The value of life

What I think about when I'm running...

Recently, I read the book "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" by Haruki Murakami, a Japanese novelist and a marathoner, a kindred soul who likes writing and running. He drew some neat parallels between determination needed to train for a marathon, and to write a story. His book made me more aware of the things that pop into my mind while the rest of the body is moving in the rhythm of my running steps. It encouraged me to write them down.

A crow flying over my head reminded me of a run about a year ago—or was it two years already?— when I ran on the gravel shoulder of a by-pass in my neighborhood and spotted a small animal scuttering by the side of the road ahead of me. It must have been a field-mouse, but it was too far to tell for sure. When I get closer, a dark shadow of a hawk swooped from a tree near by and grabbed the unfortunate critter in its talons. That one cool swoop that killed the mouse and fed the hawk made me think how cheap life is for the hunter, and how precious it is for the pray.

It inevitably took me back to the crazy days when I viewed my life through the pictures I took. Photographs of war and suffering, of fear and of celebration of life. Because, only when life itself is threatened do we come to appreciate it fully.

Like on a sunny spring day in the early 1990s in the town of Mostar in southern Bosnia. Friend photographer Sasha and I were crouched along with a group of soldiers in a passage behind an apartment building, which was under sniper fire. Some time earlier the soldiers helped two women to safety. The women too were caught by the sniper fire and hid between two houses, calling for help. The soldiers rushed to provide cover. When the women escaped to the shelter and safety, the sniper turned its evil eye on us. As we hid in a passage lined with concrete walls, its bullets bored into the wall behind us. After a while, he started shooting tromblons our way. Tromblon is a rocket-like grenade, which attaches over the mouth of a rifle to be fired. The first one exploded on the road right in front of our hideout. We were showered by rocks, chips of asphalt and shrapnel. A shrapnel cut a gash in the forearm of a man who was having a smoke in the passage. He let out a scream followed by an avalanche of curses, clutching his arm. He had a gash in the forearm muscle, which was bleeding, but didn’t look deep. When the second grenade hit the wall, we all rushed to the basement of the building.

The memory gets somewhat foggy with the passage of time. And, for the first time, almost twenty years after that day, I tried to imagine what it was like to be that man, on that day in that place, at the other side of that sniper-rifle.

In my mind, I see him sitting by an open window of a building overlooking the downtown:

From his elevated spot he has a clear view of the stone houses and narrow, winding streets of the Old Town. Behind the compact maze that is the Old Town, the urban sprawl continues with apartment buildings spreading to all directions. The Old Town is a bees nest of activity, with people scurrying around busily. That will change soon!

He follows the people through the viewfinder, picks one from the lot, squeezes the trigger, braces for the recoil. People scuffle in panic, sifting like ants through the doors and gaps between houses. In a few short breaths the downtown is deserted. Then a woman’s voice starts calling for help, voice thick with anxiety. He sees movement between two houses. Quickly, he aims to the gap and waits. Red colored piece of fabric emerges behind the wall. It’s a small target on such a distance. It’s a nice challenge. He holds his breath, squeezes the trigger half the way, presses the rifle harder against his shoulder and waits for the count of three until the weapon is perfectly still, crosshairs of his viewfinder on the fabric. He pulls the trigger the rest of the way. The bang is loud in the small room, it rings off the wall and in his ears. There’s a thin cloud of dust where the bullet grazes the edge of the wall and changes direction slightly, but enough to miss the target. The fabric disappears in that instant, with simultaneous yelp.

A group of soldiers pours from a passage of an apartment building behind the Old Town, and takes positions around the woman’s corner. There are journalists too. A photographer. No, two photographers. They take cover in door frames. There’s one particularly big soldier. He doesn’t fit into the door frame. His shirt is not wide enough to be buttoned up, so it flaps around the huge bulk of his body in a stretched blue undershirt. That one is a perfect target! He finds the soldier’s bulk in the viewfinder, shoots... The soldier turns to say something to the photographer, and the bullet misses by less than an inch, ricocheting down the street.

He curses his luck. Then he ducks, frustrated, when shots were fired to his direction, to give the women cover to run to safety. He keeps his head under the window frame, in case a stray bullet finds his window, but the soldiers are shooting blind, not knowing exactly where he is. When he dares to look up, he sees them running behind the apartment building, the two photographers with them. He decides to teach them a lesson, show them who's the boss, take a few of them down. But, they are hiding cowardly behind the wall, occasionally peeking from behind.

He is waiting patiently, a cigarette on the window frame, the lit end facing inside. The ash drops on the floor. He doesn’t care. This apartment is compromised. He won’t use it again. He spits on the carpet, as if confirming that thought. At the corner where the soldiers hide heads appear in irregular intervals, always on different heights, impossible to predict where and when. It infuriates him. He fires a few shots, always a fraction of a second too late, a foot to high or too low, hitting the wall after the head was already gone.

He decides to play with their nerves. Every few minutes he shoots into the wall. The shots will keep them on edge. He pulls a gulp from a bottle of strong homemade brandy set beside his chair on the floor. The bastards are not moving. He wonders what to do to smoke them out. Then he remembers the tromblons.

He quickly replaces his ammunition with the bulletless cartridges which will propel the grenades. Two grenades he lines up on the window frame and attaches the third one over the mouth of the rifle. He detaches the sniper viewfinder and lifts up the metal target finder. The tromblon’s trajectory takes much bigger parabola than regular bullet, so he uses this finder to help him calculate the distance. Then he takes aim at the corner where the soldiers are hiding. The tromblon misses the wall, but explodes on the road right beside it. Shrapnels fly to all directions, some showering the passage behind the wall. There's commotion, someone screams. He got at least one!

Hurriedly, he has the second tromblon ready. This one hits the wall and explodes. It leaves a deep, flower-like scar on the wall, but doesn't have enough power to penetrate it. He fires the third one to the road again, but the commotion had stopped, so were the screams. The rats are in the hole, he thinks.

He celebrates with another swig of brandy, then replaces the bullets in the rifle and waits for the movement. After a long wait, a soldier runs out, sprints down the road and disappears behind the curve at the next intersection.

The sniper sets his sight and waits. Nothing moves for a while. He relaxes his grip on the weapon, when another man, a photographer, jumps out and dashes toward the intersection, hopping like a rabbit to the safety. He curses softly and waits. Nothing happens for a long while. Just when he lifts the head from the rifle again, another soldier runs out. He is damn fast and the sniper can barely follow, but he shoots anyway. The bullet is way off, way too high. He was never really good with moving targets. Especially ones moving so fast.

Another long wait. They must be waiting for the nightfall. He leans the rifle against the wall and reaches for brandy. Another shadow jumps out. The second photographer. This one runs like a cheetah, and in a few seconds he's gone. The sniper cocks his index finger and thumb in a gun-gesture and mimes a shot to the sprinting figure, as it rounds the corner.

“Pow!” he says and chuckles. He put the fear of god in them, made them run like dogs.

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I wonder what it would be like to talk to that man now, if he survived the war. Would he remember that day? Would he remember that second photographer, running like the whole world is burning behind him? Would he tell me his thoughts? Did he hate me for getting away? Or was he a good sport, outsprinted by the desperate few? Would I hate him? I am not sure now. I think I'd only be curious to see myself through his eyes. And his sniper.