The Cellist of Sarajevo

Arrow

When the chapter opens, Arrow sits again in Nermin’s office, this time under a blinding light, waiting for him to appear. When he does finally emerge, he looks exhausted, and she bursts out with the news that she has killed the sniper. But Nermin is not pleased—he has noticed Arrow’s unhappiness when she tells him she has killed the sniper—and he tells her that maybe her run as a sniper for the Sarajevo Army has come to an end: “The time has come for you to disappear,” Nermin tells her (166)

Although we do not know why Nermin wants Arrow to stop working for him, we can infer certain things from what he says. For example, he implies that the war is creating monsters not only in the hills, but in the Sarajevo army as well. When Arrow asks him pointedly what is going on, Nermin tells her she should leave so that she doesn’t have to find out.

As she leaves, Nermin hugs her for the first time, and Arrow realizes he is the closest thing she has had to a real friend since the war began. Nermin expresses regret for turning Arrow into an assassin: “‘Your father would never have forgiven me for turning you into a soldier.’ Arrow doesn’t turn around. ‘My father is dead,’ she says, ‘And I forgive you'” (167).

This exchange with Nermin leaves her contemplative. She wonders if killing evil men makes her a good person or a bad person. Significantly, she realizes that her reasons for killing the men on the hills have changed: “Does she think she is good because she kills bad men? Does it matter why she kills them? . . . She kills them because she hates them. Does the fact that she has good reason to hate them absolve her” (168).

When Arrow leaves Nermin’s office it is evening, and that night’s shelling has begun. The men on the hills like shelling Sarajevo at night so much that Arrow wonders if they fancy them as fireworks.

As she’s walking home, she’s suddenly clipped by a running, and seemingly terrified boy—one she recognizes from Nermin’s office. An ominous feeling makes her return to Nermin’s office, but as she approaches the building, it explodes.  Later, she watches as men come and carry out Nermin’s body.

At home, she contemplates Nermin’s advice that she disappear, and she wonders whether it matters “if she succumbs to the wishes of the men on the hills or the men in the city” when she suddenly remembers that feeling she had in the car, of being overwhelmed by the wonder of life. She accepts that “That girl may be gone for now, may have no place in the city of today, but Arrow believes it’s possible that someday she might return. And if Arrow disappears, she knows she’s killing that girl. She will not come back” (173).

Importantly, there is also the issue of the cellist; protecting him has become very important to Arrow. 

Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. When she opens it, men in army fatigues instruct her to follow them, leaving her no choice but to do as they say. Apparently, Nermin knew something that she didn’t.

She is then introduced to Colonel Edin Karaman, who is Arrow’s new boss. Karaman is a straightforward, down-to-earth type, who speaks plainly. He describes the situation in Sarajevo as boiling down to one issue: “Some in this city like to think that this war is more complicated than it really is” (179): however, “the reality of Sarajevo” (179) he tells Arrow, is that “[t]here is us and there is them. Everyone… falls into one of these two groups” (179). 

Karaman believes that Nermin has wasted Arrow’s many talents and thinks that, under his direction, she can achieve great things. He also informs her that the cellist is no longer her responsibility. Arrow feels that whatever comes now, she will accept the consequences. 

Kenan

Kenan is collecting water again. Today, he witnesses the many injustices the war brings with it—most of them related to food. Kenan resents the fact that black market traders are getting rich off the city’s suffering.  Relief has come from other parts of the world, but Sarajevo’s citizens are being charged very high prices for items that should be free. As Kenan approaches the market, he sees his friend Ismet trading three packs of cigarettes-- a very valuable commodity in wartime--for one small bag of rice. Kenan even sees water from the brewery being sold on the black market, but not  Kenan notes, to anybody “who deserves it” (183).

People seem dehumanized by the ravages of war, like hungry, automated animals.  The suffering and injustice he sees everywhere that day, suddenly dissipate, like dreams upon waking, when Kenan hears the cellist play. In these passages, Galloway captures the transformative power of music on the human heart:

Kenan realizes that people’s efforts to shield themselves from suffering and fear have led them to retreat so far into themselves that they are fading out of life completely, and becoming ghosts: “to be a ghost while you’re still alive is the worst thing he can imagine. Because, like it or not, sooner or later we all become ghosts, we are washed away from the ground until even the memory of us is gone. But there’s a time when we are not, and you have to know the difference. Once you forget, then you are a ghost” (192).

As Kenan walks home with his water, he has an important and transformative epiphany. He has wondered before, who will rebuild the city when the war is over? And he suddenly realizes that he will—he and his friends, like Ismet, will put it back together brick by brick, and “that they will earn the right to do this, any way they can, and when it is done they will rest” (193).

Arrow

Arrow is being initiated into her new regime with a test—she must prove her sharp-shooting skills to her new boss. They take her to a bombed-out building to choose a target; there, Hasan, one of the leaders of the Sarajevo army asks her, “Are you ready to go hunting?” Hasan is filled with vengeance for his father and brother, both of whom have been killed by the men on the hills, and his mother and sisters who have disappeared and, he assumes, are also dead. From Hasan’s tone, Arrow thinks he is a man full of desire for a very bloody type of revenge. 

Hasan tells her that he has the perfect target, pointing out an old civilian He tells her that he picks the targets and she must shoot whoever he tells her to. Arrow hesitates, wondering how she could have become a person who might even consider assassinating such an individual and she refuses to obey Hasan’s order. Hasan warns her that her actions will have consequences, but all Arrow is thinking about is that it is four o’clock, time for the cellist to play and she begins to run. 

Dragan

When we see Dragan, he is still hiding from sniper fire.  . A man in front of him is trying to determine exactly when to dash across the street where the hatless man’s dead, body lies, reminding everyone of the danger they face.  Dragan is puzzled by the man’s desire to cross the street, when he could stay inside the hotel on this side.

Dragan also notices that the war is now being televised; he sees a camera man with his lens trained on the running man, and imagines that he is disappointed when he isn’t shot.

Then a little dog comes along; he crosses the street but ignores the corpse, it’s as if the body does not even exist. Dragan ponders this, thinking “that he has been that dog. Ever since the war started he has walked through the streets and tried to pay as little attention as possible to his surroundings. He saw nothing he didn’t have to see” (207).

Dragan resents the camera man—because the camera, he thinks, can reveal nothing of the true pain of war. Even the hatless man, he thinks, will be completely deprived of his identity in death—no one will know all the unique things about him that made him who he was. He wants to protect the dead man from being filmed for this exact reason. But then he realizes something very important: “He… has tried to live in a city that no longer exists, refusing to participate in the one that does” (209).

So he decides to start acting, instead of hiding. He goes to the hatless man; getting his feet stuck in his blood, and witnessing the carnage of his death up close. Dragan is not “horrified’ by the “gore”, however, he is determined to get the body off of the street. He realizes that acts like these can help to restore both the city and himself.

Dragan succeeds in carrying the body across the street, even though the sniper does fire at him. The incident sets off a shooting match between the city’s defenders and the men on the hills, while Dragan wonders yet again, if the war will ever end. He realizes that if the citizens do not keep fighting back in any way they can, they will surely perish: “If this city is to die, it won’t be because of the men on the hills, it will be because of the people in the valley. When they’re content to live with death, to become what the men on the hills want them to be, then Sarajevo will die” (213).