Do you have to spoil every view?

He shrugged. I can be quiet. You want?

I told him I wanted to know.

The river Drina curves and widens and narrows through the summer heat. Everywhere were gullies where men had killed each other and women had huddled under leaves, holding their breath, hoping not to be heard. When the boots stopped, there were shots and unzipping. After a hairpin curve, Mak pointed to a hill below the road. He said, Seven hundred buried there.

What does your name mean?

Mak? It means poppy.

The flower?

My mother named me for the poet Mak Dizdar.

Do you know his poetry?

Everyone knows it. I know only the love poetry.

Tell me a poem.

Mak lit another cigarette on the curve, said, You want too much, translating poetry while I am driving.

Ahead, hanging by two back feet over the road, a dead goat.

For the restaurant, Mak said. To show they have fresh meat. You eat goat?

The poem?

He shifted his cigarette to his left hand, reached for his water bottle, took a sip. A soldier’s habit, dampen the lips and tongue, don’t take too much, there may be need later. He was watching the sharp turns for trucks. He said, This is from “Calypso”.

I cry

Because your love makes a slave of me

Because of love not strong enough to free me

You cry

He looked across at me and said, Why quiet? Not good? Not good for getting a girl?

He liked flirting. He liked the energy.

I said, Excellent for getting women. How do you say I love you in Bosnian?

Volim te. Want to know it in French?

I know it. Je t’aime.

In Chinese, Wo ai ni, Indonesian is Aku cinta kamu. What language you like?

Italian.

We looked across the enduring mountains and he said, This is a country of angels. And devils. Next village we stop for a break, then Foča.

His hands kept us from flying off the cliff on this switchback road. Hands that had dragged dying soldiers into bunkers and carried water and food home to his family under shelling and lifted up the front right corner of his brother’s coffin. Fingers that had pulled triggers and the pins of grenades. Hands that had released a still-living man hidden between other men’s dead bodies. He gave him some water and then the man died.

Better not to die thirsty, said Mak. Better not to die alone.

Hands that kill. Hands that make love. Sunlit rapids over smooth river stones.

—

In Foča we drove to the high school and to Partizan Sports Hall and we saw the rubble of the old mosque and we stopped at the Ribarski restaurant where women had been sold and traded like fish. A man reeking of violence strode directly to Mak and reached out for a handshake and Mak squeezed the bones hard and pulled him close like a mastiff looking for the neck. The man said something in a low, harsh voice and walked away.