FOREWORD
It's ironic to begin a literary piece in the ruins of a library that once housed thousands of authors' introductions. But irony is the language of war - sometimes expressed in whispers, sometimes in screams.
Both echoed around us as we made our way through the rubble of what was once the National Library of Sarajevo. Charles and I stopped, again and again, trying to make sense of the devastation. The scenes before us epitomized the primal aggression of the previous four years: the attempt of bare brutality to strip this city of its civility.
My husband was there to bring the courage of Beethoven to a community that still had sporadic water, light, and heat. I was there to renew my personal and political ties, to learn more about the little-known heroism of women in this war, and to sort out how we might be more helpful from our embassy in Vienna.
This journal is a collection of images - in words and photographs - that can't begin to capture what we observed, heard, or felt. For in the wake of war, we witnessed human life, raw and unadorned, stripped of the graces of better times. We saw the ugliness of human cruelty, the leaden sadness of loss. But we also saw extraordinary courage, and the energy and optimism to launch the long, laborious task of rebuilding.
Sarajevo is a city that refused to die. And we had the privilege of being there to document the first moments of her rebirth.
Swanee Hunt
January, 1996
Vienna