The traffic light moves from green to red in 30 seconds exactly. He hits the roof of the Peugot with his annoyed fist, mutters Fuckers. By fuckers he’s referring to the obnoxious zealots who, he’s convinced, are turning Zurich into a police city-state. Money flowing in from the Middle East with such an ease and regularity it makes him want to cry; yes, he’s annoyed by it all, but finds a strange beauty in oil-encrusted transactions. Probably because it’s the work of some of his own clients! And he’s not suffering financially; sweet Jesus, no. Far from it. So he sees these banks along the Rhone negotiating deals over picnic lunches as a sort of Zen practice. Yes, a Zen world with birds chirping in branches which brush spotless glass washed daily by high-cheekboned frail men from a Third World country half a world away. And what am I but a pawn in a white-collar world? Don’t I suffer as well? Good God, yes! And Sam absent-mindedly screeches before yet another red.
Green bird shit occasionally slaps those spotless windows in between the aforementioned manual showers by anonymous workers making shit for wages but a shitload more than they would be earning back in Samoa working on P.Diddy’s luxuriously-tailored robust shirts for The Man Who Isn’t Queer But Sure As Hell Dresses Like He Could Be. Not that P.Diddy thinks there’s anything wrong with being queer. Probably not. After all, he did finish the 2003 New York City Marathon and donated all the money raised to a children’s charity. You see...
It is a strong conviction of mine that it is nonsensical to risk your life by running 26.2 miles all in the name of charity, and embrace bigotry and homophobia as well. Not that P. Diddy does; I’m just saying that an individual who does so is a zero. Doesn’t exactly add up and doesn’t exactly subtract away. An individual such as this qualifies himself, or herself (‘cause let’s face it: women can be mean motherfuckers too), as a nonentity. An invisible being.
Sam’s head reclines on the steering wheel for a wee moment so he may gather his thoughts and dash them out the window as soon as he must pass through yet another goddamn intersection. The mini Cooper behind him honks loudly: one honk, two honk, THREE honk. Why, in God’s name, in a city so goddamn small, don’t we all ride bicycles?! And it’d be so Swiss! So Swiss. I hate the Swiss. A passionless people. A neutral country. I suppose I hate myself. Do I? And his hat drifts out the window as the Peugot fails to screech at the following intersection. What, in God’s name, am I doing here? Who the fuck am I? The brakes fail and he bumps into a bank, a fatal handshake between metal and bone. His bank. And Sam’s last thought before dying: Why does everyone and their mother drive a mini Cooper?
Ajda is sitting beneath a hazelnut tree, along the Rhone, picnic basket beside her, wondering what could be keeping her sweet fiance, when she notices the flash of a car crash in the reflection of a spotless window behind her. Her cheeks fall ablaze. She sees her life, 40 years from now: a pear holds her hand after a long hard day of scrubbing floors for a movie star in Barbados.
The lights on the minarets flash simultaneously as the sun sets in Sarajevo. Ajda turns her face up to the orange sky, smiles. Another beer is brought to her table. She is treating herself after surviving a dinner alone. The end of the war has filled the streets with boys playing soccer, and beautiful women smoking cigarettes; with Bosnian poets smelling of bourbon lining the walls of the cafes, exchanging the sort of gossip that is often disguised as literary critique. The end of the war has brought Ajda an empty home. Her mother was torn apart by a sniper as her father's face was gripped tightly by another Chetnik, gledaj tvoju kurvu, mumbled in his ear as he was forced to watch. Her sister was supposedly taken to a rape camp in eastern Bosnia, but these things aren't to be discussed, and her name was never to be mentioned again. Her brother fell victim in Sniper Alley after fetching water, his body dismembered by a gang of skeletal dogs. The dogs lapped up every drop of water spilled.
Ajda escaped Sarajevo just before her family left the world.
