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.

He has always been slightly ashamed that, for a generation, when the world thought of Sarajevo, it was as a place of murder. It isn’t clear to him how the world will think of the city now that thousands have been murdered. He suspects that what the world wants most is not to think of it at all.

The opportunity to die was everywhere, and it just wasn’t that surprising when that opportunity became an event.

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

When Kenan’s children ask why this war is happening, why people are being starved and shot at, and he can’t answer them, when he sees them suffering and there is nothing he can do about it, he sees the fireman in himself and he wishes someone would pick him up and carry him away. He cannot collapse, though, because his children look to him to reassure them that everything will be fine, that the war will end, that they will all survive. There are times when he doesn’t know how he manages not to evaporate, how his clothes don’t fall to the floor, emptied of what little substance he was filling them with.

Just because he was there this time, closer than normal to the epicenter of the slaughter, doesn’t mean it’s more relevant to the city. It’s just another day.

Was being killed really better than being wounded? He isn’t so sure now. The idea of knowing the moment of your death is imminent no longer seems so bad compared with an instantaneous ending. Emina will survive, of this he feels confident, but if she didn’t, if she were more seriously wounded, wouldn’t it be better to get one last look at the world, even a gray and spoiled vision, than to plunge without warning into darkness?

And to be a ghost while you’re still alive is the worst thing he can imagine.