Lost souls

A friend I haven't heard from in years contacted me through Facebook. Like many of us involved in journalism in former Yugoslavia, he became a cameraman for a foreign news agency when the war started. Also, like many of us, he left the Balkans after the war and settled abroad. In his case, it was Washington DC, where he continued working for the same employer. Today I found out that he quit his job with the agency and is going back to Bosnia. He also is not with his wife any longer, a pattern I find common to many of us. It makes me wonder if we were all changed by the war so much that we wander the world eternally displaced. I could almost sense that familiar feeling of not belonging in him. Unlike him, I realized some time ago that going back to the Balkans is not a solution either. I could never feel at home there anymore, just like I don't feel at home in Canada or anywhere else. I wish he could settle down in Sarajevo and find what he is looking for, but part of me knows it can't happen. We may not have been injured physically, but some internal wounds were inflicted upon the little group of us who dared to fly high on adrenaline and who never found peace of heart since. On the outside we are all nice guys and gals, sociable and fun. But deep inside is an emptiness, a dark hole which consumes our self-confidence and makes it impossible to stay put. You know how sometimes you get jitters in legs and they won't stop shaking until you stand up and start walking? It's the same kind of feeling, only it comes from the inside and it affects not only the legs, but the whole body and soul. I was a lucky one, I found my anchor in Maggie, my little island of sanity in the strong current of change. She keeps my feet rooted to the ground and pulls me back when I start drifting. I hope she can keep pulling. Without her I'd be gone with the winds, like an old grey kite, ripped and scarred but somehow still flying.