5/11/2024
Corsican Rock - Breeding Dangerous Pets
by Zulfikar Ahmetovic
Back then.
Back then.
My smell - awful stink of mine.
Three weeks without washing, same clothes on.
Half human, half beast.
The Centaur.
From unruly Visegrad’s outskirts, a prisoner now.
Dragged into a civilized life.
Not too far away, but Sarajevo is still a city.
Close to a city, at least.
Cleaned, new clothes, sealed in a compound.
Segregated. Scrutinized.
What I knew. My family. My mother’s destiny. My grandpa story.
My grandpa’s knife. Handed over to them.
Like they knew my story since the very beginning.
Raspy voice first.
No, sir, I had never heard my biological father’s name.
No, sir, only one thing I know about him is the color of my eyes.
A woman, then.
Professional attire, blue blazer, blue skirt, low heel black shoes.
Disgusting devil I saw deep in her eyes.
Only good thing I could take a glimpse of her left palm, short life I said in gypsy language, she didn’t take it.
She had my school records, “amazing, she said, given what you are.”
Another day, walking me around in the compound’s walled courtyard like a dog on a leash, “Your school records remind us of a sort of genial American gangster.”
She dropped the name, Meyer Lansky.
Blank to me back then. I was nearly fourteen.
She nodded at outside world.
“You’ll never imagine why you are still alive. You’d have been dead on appraisal as all of your associates. You have a demigod of us on your side you’d never guess. Dumb luck of yours.”
She was in her mid forties, as I recall.
She said “call me miss Janice,” I guessed it was a fake.
I could get another glimpse of her palm, left hand. I saw nothing behind her, I saw a lonely kid out of skid row. I saw moderate chances in life, I saw her death - a disease, make it cancer.
I still remember, sun going down to the edge of the wall. Didn’t feel sorry for her, let her run her lines. See where she takes me to.
I didn’t feel sorry for my - as she said - associates.
New world in front, no past, no nothing.
This was how it began.
Three months in a row.
My room.
The corridor.
The courtyard.
A sort of a tidy jail.
Janice bringing me books to read. Study.
I asked Ancient Greek.
She brought in maths.
I simply wanted to stay alive.
I simply wanted to know what was next.
Then one day she brought me into another section of the compound.
She made me wear a gym suit.
She threw me in a half dark room.
A muscular guy along the wall.
She said “George, your coach,” and she left.
George said no word. He walked around. Just wasting time.
I stood in the middle. I was almost six feet, 160 pounds or so. I had turned fourteen.
I said to myself: “The Centaur is here to stay.”
He hurt me, elbows, knocks, knees. He could use any part of himself to hurt me.
I stood up every time.
Then he came up just to shake hands, as if I was an adult.
I gave him the Drina welcome.
He reminded me this before any other training session we had.
“I appreciate you’re resilient and treacherous, it’s part of the job,” he said when it was over. When I was deemed to be ready for the international school.
I still remember one night in the compound.
My time there almost over.
They had implemented my personal history. Names, details. Some real ones, some unaccountable.
They had trained me.
A fourteen years old tough boy passed through hell.
They taught me discipline, which I still appreciate.
Janice disappeared one day, a female snake to some kind of new assignment. She didn’t pass by to say goodbye.
George now the only one human being around me.
One night a sealed envelope was slid under my door, closed from outside.
Opened it.
I stil had no father, but I had an uncle since then.
His name to be Leon Almeida y Suarez.
Weird kind of name. Thought it was like the Jews back in Visegrad, they talked one separate language pertaining only to them that they said came from Spain. One of them was Leon too, Leon Papo.
I kept reading, training with George, sleeping, trying to forget, trying not to forget.
One night I was sleeping.
Door opened slamming.
Two big guys in black uniforms, masks.
Get ready in 5 minutes.
My clothes. My smell, persistent.
But not a stink, this time.
Taken through corridors, past the gym. A room.
Dim light inside.
I stepped in proudly.
The Centaur makes the scene.
A big muscular guy at the table. A black guy.
I dared say “uncle Leon, been waiting for you”
He chuckled, nodded.
“Take your seat, my son in law. I’m here to justify your dark skin.”
Someone else roared laughing from the darkness.
A tall, wiry guy I guessed among the shadows.
He came closer to the light, not enough to be seen. A limp. Slowly moving. I guessed an old man with an irresistible laugh.
Then I remembered my late mother quoting her American lover’s laugh.
Irresistible, she said when questioned. As if it was my late biological father’s most impressive feature, aside from his amazing blue eyes.
