The Cellist Playing Hope

'An insight into a devastating reality of the war' or 'The hopeless, frightened and emotionally ruined in Sarajevo' could be just a few of the many phrases used for describing the plot of Steven Galloway's 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' (2008). The story evolves around the daily lives and thoughts of three characters during the recent Balkan war (the siege of Sarajevo particularly that took place from 5th April 1992 till 29th February 1996): a lady-sniper named Arrow, a young defender of the city, and two civilians, Kenan and Dragan, a former financial director and a bakery employee. Although there is around 20 years age difference between the two men, the reader can easily realize that it does not play any difference in experiencing the fear of being shot, being exposed as a target for a bullet every time crossing an intersection just to get to the other side of the river for whichever purposes, being tired, aging in no-time and asking existential questions to themselves such as how painful is to die and how does it feel when you're shot, and why some people die and some don't. It somewhat creates flashbacks to E.M. Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front' (1929) and makes you angry about how somebody in power has decided for the whole nation to suffer, obviously against their will. And there is the Cellist, also an ordinary man whose dreams and Sarajevo like it was before the war were also broken down like everyone else's. The Cellist plays. He plays hope. A hope for a change after witnessing one of the many daily realities of wartime Sarajevo, an event that took lives of 22 people on an ordinary wartime morning standing in a cue to get some bread... 'It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded...'

Sarajevo in memories

Sarajevo as the three characters remember it, was a city with grand parks, a city where the trams were running, and buildings projected the magnificence of cultural heritage left by Turks and Austro-Hungarians. It was a city great for walking. A city, where you could not possibly get lost. A city, where 'if you got tired you could sit in a cafe, and have a coffee, or if you were hungry, stop at a small restaurant for a meat pie,' and the only thing people could have possibly worried about was whether it would rain tomorrow. In this city, both Kenan and Dragan were happily married men with beautiful children, and parents peacefully ageing, whereas Arrow was a young student enjoying the beauty of being young and spontaneous, and the beauty of having dreams that had an opportunity to become real. The Cellist also had a life, inseparable from an organism called Sarajevo Opera Hall that delivered a product of the finest form of art on a regular basis. A product that inspired him and others. He knew what was the purpose of his life and he was happy with it. And then all of this was taken away...

Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina 2009

Wartime Sarajevo and Life as it is

The rhetorical questions why some people die and some don't and how does it feel dying and if it's painful is just a few little things reflecting the reality of people in wartime Sarajevo. Wartime Sarajevo in Galloway's story is filled with the fear and misery of individual characters as their days pass under the target of 'Sarajevo Roulette' (which is told to be worse than Russian one), ruins of strategically important and/or unimportant buildings, the high prices of humanitarian rice packages or other goods on the market (although supposedly they must have been free), men shaving in the candlelight with the last bits of cold water, little boys willing to grow up faster and go defend their city, old man fishing for pigeons with a fishing rod, a man desperately looking for his dog after another shooting, tears of a fireman not being able to save the library from bombing and fire, the bridges that are regularly shot at by snipers whenever people try to cross them, the expanded daily routes of people on the way to the brewery to get clean drinking water, countless rivers and small springs of blood (depending whether one or many people have been killed at the same time), and hopelessness. Sarajevo has become a place where a basic human right to live has been questioned if not totally broken. Both civilian characters, not being connected in any way, Kenan and Dragan, project the thoughts of misery and fear of the nation, being trapped in the center of the Hell they wish was only imaginary, which no one is allowed to leave and the hope that someone from the outside will come to save them steadily fading away. Arrow instead projects the thoughts of the revenge and of the hatred, the unbearable willingness to fight against the injustice and countless crimes that have been committed to the city and its people. Because 'the Sarajevo she fought for was one where you didn't have to hate a person because of what they were. It didn't matter what you were, what your ancestors had been, or what your children would be.' The fight between good and evil continues day by day, without making any difference whether you pray for it to end or not. However, in this city of fear and the hatred mixed together, the humanity hasn't been forgotten. People help each other with a bucket of cherries, with an old prescribed medicine which they don't need anymore, with carrying two extra bottles for their elderly neighbor, and the Cellist plays...

22 days and the Cellist playing hope...

The war is devastating. Every dead body lying motionless on the pavements of the city that was once grand is a great reminder of that. Another pull of a trigger and there went the lives of 22 people. The cellist plays his Adagio every day at 4 o'clock, exactly at the same spot where those 22 people were killed. He doesn't care if he will be shot while playing. 22 days in a row. People come to listen. For a tiny moment the daily rush stops right there and brings back the old days, brings back the image of Sarajevo as it was before the war and the happy people that lived there. People come to put down the flowers. No, the flowers are not for the cellist. They're for the people that died that day. And now no one will ever know what they dreamed about, what their neighbors were like or which songs they used to love. Here, at this spot (like in many other spots of wartime Sarajevo) a human life was worth nothing. However, the author has created an illusion for a reader that things can be changed and the highest form of humanity can be restored, if people would just stop and listen. And then Sarajevo would come back to the state it was - a bright city with happy people living in it. By following these 22 supposedly meaningless days of an endless war, you wish the cellist to succeed, you wish the strings of humanity are pulled in each of the fighting fronts, and the peace is undoubtedly restored.