He waited to see if his friend would wave back and strained for a far-away call in response, but he saw no movement, heard no answering shout.
For two centuries the ancestors of Husein Bekir had bought land from the ancestors of Dragan Kovac, paid over the odds and bought every scrap, every parcel, every pocket handkerchief. Christian land was now Muslim owned. To Husein it was incredible, as it had been to his grandfather and his grandfather's grandfather, that the Serb village was prepared to sell precious land to a Muslim village for short-term gain.
He understood that the Serb people prized a uniform more highly than hectares of grazing and arable ground, orchards and vineyards. The Serbs were bus drivers, hospital porters, clerks in the Revenue, soldiers, Customs men and policemen. Dragan Kovac had been a sergeant in the police before his retirement.
They sought the status of the uniform and the security of the pension, not the scarred hands and the arthritis that came from working the land. Husein himself had bought the pocket of land right under the home of Dragan that included the mulberry tree and the field where he hoped next week to plant the apple trees.
There was no more land left to buy, and the radio from Belgrade, listened to in Ljut, said each morning, afternoon and evening that Muslims had stolen Serb fields.
The radio from Sarajevo, heard on the transistors in Vraca, said every day that Serb tanks, artillery, and atrocities in distant Croatia would not intimidate the Muslim leaders from the prize of Bosnian independence. They killed old friendships.