boys were mixing it up, apparently because one side had attacked
the other. No one takes the gloves off to mix it up because
of Sarajevo or Sarajevans.
</p>
<p> Afan Ramic, one of our wonderful artists, cynically said, almost
to himself, "Why the hell don't they just go off somewhere by
themselves and fight it out like men instead of bugging us?
They're disturbing our peace." Sarajevo simply ignores these
battles among strangers because they really make no difference
to us. We've long got used to the idea that nothing around here--nothing, that is, except our intimate, bare suffering--has anything to do with us. For months now, all the NATO pilots
have done above us with the blood-curdling sound of their planes'
engines has been to scare away the pigeons that have gathered
for an odd crumb of our meager but collective lunch.
</p>
<p> At any rate, nothing's been settled by this NATO tactic of occasionally
spitting a bomb down here and there. The other day someone tallied
up the damage that's been done until now: two old army trucks
and a small hideout near Gorazde, a museum-quality half-track
from World War II and, finally, a T-55 tank. Three bombs, near
Gorazde, didn't even explode. Before that, Karadzic's soldiers
had shot down a Sea Harrier, also near Gorazde. While we aren't
great tactical mathematicians here in Sarajevo, this seemed
like a big price to pay for such little return.
</p>
<p> Maybe something significant was said on the radio about us in
Sarajevo. Maybe in that great big world out there they promised
one another to do something about us again. We don't have a
clue though because we've got other things to worry about. The
sun is still doling out some miserly rays here in town, but
up there, above the city, on Mount Igman, the first snow has
already fallen.
</p>
<p> No one in town is saying a word about it, but no one has anything
else on their mind. With more snow and new waves of fog on the
way, we'll be left alone in our misery, left alone to wait endlessly
for more overcast mornings, forcing our eyes open to face another
day. My nine-year-old son told me this week, through the crackling
of Sarajevo's last remaining telephone line: "This is the third
birthday I'm celebrating without you, and you promised to be
here every time." My older son, already becoming a young man,
says, "Don't worry, Dad; I understand." My wife doesn't say
anything. She's just angry.
</p>
<p> Should I be happy that my older son understands, that this 14-year-old
boy knows very well what this is all about? It means that he
understands he is no longer a Sarajevan, that he no longer knows
what forgiveness is, that soon he'll understand precisely what
hatred is too. It also means that he's become part of that wretched
world out there, a world to which Sarajevo no longer belongs
and in which Sarajevo no longer has any faith.
</p>
<p> Sarajevo has been abandoned precisely because it doesn't hate;
that's why it's understandable that the Pope didn't need to
come here. We don't need forgiveness. For that, one has to go
to New York, Geneva, Brussels, Paris, London and Moscow. There
one has to pray for the salvation of the soul. Unfortunately,
though, one day prayers of forgiveness will be needed by our
kids who've "understood."
</p>
<p> We don't need prayers. We're only waiting to see how the commander
of the U.N. troops, Lieut. General Sir Michael Rose, will bomb
Sarajevo. After all, he's been told that this is part of the
objective of his mandate, as if the violations of the cease-fire
by poorly armed Bosnian government forces could ever equal the
massive firepower of Karadzic's forces surrounding the city.
Everything must be done to make us equal with those besieging
us on the hills. This means that the whole story of genocide,
of blame and aggression must be dismantled completely; then
we have to be dragged out onto the battlefield as one of "the
equally armed sides in the conflict," even though we might not
actually have any arms, and let ourselves be attacked by NATO
planes.
</p>
<p> Poor Rose. He just doesn't seem to get the point. It would have
been better for him to come and hang out at Asha's, where we
sit around and talk about our plans for the upcoming day. Should
we go for water first, or to the new exhibit by Braco Dimitrijevic,
the world-renowned conceptual artist from Sarajevo? Should we
take some pleasure in the performance, which features a bicycle
and a potato, or shall we first go have a drink near the French
Bookstore, where there are new books from New York, Madrid and
Paris.
</p>
<p> To tell you the truth, we see in every book we look at these
days something we might eventually be able to cook a little
lunch over--and only then as something to read if we can't
listen to the radio. And when there aren't any books, when we've
hauled the water in and darkness falls, then we can just sit
back and listen to UNPROFOR and Karadzic's boys pointlessly
bombing each other in the hills above Sarajevo. And then we
hear how Rose wants to turn those planes on us since we're all
the same.
</p>
<p> We don't really take it personally. What really gets under our
skin is that Rose wants to do this to us because we're "all
the same." We won't even put up much resistance to his threatened
bombing mission; we'll survive that the way we've survived everything
else, but we would like to make it clear to him that we aren't
like those up on the hills who've been killing women and children
indiscriminately, shutting off the water, electricity and gas
whenever it suited them.
</p>
<p> We are not alike. We never were nor will we ever be like them.
We would love to explain all this to the general over a cup
of coffee or at the exhibit, and not on the battlefield. If
there's no other way, though, we won't even mind doing it there.
The only thing is that he will have to let us walk a fair distance
to our water sources so that we can get into the long lines
and fill our water bottles, since that's the way Radovan Karadzic
and his friends want it. Then, he'll have to give us a little
time to go look for some wood so we won't have to burn our remaining
books.
</p>
<p> While he's waiting for us, he can stop by the exhibit to see
the bicycle, the potato and Kafka. We'll be glad to explain
to him precisely what this bicycle and this potato mean to us,
and what Kafka is doing there. In fact, he wouldn't even have
to go to the show. We can tell him what all this means to us
right now, today, because this is a live performance, our very
own concept. After all, in Sarajevo we're all conceptual artists.
Those who don't believe it should pay us a visit--if they
