DAY ONE
Snow is blanketing Sarajevo today, covering up some of the pain. And
in the quiet, forgiving beauty of this wintry day, the graceful turn-of-the-century
buildings regain a brief moment of timeless elegance. 
But just beneath the surface, injury is everywhere. Even the marble
lion that once guarded Archduke Franz Ferdinand's last breakfast in
1914, has now himself been wounded, bullets having ripped his thigh.
We're here for a week, having flown in on a Soviet-built, U.N. cargo plane. My husband, Charles, will conduct the Sarajevo Philharmonic for a New Year's Eve concert in the National Theater. I will meet with political leaders and visit various humanitarian projects.
But in a sense, we're here for a lifetime. One never leaves behind the impressions of Sarajevo, a city under siege for four years, now just two weeks since the formal declaration of peace.
Our headquarters are the American Embassy. In this small but new office building, we have two cots in a corner, with sleeping bags. The American Ambassador to Bosnia, John Menzies, has been sleeping in his office since he arrived 13 months ago. It's the only really safe place, and with Washington office hours beginning at 2 p.m. Bosnia time and stretching till midnight, it's helpful being 20 feet away from the communication system.
On the walls are dozens of maps - and almost nothing else. No embassy china here; we eat two meals a day in the basement with paper cups in front of the TV, as we try to stay plugged into the world via CNN. Happily, Charles and I arrived with a stash of weekly news magazines and old newspapers, voraciously snatched up by the few dozen embassy personnel. Otherwise, no mail arrives. But morale is incredibly high. After all, there's been electricity most of the time for weeks. And, more important, there's the charge of knowing your work really matters.
Before coming, I asked John what I might bring. Sure, I could rustle up two space heaters and pack them in my duffel bag. And, yes, I'd have room for some bags of coffee too.
So what, that the embassy is surrounded by coils of barbed wire, and diplomats ride in armored cars? So what that they launder their socks in the bathtub and hang their ties on strings between the bookshelf and window? Those are simply inconveniences. We are surrounded by real hardship. And the evidence is everywhere we look:
- through bullet-scarred doors into dank stairwells, light filtering through drafty windows with jagged, broken panes;
- in the despair on a father's face as he describes how his daughter was shot while lying in her hospital bed;
- in young and old men on crutches, hobbling gingerly on one leg across the icy streets;
- in the ravaged carcass of a bus, parked beside the remains of the maternity hospital, hammered with unsuspecting patients still inside;
- in the tears of a refugee grandmother, describing her six weeks of terror with seven others in her tiny apartment, until separatist gunmen forced them to flee with nothing;
- in the haunting shells of buildings that once were home to thousands of families;
- in the Olympic soccer field, from a distance an orderly Austrian vineyard, but upon inspection, lined instead with hundreds of wooden grave markers rising above the snow.
But there are other signs too - signs of hope. In spite of a 10 p.m. curfew, coffeehouses are brimming with life. Our first night we go out to sample the local brew - strong and rich, thick as mud. The coffee is usually served in a small individual brass pitcher, generously sweetened, then drunk from a tiny handleless cup.
A thin, wan man recognizes me and approaches our table. He is a Sarajevo journalist, in Vienna when the Bosnian/Croat Federation agreement was negotiated in our embassy, almost two years ago. "That was the first real step toward this peace," he says.
I remember him. "You told me at dinner in our residence that you hadn't eaten meat in two years," I recall. He smiles.
"I was your guest then," he says. "Now please be mine."
It's a significant gesture. After all, most people appreciate being rescued, but few want to live on indefinitely in the role. So at his bidding I drink one more cup of strong coffee ... then spend a nearsleepless night, tossing on my cot, with plenty of hours to wonder about the stories that have been lived out behind all those plastic-covered windows.
Snow is blanketing Sarajevo. NATO troops are moving in. The snipers have been told to hold their fire. The shelling has ceased. And the dawning year is blessedly quiet.