Well today I got to the run-down building at 9.27. Mirko's plastic frog watch, the only thing I have remaining of his, continues to tell me precise digital time. The streets in that part of town were empty and it was chilly, the sort of morning where cigarette smoke lingers in the air, its poisons rubbing itself over other faces long after the poisoner has hurried on. A queue had already formed, snaking lazily along the chain-link fence, so I slowed my pace a little and walked gingerly to the end of it, picking my way over the rubble and broken glass which constantly litters this alleyway. I put my headphones into my pocket. Yes, a small sharp fear razed through me like a paper cut as I sized up the crowd. Were any of our compatriots in the line, or was I alone with Darkie and Savage and Who sent you here?

There were a couple of men from Ilidza dotted at the head of the queue. I nodded to them, and took up my own place at the back. Some local guys turned to look me up and down as usual, holding their hostile gazes for longer than normal intimidation would deem necessary, as if they could see underneath me to the hole in my left shoe, but of course they couldn't.

I spotted a pretty young girl a few heads in front of me who put me in mind of Tatjana; but this one looked too clean, too well-fed to be here. When she turned fully I saw she had beautiful brown eyes. We eyeballed each other slowly for a few moments, until we lost interest. At my feet a skinny dog played with a piece of bone, dragging it noisily through the gutter, gnawing as though his very life depended on it. I know how he felt.

The boredom of the crowd was palpable, so everyone was suddenly very interested when an overweight man in an expensive suit drew up in a Merc the colour of fresh pine needles. Custom paint job. We all looked at the car, it was hard not to. It glided along the cracked laneway, as smooth and shiny as a fresh raindrop rolling down a dirty window pane. The man got out. He carried himself in a hurried, upright manner, loathing the people who leaned against the fence watching him. He unlocked a gate leading into a broken-down lot and reversed his car into it. I suddenly noticed all the other shiny cars in there, nestled underneath the iron grids which were supporting the wall of a disused building. How out of place they looked, those cars. Like freshly laid eggs in a box of rusty nails.

Then a shout went up from somewhere near the top of the queue, and a door into the red-brick was opened. We bumbled in like drunks heading for a soup kitchen, knowing the sustenance we would get wasn't what we wanted or needed but would have to suffice for now. I sat down carefully on a plastic chair in the waiting room. Every one suggested a death trap. The steel legs protruded from underneath the grubby plastic seats, positioned at strange angles, so many polio'd children. Someone had painted a mural on the wall since I'd been here last. It was depressing stuff, things which made little sense to me but maybe it appealed to the people around me. Mostly it was police chasing joyriders through a rubbish tip; the most prominent depiction was of a pub. A priest with a purple nose and brandishing a hurling stick chased after some small children.

The waiting room was strangely silent at first, save for the last of summer's bluebottles tapping fuzzily on the dirty lino. Then an ancient loudspeaker crackled into life and the irritating sound of that guy Gerry Ryan filled the air. Two women walked in with screaming children then, and the sound of the radio was accompanied by the alternating sounds of three kids slapping each other and their mothers slapping them. I stared at my cuticles, wondering how this city could be so filthy, glad to be second in line for this particular office.

When I went in of course, it was the same story. Still no papers yet. No papers no money, no papers no permit, no permit no money. Things being processed, cracks in the system, help would come soon, wasn't the government great to take you in at all. In my mind's eye I watched as my apartment and everything in it including my family went up in flames. How quickly a man becomes a nobody, an anonymous entity, no-one without 'papers'. My voice broke as I asked the assistant for more details, but his accent confused me, his disdain threw me, and in the end I just left. I walked quickly out of the office, through the waiting room and the vile-smelling labyrinthine hallways. I pushed my way outside, hurrying past a man with blackened teeth and fingernails. A few minutes walk down the laneway and a few sharp corners later, and I was out again, in what purports to be civilisation.

It is a far cry from life back home, all this. A life that was. I wonder what's left of it, our neighbourhood, the office. I stand in limbo on the Liffey. I toss a coin in, wishing it was the Miljacka. Nearby, a bus backfires, and the noise makes me jump and yell. The scars on my arm start to throb. Some teenagers passing by see the fear on my face and laugh at me. I collect myself; walk on. Home to write letters which people will likely never receive.

Regards,

Alija