The Cellist of Sarajevo

by Steven Galloway

It’s a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and that it won’t last forever.

People resent those who manage to get out. They’re considered cowards, and although he suspects that anyone who’s still sane would wish to leave, very few people will admit it, even to themselves, and fewer still would ever say so out loud.

A weapon does not decide whether or not to kill. A weapon is a manifestation of a decision that has already been made.

Dragan doesn’t want to go to Italy. He misses his wife and son, but he isn’t Italian, and he never will be. There’s no country he can go to where he won’t be from Sarajevo.

‘The men on the hills have created many monsters,’ he says, ‘and not all of them are on the hills. There are those here who believe they are in the right simply because they oppose something that is evil. They use this war and the city for their own ends, and I won’t be a part of it. If this is how the city will be once the war is over, then it’s not worth saving.’

At this moment fear doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as bravery. There are no heroes, no villains, no cowards. There’s what he can do, and what he can’t. There’s right and wrong and nothing else. The world is binary. Shading will come later.

He will behave now as he hopes everyone will someday behave. Because civilisation isn’t a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, recreated daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he ever would have thought possible.