Why
Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?
Chicago
Illinois, Hyatt Regency, Room 1214, December 31st 1999, 11:59
Ten!
Another year
is about to come and I’m alone again. I wonder why things like this always
happen. Good people are plagued while the bad people live in luxury. My whole
country is feeling the effects of this. The Serbs are living happily, while the
Croats are struggling for their lives.
Nine!
It’s because
of the Serbs I am alone today. Because of their hunger for control, because of
their longing for ethnic cleansing. Because they couldn’t be happy with what
they had. That is why I’m watching the festivities alone today.
Eight!
Look at all
the happy families. I used to have a happy family. The four of us together:
Jasna, Marco, Mathilde, and me. We were happy. Even in war we were happy. It
was incredible to watch them grow. Jasna’s first words, and Marco’s first
steps… They were magical moments, moments one can only have once. Life was
good. Too good.
Seven!
I was a doctor
in Croatia too. Mathilde once asked me why I worked in the Emergency Room. I
told her: “Someone has to do the job. If no little boys or girls aspired to be
president, there would be no one to lead a country. It’s the same with
emergency medicine.”
Six!
We had to keep
the children inside. It was safe that way. They could easily be snatched up and
taken. We hated to do that, lock them up like they were common criminals. They
hated to be kept inside too. They often got cabin fever; they couldn’t wait for
the day the war would end. The war was making them age too quickly.
Five!
We were going
to leave the country. Both the Croats and the Serbs were looking for every able
bodied man to fight. I didn’t want to fight. I had promise myself I wouldn’t. I
had seen to many people come into the hospital with wounds inflicted by the
war. I didn’t want the same thing to happen to me. I had a family to provide
for.
Four!
That day was
the one we were planning to leave on. To avoid suspicion, I would go to work as
planned. We almost made it too. I was walking home when I felt the ground
shake. I recognized the feeling, I had felt it often. A bomb had been dropped.
I saw smoke rising from the target. It was our apartment building.
Three!
Sirens were
wailing loudly by the time I got to the apartment building. The air reeked of
burning brick, plaster, and flesh. I climbed the rubble looking for my family.
Perhaps they had escaped. My hopes were in vain, as I found their bodies. I
also found a picture. It was a picture we had taken on a vacation to the
Mediterranean. It was burnt half way down the middle. Mathilde and Jasna’s
picture remained, while mine and Marco’s was destroyed. My heart broke; and I
remained there on that pile of bricks, waiting for something that wouldn’t
come.
Two!
I don’t know
how many survived the bombing. I don’t know if anyone did. I left Croatia, and
never looked back. I bought a boat and sailed for a while. Finally, I came to
Chicago. I don’t know why but the city seemed like the right place, and I
stayed.
One!
Now I am here.
I live in this hotel, and I am about to cross into the new millennium – alone.
Perhaps some day I’ll be happy again. And perhaps that happiness will be found
here. In Chicago.
Happy New
Year!
Happy New Year
Mathilde, and Jasna, and Marco. Wherever you are.
@---‘--,---
In honor of
all those who are victims of social and racial discrimination, all the victims
of the war in the Balkans, and all victims and veterans of 20th
century wars.
May We
Remember…