Pretty Birds Read Online Free Page A

would say with a toss of his dark, disheveled head. “You know why, all kinds, all over the world, they’re crazy for us, don’t you? I could help you find out.”
    Eddy was harmless in small doses, and dependably amusing. But Irena had basketball practice at eleven in the morning. She couldn’t miss a workout so close to their sectional championships.
    Irena and her teammates were often teased about being jocks; mocked for having no concern for history, culture, or politics. But they knew that basketball now competed with political assemblies on Friday nights. The city bristled with national fronts, liberation movements, and people’s assemblies, all making raucous vows in smoky basements. It could even be risky to drive across the river for a basketball game—or to buy a string of sausage.
    They knew that some Serb police had taken off their uniforms and badges and overturned a garden-store delivery truck along the Brotherhood and Unity Bridge. The defrocked police (now anointed “paramilitaries”) swept aside the tulips and sunflowers and set up a barrier. No other police would dare to remove it. Men in black sweaters with rifles on their hips barked at people to show identity cards before passing into what they called Serb Sarajevo.
    Just a week earlier, the school principal, Miss Ferenc, had introduced the men’s and women’s basketball teams at a school assembly in the gym. She presented the players by position and declared, “There you hear it—Serb names, Croat names, Muslim names.” She turned slightly toward Miriam Isakovic, but kept her lips above the microphone, so her stage whisper would not be lost. “Even a Jewish name,” she said to a satisfying chime of laughter. Miriam blushed at being singled out—she was a sweet, studious girl who rarely made it into games of consequence.
    The principal continued in a soft tone. “Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Jews—they are all
our
family names here in Number Three High School in Grbavica. Different names, different histories. Today,” Miss Ferenc fairly thundered, “we all play for the same team.
Our
team.
Just like every citizen of Sarajevo!
”
    The students rose to their feet, folding chairs scraping, clapping their hands above their heads. The speech gave them a new stake in winning. Grbavica couldn’t lose to a team like Number One High School, over in Bistrik, where only Muslims lived; it would let down all Sarajevo.
    â€œLet’s show all Bosnia!” Miss Ferenc churned her right arm above her head, as if she were ringing a bell. Her glasses slipped down her nose. “Muslims, Serbs, Croats, Jews! Rastas, Hindus, Buddhists! Jains, Shintoists, Scientologists!” Miss Ferenc ran out of religions just in time for the laughter to overtake her.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    THERE WAS AN awkward moment at that Saturday’s practice; at the time, it seemed only that. Emina Sefic, the team’s center, and Danica Tomic, a guard, had fallen to the floor in a scramble for the basketball. The girls heard squeaks, shouts, and swearing of no particular affront among athletes—“Bitch!” “Idiot!” “Whore!” Then they heard Emina snarl, “Greasy Serb slut!” Danica’s face reddened like an electric coil. She barked back, “Rag-head whore!” Irena could remember other times when the girls would shout such insults at one another for laughs. But when Coach Dino sensed that the two girls seemed more intent on slapping each other than on grabbing the basketball, he lowered his shoulders into the snarl of legs and arms, shoving them aside with his tattooed arms.
    â€œYou are teammates, dammit,” he hollered for all in the gym to hear. “You are
teammates
!”
    Conversation in the locker room was muted and brittle. No one knew what to say; no one wanted to say the wrong thing. Even playful conversations could turn a