Orange (the Background Color of Dream #2 in Ivana's Strange Series)

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. Her art scholarship brought her some money, which she deposited with frequency at her favorite bank, the one completely constructed of marble and glass. Sam couldn't keep his eyes off her. He fell in love with her in less than a month, much to her disappointment at first; she had given up on most things that most people find enjoyable.