mario papac

There are a lot of graves at the Dubrovnic cemetery from 1991 and 1992. Almost all men, mostly boys barely twenty. The gravestones here bear small oval photographs of the deceased, so you don't imagine them old as they would be today. You see them young as they were when they died.

Mario Papac died thirteen years ago this week. He was twenty two. He has a big goofy smile that makes me think I could have fallen in love with him.

I look at all these graves and wonder if they died in some merciless attack by the Serbs, or if they died massacring Muslim civilians, or if they were in a building hit by NATO air strikes. And I wonder if it matters, and how you're supposed to know better when you're twenty two, and what you're supposed to make of it even if you do.