The Cellist of Sarajevo Read Online Free PDF Page A

family. Dragan used to live in what he considered a very nice apartment in the neighbourhood of Hrasno, just to the west of Grbavica. Now it’s on the front line of the fighting. The last time he saw it a grenade had completely destroyed the interior of the apartment, and he’s pretty sure that since then the entire building has collapsed. Either way, it wasn’t possible to stay there, and he knows he won’t ever go back.
    Dragan managed to get his wife, Raza, and their eighteen-year-old son out of the city before the war started, and they are, he thinks, in Italy now. He hasn’t heard from them in three months and has no idea when he will get word from them again. A part of him doesn’t want to hear from them until the war is over. He has heard of women sending divorce papers from abroad, and he’s not sure he could handle that. He’s sixty-four, looks more like a grandfather than a father. While they never had the perfect marriage, it was a comfortable life for both of them, though she was six years younger than him and they’d had their son, Davor, late, when she was forty. They’d thought they couldn’t have children.
    He hopes that, wherever they are, his wife and son are happy. He’s glad they don’t have to share his sister’s apartment. Dragan and his brother-in-law have never got along and, though neither will admit it, they would both prefer to spend much less time together than they do. But the bread Dragan brings home makes him indispensable, and the roof they put over his head traps him there.
    The bakery isn’t far from his sister’s house, maybe three kilometres. Under normal conditions it would be about a forty-five-minute walk. Nowadays it takes an hour and a half if he hurries. Today he’s mainly out for the sake of being out, though, and he’s been taking his time. He’s kept his pace slow almost the whole way, with the exception of the part of the main road that intersects with Vrbanja Bridge, an especially dangerous spot. There he ran across the street as quickly as he could, trying not to think about whether he was in someone’s sights.
    He’s on the main road, the one where the streetcars used to run. The south side of the street is piled high in places with barriers to shield cars and pedestrians from the hills to the south, though there are still plenty of places for a sniper to sneak a bullet through. He’s heard foreigners call this street Sniper Alley, and this makes him laugh, because it seems to him that every street in Sarajevo could have this name. Were the streets runningalong the banks of the Miljacka not worthy? What about every single part of Dobrinja or Mojmilo? It would be easier just to call every road in town Sniper Alley, and then, by some act of magnificence, if there was a street that was impenetrable to the men on the hills, to single that street out for a special name. But, of course, this is the road that takes the foreigners from the airport to the Holiday Inn, so it must seem particularly dangerous to them. Still, six lanes of pavement and a median for the trams hardly seems to Dragan like an alley.
    He cuts north, leaving the main road, which, if he continues on it, will veer too close to enemy territory for his liking. This part of the street is heavily guarded by the defenders, but that has never stopped a sniper in the past and he has no illusions that it will stop one today.
    He links up with another busy street, the preferred route for many people travelling the length of the city. As he reaches another main intersection, between Marshal Tito’s Barracks and the Energoinvest Tower, both almost entirely destroyed, Dragan prepares to run. This is one of the most dangerous intersections in the city. Only four hundred metres to the south is the Brotherhood and Unity Bridge, which separates the right bank of the city from occupied Grbavica.
    To his left there are eight boxcars, piled two high, lining the street. To his right are the railroad tracks. Onthe