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Faruk Šehić
collaborating with the enemy.
My Grandmother’s whole
family, without exception,
were Partisan supporters.
Grandmother herself, then
a clerk at the local court,
helped
the
resistance
by carrying messages in
her beige handbag, and
her cooperation with the
communists remained a
deep secret. Therefore she
derived no material benefit
from it after the war. Many
years later, only her cream-
colouredshoeswith theblack,
rounded ends reminded her
of the time when she took
messages from one prison
cell to another in a miniskirt
and with the handbag under
her arm. That would happen
when she climbed the steep
wooden steps up to the
attic – where she kept her
old shoes – to put laundry
in the washing machine, or
to go to Uncle Šeta’s room,
where she would prop her
elbows on the windowsill and
watch the Unadžik for hours,
looking even further, past the
willows, through the avenue
of aspens, all the way to the
end of the aits, where the Una
returns to one channel and
continues on alone, without
islands, towards Jasenovac.
The husband who left her had
been at the concentration
camp there for two years.
My Grandmother didn’t lose
hope when her husband was
interned at Jasenovac. On
the contrary, she travelled by
train to Zagreb, down the Una
line that faithfully follows the
river as far as Kostajnica, and
tried to save him from the
death camp. By plying several