Short story

June 2021

WAG International Artistic Organization

LITERARY ARTS

Literary Arts Entries SHORT STORY 2 entries

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June 2021

WAG International Artistic Organization

Thinking about the meaning of life We try to get out of London by bus during the rush hour and have to stop again and again. We are obviously in a traffic jam.

Cars come towards us at high speed whereas we hardly move forward.

Every few minutes a big airplane appears above my head and seems to land somewhere behind the clouds.

When we do start moving, I notice the ugly apartments on either side of the road and I’m glad that I don’t live in one of them.

We come to a well- kept graveyard that reminds me of death, but I’m not ready for that yet and wonder if anybody else would be: no or yes?

Well, I for myself put the thought aside quickly.

An ambulance rushes past us making a deafening noise with its siren and I know that someone is badly in need of help. So I pray for the injured person.

We pass expensive houses with beautiful gardens and I’d like to live there but am sure I couldn‘t afford it.

Two hours have already passed and we are still not at our hotel.

So I should be patient, enjoy the flowering trees along the road, the colorful plants, a spectacular sunset and think about the meaning of life.

I might well conclude that time does not really matter and too much worrying doesn’t help.

So I ask myself: Should the ultimate goal in life be to keep body and soul in harmony, no or yes?

LITERARY ART Short story Entry nr. 1

June 2021

WAG International Artistic Organization

No to aggression, yes to humanity Be a human being to the neighbor

Just when I thought I wouldn’t be able of writing a credible story about real mercifulness which I or somebody else had shown someone, consciously, voluntarily, one true event from the recent Balkan past confuted me.

During the war, or in whatever way I could describe or define conflicts, destruction, killings and hatred which happened at the end of the 20th century in ex Yugoslavia, there were many examples of courage, sacrifice and humanity among ordinary people, by all warring parties. I have read and heard about them, some testimonials have been described in books and documented by names and surnames of the participants.

Anyhow, I believe in every story in which the gratitude for one's life is given to a member of different religion or nationality.

I was especially moved by the acquaintance's story, which I had heard from him, and had seen his broken and incorrectly healed fingers, but who had stayed alive, precisely thanks to his neighbor of different religion and nationality.

Since I firmly believe that there had been other similar cases among “ordinary” people belonging to all warring parties, I shall not name it, who helped whom.

So, my acquaintance was dragged out of his house in one small place, in an early, foggy morning and taken to a hearing. The man had lived in that place since forever, went to school with his peers, learned his craft, celebrated birthdays, holidays and festivities with all the people from his neighborhood.

They had all been working together in the only, biggish factory plant in that place.

LITERARY ART Short story Entry nr. 2

June 2021

WAG International Artistic Organization

And then the conflict broke out and all the naïve ones, the ones who simply couldn’t believe that anyone could do them any harm, for they had never done any harm to others, didn’t join “their people”, but stayed in their own houses.

However, when the heads are being cut off, usually the ones which take the blame are the innocent ones, guilty of nothing.

In the same manner, my acquaintance was bitten up, interrogated about the issues he knew nothing about, in which he had taken no part. But, they neither believed him, nor did they want to hear about it. The bullies thought that by giving him stronger and stronger beating and by using threats they would find out something, albeit false, so they can go in retaliation.

Soaked in blood, thirsty and starving, swollen and harassed for number of days and nights, the man, along with those who shared his destiny, was imprisoned in an improvised camp.

He was on the verge of temptation to simply make up names and addresses, but he was aware that the people with similar names surely must have existed, streets and numbers existed, thus those villains were going to punish the innocent ones, regardless of the discrepancy between reality and the information he had given them. That’s why he decided to say nothing, no matter what happened next.

Leaning on the wall of the barrack, beaten up, muddy and frozen, he barely resembled himself.

One afternoon, a new group of people entered the camp, obviously recruited members of the same, so called “army” to which the ones who had tortured the prisoners belonged to.

LITERARY ART Short story Entry nr. 2

June 2021

WAG International Artistic Organization

If any of the prisoners had had strength to look up or try to raise his head, without drawing attention to himself and thus suffering even worse abuse, maybe he would have seen some of his old acquaintances, school buddies, colleagues. Some of the people with whom, until recently, he had shared his meals, celebrated births and holidays. And perhaps they would have noticed the embarrassment, fear, compassion of the newcomers. Perhaps they would have noticed that those weren’t volunteers, but forcefully recruited villagers. But, poor, tormented people kept looking down, at the ground.

But, than one of the newcomers recognized his neighbor, curled up against the wall of the barrac. Shocked and wihtout thinking, he asked the commander what that man was doing there, what he had done to deserve such a beating. He knew him, it was his neighbor, a wonderful and honest man.

The commander laughed mockingly and said that it was impossible for a man of different religion to be a good person, so that he surely must have known something. And as for him, to stop asking questions - what was is to him; otherwise, he would become suspicious as well.

Nevertheless, the newcomer did repeat that the beaten up people needed aid, food and water, a roof over their heads, since it was almost nightfall. And that he still stood by his claim that his acquaintance had nothing to do with the conflicts.

At that moment, what the bloodthirsty commander had threatened to do, happened. He roared how he had no intention of taking care of the prisoners, but that he was going to “whack” them all. And since the special neighborly care had been shown, it was the perfect opportunity to condemn the man without further delay and that the acquaintance was to shoot him that very instant.

LITERARY ART Short story Entry nr. 2

June 2021

WAG International Artistic Organization

The newcomer said that what they were doing was inhumane, it wasn’t by the law, nor by justice.

The commander approached him, and tried to force the gun into his hands, force him to shoot. The man told him: “You know perfectly well that I am a teacher, you also know that I have taught your own children to write and read, you know I have taught them that our hands serve for holding pencils, not knifes and guns! I shall shoot no one, I shall only defend my own home and my children, if the circumstances demand it…”

“Shoot”, screamed the bloodthirsty commander, “or you and this scum will share the same fate”.

“No, I shall not”, replied the teacher, “and you can do whatever you please…”

Those were his last distinct words. The commander ordered his most trusting helpers – wild hounds to beat him. His own compatriots were thrashing the teacher, with their feet and rifle butts, screaming: kill, kill, kill…

At that moment identically muddy, beaten up and soaked in blood as the prisoner himself– acquaintance whom he refused to shoot, kneeling in the mud, he raised his hands towards the heaven and barely whispered: “ Never...”.

“Shoot him”, roared the drunken, bloodthirsty camp commander and the teacher took the first bullet. From “his own” people…

He fell into the mud, not very far from the curled up prisoners. His open, lifeless eyes were staring at the evening sky.

Most of the newcomers, the recruited villagers were staring at the sight, openmouthed, thunder stricken, with fear in their eyes, but they all stayed put as petrified.

LITERARY ART Short story Entry nr. 2

June 2021

WAG International Artistic Organization

“Tomorrow morning you are going to shoot all the prisoners!”, ordered the camp commander with a drunken, malicious look in his eyes and staggered into the night.

But that didn’t happen, because before dawn an UNPROFOR or some other international force group invaded the camp. Did they liberate it or “took it over” or whatever that kind of operation was called during the war - this I don’t know.

The only thing I do know is that the last person who got out of the camp was my acquaintance, because he had been lying in the mud for hours, holding the neighbor’s dead body in his arms.

He told this story peacefully and calmly, but with tears in his eyes, firmly believing that this wasn’t just a matter of honesty, humanity and goodness of neighbors, but precisely a matter of experiencing the mercifulness for another human being.

I, too, believe that it truly was.

Epilogue: After the war had ended, my acquaintance visited the teacher’s children. He told them that their father had once saved his life and that the teacher was his hero.

He didn’t go into the details nor did he explain the circumstances, since the teacher’s wife and children had been told that the father had lost his life in a battle. My acquaintance has put the teacher’s children through school, along with his own, although they’ve never found out about this. He didn’t want the feeling of gratitude to be passed down, forever.

For him it was enough to cherish the memory of his dead neighbor, the teacher.

The real truth was known only to their mother.

LITERARY ART Short story Entry nr. 2