John Falk - Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Contents

To my parents, Arthur and Joanne Falk, who only grow stronger with time

The unexamined life is not worth living.Plato

The unlived life is not worth examining.Alfred E. Neuman

one

Tabula Rasa

August 3, 1993

The plane was a Luftwaffe C-130 packed with tons of food aid, en route to Sarajevo. The German Air Force had issued parachutes to give us a fighting chance in case we were shot down, but the other passengers thought it was a waste. Just means our bodies will burn faster, bitched a distinctly American voice. I was cheered.

Actually, I didnt get it. Yeah, the parachutes were uncomfortable. Yeah, we looked like idiots. But I was a war correspondent, flying into my first war zone and, if I had to wear a giant silver diaper to get it done, so be it. I was going in.

About forty minutes into the flight from the coast of Croatia, a German sergeant ordered us to buckle up, barking about ground fire at the airport. Be ready to disembark immediately, he yelled over the engines as we flew through a cloud bank that obscured everything below. I stared out the window anyway; I couldnt help it. When Sarajevo revealed itself, I wanted to see everything. It was ugly; it was grim; it was war. But at the time, I admit it, it was exciting to me.

I knew more about the siege of Sarajevo than many, having read up in graduate school. Sarajevo was a city of almost half a million tucked away in a valley dominated on all sides by mountains and steep hillsides where approximately ten thousand Serb soldiers armed with the latest weaponry were dug in. Their aim was to kill as many as they could of the lightly armed, mostly Muslim inhabitants in the city below. So far, they had taken out ten thousand and the survivors lacked water, electricity, gas, and medicine.

I knew the names of the key politicians and the broad strokes of the latest international peace plans. But I didnt go much deeper than that because I really didnt give a fuck about the history of the place, and I hadnt come all this way just to learn more. I was here because I was trying to start my life. Maybe a genocidal conflict seems a strange place for this purpose. But I had waited so long and I was determined.

Our plane descended below the clouds, and Sarajevo started sliding by: smashed roofs, houses gutted by fire, patches of rubble, tank traps. A smoky steel blue haze hung over the city and, even though it was summer, the few trees were bare and skeletal.

We landed at Sarajevo International, then run by the French Foreign Legion, at 4:00 p.m. Concertina wire ringed the perimeter. Machine-gun emplacements were dug in between the runways. Snipers were positioned in the sandbagged control tower. Everywhere I looked there were Legionnaires with assault rifles. Except for a huge Russian jet crumpled at the end of the runway, we were the only plane.

Within minutes a crew of Frenchies in khaki hot pants had unloaded the aid and was ushering us outside. I grabbed my stuff and followed the others out to the tarmac, where I caught my first whiff of wara strange amalgamation of burning plastic and wood smoke, mixed with a dash of horseshit. Not pleasant, but exotic enough to have a certain allure. In the distance I could hear gunfire.

From the plane, we were led down a sandbagged alley where my papers were processed by a UN press officer. Within three minutes I was in the pickup area, a parking lot surrounded on three sides by a ten-foot wall of dirt. Except for the black SWAT body armor and the helmet I wore, everything I had brought from Long Island was packed away in a medium L.L. Bean canvas duffel bag I dragged behind me.

It held: four pair of boxers and socks, three golf shirts from the Gap, two pair of stone-washed jeans, a ribbed-neck sweater from J. Crew, two cartons of Camel Lights, a years supply of the antidepressant Zoloft stuffed in a tube sock, three hundred dollars American, a shortwave radio, pens and a notebook, recording equipment from Radio Shack, a 35mm camera and film, half a bar of Toblerone chocolate, five rolls of two-ply Scott toilet paper, a Serbo-Croatian phrase book, plus The End of History and the Last Man and a dog-eared, underlined copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

But my most valuable possession wasnt in my bag: in my pocket was a crumpled-up cocktail napkin with a crude map sketched on it, a reward for my agreeing to be a courier for a Macedonian I had met in Croatia. The plan called for me to deliver a bag of mail to a woman named Szezana in Sarajevo.

Back in Croatia, I was told that the most important thing I needed to make it in Sarajevo was an ally, someone who knew the city and would be willing to give me a safe place to crash. Szezana, Id decided, was going to be my ally, but to rendezvous with her I had to get into the city. To do that, I was to hook up with an Egyptian armored personnel carrier (APC), which would take me to some building called the PTT. But the Egyptian APC was nowhere in sight.

An Australian reporter was hovering close by, so I showed him my mailbag, told him about the Macedonian and Szezana, and described the map.

Let me see, he said, storing his cigarette in the corner of his mouth. After glancing down, he grinned. No way, mate, he said, handing back the map. You go there today, tomorrow you go home in a box.

What the hell do you mean? I asked, panicked.

Someone doesnt like you much. That address is the worst in the world. Its in the middle of goddamn Sniper Alley.

But that napkin was the Jesus-bolt holding my whole plan together: What should I do?

If I were you, Id get out of here. Its not a place to fuck around, mate. Then he hopped into an armored Land Rover and drove away.

I was as scared as I had ever been and I hadnt even been on the ground for ten minutes. In seconds, I had gone from this sense of having a friend in Sarajevo to feeling completely alone in the most dangerous city on the planet. But no way was I going to turn back. So, though I didnt really want to, I approached Mortthe tall American reporter who bitched and moaned more than anyone on the plane. Maybe he would help me, but it would probably cost something.

Who gave you this piece of shit? he roared at the map.

A Macedonian, I told him, holding out my napkin. Im supposed to deliver some mail for her at that address.

Nice of you. Piece of advice, though? Next time dont take shit from no one. You dont know what youre carrying in. Military maps. Messages. If the Serbs find any of that shit, youre fucked.

Listen. Normally I would never ask this. But could you please help me. Just one night.

Why dont you just stay at the Holiday Inn?

I had heard about the Holiday Inn. It was on a front line and half of it was history. Rooms in the other half were going for two hundred a nightmore if you wanted soup.

No money.

Freelancer?

Yeah.

He looked away, then back, then did it again. Someplace not far off, a machine gun burped. OK, he said. Youve come this far, so I guess someone owes you a day.

Thanks, man, I told him. Really.

But remember, tomorrow morning, whatever happens, youre on your own. Then he put his right hand on my left shoulder and looked me in the eye. If you fuck up my gig at the church, I mean at all, Ill kill ya.