Monday

Here in my cell, assuming the yogic position of the Unresolved Crescent Moon, I have much time to think. I miss my life on the outside, in Belgrade. I was a poet. A humble bioenergy psychic practitioner, anonymous and free.

In the evenings, often, I would go to my favourite bar, a delightful, wood-panelled traditional Serbian place called The Burning Mosque. “Good evening, Dr Dabic, sir, Secret President and hero of the Glorious Liberation Conflict!” the barman would say, as though I was anybody who had just walked in off the street. And then he would give me the traditional Serbian greeting, which is a wink, and a tap with the forefinger to the side of the nose.

In here, I was anonymous. I drank, I laughed. Occasionally I would play the gzrydzkzk, the traditional Serbian two-stringed instrument, which we play without the help of bow or vowels. Usually, I would perform an ancient folk song called I Am Radovan Karadzic and I Killed Lots of Muslims and Croats and Drove Them from Our Homeland. The people would look at me, with tears and love in their eyes, and still nobody would have any idea whatsoever who I really was and you can’t prove otherwise.

Tuesday

My jailers wish to remove my beard and hair. This saddens me. I grew both three years ago. Serbians understood that I was not a man to be recognised. The tourists, alas, were different.

“Aren’t you . . ?” they would say, stopping me in the street.

“No,” I would reply, looking away. “I’m sure you are,” they would say, in wonder. “I thought you were dead. Amazing! I loved you in Father Ted!” It grew tiresome.

Wednesday

Soon after dawn, my prison warden brings me breakfast. Assuming the Lotus position, I decline.

“Hunger strike, Dr Karadzic?” asks the warden, grimly.

Not at all. I am merely choosing to subsist on a diet of water, mixed with a millionth part of essence of dandelion and the faintest holistic whiff of clove.

“That won’t work,” sighs the warden. “You will starve.” Does he take me for a fool? Am I not Serbia’s foremost practitioner of alternative medicine? Many consider me a miracle worker. Why, I recall one elderly Croatian gentleman who e-mailed me to say that he had not walked for seven years. I sent him a course of St John’s wort droplets, tinged with musk.

Two days later, I paid him a house call. The instant I stepped into his room, the man leapt from his bed and ran down the street, screaming lustily with what can only have been startled joy.

Thursday

Other tourists thought me Tom Conti, as seen in Friends, or Sam the Eagle, from The Muppet Show. So, the beard.

Now it is gone. The barber came this morning. No more beard, and no flowing hair, either. My chic little topknot, slashed to the floor.

“I’ll come back and pick that up later,” said the barber, of the topknot, looking a little sick. “When I’ve got some gloves.” I have hidden it. It is a memento of my past.

Friday

And so they are to put me on trial in The Hague. A national hero, taken from his lands. Even through my karmic oneness, I find myself shouting at my lawyer. “I do not recognise this trial! I do not recognise this entire process!” “What sort of trial would you prefer?” he asks, acidly.

I am not an unreasonable man, I tell him. Anything involving crystals, ley lines, acupuncture or the kinetic balance of my ineffable psychic bioenergy would be fine. My lawyer says that he will see what he can do. Once he is gone, I take the topknot from my pocket and place it loosely upon my head. Then, assuming the position of the Slightly Flexing Elk, I stare, bleakly, at the wall.

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