People of the Book Read Online Free PDF Page B

world—Aboriginal people were making sophisticated art on the walls of their dwellings thirty thousand years before the people in Lascaux chewed the end off their first paintbrush. But I decided to spare him the full lecture. “Well,” I said, “you should consider that immigration has made us the most ethnically diverse country in the world. Australians’ roots run very deep and wide. That gives us a stake in all the world’s cultural heritage. Even yours.” I didn’t add that when I was growing up, the Yugoslavs were famous as the only migrant group who’d managed to import their Old World grievances. Everyone else soon succumbed to a kind of sunstruck apathy, but Serbs and Croats were forever going at it, bombing each other’s soccer clubs, stoushing with each other even in end-of-the-earth outback shitholes like Coober Pedy.
    He received the barb with good grace, smiling at me over the box. He had a very nice smile, I have to say. His mouth sort of turned down and up at the same time, like a Charles Schulz drawing.
    The guards stood to escort Karaman and the book. I followed down the long, ornate corridors until they descended the marble staircase to the vaults. I was waiting for someone to unlock the main doors when Karaman turned back and called after me.
    “Perhaps I could invite you to dinner? I know a place in the Old City. It just reopened last month. To be quite frank and sincere, I cannot guarantee the food, but at least it will be Bosnian.”
    I was about to say no. It’s just a reflex with me. And then I thought, why not? Better than some bland, room-service mystery meat in my bleak little hotel room. I told myself that it was legitimate research. Ozren Karaman’s rescue had made him part of the history of the book, and I wanted to know more about that.
    I waited for him at the top of the stairs, listening to the pneumatic swish of the vault and then the clang of the metal bars that enclosed it. The sound was final and reassuring. The book, at least, would be safe for the night.
    III
    W E STEPPED OUT into the dark city streets, and I shivered. Most of the snow had disappeared during the day, but now the temperature was dropping again, and heavy clouds hid the moon. There were no streetlights working. When I realized that Karaman proposed to walk to the Old City, the feeling of a stone in the gut returned.
    “Are you sure that’s, you know, OK? Why don’t we have my UN escort drive us?”
    He made a slight face, as if he smelled something unappetizing. “Those oversized tanks they drive will not fit in the narrow ways of the Baščaršija,” he said. “And there has been no sniping for over a week now.”
    Great. Tremendous. I let him handle the argy-bargy with the UN Vikings, hoping he wouldn’t be able to convince them to let me go on without an escort. Unfortunately, he was a pretty persuasive fellow—stubborn, anyway—and finally we set off on foot. He had a long-legged stride, and I had to quicken my pace to keep up with him. As we walked, he delivered a kind of countertourism monologue—a guide-from-hell kind of a thing—describing the city’s various shattered structures. “That is the Presidency Building, neo-Renaissance style and the Serbs’ favorite target.” A few blocks farther: “That is the ruins of the Olympic Museum. That was once the post office. This is the cathedral. Neo-Gothic. They had midnight Mass there last Christmas, but they held it at noon because, of course, no one went out at night at that time unless they were suicidal. On its left you see the synagogue and the mosque. On the right the Orthodox church. All the places where none of us go to worship, situated within a very convenient hundred meters of one another.”
    I tried to imagine how I would feel if Sydney were suddenly scarred like this, the landmarks of my childhood damaged or destroyed. Waking up one day and finding that the people in North Sydney had set up barricades on the Harbour Bridge and