Conversation on the train

Conversation on the train with Branka, a friend, host, and guide to me, a kind of angel to others. In 1995 a family living near Pozega, Croatian wife, husband Serb, two teenage boys, feel pressure from with in their community to leave their home, pressure from hidden places, yet widely known. They refuse, they are decades here, "we are not at war". Then one night, 2am, bullets tear through the windows of the dark house as a warning. A warning that leaves a wife and mother dead. The two boys end up with grandparents in Latinovac. Branka is with them regularly. Not as a skilled psychologist, as a neighbor, but skills are skills... Relationships deepen, and they are often together doing one thing or another in the village, or simply for tea or coffee. Time passes. Some years later the boys are back to their home, Branka is now a lot in Vukovar with the Peace Camp of youth from all over the Balkans. Another year passes, and lives drift as lives do... Branka is driving at night to Pozega, is pulled over, "nothing wrong just routine", and from out of the darkness emerged one of these boys who was passing and recognized her. He tells her he and his brother are in a Tamborica Orchestra, (she had encouraged them to play music when they expressed an interest), and now they are performing regularly and loving it. It was a pathway back for them, emotionally, and to the community where they were born, where their mother died.

"We saw you on TV", he says. The Peace Camp is something new and strange and gets mostly good press as there are supporters of this work in the media. "Call my conductor, we would love to come and play, my brother and I want to support your work".

She does, and they do.

35 musicians, singers, and dancers from a conservative Croatian town, come to a mostly Serb populated village, and perform for youth from all over the region, from all sides in the conflict, Christian, Orthodox, and Muslim. No one knows what Branka has been through with these boys who survived their own tragedy in this conflict. She is crying as she tells me of the joy she experienced watching these two playing, and the mix of every one dancing and singing around her.
"I just laughed and cried, laughed and cried, laughed and cried".

There is a subterranean life here, under everything, veiled in silence.

Now 7 years later, no investigation, a killer from with in the community is silently moving through life.

No one speaks of it.

Not openly.