The Smelly building

I once walked into a building known as Keramica with no knowledge of its past. There was more than a smell in the place, an atmosphere led by the nose. The empty shell cases, the stains on the wall, the mortar boxes, the upturned coffee cups, the empty Slivovic bottles, told part of a story. A story I was not to like. The smell of urine, faeces and fear gave me the beginning of the second chapter. Some rooms were locked and some were open.

The corridors smelled of fear and damnation.

I think the last breaths and bodily functions of people happened behind some of those doors, and by the look of things, occasionally in the corridor. Keramica was a clearing station for people on their way to a concentration camp called Omarska. Cleared of what, I know not. A lot of people died. Let this building be for those people I knew had been there. The people whose lives I had smelled for a brief time. Let them have a building in Paradise. Let them have a clinically clean odourless building in Paradise. Until then, let this building be for them.