‘This man killed my father,’ he said, his voice low and even, giving no indication of the fury that gripped his insides like an ice fist driving through his ribcage.

18

1992

Petrovici, Bosnia

Tomo walked home from school back to his tiny home in the shadow of the Trebivic mountain, whistling and kicking a stone along the dusty track. He was looking forward to the twelve-kilometre drive with his papa to Sarajevo later that day, where he would join Papa’s wrestling class. The full group of other embryonic wrestlers would all be star-struck by the ex-Olympian wrestler teaching them, with Tomo the proudest of them all.

He arrived home to a sight he truly was not expecting. Every instinct told him that something was wrong, very wrong. Four burly men in rag-tag camouflage uniforms were stood outside the cottage smoking: all Serbs, laughing at a shared joke, cruelty leeching from their pores. Every window in the house had been smashed, and the garden was strewn with his family’s belongings; clothing and papers fluttered in the stiff breeze. Even the chickens were gone, just a trail of feathers and blood on the grass where they should be.

The largest approached Tomo with a nasty smile on his pocked face, his vivid pale blue eyes staring directly at the boy. His nose was bent to one side and blood was smeared on his lip. His bull-neck gave way to a muscular body that spoke of hours in a gym and a thin scar traced from his left ear across to his nose. He squatted on his haunches and offered his hand to Tomo, who remained rooted to the spot, ignoring the shovel-like hand. He was transfixed by the tattoo on the man’s wrist: a white, double-headed eagle.

‘You must be the great Jacov Novak’s boy. Are you a wrestler too, like your papa?’

Tomo stared at the man.

‘Never mind, son. You’ll get another man for your whore of a mother. Your father could have joined us in glory, not consorted with Roma and Bosniak scum.’ He patted a crest patch on his right shoulder that showed the same two-headed white eagle as that on his wrist. Fury and a maniacal gleam shone in his eyes.

His mama appeared at the cottage door and rushed to meet Tomo, shooting a look of utter hatred at the intruders as she took him in her arms, protectively. Her face was bruised and bleeding, her dress ripped, and she shivered, her tear-stained face radiating fear and desperation.

Of his papa, there was no sign.

His mama sobbed as she clutched him protectively, quivering with emotion.

The big Serb guffawed, got to his feet, and marched off, barking orders at the other men. They all climbed into a battered Toyota Land Cruiser and sped off in a cloud of dust.

‘Mama, what have they done with Papa?’