Dust

FIFTEEN YEARS before they built their own house, they were let out of the refugee camp to set up on their own. That first house was a transitional dwelling which the government called satellite housing. What this meant was that for about six months Zerina, her husband, and their child shared a house with another family, but administratively (she hated this word and went on lengthy rants about it when she would explain to people what this was) they still belonged to the refugee center where the three of them had spent two years and two months between 1993 and 1995 in a twelve-square-meter room. Back then, with the satellite program, it was as if the government wanted to see whether these Bosnians had for two years and two months merely pretended not to be savages. When no one had dropped the mask and killed