PHANTOM PAINS AND EXPECTATIONS

The Invalids are Here to Stay

Summary: 300 disabled veterans, mainly young men between 19 and 30 years of age are undergoing treatment in the Institute for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics in Belgrade. The majority come from workers' and peasant families. Two thirds are from the Bosnian-Herzegovinian, and one third from the Croatian war theatre. They are experiencing traumas trying to accept the fact that they now do not have a leg, arm ... 55% of the invalids resort to alcohol as a "therapy" for peaceful dreams. Most of them pledge allegiance to Serbdom, defending themselves from destructive doubts about the meaning of their own sacrifice. They are angry at the indifferent Belgrade and anti-war movements. From their states they get compensation of 50 or at most 100 DM (din) a month.

AIM, Beograd

Zeljko Savic is 25, he has a smile on his face and a passion for football which he can no longer play - he is a war invalid. Zeljko does not have a leg, that is why he now shoots pool in the Sports Center in Belgrade, he moves easily with his prosthesis and is among those for which experts say that have adapted best, weathered the crises and amazingly well reintegrated in normal life after everything.

The medals of his grandfather, a brave veteran from the Thessaloniki front, are still on the wall of Zeljko's room and Zeljko was until September 1991 just an insignificant message boy in his company, with two grades of secondary school. War started in Croatia and the pictures on the TV screen, always and only of the unfortunate Serbian people, shook him from within. - I couldn't bear what the Croats were doing to us, he says, again with a smile.

Then he was called up and he gladly responded. He now admits that they told them in the barracks then: who desn't want to go, doesn't have to. And he wanted. Already that morning there were less of them in the mobilized unit. The following morning he "cleansed" cellars in Vukovar, happy to be among like-minded people, a warrior devoted to the Serbian cause and simply enthusiastic about his commander.

_ When I saw killed people for the first time, I simply froze. Later you get used to it.

A month later he run into a yard and a mine blew his foot into pieces, he lay there for three hours and almost bled to death, thinking only of home. Preventively, fearing gangrene, they cut his leg off above the knee, and he started sobbing only when he found himself in his bed, in Belgrade.

Three years later he says: "If all this hadn't happened to me, I would go to war again, I wanted to be a professional soldier." He smiles, thus psychologically defending himself from all the affected pampering, protection and pity at his job. And because he can no longer play football.

Now, he assures us everything is O.K., he has friends. The Yugoslav Federation pays him a disability benefit of 40 dinars. It seems that he will live on having been a hero for a brief moment.

• It was bad at the beginning, nightmares, screams. And phantom pains. A leg you don't have hurts. And now, at night, in my sleep I try to scratch it and then I wake up, and laugh heartily.

That is how a person who, experts claim is adapted, speaks.

What do then 300 war invalids in the Institute for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics in Belgrade, who have not yet adjusted to their prostheses, have not returned to their families or have no one to return to, think and of what do they dream?

The Misfits

A volunteer from Serbia, inspired by the wish to help his people. A holy terror in the battlefield, a hero. The loss of his leg was a trauma he could not reconcile himself to. The city is a graveyard, the citizens walking dead people. He sees thieves everywhere, everything irritates him, he talks only about heroism and Serbdom. He did not even wait for his prosthesis, he returned to the war theatre, to emotional "security". There, if he is alive, he is strong and important, while in peace he is socially unsure, a non-entity.

A woman without a leg leaves the Institute with a prosthesis. She grew up on a shooting range, she adored the Army. When the war for Modrica started, she took part in the battles and lost a leg below the knee. It took her months to accept this. Later, she exercised tirelessly, kept herself busy all the time, crocheting and knitting, socializing. Now, she is leaving with hope in the future and healed traumas.

A twenty-year old from Glamoc, a year and a half in the Institute, completely adjusted to his prosthesis. His sister lives in Belgrade and he will probably stay on with her. "I adored Yugoslavia, I never had any nationalist passions. That's funny. Why did I go to war? So as not to be a coward, nothing else. Everyone was going, and it was as if I were drugged. I would go back now, it is inexplicable to me too, something from within is driving me".

Arkan's volunteer who does not dare go to sleep. The scream: "Ziko, don't kill me" keeps coming back in his dreams. And the face of the child whose life he took.

Ljiljana Dakic in a wheel chair, twenty-three. She has two shrapnels in her head, an artificial eye and palate so she speaks with difficulty. A mine blew off both legs. In Brcko, where Moslems, Serbs and Croats used to live, she had many plans. She moved in nationally-mixed company. They avoided speaking about that up to the last moment, when there were already Moslem guards in town. The war started and "every bird flew to its flock". Her friends to the 108th Moslem Brigade, and she to the Serbian volunteers, after her father was killed. For four months she was an avenger -mine layer, always in the first lines. - It was cruel. They were cruel, we were cruel. So that our cruelty is not real, she utters with difficulty. I have not changed my mind, neither in war, nor in hospital, nor now. I would fight again, I believe in the Republic of Srpska and the new peaceful country we will build when we finally separate. Never again with them. I will go home, my folks will find me a job of some sort. That is how it has to be.

A misfortunate Serb from the coastal city of Zadar also has no doubts: The Croats are to blame for everything. They were a majority in his village. When everything pointed to war his best friends turned their heads away from him. Only two dared say "hello" to him.

Then we showed them, and "cleansed" them from there. We are not like they, we never tortured. What can be said when a man has to identify his own child in a grave after three months.

And thus, true believers, they do not even dream that similar Institutes and similar stories exist in other parts of the former Yugoslavia.

"The people will make everything good".

In the Institute for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics in Belgrade there are about 300 war invalids from 19 to 30. Two thirds are from the war zones in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one third from Croatia. Alone, awkward and silent, closed into themselves. When in a group boisterous, bitter and sometimes quarrelsome. In between the exercises and TV news, solitude and gloomy pictures draw them firmly together. The group is now their village, the wall protecting them against reality. Of the same social background, mainly from peasant and workers' families (only ten percent intellectuals among 1,000 people), not given to introspection, they choose their room leader and agree with him on everything. Up to two months ago, inflation swallowed up their benefits, now they get from DM 50 to 100 from their "homelands".

The Bosnians will, as a rule, drink it all up at once, buy a lamb and beer for everyone. The Herzegovinians will assert themselves as true leaders and the Serb from Slavonija will hide an apple, from himself, to give his son when he comes to visit.

Of different origin, experience, customs and motives, they are nevertheless firmly bound by the same trouble: unaccepted misfortune, fear (what will they say in my city, when they see me?), patriotism and firm clinging to old national myths, despite the ruined reality.

Hatred is directed primarily at deserters (they ran away and I stayed and gave part of my body), then at the Peace Movements in Belgrade and Vuk Draskovic. They would all go back to the front, back to the horrible but familiar situation. And when they say that the food is bad (and it is

• only cabbage and soya) and when they complain of the staff, cleanliness they are actually imploring "Give me back my arm, I am a hero, I want to be elevated by the state and I want it to admire me". In their heart, nevertheless, a burning doubt that the "people will not make everything good after all", and loudly they demand the equal, attractive status of veterans and disabled from World War II for themselves.

Serbia no longer seems like a mother to them and anti-war Belgrade is a surprise. In anger they sometime say: As soon as the war is over, we shall show you what Serbdom is.

Belgrade then remembers with horror the Sixth Lika Brigade which which really "taught Serbia a lesson" in 1945, which it has still not recovered from.

Marija Vujko, psychologist in the Institute for Orthopedic Prosthetics says:

• They react to the loss of a limb according to their personality. Most frequent are neurotic disturbances, pains in the head and stomach, although they are healthy. Nightmares and traumas. Typically, they avoid the actual problem, fleeing "outside" to problems with the prosthesis, food. They are all the same here, they expect psychological problems when they return to their environments. People who were forced to defend their homes in the war with clear motives why they are doing that, accept amputation and prostheses much more easily. Persons who were neurotic and aggressive, instable before the war have most problems. They did not clearly define their motives for going to war so that they take the loss dramatically.

When night comes, in the darkness of their room, they talk about events from the front, about acts of heroism, often bordering on the impossible. All of them are then heroes, who dared stay in the face of horrible adversity. Even when a man who lost his arm in theft and his room mates know that, boasts of his heroism nobody says a word. They fall asleep, often in an alcoholic stupor, for research shows that 55% of the invalids in the Institute resort to alcohol, as a "therapy" for peaceful dreams, nightmares and an uncertain future.

Gordana Igric