The Cellist of Sarajevo

by Steven Galloway

And so today, like every other day in recent memory, the cellist sits beside the window of his second-floor apartment and plays until he feels his hope return.

and then he and his cello will coax Albinoni’s Adagio out of the firebombed husk of Dresden and into the mortar-pocked, sniper-infested streets of Sarajevo.

Outside, a line of people wait to buy bread. It’s been over a week since the market’s had any bread to buy,

Sarajevo is a long ribbon of flat land surrounded on all sides by hills.

Arrow believes she’s different from the snipers on the hills. She shoots only soldiers. They shoot unarmed men, women, children.

They are trying to kill the city. Every death chips away at the Sarajevo of Arrow’s youth

Those left are robbed of not only a fellow citizen but the memory of what it was to be alive in a time before men on the hills shot at you while you tried to cross the street.

It’s a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous,

am Arrow, because I hate them. The woman you knew hated nobody.”

Sarajevo was a great city for walking. It was impossible to get lost.

he believes that the character of those who will build the city again is more important than the makeup of those who destroyed it.

Sebilj,

Someone is fishing for pigeons.

“It’s not about merely killing him. Shooting him is a statement.”

Before the war, even when the country was a Communist state, you could travel anywhere you wanted. There were only four countries in the world that you needed a visa to visit.

Then she remembered that for some people, those with connections and privileges, plenty of food was available.

He wonders what they think about, up there in the safety of their hills. Do they wish for this war to be over? Are they happy when they hit something, or is it enough to frighten people, to watch them run for their lives? Do they feel remorse when they go home and look at their children, or are they pleased, thinking they have done a great service for future generations?

long as he’s here, and as long as he can keep his fear of death from blinding him to what’s left of the world he once loved and could love again, then there’s still hope that one day he will be able to walk openly down the streets of this city with his wife and son, sit in a restaurant and eat a meal, browse the windows of shops, free from the men with guns.

Kenan watches as his city heals itself around him.

the real Sarajevo the one where people were happy, treated each other well, lived without conflict? Or is the real Sarajevo the one he sees today, where people are trying to kill each other, where bullets and bombs fly down from the hills and the buildings crumble to the ground?

“My name is Alisa.”

The Siege of Sarajevo, the longest city siege in the history of modern warfare, stretched from April 5, 1992, to February 29, 1996.