Natasha's Story by Michael Nicholson

Author:Michael Nicholson [Nicholson, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: apostrophe books, michael nicholson, war correspondent, serbs, bosnia, orphan, war in sarajevo, sarajevo, natasha's story, bosnian war, welcome to sarajevo
Publisher: Apostrophe Books
Published: 2013-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

The end of the year and nine months of war in Bosnia was approaching. Natasha had now been with us for over four of those months. On 7 October she had celebrated her tenth birthday with her first ever party and a crowd of new friends. It went famously, even if she was dazed by the avalanche of presents and all the traditional accoutrements of party-time we take so much for granted, the coloured balloons and fizzy pop, blind man’s buff and musical chairs and, with a blowing of toy trumpets and drum, the entrance of a giant chocolate cake with ten tiny candles. Urged on by a dozen different shrieking voices, Natasha blew them out, closed her eyes and made her wish, and above the din of little girls running amok, she said again and again that this was her ‘bestest’ day. We hardly needed telling.

For an extra treat the next day she went on her first train ride to see her first feature film, Steven Spielberg’s Peter Pan, and both enchanted her. Every day now, rain or shine, was a holiday, and she lived them at full pelt. But they were not without problems. Gradually, she had become more and more demanding, at times aggressively so. Friends and neighbours, watching her progress discreetly from the touchlines, thought it a healthy sign, proof that she was simply growing more secure and so increasingly more confident that she could make demands on us without risk. Inevitably, it was Diana who bore the brunt of this relentless insistence on attention as a matter of privileged right, Natasha taking it for granted that we were obliged to attend immediately to her whichever way her moods and fancies moved. We tried to explain as gently as we could within the limited language we shared, that we simply could not devote our entire waking day to her and her whims. Then began tantrums and sulks when she retreated into long periods of silence, often locking herself away in her room.

Another problem was that she seemed quite incapable of occupying herself. She was always yearning for company, depressed when the school day was over, when she and her friends went separate ways and she was faced with the prospect of a long gap to bedtime without them. We tried our best to fill those spaces in the evenings and at weekends by inviting a friend to stay overnight, and that led to welcome invitations in return. But it was not always so easily arranged and then she would plunge back into her dark and silent moods, not wanting our company, not prepared even to listen to our explanations. Then we too would sit and brood, wondering if she might after all have been happier staying with her Bosnian friends who were now living together in refugee hostels in Italy and Germany. Or whether, as some people had advised from the start, she would have flourished better fostered by a Croatian family in Britain.

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