The Quiet in A Storm

Davud sat across from me, a quiet presence in the small café in downtown Reno, his hands wrapped around a coffee cup. His eyes, dark and still, held something more than the ordinary wear of time.

It was as if he carried the weight of all he had lived through. His voice, when he spoke, was steady but worn. I was there to interview him for the newspaper.

“You know,” he started, looking down at the table as though the memories were unfolding before him, “I never thought I’d be here, in the States. Safe, I mean.” He paused, his fingers tracing the rim of his cup. “Back then, I didn’t think there’d be a ‘back then.’ There was just the war. Every day felt like the same. You wake up, and you don’t know if you’ll make it through. The sounds of bombs, the gunfire… it never stops.”

His eyes lifted then, meeting mine. “The worst part is the quiet. You get used to the noise. But when everything stops, that’s when you know something’s wrong. That’s when you know the next explosion is coming.”

I leaned in, listening, not wanting to interrupt but needing to understand more of what he was trying to tell me. “What was it like for you… in that apartment?” I asked as if to match the heaviness of the moment.

His gaze softened, and he gave a small, almost reluctant smile. “We didn’t go outside much. You couldn’t. Too dangerous. I remember we covered the windows with plastic and blankets. It was winter, but the cold… it was just another thing to endure.”

He rubbed his face as though trying to rub away the memory. “My family and I huddled together inside, trying to stay warm. We wore our coats in the house. But it was never enough, you know? That cold—it gets into your bones. And it never really goes away.”

I nodded, feeling the weight of his words settle between us. “Did you… did you ever think about leaving?” I asked gently.

He shook his head. “Leaving? Where would I go? We didn’t have a choice. You just kept going. Every day, just trying to survive. Sometimes, we ate what we grew on the balcony—just a few vegetables. But it was never enough. So, we waited for the UN drops. When they came, it was like a little party. We got food, and for a moment, it felt like someone still cared. But you knew the next time they came, there might not be anything.”

The silence between us deepened, filled with the weight of things he hadn’t said–yet.

His voice broke the quiet again, almost in a whisper. “My brother went out for water once. We didn’t have taps, so we had to go to the wells. He didn’t come back.” He looked down at his coffee, his expression unreadable. “A sniper. That’s what they told me. A sniper shot him down.”

I felt the sadness in his words, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. “I’m sorry, Davud,” I said finally, unsure what else to say.

He nodded, almost as if accepting the apology, but there was no anger, no bitterness, just a quiet acknowledgment. “My mother, she cried a lot after that. She doesn’t talk much now. Even her silence is full of sadness. And my father… he stays busy. Always fixing something, always looking for food. I think he does it to distract himself from the pain. He’s never the same, not since that day.”

I waited, giving him space, as he seemed to gather his thoughts. “And school?” I asked, unsure if it was a subject too far away, something he no longer cared to remember.

His lips pressed together before he spoke, his voice tinged with a strange kind of bitterness. “School? School was in the basement. The real schools, they were gone. No electricity, so we learned by candlelight. Our teacher told us stories about peace, about what Sarajevo was like before all this. I couldn’t picture it. It was like some fairy tale from another world. I missed my friends. Some left, some didn’t make it. The classroom got quieter each day.”

His words were so matter-of-fact, yet they hit me like a punch. “And the cat?” I asked, needing to move to something lighter, something to pull us out of the heaviness.

Davud’s face softened. A small, almost imperceptible smile appeared at the corner of his lips. “The cat,” he repeated. “Yeah, I found her under the building one day. She was scared and hungry, just like us. We took her in, fed her what little we had. She slept on my bed. Her purring… it was the only comfort we had. It made the nights a little less lonely.” He paused, then added, “I think she saved us, in a way.”

I smiled then, relieved to hear that small glimmer of tenderness in his voice. “It sounds like she gave you a reason to keep going,” I said.

“Maybe,” he answered softly, his eyes distant. “There were times when the quiet would come, and we’d think it was over. But then the explosions would start again. We learned not to trust the silence. We learned that peace could be over in an instant.”

“And when the fighting stopped for a little while?” I asked, my voice almost hesitant.

“That one morning,” he began, his eyes sharp with the memory, “there was no fighting. We went out to get water. It was quiet. And you knew it could start again at any second. But for a moment, it was like everything had stopped. We filled the buckets and ran back. And that night… that night we drank the water slowly, like it was something precious. It was the one normal thing we had. For just a moment.”

I sat back, letting the weight of his words settle. “You still dream of peace, don’t you?” I asked.

He nodded slowly, staring off into the distance. “I dreamed of walking in the park, without worrying about snipers. I dreamed of school, real school. I dreamed of a city where children play without fear.” His voice softened, almost wistful. “But dreams don’t change what’s happened. All we could do is survive. Wait. Hope.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say for a long while. When I finally spoke, it was quieter than before. “What happens now?” I asked.

“Now?” he said, looking back at me with a faint smile, “Now we live. We keep going, day by day. I write it down, so I don’t forget. So I don’t forget that we survived. Even when everything was falling apart.” His eyes met mine again, clear and steady. “We hold on to what we have left.”

And then, with a finality I couldn’t deny, he added, “Because we must.”