painted white, sarajevo

XV

He had returned to his room in the hotel just after one in the morning. Elias had collapsed into bed and had immediately fallen asleep, letting his tiredness take him under, into a dreamless world.

Upon awakening, around eight o'clock, Elias groaned and let his head fall back into the fluffiness of the pillow. "S'too early..." he mumbled, releasing a sigh.

Nonetheless, he rolled off the bed, standing and stumbling towards the bathroom. As he washed his face, he peeked at himself in the mirror, noticing the sudden deadness to his eyes.

I did something I wasn't supposed to do.

Cold water slapped at his face, and Elias dragged a hand down his cheek, releasing a groan.

I lost Kane, too.

After brushing his teeth, Elias sat at his computer, risking a quick glance at his email. There was one new email waiting for him from Ada, with three files attached. Immediately, his excitement shot up, and his hands started quivering with pent-up excitement.

The first one was...a tunnel.

The tunnel of hope.

Tunel Spasa.

A chill ran down his back.

A tunnel.

SPASA.

Wistinburg is Sarajevo.

There was no doubt in his mind now—Wistinburg was Sarajevo, and he could be standing on the same ground Safet used to stand on.

That meant the underground place Elias went to, the one with SPASA, that was the tunnel, wasn't it? It was the Tunnel of Hope.

That tunnel was a link to their past, the past that was hidden to them until now.

Now, so many years into the future, where technology had developed and blossomed before their eyes, ages after the Great Recreational Age had occurred, they had a chance of finding out what had happened so deep in the past.

Elias let out something akin to a high-pitched squeak, mind racing, heavy with thoughts and ideas. Plucking himself up with the speed of a cheetah, Elias raced down the hallway, just about to knock on Kane's door when—

Oh.

His hand, momentarily frozen in mid-air, close to knocking but paralyzed right then, unfurled from the fist he had made. Carefully, Elias backed away from Kane's door, eyes downcast and a hole in his chest.

First, he had lied to Kane. Now he had exceeded Kane's patience in being his friend.

Turning sharply on his heel, the man strode back to his room, sitting down. Along with the files, Ada had left her phone number, just to make it easier—a direct method of contact rather than waiting for her to see an email and vice versa.

The second file was one about the tunnel again, detailing why Safet wasn't going down the tunnel.

The third one was something new.

September 2nd, 1993.

People are changing.

The streets are battle-scarred, broken, and cracked. Momo doesn't smile anymore, and his face is more weary than anything else. Vita cut her hair shorter and wears it tied back, preventing it from getting in her face whenever she tries to help the civilians.

Samra's husband has been positioned in the tunnel, but I haven't seen much of him. He has recovered from his sickness, or whatever he had, and Samra has gone back to her own work.

"Momo," I said this morning. "Do you want to help me deliver daily papers?"

At the time, he had barely looked at me. It had taken over a minute for him to drag his gaze to mine.

"I wouldn't mind," he had said at last.

We left immediately, me with a satchel of the papers that I had planned to pass out, him with an empty gaze to his eyes. The daily numbers of printed newspapers were a joke compared to numbers before the siege, but they were printed.

Momo shifted along with the gait of the snail, hesitant and anxious. But I strode forward, fear in my veins but not in my mind.

This is the way I show my rebellion. This is the way I fight.

The first person we stumbled upon was a man of twenty or so. I dug through my bag and handed him a paper.

When he lifted his head and managed a weary, half-broken smile, my heart lifted.

This is what I do best. Deliver papers. Deliver hope.

The smallest things have effects. A single nudge of a domino can cause the entire thing to fall. The slight blow on one card in a house of cards can send it toppling. A little ripple can turn into a giant wave.

But something had survived in that man's eyes. Hope.

The siege was not going to knock us down. I'm not going to let it knock us down.

We are people. We are not dirt underneath the Serbians' feet. We had good lives before all this, and we are fighting to have that again. We had jobs before all this, and we still do our jobs now, within the middle of this horrible madness.

This is our struggle. This is our fight.

We will not fail.

- Safet Kapić

After reading the piece, Elias let his finger stray to his lip, chewing lightly on the skin despite it being a bad habit.

It wasn't just the land. It was the people.

Surely there was blood of Sarajevans in the families of the world. No matter how much they tried to powder it over, everyone had ancestors from before the Great Recreational Age.

Safet never mentioned his family, not once. No one but Vita.

Did Safet survive? Did he and Vita get married? They probably had children. Two little girls looking just like him? There was a high chance that someone, somewhere, in today's world carried the family blood of either Vita, Safet, or Momo.

It seems, Sarajevo had fought hard. The people of Sarajevo didn't ask for that war. They didn't start it, they didn't cause it. One day, they woke up in it.

And now, it's happening again. Can those ghosts of Sarajevo's soul hurt all over again? Sarajevo, Wistinburg, you're not going down, not on my watch.

"Now...how will I do this?" Elias mused.

Reid Smith, his boss, wasn't a hardened man, but he had a job to do. He wasn't going to change his mind because of an old notebook and a couple rickety wooden stairs.

Elias needed a strong presentation, a good argument, a way to make Reid see the possibilities and benefits of this discovery. Maybe even paint a picture of his boss getting a promotion out of it.

He also had to take into the account the city of Wistinburg—not just Sarajevo.

The city was small, yes, desolate. A lonely, tiny city with seemingly no connection to anyone or anything outside its limits. The city without hope. Wistinburg was a city struggling to find a purpose.

If I was put in charge, I'd probably manufacture something here. Try to involve the bigger, international companies. The people here work in shops mostly, from what I can tell. Goods are handmade, and they're stunning, beautiful, and of the highest quality. The problem is they sell only locally. They don't export any of it. Those shops are only available to those inside the city, really, and since the city is so small, I doubt they can earn good living.

So if we can forge a proper relationships, involve major international businesses, we could get business going.

Wistinburg, with no purpose?

"Time to give it one."