I loved my new life in the city and in law school and I thought of myself as one of the “new primitives.” I listened to Patti Smith and Talking Heads and Sonic Youth and Idoli and I went to Kusturica’s films with flying brides and gypsies. Ivan and I met Kosmos at an art show and became friends. He used to perform outside at the People’s Theatre with his collective and he would walk down the steps into the crowd to deliver his lines to me. He was always crazy and hanging around me and I used to laugh at him and tell him if he wanted to be friends with me he had to be friends with Ivan too. We went to the same openings and poetry readings and on warm evenings made the long walk from the university to the terrace of the Bijela Tabija restaurant before the moon disappeared.

A student was arrested for walking naked down the street and calling his performance “Balls on Asphalt.” Ivan helped make a performance of John Cage’s 4′33″ with twelve radios and lots of screeching and static. At the performance, Kosmos was drunk and called Ivan Radio-man, and I felt jealousy between them so I took both their hands and said, Let’s dance.

When the dancing was over, Ivan wanted to be alone with me and we took the cable car up to the Vidikovac café to sit side by side on the patio overlooking the city.

It looks like a toy village, he used to say. And we are living miniature lives inside it. Are you happy?

Always at the end of each day, no matter where we had been, we found each other.

In law school I learned a new word, privatnost. It was an unfamiliar idea. At home we knew all our neighbours and we were each other’s kum and I told Ivo everything. In the city we explored together, wandered through alleys and plucked young sloe berries from between the thorns, walked on the boulevard and ate crescent moon–shaped doughnuts.

One night Ivo said, Let’s stop at the mosque.

He often had these whims and I was comfortable with him and with cupped hands we drank at the fountain as we had many times before.

Then Ivan said, I want to quench my thirst with you forever.

I did not laugh at him because I saw in his eyes that he was trying to say something important to him and I took his damp hands and asked, What is it, Ivan?

It is nothing.

But it is something.

I want to marry you.

Oh, this thing, I thought, that has been bothering him since we were children. First I felt it on the sidewalk outside Lepa Brena when we tossed stones, and then I felt it under the bridge by the Drina. I had already given myself to him. My friends used to laugh at me and say, You don’t even want to look around? How will you know? But I knew and I said to him, I want to marry you too.