The Cellist of Sarajevo

Dragan

Dragan is still trying to make it to the bakery when we meet him again in chapter two. A sniper has just fired, barely missing the couple crossing the street in front of him. He steels himself to keep going, to cross the street, because after only two more dangerous crossing she will finally have some bread to put into his ravenous stomach. As he is waiting to cross, a friend of his wife spies him and approaches. Although his first thought is to avoid her, he cannot make it away in time. Her name is Emina, and she and her husband used to have dinner with Dragan and his wife before the war.

Emina is out delivering medicine for the community prescription swap that has been established. He and Emina discuss mutual friends and the possibility of getting out of Sarajevo—a possibility available to only two kinds of people, the very rich, who can buy passage through the tunnel or the very powerful, who also receive passage through the tunnel. Otherwise you are stuck and cannot travel for any reason.

Although at one time both Dragan and Emina, like everyone else, had believed that someone— some country, somebody would come and help them in Sarajevo, they now both readily admit they know that “no one is coming” (73). This is not a situation where you can fool yourself for very long, although everyone tries to survive:

“For a long time he held out hope, listened to the news, waited for someone to put a stop to this madness. All his life he had lived under the rule of law….There was order and it was unquestioned. Then, in the blink of an eye, it all fell apart. Like many others, Dragan waited far longer for order to be restored than was logical. He tried to go about his life as though things were still normal, as though someone was in charge. The men on the hills were a minor inconvenience that would be resolved any moment. Sanity would prevail. But then, one day, he could no longer fool himself” (73-74).

As he’s talking to Emina, Dragan begins to wonder if she sees the same destruction, the same sense of defeat and hopelessness in everyone that  he does: “Does she see the gray everywhere? Does she see the mangled buildings, the wreckage in the streets, the people grown thin and tired, sulking along like frightened animals?” (75). 

The two decide to cross the street together, but Dragan, running, makes it only a quarter of the way when he hears a shot. He feels the bullet fly by his ear before he hears it. Dragan runs back the way he came; even as he realizes that this is the first time he has ever been the specific target of someone’s violence, he doubts it will be his last. Still, as Emina comforts him, for the first time in a long time, he feels grateful to be alive.

When he asks Emina how she can possibly risk her life so carelessly every time she goes out to deliver medicine, Emina tells him about the cellist— she tells him how every day at four o’clock the cellist plays the same song—which she describes as a sad one that doesn’t make you sad.

Right after Emina hugs him goodbye, and Dragan thinks to himself how real she has become to him again, she is shot as she hurries across the street. At the end of the section, Dragan doesn’t know if she is still alive or not. Two men run toward her, a man in a hat, who keeps on running, and a young man who stops to see if Emina is still alive. The man in the hat is shot next, and his hat flies off his head and lands at Dragan’s feet.

After that, things begin moving pretty fast. Dragan is pulled to safety by someone, and he notices the young man now carrying Emina, who is still alive. As Dragan counts out loud because he has gone deaf—he only makes it to eight before the now hatless man’s head is blown off.

Arrow

When we see Arrow again, she is in the office of her unit commander, Nermin Filipović, who tells her that many people are impressed with her abilities and that he wants her to complete a special assignment. Until now, they have let Arrow choose her own targets.

Arrow reflects upon how she was recruited. At that point in time, not only had she never killed anyone; she had never even shot at a human target. She refused to kill at first, but Nermin reminded her that she would not only be taking lives, she would be saving them. Arrow told him, “I think it will end, and when it does I meant to be able to go back to the life I had before. I want my hands to be clean” (58). But Nermin reminded her that none of them will be returning to the life they had before, even “those who keep their hands clean” (58). Eventually, Arrow agrees, but only if she could pick her own targets and only if she could work alone.

As she remembers the woman she was, “She’s aware now that the woman who sat in this office on that day and said she didn’t want to kill anyone was gone, that with each passing week she’s less and less certain there will be an end to all this” (59).

When Nermin begins to talk about her special assignment, he takes her out onto a balcony to watch the cellist play. When she hears him, she is literally transported to another world: “Her mother is lifting her up, spinning her all around and laughing. The warm tongue of a dog licks her arm. There’s a rush of air as a snowball flies past her face. She slips on someone else’s blood and lands on her side, a severed arm almost touching her nose” (62).

Nermin tells her that they need her to keep this man alive by killing the assassin who is being sent here to kill him.

Arrow thinks about the cellist and his mission and decides that she must keep this man alive at all costs. She knows that the cellist must finish his mission.

Arrow studies the area the assassin will have to work with, trying to figure out how the he will try to approach and exit after he shoots the cellist, if Arrow doesn’t kill him first. However, she also knows that they won’t send any ordinary assassin. 

She plans out her attack, finding a vantage point where he would not normally check for assassins like her before he shoots the cellist. She finally finds her point of attack on the south side of the street. She has also set up a decoy, placing a rifle, its barrel pointing west; toward the spot she believes the sniper will aim from. She lodges a baseball cap there as well, to make it look as if a sniper is waiting to fire at him. This way, if she hasn’t already spotted him, he will give his position away by shooting at the decoy. 

As the afternoon unfolds, Arrow thinks she has discovered where the sniper is shooting from but, after a tense ten minutes, when Arrow considers shooting at him, she decides against it.

Later, she replays the events of the afternoon to herself. She is sure the sniper was there, and doesn’t know why he didn’t shoot.

What she fears is that the sniper is much better than she had anticipated--- and that he has a plan she hasn’t yet conceived of.

She reflects upon the person she has become, one who is angered by any excessive show of grief as she herself has become so unaffected by death—having been immunized by the sight of so much of it.

That afternoon, the sniper strikes, shooting from the decoy window. Arrow hits the ground just in time to avoid the bullet he has fired at her. She stays down to make him think he has hit her. That afternoon the cellist remains safe, because the sniper does not fire again.

The next afternoon, when the cellist comes out to play, the sniper emerges immediately. Arrow is going to shoot him but then she notices his hand isn’t even on the rifle. The rifle is aimed at the cellist, but the sniper’s shooting hand is at his side, not on the trigger. As the last notes of the sonata sound out, Arrow shoots the sniper anyway, just in case.