January 18, 1996
Serbs in Bosnia See No Peace for Their Dead
By CHRIS HEDGES
LIDZA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- On Wednesday morning Nikola Ljesic went to the Vlakovo cemetery for the last time. He carried with him several yellow candles, a small parcel of food and a piece of brown wrapping paper filled with nails.
He walked past the dun-colored mounds of earth beside several empty graves toward the wooden cross marked with the name of his son, Dragoslav. He said that the 18-year-old was shot dead by a Muslim sniper in June 1992.
He kissed the cross. He knelt and kissed the dirt on the grave. He removed his brown wool hat and stood in silence.
"I would like to take him in my arms one more time, and kiss him and hold him," he said.
Ljesic lit the candles in front of his son's grave. He watched the flames flicker in the cold wind that whipped down from the barren, brown hills around him. On a weathered wooden bench he laid out two loaves of bread, a shaker of salt, smoked pork, a bottle of brandy and a shot glass. The two grave diggers next to him, wearing blue work shirts over worn sweaters, ate the bread with salt and a piece of meat. They quickly downed the alcohol.
When the graveside mourning ritual was completed, Ljesic nodded for the men to begin hacking through the frigid earth until they reached the remains of his youngest child.
"I took a handful of tranquilizers before I came," he said.
It is a measure of the distrust and hatred here that the Serbs are refusing to leave their dead in the hands of the Muslim-dominated government, due to take control on Feb. 3 of the Serbian-held Sarajevo suburbs. And a mounting number of Serbian families, planning to flee the suburbs, are arriving in the cemeteries each morning to take away the remains of relatives.
"You don't know these Muslim fanatics," Ljesic said. "They have no morality. They would dig up my son and take his bones and burn them."
Fifty graves in this cemetery, including that of a senior Serbian commander, have been exhumed by Serbs since December. And cemetery officials are drawing up plans to unearth the some 1,000 dead killed in the war and move all of the bodies to a new cemetery in Sokolac, outside of Pale, the headquarters of the Bosnian Serbs.
"We only have three workers," said Jovo Kuljanin, the director of the cemetery, "so people often have to dig up their own graves. We don't have any hearses, people have to arrange for their own transportation. And everyone who wants a metal coffin must pay $140 for it. We can't provide one."
Ljesic, who last visited the grave on Jan. 9, his son's birthday, was unable to pay for a metal coffin. Instead he brought plastic sheeting, handed out by the U.N. high commissioner for refugees to cover windows. In the pocket of his black suit he carried nails to pound the coffin back together. He had paid Srdjan Manojlovic $70 to carry the coffin in his 1987 red Yugoslav Zastava van to Sokolac.
The war shattered Ljesic's life. His two daughters left Bosnia, one for Germany and the other for France. His wife, whom he has not been able to contact in three years, remains cut off from him in Muslim-held Sarajevo. His home, on the outskirts of the city, was blasted into rubble. He has lost his job and lives alone in a small apartment in Doboj.
"My wife does not know I am here today," he said. "She was not allowed by the Muslims to come to our son's funeral. She has never visited his grave. It would kill her to see this now."
Milivoje Matic, a burly man in a brown coat, stopped to take a shot of brandy and express his condolences to Ljesic. He listened patiently to the story of how the boy was killed. Matic told the story of his brother, Slobodan, who he said had been tortured to death in a Muslim jail in Sarajevo. He then went to work a few feet away, swinging a pickax over his head to dig up his brother's grave. Small beads of sweat collected on his forehead.
"His children called and asked me to get the body," he said breathlessly. "They asked me to dig him up."
When the coffin, containing the remains of Ljesic's son, was uncovered, the gravediggers brought in a small back hoe to lift it out of the ground. As it was hoisted up, the dilapidated brown-painted wooden box spewed water into the hole.
Ljesic removed his hat. He pulled the nails from his pocket.
"We can put it back together," he said softly to Zeljko Knezevic, one of the gravediggers. "Please do it for me. I will give you all the money I have. It is not a lot, but it is all that is left."
Knezevic pounded nails into the three planks of wood that once formed the lid. The corpse, wrapped in a gray, damp blanket, faced the open sky. Ljesic, as if he were putting his son to bed, gently laid a clean blanket over the remains. An American Chinook helicopter passed overhead.
"I will put this plastic around the coffin," he explained to the gravediggers. "We will tie it up with string."
When the coffin was repaired, Ljesic embraced Knezevic.
"I will never forget what you did for me," the father said.
The end of the coffin, covered with the milky white plastic sheeting stuck out from the back of the van as it drove away.
Knezevic, seated on another grave, lit a cigarette.
"We have to do five graves tomorrow," he said. "I was here when they put the first body in the ground. It looks like I will be here when they pull the last one out. When the cemetery is empty, my job will be done and I will leave with everyone else."
