And then there are the really weird ones...

I love Rat Men of Paris - isnt there a rat queen?

#6 has my favourite vampire story: As for bugging me, you havent been doing enough of that lately friend of mine!

I'm sure you can guess what happened next. The sisters went on their errand. After a little while, Nigel turned up. He was a down-to-earth, matter-of-fact sort of fellow who made light of his own quite extraordinary actions. I have no idea how a quiet, unassuming university music professor from Glasgow transformed himself into a smuggler who managed to blag his way through watchful Serb checkpoints time after time - though he did at one point tell me that he had been caught red-handed more than once and fortunately had been able to bribe his way out of trouble. What happened next is still for me the stuff of nightmares. The cat had I thought hidden itself in the darkened bedroom and I had thought nothing more about it. Until I heard it, distantly mewling from outside the flat. I dashed out into the gloomy stairwell. Plenty of mewling, but still no signs of the cat. Nor was it out in the street, or n the landing above, or in the flat above occupied by some rather dubious characters that evidently wanted to shoot me if I didn’t stop bothering them. Baffled, out of breath, Bobby and Nigel hard on my heels, I paused on the upper landing for a moment to draw breath. Which is when I heard the cat. I looked up and saw well above my head a tiny window, and it was open. And the mewling was coming from that direction. I was baffled; because I knew that outside that window was nothing but a 50-foot drop to the car park below. With Nigel's help I boosted myself up and peered out. A good 6 feet below and 4 feet across on the wall at right angles to the one I looked out from was the roof of the tiny balcony of Misha's flat. It looked to be about the size of a large postage stamp and as solid as a sheet of paper, and was pitched at a steep angle. And somehow, the cat had contrived to get out of the flat, through the window, and onto that shaky roof, only to realise there was no way off. When Bobby saw the look in my eye she physically tried to stop me from doing what she saw I intended to do. The fact is, I thought that if I jumped onto that roof it would either collapse, or I would simply bounce off. But my sheer terror at the thought of having to face Misha far outweighed any other factor, so with Nigel's help I managed to worm my way out of the window. And then I jumped...

I need a green one to match my black ones (and that's just my shirt and trousers). I just knew you were going to say that!

I need a green one to match my black ones (and that's just my shirt and trousers).

Yasna's cat And so at last to Yasna's cat, and how I very nearly lost my life, though not by sniper fire! The following morning we had arranged to meet Nigel Osborne at the flat. But the sisters had to go out and stand in line for their daily quota of bread. Before they left, Misha said, "Michael, on pain of death, do not let that cat out of the flat. If you do, someone will cook it and eat it. And I do not know what will happen to my sister if that were to happen - that damned cat is her lifeline!" More tomorrow...

Yasna had moved in with her sister after suffering from shellshock in her basement flat. Her cat was her lifeline. She never spoke. When I realised they had to queue for bread every morning, I produced the remnants of our last meal in Zagreb - a couple of tomatoes and a chocolate bar. When Misha saw these offerings she went very still and said, "Thank you very much - I have not had a tomato in over two years, or chocolate either. Let me get used to the idea, perhaps we will have them tomorrow." It transpired that the black marketeers were selling a potato or a tomato for 5 deutschemarks apiece, but in any case no one had any money - just scrip with which to queue for bread. As Misha said, "Michael, we have a saying here - some men make brothers of war."