He told me he died twice — first in the bullet-rain in the Bosnian civil war. It started with his
mother giving him cigarettes to barter for bread. The market echoed with shouts. Unrest spreads
in fearful silence. When he returned, he found his mother kneeling on the floor. A bullet was
lodged in the glass; the windows had blown in, revealing a spiderweb of cracks blocking the
outside world. If we–my mother and I–weren’t lucky enough to find a piece of plastic, we would
have been killed by the bullet rain. He spoke as we sat next to a wall stippled with bullet holes.
His breath flowed in and out, stirring the boiling wind. I thought I could still hear someone
singing inside the house, and the singing tasted of the ants gnawing the wooden column. On
our way back to the hotel, he said the bread was so delicious then. Nothing more. We ascended
the stairs—the lights died in small pulses, plunging us into a blue twilight where his face was
carved into a mask of sharp angles and deep shadows. The years he had lived parallel the years
he had folded himself in death—curved, unfinished. Under the hum of the lightbulb, it swelled
into a scream.

My own pres...he began, and looked away.

My old president, he whispered, he threatened to murder us all.