The Cellist of Sarajevo

by Steven Galloway

That life will end has become so self-evident it’s lost all meaning.

Dragan is afraid of dying, but what he’s afraid of more is the time that might come between being shot and dying. He isn’t sure how long it takes to die when you’re shot in the head, if it’s instantaneous or if your consciousness remains for a few seconds, and he’s sceptical of anyone who claims to know for certain. Either way, it’s a lot better than gulping air like a fish in the bottom of a boat, watching your own blood gush into the ground and thinking whatever thoughts people have when they see themselves ending.

and it will all happen again, like a herd of gazelle going back to the water hole after one of their own is eaten there.

He doesn’t know why some people die and others don’t. He doesn’t have any idea how the men on the hills make their choices, and he doesn’t think he wants to know. What would he think about it? Would he be flattered they didn’t choose him or offended he wasn’t a worthy target in their eyes?

He thinks it’s possible that the men on the hills are killing them slowly, a half-dozen at a time, so there will always be a few more to kill the next day.

“What is coming is worse than anything you can imagine,”’ Dragan says. ‘He killed himself the day the war began.’ Emina shakes her head. ‘This cannot be as bad as what happened in those camps.’ Dragan considers this, wonders how relative suffering is. ‘No, it’s not. I don’t think he thought it would be. But I think he believed that what he and others suffered there meant something, that people had learned from it. But they haven’t.’

So I gave them to our neighbours, small baskets to ten different families.’ ‘You were good to give her the salt,’ Dragan says, and he means it. ‘I didn’t need it. She didn’t have to give me the cherries, either.’ Emina shrugs. ‘Isn’t that how we’re supposed to behave? Isn’t that how we used to be?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Dragan says. ‘I can’t remember if we were like that, or just think we were. It seems impossible to remember what things were like.’

‘Sarajevo roulette,’ she says. ‘So much more complicated than Russian.’

Glass is disappearing from the city. It’s either blown up or removed to prevent it from becoming a lethal projectile when it inevitably is blown up. One pane at a time, the windows through which people see the world are vanishing.

then places the coat on the ground beside him. She won’t want it now. No one wants the coat they were shot in, even if it were possible to wash out the blood and mend the holes. It was a nice coat when she wore it. Now it doesn’t look like much to him. Just another piece of garbage.

What makes the difference, he realises, is whether you want to stay in the world you live in. Because while he will always be afraid of death, and nothing can change that, the question is whether your life is worth that fear. Do you face the terror that must come with knowing you’re about to die, just for the sake of one last glimpse of life? Dragan is surprised to find his answer is yes.

No one will be on the hills with guns pointed at them, and after a while he won’t even think of this as a benefit, it will simply be an obvious thing, because that’s how life is supposed to be.

Arrow no longer goes into the basement of her building with the other residents when there’s shelling. It doesn’t seem worth it. Given that she’s in more danger during her average day than she is during the worst night of shelling, she’d just as soon sleep in her own bed. If she’s going to die, that’s where she’d like it to happen. It’s a small measure of control over an uncontrollable situation.

Then there are the things one doesn’t mention about the dead. It will not be said that he had a quick temper, or that he sometimes cheated at his monthly card game. He was cheap. When drunk, he was cruel. None of this will ever be said again, has simply vanished from existence. But these are the things that make a death something to be mourned. It’s not just a disappearance of flesh. This, in and of itself, is easily shrugged off. When the body of the hatless man is shown on the evening news to people all over the world, they will do exactly that. They may remark on the horror, but they will, most likely, think nothing of it at all, like a dog with somewhere else to be.

In the Sarajevo of his memory, it was completely unacceptable to have a dead man lying in the street. In the Sarajevo of today it’s normal.