Kate & Frida

Chapter 30

Sarajevo Notebook

Frida Rodriguez, WJD (War Journo Dame)

Time to get serious:

1) No run-on sentences.

2) Cool it with the dashes.

3) Use commas.

8/23, Day 1

2 p.m., Holiday Inn Sarajevo

Fair Kate,

I’m here. Sarajevo. How can it feel so unreal when this hotel room is very, very real with a big pane window crisscrossed with duct tape to keep it from spraying glass everywhere? I’m using one of my Reporter’s Note Books to write to you since I forgot stationery and the only things on our desk are cigarette burns and this isn’t the place for a jaunt to the five-and-dime. Run-on sentences already ! . Ugh. Another issue I need to deal with. I have a journalism degree for crying out loud. I do know how to write without exclamation marks.

When the plane’s wheels shuddered on the tarmac, the sun looked like a globe lozenge of melting ivory in the smoky sky. How’s that? You’re so good at describing things. I don’t want to be a just-the-facts-ma’am journalist. I need to practice descriptions so my readers can feel what it was like to fly in on Maybe Airlines – not the real name – that’s what the War Journos call it.

You’d think my whole body would be pulsing with adrenaline, especially after the plane did a nosedive on its descent to avoid being shot down, but I felt like I’d been drugged with anesthesia when Niko met me at the airport. Remember how you wrote about feeling too close to yourself and too far away at the same time? In Paris Niko told me the road from the airport to the city is called Sniper Alley. It sounded thrilling on the banks of the Seine after a bottle of Beaujolais. So Year of Living Dangerously when Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver blast through that military roadblock. But if somebody asked me to describe an apocalypse, it’s the drive to the hotel. Destroyed buildings and burned-out cars everywhere.

Niko drives a Land Rover nicknamed – get this – Mr. Kotter. He raced through the empty street and when I told him I didn’t expect it to be so quiet, he said, “Don’t let the lulls fool you, Cub, you’re on a highway straight to hell and you never know when a shell has your name on it.” He was full-on pedal to the metal but he sounded so nonchalant I think I’m still waiting for his words to sink in.

War Journos, diplomats, and aid workers stay at the Holiday Inn. It looks like a gargantuan cube of Emmental. Sallow yellow and pocked with bullet holes. At the back entrance you can drive right into the underground parking garage. Niko gunned it and squealed down the ramp to make it harder for the snipers to shoot us. Can you believe I’m writing sentences like that? He hauled my bag into the massive atrium lobby. Tarps are stretched over the windows where the glass was blown out. War journos sat around slurping coffee, and a few of them tapped on those new little portable computers like we’re in a sci-fi movie.

My mind was in overdrive trying to observe everything.

A guy wearing a helmet while he ate Froot Loops of all things ! .

A woman with frizzy blond hair and a chunky turquoise necklace at a piano playing Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move.” How’s that for cynical?

Niko giving me duct tape and a Sharpie so I could write my name and blood type and stick it on my flak jacket. Yes I have a flak jacket.

Up in the room I heard a muffled cracking sound. Sniper’s Corner is out front. Niko said it’s the most dangerous intersection in the city, but don’t worry, Cub, you’ll get used to it. On the Seine it was all about thoughtful explanations and lingering kisses, but apparently Sarajevo is terse words and a quick dry peck on the temple that made me feel Seriously? I’m in a city under siege Kate, and I’m thinking about kisses! What’s wrong with me?

I think Niko’s preoccupied because Time beat him to jolting the world with their cover story about the concentration camps. He’s been working on a guard at one of the camps for a while. The guy claims he secretly took pictures inside. Niko’s still trying to gain his trust. That’s why he’s out right now and I’m not. That and a tanker came for the hotel cistern. Someone has to stay and fill our bathtub to the brim since there’s no telling when the next delivery will be. The Serbs cut off water supplies and most of the city’s electricity too although the hotel has its own generator.

Hotel Room Rule #1: Don’t stand by the windows – I swear I’ve never paid this much attention to windows in my whole life. I’m sitting in a corner with my notebook propped on my knees, hypnotized by the steady crack and boom of shelling down in the streets. Why do I feel so remote writing those words? Those bombs are anything but remote. This is what I’m meant to do, isn’t it, Kate? But something’s not doesn’t feel No – I can say anything to you. Something doesn’t feel right. I wish I’d packed The Face of War . I need Martha right now.

10 p.m., Holiday Inn Sarajevo

Dear Kate,

After a few hours in the room I realized I didn’t know when Niko was coming back. I was getting a serious case of leg cramps from huddling in the corner so I wandered down to the lobby. I saw a guy reading one of the copies of the Tribune Niko brought back from Paris. Niko told me, “The journos like to check up on the rest of the world, Cub, to make sure they chose the best war.” How sobering is that? It really is a century of wars, isn’t it? Did I mention Niko gave me the nickname Cub for cub reporter in Paris? It sounded sweet when we were there, but when he called me Cub in front of another journo at dinner tonight I could feel myself shrinking and I hate the way I feel like

I’ve never been so hyperaware of every single thing happening in relation to how it makes me feel. This isn’t about my feelings! This isn’t about me! – Or myself! – Or I for that matter! – but I don’t know how to get rid of Me-Myself-I and even if I did I don’t feel like Me-Myself-I right now which makes me wonder who Me-Myself-I is since I thought I knew but apparently I didn’t which is a whole other issue and now isn’t the time for that kind of navel-gazing and this might be my worst run-on sentence ever.

What I should be writing about is how $82 a night gets you three meals a day in this hotel. A couple journos were wearing their flak jackets to eat, but the waiters wear suit jackets and bow ties like they work at the Ritz. At dinner in the safe, windowless dining room there was red wine and braised steaks and decent crêpes with chocolate sauce for dessert. The forks and knives have the Olympics symbol embossed on them – the hotel was built for the 1984 Olympics – and I wondered if anyone else felt as horrible as I did enjoying good food while the rest of the city lives off food aid rations. There’s a rumor some of it has expiration dates from the 1970s!

The frizzy blonde was back at the piano. When we walked in, she started playing “You’re So Vain” and Niko’s friend, a hairy British guy whose name is actually Harry, said, “Look out pretty boy, Bobbie’s gunning for you.” Niko laughed and said, “Water under the bridge.” Great! A jealous ex who happens to be great at her job. I’ve seen her reporting on Sky TV. Not what Me-Myself-I needs right now.

I thought Niko would introduce me around during dinner but he got into one of those conversations that feels like it’s been going on for years and I couldn’t find a way to jump in. I’m thinking we’ll talk once we’re back in the room. We’ll lie in bed and I’ll tell him how disconnected I’m feeling and ask him if that’s normal for a newbie and he’ll say yes, Cub, absolutely, and I’ll feel better and they covered a century of wars together and lived happily ever after. Ha! Sixty seconds and he was out like a light. Now I’m sitting in the dark with Serb forces hunkered down in the hills surrounding the city. Our room isn’t on the worst side, but I can still see when they launch a mortar shell. There’s a quick flash like a white carnation. They took over buildings too and I can actually see the red laser beams they use to track people in the streets and even though I read all my WJDs front to back and all over again I feel like it makes me sick to I’m not I can’t even

Midnight, Holiday Inn Sarajevo

I can’t sleep. Confession: I need to tell you something but I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed in me. But if I don’t tell you, I’ll be disappointed in myself because we’re not the kind of friends who keep things from each other. I’m scared, Kate. Not like when you’re watching a horror movie waiting for Freddy Krueger to jump out but deep in my bones scared. That drive from the airport. A highway straight to hell rattling with spent shell casings. The parliament building across the road is still smoking from being bombarded a few days ago. It sounds like the never-ending grand finale at a fireworks show out there. I knew it was bad here – really bad – but this bad? How could it be this bad? If it’s this bad – and it is this bad – the world would stop it. But the world isn’t stopping it. I’m terrified of getting shot. I’m terrified of bombs. I’m no dummy. But it’s not just that. People live here. This is their home. I can hear – I can feel! – bombs falling on them right now while I write to you. Who is Frida Rodriguez to think her words can have any impact when veteran journalists are reporting every day for the BBC, NYT , London Times , AP, Reuters, CNN – you name it, even the Vatican has a radio correspondent here – and no one outside this country gives a damn because if they did this wouldn’t be happening.

8/24, Day 2

Noon, National Library

Dear Kate,

It turns out the postal service is out of commission so I can’t send you anything I’ve written – probably for the best, it’s so pathetic. Niko’s back with his guard from the camp. Before he left he brought me to the national library – which is also the university library – to see if I could find any students – get their perspective. He says a War Journo’s job is to keep talking to people until you find a story that needs to be told. I asked him how will I know? He said you’ll know, Cub, you’ll just know. Easy for him to say.

Even though a peace conference started in London, the Serb forces are ramping up their attacks. On the way here the shelling was nonstop. The library isn’t far from the hotel, but we had to zigzag down Zmaja od Bosne – Sniper Alley. When I got out of Mr. Kotter, I saw an old woman on a street corner gripping a girl’s wrist. They were pressed into the doorway of a building to keep from being exposed. The girl looked like she was kindergarten age. She had pale red hair and pale pink skin and she was wearing a powder-blue Smurfette t-shirt. The old woman darted out dragging the girl as fast as she could down the street until they were safe behind a steel shipping container set up for a shield. People don’t get caught in crossfire here Kate. There is no crossfire. Every single person is a target. There are ropes tied to lampposts to pull yourself to safety if you’re shot! Is that a story that needs to be told?

I got to the library a while ago and I’ve been sitting here paralyzed. I blame the building for not knowing there’s a war going on. It’s a painfully beautiful contrast to the ugliness in the streets. I wonder what Kirby would have to say about a place like this in the middle of a war. I’m furious at myself for not making up with him before I left. It feels like a part of me The architecture is a stunning combination of mosque and cathedral with arches and lacy woodwork and sunlight filtering through stained glass. You know that library smell? The sweet dust of old paper. It makes what’s going on outside feel impossible even though I hear it plain as day. How do the Serb forces have so many mortars?

Since it’s summer and there’s a war going on I’m not sure if any classes are in session, but I found a big reading room – it looks like it used to be an auditorium – with a few students studying and hanging out at some tables. It’s weird how they look like they could be in L.A. Reading and whispering and even laughing. It’s unsettling to hear laughter when a little girl who loves Smurfette is running for her life in the streets. When the students leave here today, they’ll run for their lives too. I could never laugh if I lived in a place like this. I’d feel too

Snap! Out! Of! It! No one cares what Me-Myself-I could never do!

Martha Gellhorn.

Be Martha Gellhorn.

Martha Gellhorn observed and reported.

Observe and report!

Okay Kate, here I go, I’m going to pick a table. Got it! That one over there. There are two students. Joan Jett Hair and Translucent Girl. Joan Jett Hair is talking intensely about the book in her hand. Hold still so I can see what you’re reading. That’s it. Steady. Something Totalitarianism by Hannah Somebody. The book is in English but they’re not speaking English but they must know English to read a book in English. Joan Jett just looked me square in the eye. I nodded. I should go over there and talk to them. I should ask them what stories need to be told. I’m getting up.

2 p.m., National Library

What’s the matter with me? I stood up, turned around, and walked in the opposite direction. I told myself I was going to see if I could find an English section for a book by the same author so I’d have a reason to strike up a conversation. I found a librarian whose English was pretty good but something obviously got lost in the translation – I ended up spending the past hour reading a beat-up old British copy of Little Women .

9 p.m., Holiday Inn Sarajevo

Dear Kate,

Back at the hotel Niko took a nap and slept through dinner and he’s still sleeping. I didn’t feel like waking him up because then we’d have to talk about how I wasted my day, and I couldn’t go down to the restaurant by myself. I don’t get it. Frida Rodriguez has never been afraid to walk into a crowded room alone. It’s not who I am but it doesn’t matter who I am because I stayed upstairs. Sunset rinsed the sky with milky pink nectar and I watched the hills transform into a dusky garden blooming with phosphorescent carnations. How’s that for a Kate Fair description? I didn’t have much for lunch and my stomach started to rumble. Get this – I felt sorry for myself. Seriously! I’m not starving. The people who live in Sarajevo ration food and cook in makeshift woodstoves because there’s no electricity most of the time – not like here in the Important Journo Hotel with its Big Generator. I’m hungry that’s all and I don’t have to be because I could walk downstairs and have beef stew but I don’t want beef stew I want Mom’s chiles rellenos and oh my God I’m crying for chiles rellenos.

I can’t breathe. Slow down slooooow dowwwwwn but when I slow down I think about the pale girl in the Smurfette shirt and is that why I’ve got chiles rellenos in my head? When I was her age I asked Mom how farmers grow chiles with cheese in them. She said why don’t we find out and we planted some Anaheims and one day Dad called me outside and there on the vine were two chiles with strips of cheese inside. I was deliriously happy. It took me years to figure out Dad snuck outside and slit the peppers and tucked the cheese in. They still laugh about it. They still don’t know I’m here. What kind of person goes to war and doesn’t tell her parents? What is that little girl going to remember if she lives long enough to have childhood memories? Unless her mom never lets her out of the house again – even then – shells hit houses and kill children all the time here. All it takes is one piece of shrapnel. Does she like to read? I hope she likes to read. I hope she has books for escape. I escaped today and I can’t believe it – I stole Little Women from the library. I couldn’t bear the thought of being back in this room without a book. What was I thinking not bringing a book? I’ve never traveled anywhere without a book. I stole a book in the middle of a war!

8/25, Day 3

1 p.m., National Library

What a day so far! You’d be proud of me, Fair Kate. Who knows what kind of magic happened while I was sleeping. Who cares? I’ve been purged. I leaped out of bed ready to ditch Pity Party Me-Myself-I and take my War Journo Dameness and some well-placed commas back to the library and track down my very own story that needs to be told. And return Little Women . I donned my oh so fashionable – and heavy! – flak jacket and gave Niko a surprise when he sauntered into the dining room and found me deep in conversation with Hairy Harry over bacon and eggs.

When I told Hairy Harry where I was going, he gave me the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. That’s the country’s whole name, by the way. During the late 1800s the occupiers built a new city hall – it eventually became this library in 1951 – in neo-Moorish style. The architect got his ideas from trips to Cairo, and even though the new rulers were Catholic, the building recognized the country’s Muslim heritage. Hairy Harry says that mentality has been the beauty of Bosnia and now its curse. It’s the most multiethnic republic in Yugoslavia, and that’s the last thing any staunch nationalist wants. I took careful notes and asked smart questions. I’m here, Fair Kate! I’m finally here!

I told Niko I wanted to go to the library again, and he asked if I found my story. Not yet is what I said then. What a difference a few hours can make! But let me take it slowly as I sit in this sanctum belles-lettres, the hushed percussion of mortars no match for the complex lives inside this fortress of books.

Back in the library, taking off my flak jacket and sitting down in a corner to figure out my strategy, the first person I saw was Joan Jett Hair in a David Bowie t-shirt and acid-washed jeans. She walked right up to me, stuck out her hand and said, “Hello, I am Lejla. You are American?”

How did she know? I have brown skin. People back in America don’t even think I’m American. She pointed at my feet and said – in flawless English – “I think Americans love brand new white tennis shoes.” I told her I never wear tennis shoes but I bought these in Paris in case I have to run fast here. This made her laugh. “You are an aid worker?” she asked. I shook my head but before I could tell her I’m a WJD she held up her hand and said, “I will guess. You are CIA?” I thought she was joking. She wasn’t. Doctor? No. UN official? No. It was disorienting because her makeup was gloomy and goth but her curiosity was warm. Finally she guessed journalist and I told her I’m trying to find a story that needs to be told.

You should have seen the look on her face. She flung out her arms and declared, “It is here!” She told me the library has almost two million books. Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, Orthodox. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian. It was like what Hairy Harry told me. Lejla said they live peacefully together under the same roof the way the people of Sarajevo had been living together under the same sky. They’re proof that harmony is possible but the nationalists don’t want harmony. They want ethnic purity. The shelling outside sounded like it was getting even worse. She ran her fingers through her hair. The spikes stood up like candle flames. She told me she kissed her first boyfriend next to ancient Ottoman manuscripts. She said, “A Catholic and I am Muslim! I think no one wants the story of how Bosnians get along. They only want the story of how we hate each other because people love stories about hate. I watch Dallas .”

My mind was leapfrogging all over the place when she told me about reading her first English-language book in the library on a Sunday morning while her mom worked as a cleaner. Her cousin used to send her books from Washington, D.C. She asked if I’d heard of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. ? Did I gasp? You bet I did, Fair Kate. Every girl I knew read that book but I never imagined girls reading it in other countries. Lejla told me Margaret taught her what a period was. Same for me. Poor Mom when I demanded to know if it was true. Ask her about roasted chayotes and she’ll talk until the sun comes up, but mention Aunt Flo and all of a sudden she’s late for a meeting!

Lejla said, “Growing up I heard women say ‘I have it .’ What did they have? No one would tell me. But I think Judy Blume is a straight shooter.” Lejla loves books as much as we do. It’s incredible how many American authors she’s read. Mark Twain, Pearl S. Buck, Edgar Allan Poe. She grinned and looked around and whispered, “I am naughty.” Whenever she finishes reading a book, she draws a purple butterfly inside the back cover. There are eight purple butterflies inside her Margaret book. There are purple butterflies all over the library. Lejla swept her arm toward the table where her translucent friend was sitting and said, “Irena gets mad at me. She says I am a vandal. She is my best friend. All our lives we were Yugoslavian but now the Serbs say she is Serb Orthodox and I am Bosnian Muslim, and that we should hate each other for this. We don’t buy their partisan garbage.”

My whole body trembled. Niko’s right. I just knew. This story – the story of what Sarajevo is rather than what it isn’t – it needs to be told. I asked Lejla if I could interview her. She was ecstatic. She told me how everyone wants bullets and bombs. Or a dead child because they think dead children will stop a war but when in history has a dead child ever stopped a war? Men in power don’t care about dead children. If they did there would be no wars at all. She said if I was going to interview her I should interview Irena too – they both studied in London so her English is as fluent as Lejla’s – but don’t let Irena talk about Bono because when she starts in on Rattle and Hum it’s impossible to shut her up. Then she had to go help her mom and she invited me to an underground café later for our first interview. This is it, Fair Kate. I’m sure of it!

8/27, Day 5

4 a.m., Holiday Inn Sarajevo

I wanted to write to you last night before bed but I was dead tired. Then I woke up wide awake and realized I couldn’t go back to sleep unless I told you what happened even though who knows when you’ll get this letter so why does it feel like it matters if I write to you ASAP and not tomorrow? I snuck down to the kitchen. I thought the bakers were ignoring me snooping in the cupboards, but while I was heating water for the Nescafé I brought with me, one of them tapped my shoulder. I turned around. I must have looked the way I felt because she squeezed my arm and handed me a warm roll dotted with gems of plum jam. It takes my breath away how someone can be so kind to a stranger in the middle of all this misery.

It’s eerie here in the lobby. I’m the only one awake. There’s glass in piles in the corners. The hotel was hit on Tuesday too. The journos say it’s the worst shelling so far. Is it only Thursday? Was it only two nights ago when I met up with Lejla and Irena at the underground café? I thought they meant it was secret or maybe subversive but it was just literally underground. A few university students turned a cellar near the library into a meeting place. It made me think about what Martha wrote – how a basement is more desirable in a time of war than a time of peace. The walls were plastered with posters. David Hasselhoff, Michael Jackson, and John Lennon, as well as a few Bosnian celebrities – I assume – that I didn’t recognize and some old promotional ads for the 1984 Olympics. Along with tables and chairs, cots were stacked in a corner in case anyone needed to stay the night. I wish I’d known to bring something. Everyone showed up with thermoses of tea or bottles of liquor. No electricity – just candles and a moody guy whose Simon & Garfunkel guitar playing did not match his Duran Duran mullet.

A girl had a pack of Drina cigarettes and she rationed them out while everyone tried to explain Tito to me – it’s amazing how many students here speak such fluent English. They told me when he became president of Yugoslavia he said he wanted to create a federal republic made up of equal nations and nationalities – things got heated with an argument about politics in theory versus reality, and the cigarette girl declared the only people who believe in benevolent dictatorships are people who’ve never lived in a benevolent dictatorship. Don’t ask me how but this led to questions about Murphy Brown and the American Way. I blame the fiery plum brandy being passed around.

I understood why they created this place. It felt almost normal. But normal can’t be relied on in a war zone, Kate. Mullet was strumming “Bridge Over Troubled Water” with everyone singing along when a guy ran down the stairs and yelled, “They’re bombing the library!” We looked at each other like he was speaking Latin. The next thing I knew we all flew up the stairs.

The first people outside turned around and shouted, “Go back! Go back!” I stumbled into the person behind me, but I could still see out the door. Flaming meteors striped the sky, exploding into the dome of the library. We should have retreated into the cellar, but the shock paralyzed us. Grenades sounded like they were shredding the night. I heard Lejla scream Irena’s name. I pushed forward and saw Irena running. I tried to grab Lejla’s arm, but she jerked away. I caught up to them in a doorway opposite the library. Irena gasped something in her own language and then in English. “They stopped, thank God they stopped.”

We thought it was over, but it wasn’t. “Flames!” Lejla cried, pointing up. A bright orange wave thrashed out of the library. We looked at each other, but what could we do? A tanker finally arrived, and some men aimed a hose. A single hose, Kate! There was only one truck because the Serb forces bombed the surrounding streets so nothing could get through. They severed the pipelines. The river was right there, but the men couldn’t fill the tank fast enough. The flames grew, and the night smelled like the end of the world. It wasn’t just the library. The entire city was on fire. I couldn’t breathe, Kate. I can’t breathe.

Somehow I was in a chain of people. Firemen and librarians raced into the library and passed books out to us. The fire was far above us, but cinders flew and it scorched every particle of air. It tasted like chemicals, and I couldn’t cover my mouth because I needed my hands for the books. When I rubbed my eyes, the soot felt like needles. The fire sounded like wax paper crackling in my ears, and there were cracks like a whip. I thought it was the flames, but it was gunshots. Kate, the snipers were shooting at human beings trying to save books. I was a human being trying to save books.

I can’t remember how, but we were huddled back in the doorway again. I don’t know how Niko found me. He drove Irena and Lejla home before we went back to the hotel. I smelled like a bonfire. I stared at the bathtub. All that water felt obscene. I let myself use a small ration but there’s still smoke inside me. I smell it every time I breathe. It’s under my skin.

I slept through most of the morning. When I woke up, Niko was gone. The desk clerk gave me a note from Lejla. It had an address on it. I asked Hairy Harry for a ride in his battered VW Golf that is most definitely not sniper-proof. Fire still raged out the library’s windows, and gray smoke eclipsed the sun. Butterflies floated in the sooty air. Hundreds of Lejla’s butterflies dancing like lace across the dimmed daylight. I was sure I was losing my mind until I got out of the car and saw they weren’t butterflies. They were books, Kate. Downy fragments of the library’s precious books. I held up my hand and a wisp of paper settled on my palm. It was warm on my skin like a brush of sunlight. Then poof. It was ash. Gone.

Do you remember how we wrote it’s the words that will last? Is it true if something like this can happen? Words living together in harmony under the same roof – incinerated in a single gust of hate.

6 p.m., Holiday Inn Sarajevo

I keep getting interrupted and losing track of time. Even though I’m writing Day 1, Day 2, it’s hard to keep things straight. I was telling you how I got out of Hairy Harry’s car in a soft rain of butterflies. That feels like a century ago. Hairy Harry dropped me off at a small house with timber beams and a clay tile roof. It would have looked like a fairy tale cottage if the windows weren’t blown out. All the windows on the block are gone, and the house across the street has a crater in its roof with part of the wall exposed so you can see yellow cabbage roses on the wallpaper. An old woman answered the door. I followed her down a dark hall into the smoky light of a garden. Ash from the books dusted a linden tree the way ash from wildfires dusts our lemon and guava trees back home.

Lejla jumped up from a chair. I know I just met her, but she looked like a completely different person from the girl in the library talking about Judy Blume. On the surface she was still the same, smudged raccoon eyeliner and the torn Flashdance collar of her Blondie t-shirt slipping off her shoulder. But a layer of her youth had been singed away. I wondered if I seemed different to her. I felt different.

She grabbed my hand and asked, “You will still tell our story?” My skin prickled. I felt helpless. The way she and Irena were looking at me, I could see it in their eyes how much they needed someone – me – to save them. Before I could say a word a child ran past me and jumped onto Irena’s lap. I’m never speechless, but my vocal cords froze. You won’t believe this. Remember the pale redhead in the Smurfette t-shirt? The little girl I saw running in the street. It was her! Maybe Irena thought I wasn’t answering Lejla’s question because I had changed my mind. Fiercely, she said, “The Serbs think to bomb the library can erase our bonds. We will not allow it! You must tell the world about people like us for the sake of children like my niece Branka.”

She clutched the girl. I couldn’t believe Smurfette was right in front of me. I was still speechless and Lejla jumped in and said, “Not all Serbs are the enemy. This is important. It is the nationalists who are using the excuse of ancient rivalries. That is not who we are today. There were Croats in the café last night. The guitar player is Czech and Slovenian.” She talked fast like she was afraid I’d cut her off, telling me how Serb nationalists use fanaticism to pit neighbors against neighbors while UN peacekeepers are as useless as rocks and George Bush says America will support the new government of Bosnia and Herzegovina with full diplomatic relations but Bill Clinton calls that a lukewarm response and what do I think? Am I voting for Clinton?

I haven’t even been following the election in my own country. I’m only barely beginning to understand Bosnia. I’m still shaking from the library. I’m in over my head and I was terrified because this is more than just a story that needs to be told. I knew with my whole heart – this is it, Kate – this is MY story. I want this. I want to make a difference and I’m afraid nothing will make a difference. The city is smoldering in every direction. If no one’s coming to their rescue after the last bombardments, what good will it do to tell the world about two best friends in Sarajevo who crossed the ethnic divide and liked to snack on Smoki puffs while they watched The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ?

The garden was silent. Without power there were no radios or TVs, but what unnerved me most was no shelling. That’s how fast a person can get used to it. I was already more aware of when it was absent than when it was present. Ash rustled in the leaves, and I wanted to say something reassuring but my brain was clogged with butterflies. My tongue was gummy with soot. I crawled through the debris in my thoughts until I found Martha and asked her what she would say right now, and she frowned at me and waved her menthol and said, “Why are you asking me? This isn’t my story. What do you want to know?”

Remember that primer I said I was going to write? It’s so complex here, Kate. The same word can mean a nationality or an ethnicity, and a person can have one ethnicity and another nationality – and ethnicity, nationality, and religion too – it all plays a part in what side you’re on. Plus I still don’t know if I’m using the right terms for the different kinds of weapons. But what did Me-Myself-I really want to know? I looked from rock ’n’ roll Lejla in her combat boots to ethereal Irena in her gauzy hippie dress and said, “Tell me about an Orthodox Serb and a Muslim Bosnian being best friends.”

In the haze of an exposed garden in a city under siege they glanced at each other uncertainly. But it was like they couldn’t stop themselves. Like they had to tell me everything as fast as they could before they lost the chance. They were born three weeks apart and grew up on the same street, and it seems like there’s nothing they didn’t share. A love for books by an author called Nasiha Kapid?i?-Had?i? when they were girls, and an intense Agatha Christie phase during one summer youth camp for Tito’s Pioneers – think Girl Scouts with a Communist twist. Their favorite band was Zabranjeno Pu?enje until Irena discovered U2. “It was our first fight,” Lejla teased Irena. Irena went off on a tangent about the music video for “In the Name of Love,” and then they were arguing about the obligations of music and Irena insisted Zabranjeno Pu?enje’s politics weren’t big enough and Lejla insisted they taught young Yugoslavians to think about social issues and the next thing I knew they were howling with laughter about how they spent the entire 1984 Winter Olympics hanging around the entrance to the Olympic Village begging everyone who went in to get them Katarina Witt’s autograph.

The Serbs have no idea. This war that’s supposed to divide them is making them even closer. I knew it was illogical when a shell could crash down on us at any second, but I thought – they’re so lucky.

The more they talked, the more the war disappeared. Smoke masked the sun, butterflies dissolved mid-flight, and their past was as alive as the present. Their past is their weapon against the present and the enemy can go to hell if it thinks it can wipe out that past.

Irena and her sister – Branka’s mom – live together with their grandma. Irena’s sister is a surgeon so she’s rarely home anymore. The shelling started up again, and Irena’s grandma begged us to come inside, but Irena said they were tired of hiding in the back corners of rooms all the time. Like me right now sitting on the floor in the back corner of my hotel room trying to imagine what it must feel like to go from one life to another overnight. Not figuratively. One beautiful spring day they were in a café dissecting a new American album called Nevermind over bottles of apricot Fructal and Schweppes. The next day they were running from snipers in the streets. It doesn’t make sense.

Here’s my problem, Kate. I’m trying, I am, but I can’t imagine what it feels like. How is that possible when I’m in the middle of it, but I don’t feel like I’m in the middle of it – I feel like I’m outside it – even when we were passing the books and the fire was raging and the snipers were shooting – I found out they killed a woman, a librarian, Aida Buturovi? – I could have died like her, I could die like anyone else here, but I’m not like anyone else here because this isn’t my home. So how can I understand what it feels like to lose what they’re losing, and if I can’t understand then how can I write about it? I need to stop now before I spiral, I can’t spiral, they deserve more from me.

Almost Midnight, Holiday Inn Sarajevo

I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about the library. It surprised me. It wasn’t like what we learned in school about life behind the Iron Curtain when we were growing up. I thought everything here would be drab with nothing to read but Communist propaganda. But that beautiful library housed hundreds of thousands of rare books and manuscripts, the national archives, and the university’s collections. The Serb forces fired phosphorus shells so hot they melted the lead into the stone walls. One moment it was a cultural stronghold. The next a charred shell filled with ash and burned stones. Lejla says the goal is to erase the entire Muslim existence in Bosnia. Irena used that word too. I have this picture in my head of a giant eraser sweeping across a whole population leaving a big blank swath. Erase. A nothing word – an everything word – depending on who’s using it or how or if I’m chasing an idea around in my head but I can’t catch it.

I was hoping to talk to Niko about all of this at dinner tonight thinking maybe he could help me map out an article for Alt News L.A. but he was telling Hairy Harry and frizzy blond piano-playing Bobbie that his guard finally showed him photos and it’s worse than he imagined which is saying a lot considering everything he’s seen in his career. What could I do? Interrupt Niko’s eyewitness to atrocities to tell him I have this gut feeling that what happened to the library is directly connected to every horrific thing happening in the camps? That every burned book is connected to every sniper and bomb. That everything happening to the lives of Lejla and Irena comes down to words and who is using them and how. Nationalism. Muslim. Erase.

8/28, Day 6

8 p.m., Holiday Inn Sarajevo

You’d never know there was a peace agreement in London. The shelling is incessant, but if the Serbs think they’re winning, they need to meet Lejla and Irena. When I went back to the house, they were their own army of two on a mission. Their uniforms? A Clash t-shirt for Lejla and a filmy Stevie Nicks skirt for Irena. In the garden they set up three tables with three manual typewriters. They already have a plan. With the library destroyed, the university students lost invaluable resources. Lejla and Irena are going to make lists of what individual students need. Three typewriters and who knows how many students but I wasn’t about to argue. A lot of students studied abroad so they’ll ask them for their contacts at those universities. Then they’re going to reach out to professors, libraries, and research centers to track down books. I don’t know how this is going to happen without a postal service or phones or even electricity, but if anyone can do it, it’s these two.

8/29, Day 7

10 p.m., Holiday Inn Sarajevo

I figured I can get some attention for Lejla and Irena’s project by pitching articles to college newspapers around the U.S. We decided I’d talk to the students who speak English – get their stories to weave into my pitches. Sounds simple enough but when I woke up this morning for my first day of interviews, my courage was nowhere to be found. It took me half an hour to force myself out of bed and another half hour to brush my teeth. The more I think about writing about this experience, the more I’m discovering the inadequacy of words unless they’re the exact right words. I’m scared of getting their story wrong. I’m scared of letting them down. I gave myself a stern talking-to. If I can’t write a decent article at least I can do something practical so I went to the kitchen and bribed the bakers for five loaves of fresh bread. I packed it with some of the food I brought from Paris in the back seat of Hairy Harry’s hatchback.

Lejla and Irena were already in the garden with a few students I recognized from the underground café. The sky was smoky but not as much as the day before. It’s eerie how scorched air can be so many things. Autumn wildfires and childhood campfires and hundreds of thousands of books in flames. My body felt like it was slowly filling with razor blades. It didn’t make sense. All I had to do was ask students what books they needed and why but I was afraid if I opened my mouth – I could feel a scream building inside me.

I hurried into the kitchen and was opening the suitcase when Branka appeared in the doorway. Her Smurfette shirt was spotless. Does her grandma wash it every night? How? There’s no water. Branka’s English is pretty much limited to “hello” and “I want my MTV” so I made some gestures to ask if she wanted to help. She examined each item as she unpacked it. Parmesan, pickled asparagus, artichokes. It was like she’d never seen food before. The amazement on her face when she took out a tin of butter cookies. I felt sick when she handed it to me and looked away like she couldn’t bear the sight of it in case it wasn’t real.

There’s an outdoor alcove next to the kitchen with a makeshift woodstove on the ground. I managed to get a fire going and opened a few tins of Portuguese sardines and grilled them over the flame. I was so absorbed in keeping the fire going I didn’t hear Lejla walk up. Because I was crouched by the stove I had to look up at her. She frowned, and I was positive I was doing something wrong. I waited for her to say something, but it was like she was in a trance. I picked up a piece of bread, spread minced artichoke on it, and topped it with a crisp oily sardine. When I stood up and held it out she stared at me. Branka finally murmured something that must have meant eat. Lejla put the bread in her mouth. I’ve never seen anyone chew so slowly. Her eyes filled with tears. She spoke softly and I had to lean forward to hear her. She said, “It has not even been six months and already I forgot what it tastes like to be a human being.”

8/30, Day 8

11 p.m., Holiday Inn Sarajevo

The next day I bought more bread, and Branka made a menu and walked around with a pad of paper taking orders even though everyone gets the same thing. While the students ate she stood beside them with her hands behind her back clucking with approval like an old abuela. It would be adorable if it wasn’t so depressing. When I think of all the flavors I can taste in Paris just a few hours away. Berthillon’s wild strawberry sorbet. A little Rochers from the local tabac to satisfy my sweet tooth. Anything I want. Whenever I want.

I finally had the chance to talk to Niko. It’s disturbing how different this war is for us. The night at the library shifted something inside me, but for him it’s a run-of-the-mill day in War City. I told him about Lejla and Irena, and he said it could be a nice little human interest story if that’s what I want to write. The tone of his voice – I wish it was condescending. That way I could tell him to kiss my grits. But he was matter of fact. Bobbie was at the piano, and she kept glancing over at us, so she probably saw me turn red when Niko said, “Journalism is about facts, Cub, and human interest stories are about emotions.” He said the problem with emotions is that they can distort facts. I looked around the room. A pile of Dalmatian ham on the buffet while Lejla cried over a sardine. I don’t understand. How is that not a plain fact?

9/1, Day 10

6 a.m., Holiday Inn Sarajevo

I wish I could send you my letters, Kate. I wish you could reply and help me make sense of everything. It’s hard to picture you and Sven snuggled up reading novels to each other in the wee hours. It’s scary how easy it is to forget there’s a normal world outside this horror show.

After dinner last night Niko and I stayed in the lobby for drinks. I could tell he knew I was annoyed with him. He didn’t like that at all . He was trying to get on my good side, telling a couple journos from Japan how I helped save books at the library and toasting me with plum brandy when Harry Hairy staggered in – another market bombing – bodies everywhere. He said he was shooting the carnage when he saw a little girl wearing a t-shirt with one of those creatures on it. His exact words – “You know the ones, with the blue skin.”

It’s possible for the world to stop spinning. It’s possible for a heart to stop beating. When was the last time I saw Branka? Why would she be at a market? No one takes their children out in the streets anymore. But that’s not true because I saw Branka in the street with her grandma that first day I went to the library. I asked Hairy Harry if he was talking about Smurfs. He nodded and said yeah, that’s it. That scream I told you about, the one building inside me. It roared in my head. I barely heard my voice crawl out from under it and ask what the girl looked like. Ginger hair, Hairy Harry said. Skin so pale she almost seemed clear.

The earth started spinning again but not fast enough for gravity to get a grip on me. I held on to the table so I wouldn’t fly away. The bombs had nothing on my pulse and Hairy Harry said something but I couldn’t hear him and I said what, what, what and finally the words crashed through. “She was whimpering, poor poppet, stranded on a pile of rubble and limbs.”

She’s alive? Hairy Harry nodded. Was she injured? Miraculously no. Everything went a sickly color and Niko must have gotten me upstairs because we were in the room and I was vomiting brandy and I slept and I was awake and then sleeping and then wide awake and I stared at the shadow of Niko snoring beside me and it hit me like a hammer. I followed a total stranger into a war. I flew into a war like it was No Big Deal. War is a Very Big Deal. I felt excruciating pressure like Branka was trying to take shelter inside my rib cage.

I grabbed a notebook and walked out into the hall and around piles of plaster and down to the kitchen to make myself a Nescafé. I had to write my story. Not next week. Not even tomorrow. Now! My nice little FACTUAL human interest story or why was I here? To write Me-Myself-I letters to you and feed people a few lousy sardines? I was so agitated that by the time I noticed Bobbie in one of the lounge chairs in the lobby it was too late to back out. It was like she was waiting for me. She raised a bottle of wine and asked what line Niko used on me – the one about how he’ll never run out of work because the world will never run out of war? She said, “I bet he calls you Cub.”

There you have it. Me-Myself-I is a cliché on top of everything else. She patted the chair beside her. I sat down. Did I have a choice? She took my coffee out of my hands and gave me a water glass filled with wine. She said, “He never should have brought you here. It was irresponsible.” Oh Kate, that’s exactly what Kirby said. I remembered my stupid argument with him, telling him how no one’s ready for war until they’re in one. That’s what makes them ready. Guess what? It’s not true. So why did I want to keep arguing with Bobbie – protest – tell her I have a journalism degree? I didn’t have a chance to say anything because she said, “My friend was shot in the jaw last month. Margaret Moth. Brilliant photojournalist. A true professional.” I said I’m sorry but she flapped her hand and sang “invincible, that’s what you are” to the tune of the Nat King Cole song. I couldn’t tell if she was drunk and I wanted to get away. She looked up and told me in a voice that was very sober, “If you came here because you think you can change the world, think again.” My ribs felt like they were going to crack from the pressure. I asked her if she thought she could change the world, and she said, “Not anymore, but history needs witnesses. Bottoms up.” I was nauseated but I took a drink. As soon as I did, she said, “If you’re going to do this, you can’t come unglued every time a market gets bombed.”

I told her I know the little girl Hairy Harry was talking about. I told her how Branka pretends she’s a waitress and takes people’s orders – I was babbling but in my head I knew what I was saying. Tell me what to do, tell me what to do, tell me what to do. I felt this mixture of fear and calm like a storm was coming and I didn’t know if it would cleanse me or destroy me.

She said, “In this job you need a place inside your heart that’s made of steel.” She said you have to be able to live in that place for longer than you’d ever think was bearable. You have to live in there with men who’ve been tortured in unimaginable ways, and women who’ve been raped in front of their families, and politicians doing everything wrong or nothing at all because they’re calculating their odds of staying in office. She asked me, “Do you have a place like that?”

I flattened my hand over my chest. I felt Branka’s feathery trembling. I felt soreness and tenderness in every last soft cell of my heart.

Bobbie asked again. “Do you?” I knew the answer but I didn’t want to admit it so I said I’m not sure. “Then you don’t,” she said, “because if you did, you’d know.” It’s the truth. I don’t have that place in my heart. My face was wet. I felt like a jerk because I wasn’t crying for what’s happening in Sarajevo. What kind of awful person cries because she’s not who she wants to be while sweet little girls like Branka whimper on piles of rubble and human limbs?

I figured Bobbie must think I’m a loser, but she leaned toward me and pulled my head onto her shoulder. She rubbed my back in circles like my mom used to do when I was upset. This made me sob harder. She said, “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have steel in my heart. Sometimes I wish someone told me what I’m going to tell you. You can take it or leave it, Cub, but there’s no shame in walking away from a war. There is more than one way to make a difference in the world.”

9/3, Day 12

In flight to Paris via Zagreb

Dear Kate,

I went back to the house as soon as I could get a ride. Lejla and Irena had moved the tables and typewriters inside. The room was dim because of the plastic over the windows, but there was enough light for me to see how much they’d aged overnight. This was different from after the library bombing. They seemed smaller, thinner, like the war is scraping away the essence of who they are from the inside.

Branka was asleep in a bedroom that was more like a closet in the very back of the house. It’s where the family moved her bed when the siege started – although now they sleep at night in a bomb shelter in a basement. There was a dresser with a Smurfette doll on it and a small open window with thin white curtains. A ray of sunlight sliced through the gaps in the fabric. I sat on the floor beside the bed. I needed to hear her breathing. I needed to hear her alive. Most of the thick smoke is gone now, and I smelled crisp traces of autumn on its way, the start of the school year, the shiver of new beginnings. It feels out of place in this city of endless endings. The journos say the London peace conference won’t change anything and the mayor says this will be the worst winter Sarajevo has ever seen. Temperatures drop below freezing, and without electricity or oil there won’t be any heat. I should have brought bags filled with wool socks. I should have brought suitcases filled with waterproof matches and antibiotics and guns. I don’t understand the arms embargo. How can the Bosnians be expected to defend themselves?

I watched a breeze puff the thin curtain in and out. I watched the sheet rise and fall with Branka’s steady breathing. I still had Little Women in the bottom of my backpack. I didn’t have the chance to return it to the library. I picked up where I left off and started reading out loud, and one by one they joined us. Meg and Jo and Beth and Amy, Marmee and Father, and rowdy Laurie, drowning out the voices of the students in the other room. Muted sunlight moved across the floor. Branka stirred. I climbed onto the bed and she rested her head in my lap while Meg made peace with poverty and Jo walked in the rain with Mr. Bhaer and Amy fell in love with Laurie, and Beth, sweet Beth, why couldn’t it be different this time? It seems like it should be the end of the book when she dies, but life keeps going on.

I wasn’t done reading, but I suddenly remembered, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t looked already. My fingers turned to the last page. There it was. One of Lejla’s butterflies. I brushed my fingertip over the purple wings. When she saw my tears, Branka made a small mewing sound like a kitten and petted my arm. At her age I’d never seen an adult cry, but she’s seen – I can’t breathe when I think about what she’s seen. When I think about what’s a part of her memories now. If this was Paris or Los Angeles the siege would be over. What makes Sarajevo less valuable to the world? What makes this city’s children less valuable? What makes Branka less valuable? The sunlight dissolved up the wall. Branka fell back to sleep. What makes some stories less valuable than others? That’s what I can’t understand.