Dating

That period is somehow all dark in my memory. Like one big night. That winter mother of my friend, Dragana, had stroke. She survived, but she ended up as invalid.
One night few of us girls decided to take Dragana out, so that she can relax. There was police curfew in the place so our going out had to be finished before 10pm. We had to be in our houses at that time. Military police tended to shoot the people after that hour. Not nice prospect.
Anyway, that evening was my introduction to the wartime dating. We meet some pilots. Those were the only military men who you could find in town. The one who found me interesting was, in my opinion ugly, so the only reason why I accepted the date was because of my friend Silvana, who hooked up with his gunman.
This pilot, Zlatko, had rank of major at the time and he was piloting the helicopter. The only other member of his crew, the gunman was the man who was actually puling the trigger when they were flying.
I had at that time still the reminds of my ideals intact so I could not even think to date a man who kills other humans.
We went out twice, and both times it was double date. Both times he and his gunman were showing off, like little boys demonstrating how strong and big they are. That was too much for me. I was anyway scared and confused. No one ever told me how a civilian supposes to live in the war. All I know about war were those silly fact repeated in the books and films.
Then Zlatko asked me to have sex with him and that was it. I said no. Dragana and Silvana could not understand how I could reject a ‘Major’ so I invented some silly story that I saw him kissing the other woman. That story was acceptable as reason for terminating the dating.
After that I just faded into background. I did not wished to date. First there was this constant struggle to find enough food and fuel for heating, second the very idea of kissing a man who literarily just killed someone I found repulsive. And third I was scared that if I actually start to love a man he’d die in battle.
Dragana and Silvana enjoyed the fact that they could go to bed with the guy who will simply physically go away and will not make them any problems if they decide to sleep with someone else. So they used all this opportunities as much as possible. Now I believed that Dragana was using all that as the form of the escape. She was the oldest child in family with 4 kids. And her parents divorced just before the war. Her father was away in Germany. And then the only person who was caring about them became invalid.
So I was spending my days practicing the martial arts and self-defence while those two girls with whom I grow up were busy doing other things.
At that time I decided to try to find some decent way to earn the money. So I took the notebooks about astrology Darko left me and started to learn how to make a horoscope. I knew that I will sell ‘the fog’ but to me being ‘astrologist’ sounded much more decent and acceptable than sleeping around for food and money.
It took me 3 months to learn how to make horoscope.

That early spring siege was finally broken and I sold my first horoscope. Things started to look up.

First war winter

And then first war winter knocked on our doors.
The city was sort of under siege. There were no battle lines on the outskirts of the city but there was no possibility of the communication outside that small area which surrounded the city. And the worst of all, no power and no food supplies could be brought in the area.
I had pets before the war, huge fish tank with exotic tropical fishes and terrarium with the 2 turtles. Guess what, my turtles names were Donatello and Michelangelo. I loved that Ninja turtles cartoon too.

Anyway, tropical fishes needed warm water. So as the cold weather settled in my fishes started to die. I could not keep the tank warm. We could not keep our home warm. The heating fuel was same rarity as food and medicines. So my fishes and smaller turtle died.
At that time there were even more civilian victims. In the neonatal unit of the local hospital there were 12 babies whom had to be kept in isolated condition and they needed the oxygen. Those babies died too. They never got the oxygen. Later in the war we forgot about them. There were so many other victims that 12 babies were nothing. But at that time my brother was serving at the local military airport. He later told me that he was staring to unused huge bottles of oxygen laying in one of hangars at airports, the same oxygen that those babies needed to survive.
Me personally, ah. I was confused then. At that time I still could not believe that people can be so cruel, that such bad things can happen. And during that winter, during those cold winter night when I was sitting together with my mother next to the only oil lamp (we did not even had candles, we used animal fat which was too old to be eaten to burn), during those nights the nationalistic propaganda started to get me. I did start to believe that ‘the other ones’ are evil. I was half frozen, hungry and scared, and officials were telling me day after day that ‘the other ones’ were cause of my miseries.
I started to believe them.