Not even a postman: Branko's native village found itself between Glina on the Croatian side and Dvor na Uni [Dvor on Una] on the Bosnian side. One gets to the hilly, small Serb village by a damaged mountain path from Glina. On a small hill next to the path there is a cemetery. It looks untouched. Also left behind are the destroyed houses, scarred with shrapnel, peering like monuments from both sides of a hill covered with wild poppies. A white UNHCR jeep is parked in front of the house of Branko's relative's [kum, i.e., related by virtue of God-parenthood or having served as the bride or groom's personal witness at the wedding of anyone in the family.] The wire gate is opened by a petite middle aged woman who embraces her kum. Tears and joy at the same time. She motions us into the house with her hand and we reluctantly accept. Barefoot, wearing old slippers, Branko's kum emerges. After six years the two men meet in the yard and wail like women. They weep out loud in their pain and sorrow. The sound of their crying carries so far that it could surely be heard on the other side of the Una River.
"My dear kum, look what has befallen us..." cries Branko, wiping his tears but without releasing his relative from his embrace. We remain silent and wait.
"There, you see. On the other side of that hill is my house. You can't see it from here," says Branko, lighting a cigarette.
"Do you want to go and see what condition it's in right away?"
"No, not right now. Everything must be overgrown with grass. First I am going to visit the grave of my son. It's here not far from the house," whispers Branko.
Branko's son, like the son of his kum who returned to Croatia with the rest of the family two years ago, was killed in the war. Both were in their early twenties.
We continue on toward the village of Kobiljak. It is not easy to get to this village, located some 30 kilometers from Glina. Not one automobile passes us on the road that determinedly leads uphill, never downhill. Not even the postman comes here. The ghost-like and silent village is horrifying. There is no one here. There is no electricity, no store, no school, no life. Nothing. The electrical posts fell down like overripe plums in the plum orchard of Branko Suzic a long time ago. While he, a quiet and slightly confused man, stands before his house and folds his hands together.
"Dear God, what is this supposed to be!... Is it possible that everything is so destroyed!"
The house in which he once lived looks horrible. It was the target of the armies which clashed in the area and is destroyed to the foundation. Everything is razed. On the walls of the room which was once a bedroom is war graffiti with well-known messages. In the grass which has grown in front of the house - empty cartridges, tin cans, plastic bottles. It is as if war was waged here yesterday.
Unemployment: According to UNHCR statistics, during the past six years about 17,000 people have returned to the area of Sisak, Petrinja and Glina. Most of them are elderly people who have managed to secure a pension because it would be very difficult to survive on any other form of income the state is offering. Younger people have a hard time deciding to stay. They come, spend some time here and go back. To Serbia. There is no fear anymore. No one here is afraid but there are not enough kunas [Croatian currency] to survive here. Unemployment is high. In the municipality of Sisak approximately 60 percent of the population is unemployed. And that isn't the only problem. Those whose houses were not destroyed or occupied are lucky indeed. The state still protects those who have occupied the houses of others, mostly Serbs. The majority of them are Bosnian Croats who have nowhere else to go. "Just yesterday I told my husband how it seems the postman stops at every house except ours when he is distributing pensions. We are satisfied with the five hundred kunas the children receive for school. We would need a lot more for a normal life but we make do with what we have. I was just on my way to my neighbor's to borrow 100 kuna until the end of the month," says 36 year-old Radojka Grubic from the village of Majka Poljana, who returned with her husband and two daughters from Bogatic in January of last year. They are the youngest returnees in the villages in the Glina area.
Before the war she sold milk in the village while her husband Miodrag worked for eight years as an auto mechanic. Now he works the land. In the barn across the way from the house the Grubics keep a cow which they received from the Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Several numbers are imprinted on the ears of the domestic animal. One of them is 3994. They say she was imported.
"We have a calf, too," says Radojka with pride. "Now I would like to ask the people from the CRS not to take the cow away because I could sell milk in the village. A liter costs about a [German] mark. It would save us. You see the little girls. Both go to school and everything is expensive."
Radio and candle: In the village of Donja Bacuga, in a house which was his parents' cottage before the war, Sasa Kicin now lives alone. His mother died two years after returning to Croatia in January 2000; his father died much earlier. The 26 year-old young man suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. He lives on a disability pension to which he has a right due to his illness. In January this year he moved into the house where there is no electric light. The only room has a green linoleum floor and the scent of the pressed board from the new door fills the nostrils. A hospital bed takes up most of the room. There is also a radio and a candle on the table.
"I spend my time lying down, listening to the radio and walking in the yard. I'm satisfied because this is where things are best for me," says Sasa quietly and that is all. In comparison with Arilje, where he lived as a refugee, the Petrinja area means life for the ailing young man.
The most recent returnees arrived in Croatia in November of last year and January of this year. Housed in the Sasna Greda collective center near Sisak and the Tehnika collective center in Sisak itself, they patiently wait for the day when they will return to their houses - in Benkovac, Knin, Donji Lapac, Kostajnica, Glina. They came here from all over. There are 22 returnees in Sasna Greda and 150 people living in the wooden huts of the former construction company Tehnika. Some find life in the gray huts near the center of the town increasingly difficult and painful.
They all approach us; they all talk at the same time. Everyone has a problem: they cannot get a pension or their documents, or their house is occupied or destroyed. All of them would like to live in the place of their birth. An old woman with a headscarf approaches slowly in the attempt to tell us her story, too. The others convince her to remove the bandage from her eye. A gaping hole. The people from UNHCR say very curtly that "the old woman shouldn't have been sent here from Belgrade when she had cancer. The operation costs 2,000 German marks; whoever has it can pay for her." They add that the Croatian health insurance system is "very restrictive" and that "no one is responsible for taking care of" cases like this.
The bus of the humanitarian organization Danish Refugee Council (DRC) was waiting for passengers to Serbia. They all entered one after another as their names were read. Their visit was over according to plan, within 48 hours. Branko Pejic entered last carrying, one could clearly see, a large framed picture wrapped in brown paper and tied to his little bag with a white cord. He did not let it out of his hands until he got to Belgrade. He looked like a man who would never go back again.