DAY THREE
In mid-sentence, I stop. The lights blink off, then on, then off again. My hosts don't even seem to notice. There is no stir, no commotion. Candles simply appear and are passed down the table as the meeting continues.
In a building next to the river swelled with snowmelt, up two flights of a dark stairwell, across hallway puddles, past the ubiquitous broken window panes and unmarked doors: we're gathered in a large room, with simple furniture and no decorative features. This is the meeting place for an informal federation of women. Here they speak out, away from a cultural norm of quiet deference when men are present.
Melita is sitting across the table from me, in an understated gray suit that blends with streaks of gray in her hair. She is President of The Union, a coalition of women's groups across Bosnia.
"The changes for women must begin inside," she tells me, "We keep waiting for someone else to make things better. That's how it was under Communism. But we've got to make things different ourselves."
The last four years have been a proving ground for the women of Sarajevo. While their brothers, fathers, fiancés and husbands have been in the trenches, women have been bringing in the family income, growing vegetables in the parks, and raising children - often without schools, heat, or electricity. Raising the children who have survived, that is; in Sarajevo alone, 1,700 have been killed and another 3,000 wounded in the four-year terror campaign.
And in addition to everything else, somehow the women have been organizing, forming well over 50 associations across this small country. The groups are centered around myriad shared interests and causes: politics, academics, professions, trades, and humanitarian crises, to name a few.
But that's not all. Some women have been on the confrontation line, digging trenches, or behind rifles. In the dim candlelight, I study the delicate features of the fair 22-year-old before me. She has lost everything - her home, her family, her hope. So why not join the soldiers at the front? It's best not to ask about the experiences that led her to that point. The important thing is now she is back, to rebuild.
Women will provide the backbone of that work. Just by simple mathematics: So many men have been killed or maimed, physically or psychologically, the burden of reconstructing a civil society will have to fall on the women. As Sarajevo comes alive again, women are actively engaged in the most public street life, hawking journals and cigarettes. But behind the scenes, Bosnian women are hampered by serious social discrimination.
I remember the 14 days of Balkan peace negotiations in my embassy in Vienna in 1994. No women among the dozens of lawyers, experts, and political leaders. Now I understand. The Bosnian "glass ceiling" allows women to be 80% of the judges at lower levels, but only one out of nine in the new Constitutional Court. That is the pattern: females as workers, males as managers.
Now, like so many professional women throughout the war, the fifty-year-old editor sitting on my left is working without a salary. Hana is managing a sophisticated monthly magazine. Each of the 6,000 copies is read by ten women in Sarajevo. In places with dense concentrations of refugees, the readership is 50 per copy. Hana insists that her magazine must provide a voice for women. I offer to arrange an interview for her with the NATO commander; she asks, instead, if there's not a woman in the command structure with whom she could speak.
She is adamant: Sarajevo women are not asking to be rescued. Yes, atrocities have been committed, including thousands raped as a deliberate policy of Serbs to humiliate Bosnian Muslims. Yes, they have suffered. They have borne the gruesome brunt of war. But they have survived. And they are stronger for it.
I think back on my visit earlier in the day to the ruined magnificence of the National Library: a temple of wisdom and beauty, reduced to rubble. Now the card catalogue file leans against a pile of debris and icicles have replaced the delicate ornamentation above the doorway. Then I remember the shattered rose window of the church in the heart of town, creating a tragically ironic background for the Prince of Peace. Those places remind me of these women - sources of mental and spiritual vitality, in spite of the battering of war.
As the candlelit meeting continues, ghostly shadows dance across the walls. The picture forming in my mind is also surreal: week after week, these sophisticated, highly educated women, dressed in the quiet elegance of cameos and pearls, dodging bullets as they dart across sniper zones to collect water in plastic jugs. One woman describes bathing each day for three years from a cup of water. Still, every single morning, she put on her makeup, as a simple act of defiance against the cruel ugliness of life under siege.
Before I leave, I pour 40 tubes of American lipstick onto a silver tray and pass them out. The women laugh. They understand the symbol. I shine a flashlight on the tray - so they can choose their weapon.