In a city undersea, the story of people coming together and enduring.
A man carrying jugs of water is passing by a hospital.
A doctor grabs him.
Come quick, it's an emergency.
Okay, he says, I'll give you my blood.
Please don't take my water.
The humor is awful.
The miracle is that there's anything to laugh at at all.
This is ABC News Nightline.
Reporting from Washington, Ted Koppel.
The truth now.
When we hear or read about Bosnia in the news, most of us cringe a little.
It's difficult not to feel sympathy, but it's only too easy not to want to become engaged.
Well, don't be alarmed, there'll be very little blood and guts on this program tonight.
Yes, we are focusing on a city in which about 12,000 people have fallen victim to the war,
more than 1,700 of them children.
But what we sometimes ignore, or at least fail to acknowledge, is that Sarajevo is a
city of some 400,000 people who continue to do an absolutely remarkable job of living.
Not just staying alive, mind you, but living.
Caring about how they look, about the impression that they make on one another.
Trying to keep themselves intellectually involved.
Trying to make one another laugh.
Continuing to care about the future.
Living.
That is no small accomplishment.
But what is absolutely heroic about the people of Sarajevo, Serbs, Muslims, Croats, and Jews,
is their determination to remain neighbors with one another, surrounded as they are by
ethnic violence and hatred.
Sarajevo, as producer Deanna Lee and correspondent Dave Marish will show us, is determined to
remain a civilized place.
In the shadow of Trebovich mountain, just outside a gate on the ancient walls around
the city of Sarajevo, lives Hasima Vesicic.
This used to be a great place for outings.
There used to be the traditional Bosnian coffee shops, the kind where you grind the coffee
by hand.
And now we have nothing.
Now you can see what we have.
Not that Hasima and her friends are giving up just because of a 17-month siege, and hundreds
of mortar and artillery shells that have left the walls and roofs of her old neighborhood,
looking like Swiss cheese.
Everything was destroyed, but we will rebuild everything.
Just give us peace and health, and we can accomplish anything.
Enter the city gate and turn the corner and you can see what Hasima means.
There on Alexe Santisa Street, named for one of Sarajevo's great Serb poets, her neighbors,
most of the Muslims, are digging a new gas line.
The same agreement that obliges the Serb nationalists to stop shelling the city and to pull back
from their positions on nearby mountains, obliges them to restore Sarajevo's water,
electric, and gas service.
Few believe these obligations will be met, but this volunteer labor goes on anyway.
Of course this makes sense, says one man with a shovel.
Of course Sarajevo has a future.
Sarajevo can't die.
It will never die.
Don't worry about us, said another.
We'll survive, that's for sure.
This can't go on forever.
These are typical 1993 Sarajevans, confident of their own resources, contemptuous of those
they feel have let them down.
What do I think?
I think the United States is going to lose its leadership role in the world unless they
do what they promised.
In my personal opinion, the United States provide us with sincere support and try to
help the people of Bosnia.
Jurej Pellevan was the first prime minister of the independent state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
For every good word he has to say about America though, he has ten harsh ones for Bosnia's
so-called European allies.
Absolutely.
I consider that Bosnia was betrayed.
We were very much deceived by the politicians of Great Britain and France.
These days the ex-prime minister, who also used to be one of his country's top bankers,
lives quietly with his wife.
I live as an average citizen in Sarajevo.
I suffer the consequences of the siege, the limitation of movement, the difficulties in
nutrition.
How the once wealthy Pellevan share Sarajevo's common difficulties was displayed during a
rainstorm.
Mrs. Pellevan, remember he was dressed up for our interview, joined the neighbors in
the rush for rainwater.
The runoff from a storm drain may be the cleanest water available in Sarajevo these days.
And when God makes it available, every man, woman and child in town rushes to get a share.
Otherwise there's the river, the sewage-filled Milatska, a few equally polluted shallow wells,
and the pipes and tank trucks which magnetize mobs of jug carriers wherever they're parked.
A man carrying jugs of water is passing by a hospital.
A doctor grabs him.
Come quick.
It's an emergency.
Okay, he says, I'll give you my blood.
Just don't take my water.
Zenit Zozic is a member of the comedy troupe Surrealist Hip Parade.
So is Sula.
They used to be stars on Sarajevo television, but no one can watch television in today's
powerless Sarajevo.
So we are working on a radio show.
We usually finish planning the show around five o'clock in the morning so people get
an immediate reaction to current events.
Radio doesn't require a lot of technical facilities.
For example, if we need a moving tank.
People who have batteries for their car, for their radios, save them to listen to our show.
They really listen to us a lot.
Our work is to show people even in our terrible situation, there is a way out.
It's not the end of our lives.
There is still some hope.
The comedy troupe's senior members, Elvis G. Kurtovich, one of Sarajevo's top rock musicians,
as well as a comic, and Sasha Petrovich, say making people laugh is a way of showing them
even in their hometown's most tormented times that they are still normal.
Besides mere survival and chasing water and food, one of the rare things which is left
for us is this humor which shows us we still exist.
Sarajevo, you know, is famous for its shortages of everything, especially cigarettes.
Lots of guys always carry a spare cigarette behind their ear, like this.
Some keep them there for days.
So a guy is hit by a shell.
His ear is blown off.
He searches the sidewalk, holding his bloody head.
Run, says a neighbor.
More shells are coming.
Forget your ear.
We'll find it later.
I'm not looking for my ear.
I'm looking for my cigarette.
In today's Sarajevo, laughing about bloodshed is perfectly normal.
In today's Sarajevo, being normal may be the best revenge against the guys with all the
guns.
When we come back, part two of Dave Marish's look at life in Sarajevo, a look at the struggle
of the people searching for normalcy in a land being torn apart.
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Parents were murdered and their children confiscated.
Were these twin boys raised by those who may have kidnapped them?
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Sarajevo today is a city of contradictions.
Surrounded by armed Serb soldiers, inside the city the different ethnic groups are friends.
And more, as the 29% intermarriage rate demonstrates, they are family.
Here's Dave Marish with part two of his piece on the city under siege.
Long live the mother, long live the father, then work new homes, all crazy war horse will
be blown to pieces.
Since my childhood is filled with shells and mortars, this music is what makes me feel
better so I can forget the horrible things going on around me.
The Peltici choir is usually limited to girls under 12, but now, says director Slavko Oliuich,
we let them stay on longer.
Even today as Sarajevo, it's definitely better to be in the choir than out in the world.
It's a horrible time.
All people talk about our terrible things.
At home, downtown, on the streets.
In our lives, nothing is normal.
Everything seems unreal.
Things you could never dream of now are coming to pass.
We offer warmth and happiness and good feelings to people.
Don't kill the world, she's all we have.
The choir is planning a world tour to raise money for, and more than that, raise consciousness
about its beleaguered base of operations.
In Sarajevo, the girls raise spirits and speak the spirit of the city.
This war broke out to force apart the people of different nations.
But I think that is impossible.
I have friends from all different nations, and we get along very well.
People here have been divided for no reason.
What do faith and religion mean?
What does nationality mean in this modern world of satellites?
There is no excuse for this war, no excuse.
Symptoms of the siege are everywhere in Sarajevo, but nowhere more so than in the marketplace.
Look what's for sale here.
Much of this merchandise isn't just used, it's cared for.
But when your survival is at stake, you'll sell what you love.
Who is this?
Mickey.
How long have you had him?
Three months.
He has a perfect personality.
He knows how to talk.
He understands everything.
But unfortunately, I have two children and I have to do this.
This may be the world's most low-energy market.
Sellers who don't want to part with their few goods, buyers who can't afford even the
small quantities on offer.
And no one seems to want to talk about anything.
How can there be a free market when the city and its people are chained inside a circle
of heavy weapons?
Free food is what keeps Sarajevo alive.
But the cupboard at most UN food warehouses is half empty these days.
Donations simply haven't kept pace with the needs of Bosnia's two million homeless refugees.
And quantity is hardly the only problem.
These sacks of flour require water and heat to be turned into bread.
And water in Sarajevo today is mostly foul, and there's little fuel for cooking.
Zahid Muratbegovic has run the food distribution center in the Martin Bor neighborhood for
31 weeks.
Some of them are old.
I like to see more food and more variety.
We got one kilogram of flour per person every week or two is not enough.
One of Zahid's sub-distributors is Mariana Plonja.
She's in charge of food for her apartment house.
She says two kilos of flour a week, that's her normal share, makes about four loaves of
bread.
That's four a week for her and her husband Jamal.
Connoisseurs of Bosnian culture can tell by their names.
The Plonjas are a mixed couple.
Mariana is a Serb name, while Jamal equals Muslim.
I don't think like that myself.
Not even now do I consider myself Serb.
I'm Bosnian.
I live with Bosnians here and I consider myself Bosnian.
Now Jamal, you're Muslim?
I'm Bosnian too, but I belong to the Muslim tradition here.
Jamal's father translated the Koran into Serbo-Croatian and was a hafiz, meaning he knew the Muslim
holy book by heart.
Jamal translates psychological texts from English into Serbo-Croatian and teaches language
in high school.
A peaceful scholar with no apparent factional hate in his heart, he still can't keep the
war out of his home.
Well, when the sharing started, I came to the window to put the board on, you know.
A fragment came only maybe 10 centimeters far from me and hit to the wall.
You see the fragment hit here, but I was there.
The war has chased their son, a graduate student of genetic engineering, out of Bosnia.
Mirjana can't even talk about it without crying.
Terrible.
It feels terrible because we can't connect him, we can't see him.
Almost one and a half year passed since we didn't see him.
I asked Jamal, where would a mixed family like yours fit into the Serb nationalist plan
for a divided Sarajevo?
I'm afraid of that.
I don't know what will be with us if they realize such a plan.
When I asked Jamal what meal he dreamed of through all these days of deprivation, he
replied, a hamburger with everything.
Perhaps you've guessed, he spent a year in the United States.
It's like my country.
I don't know what to say.
My friends also consider America as the best country in the world now.
And we are all surprised now why America doesn't take some measures to finish it.
As we were preparing to go, Mirjana apologized.
Maybe we're a little tense, she said, because we can't see an end to this.
I can't either, I confessed.
And when we come back, the final part of Dave Marish's piece on Sarajevo and a look at how
a famous American writer, Susan Sontag, is contributing to the cultural life of the city.
We'll be back in just a moment.
I've got news.
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Next time, how a computer game is teaching ethics at the Justice Department.
And small upstart airlines, should you give them a fly.
Plus, Angelica Houston on Good Morning America.
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It is sometimes easier in times of war for reporters and news organizations to spend
more of their time on the front lines, reporting on the blasts from the guns, the damage from
the rockets.
But for how the war really affects the people of a city, it is the unexpected insights in
the most normal of places that sometimes shed the most light.
In the third and final part of Nightline's look at Sarajevo, we visit two such places,
a theater and a funeral home.
The place to see the end of Sarajevo's pain is the eternity funeral home.
It's also a place where you can see the beginnings of the agony.
Mohamed Chavdar is the chief coffin maker here.
He is also a refugee from the suburbs.
Mohamed used to work in a furniture factory.
He had a very good job.
I was in charge of all the shifts.
I oversaw 152 men.
But his suburb is now part of the Serb nationalist territory, and Mohamed is a Muslim, so he
had to flee.
Now he's just an employee, but he's busy.
The highest number here in one day was 52 coffins, 52 people brought here and buried.
That's the record.
The week we were in Sarajevo might have set records in the other direction, thank God,
but still the shell-torn corpses arrived, and still Mohamed had to face another of Sarajevo's
critical shortages.
Most of the wood, most of the trees in town, went into fireplaces this past cold winter,
and today providing materials for a coffin are one of the responsibilities of the families
of the deceased.
Some relatives can bring very good wood, and others just plain pieces.
The most important thing for all dead people, whether they were killed or died naturally,
is to be buried decently.
Our people take good care of that.
With 12,000 people killed in Sarajevo since the siege began, people have had too much
practice burying the dead with dignity and decency.
But the truth is, Sarajevo's under siege live with incredible dignity and decency.
Women somehow appear every day with freshly washed hair.
Men somehow find jackets that look like they just got back from the dry cleaners.
And children smile and tease strangers as if there were nothing in the world to fear,
no one in the world to hate or envy.
And in the midst of its torment, Sarajevo is having an arts festival, featuring a production
of Samuel Beckett's bleak 20th century classic, Waiting for Godot, directed by the New York
writer and thinker, Susan Sontag.
It's so painful if you can't find the words.
The language barrier, Sontag speaks no Serbo Croatian and most of the cast doesn't know
English, is the least of her trials.
The hardest thing about the work is that we're working in the dark.
There's no electricity and there's no water.
Okay, now we try it on the stage, in our dark stage.
Doctors don't know their lines immediately.
They read from a script, but they don't, they can't read their scripts.
They can't see each other's faces from far away.
Waiting for Godot is being performed this week by candlelight in the middle of the day
for an audience that dares not go out at night, but it will be performed.
Sarajevo is a city where the show must go on, no matter what.
The actors understand that.
We are waiting for Godot, actually.
We are waiting for democracy and for very, very closely living with each other.
I mean, all three nations as we are living here in Sarajevo and Bosnia.
My father is Croat.
My mother is Muslim.
My name is Serbs.
Orthodox name.
And I don't know, what am I?
Where would somebody like you fit into a divided, apartheid state of Bosnia?
Nowhere.
Waiting for Godot is very interesting for Sarajevo.
Maybe I'm waiting for, and the people in Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, waiting for something.
Maybe that's Clinton.
Clinton.
I'll be back in a moment.
definitely.
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Dreams don't come on schedule.
Creation can occur anywhere, anytime.
You must be prepared and equipped to handle it.
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The
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A touching story that proves real love can survive anything.
I am the luckiest man that ever lived.
Dennis Quaid, Jessica Lange, and John Goodman.
Everybody's All American, Sunday.
Later tonight on World News Now, the life and death plight of Brazil's street children.
That's later tonight on this ABC station.
And that's our report for tonight.
I'm Ted Koppel in Washington.
For all of us here at ABC News, good night.
Tonight live is a presentation of ABC News.
More Americans get their news from ABC News than from any other source.
Wednesday.