The Fracture Zone Part 3

"We've got Croatian TV, with huge transmitters down in Herzegovina, just up in the hills beyond Dubrovnik-great waterskiing, by the way!-uttering all kinds of bilge, which the Serbs get terribly worked up about. There is RTV-BiH, which is hopelessly Muslim-biased. The Serbs don't like that either. Ca.n.a.l S is very pro-Serb, and so is STV, which we want to shut down because it broadcasts endless stuff directly from inside Serbia about how wonderful Milosevic is and how cowardly NATO is.

"Some of it we permit, because we're all for free speech. But some of it becomes too irresponsible-just rabble-rousing. That we try to take a hard line about-but we have to follow procedures, of course, and it all takes time. It takes eight, nine steps, so far as I know.

"First we ask those stations that break our code-and it's mainly TV stations; the people here are fanatic TV addicts-we ask them to say they're sorry. Then we issue a warning. Then we make an order against them. We can fine them. We can suspend their broadcasting license. We can go into their building, seize their equipment, close them down, take their license away forever. It is all very formal-but we do have the power."

But I put it to the former soldier that all of this wasn't going to do much good if, moments after a broadcast like the one he told me about, a gang of Serbs came down to the Sarajevo zoo bent on killing young Muslims who might look as though they had thrown Serbian children to the lions. He shook his head wearily. "That's what I mean. We behave like reasonable people here. Not everyone else does."

Later in the day I drove a couple of miles west out of town to the sprawling and scrupulously well-guarded headquarters of SFOR, the huge multinational armed force that is charged with trying to keep the peace inside Bosnia. After an hour spent acquiring permission-during which I had to stand directly in front of a Turkish armored car that trained its 50 mm cannon directly onto my winds.h.i.+eld-I found myself in the Ops Room, with a dapper Argentinian brigadier who clicked his heels and said how sorry he was about the Falklands War, and with his colleague, a young British colonel who was also an Irish hereditary earl-and who might have stepped straight out of an Evelyn Waugh novel.

We sat in the sun and drank tea-no beer before seven, SFOR rules-and I told him about the troubles that the IMC had enforcing anything. "It falls to us, then," said His n.o.ble Lords.h.i.+p. "Very simple, really. If push comes to shove we don't bother to go through the whole rigmarole of warning them and asking them to stop. We don't go to their offices-no point, really, if you want to act decisively. We just go up to the hill where they have the transmitter-there's usually no one there, or perhaps just a chokidar chokidar and we find the switch, and flick it up. Bingo! Turns everything off. And then we put a couple of sentries there so they can't go back and turn it on, and if they do, we blow it up. Quite simple, really. Miserable for the sentries in winter, of course. But it's the only kind of thing some of these chaps understand. A bit of decisiveness." and we find the switch, and flick it up. Bingo! Turns everything off. And then we put a couple of sentries there so they can't go back and turn it on, and if they do, we blow it up. Quite simple, really. Miserable for the sentries in winter, of course. But it's the only kind of thing some of these chaps understand. A bit of decisiveness."

So, were the internationals a good thing, on the whole? "They mean well. That chap Westendorp-good fellow, reasonable man. But he's dealing with terribly unreasonable people. I think they sometimes forget that. That's where we come in. We keep the three sides apart. And we make sure that everyone behaves. Who's the bigger dictator-the high representative, or the general, the SFOR commander?" he asked rhetorically.

"I guess they're both pretty much dictatorial in their powers. The civilians are the benign ones, I guess. They don't have the muscle to be malign. We do. It's not very easy to argue with us. Have you seen some of our tanks? And we can whistle up planes in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

"No-a strong hand is needed to run a place like this. To keep the lid on the pressure cooker. And for now we're the strong hand. Us in Bosnia. Our chums down in Kosovo before long, I guess. You seen any news today?"

In a bar later that evening I met two policemen, dressed in navy blue uniforms and with an impressive array of badges, flashes, and medals. They were Americans, one from Kansas City, the other from Wichita Falls, Texas. They had been seconded to the UN and had spent the past twelve months in Bosnia, trying-"yes, trying"-to train young Bosniak policemen. The biggest problems had to do with drug smuggling and pa.s.sport scams. The pair thought that Sarajevo was probably now one of the largest drug-smuggling centers in the world. The raw material came on what they called "the Mujaheddin highway" from Afghanistan or the Burmese Golden Triangle, and it was refined and distributed from warehouses among the ruins of central Bosnia. "Everyone's in on it," drawled the Texan in a tone of languid desperation. "It's not just a Muslim thing, you know."

But anyway, he continued, it wasn't his problem anymore. He was leaving Bosnia the very next morning and going home to Texas. He had just had his final plate of kebabs, the raznjazici, raznjazici, and now he was going down to the Turkish bazaar by the old library, to buy one of those "darned cute carved sh.e.l.l cases." A small cottage industry had developed at the east end of town, and merchants peddled the intricately worked cylinders of bra.s.s, 155 mm being the largest and most expensive. He thought he might take two. One for each side of the fireplace in the den. "Then I can tell the story. Don't get much better than that in Wichita Falls, I can tell you." and now he was going down to the Turkish bazaar by the old library, to buy one of those "darned cute carved sh.e.l.l cases." A small cottage industry had developed at the east end of town, and merchants peddled the intricately worked cylinders of bra.s.s, 155 mm being the largest and most expensive. He thought he might take two. One for each side of the fireplace in the den. "Then I can tell the story. Don't get much better than that in Wichita Falls, I can tell you."

Near to the restaurant was what used to be known as Princip's Corner. Rose and I had argued heatedly that morning as whether the more important event in Sarajevo's history was the five-year siege of the 1990s or whether it was what happened eighty years before, on June 28, 1914, at this corner, at the end of the street to the north of second bridge across the Miljacka River. (I was for the earlier event, which, after all, I pointed out, involved the whole world. To the siege, most of the world turned its back.) The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his morganatic* wife, Sophie Chotek, had just been driven there after a meeting at the town hall, now the ruined National Library. A man named Gavrilo Princip fired at the couple with a small pistol, killing them both. A black tablet was later erected at the spot, noting that "Here, in this historical place, Gavrilo Princip was the initiator of liberty, on the day of St. Vitus, the 28th of June, 1914." wife, Sophie Chotek, had just been driven there after a meeting at the town hall, now the ruined National Library. A man named Gavrilo Princip fired at the couple with a small pistol, killing them both. A black tablet was later erected at the spot, noting that "Here, in this historical place, Gavrilo Princip was the initiator of liberty, on the day of St. Vitus, the 28th of June, 1914."

What the tablet omitted to say, of course, was that the two victims who fell here in 1914 became the eight million that fell all across Europe in the Great War triggered by their a.s.sa.s.sination. And what it also chose not to say was that Princip was a Serb, and the most extreme of nationalists. The date he chose was itself pregnant with significance: June 28 is not merely Saint Vitus's Day-it is the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo Polje, when all Serbs celebrate their battle with (and defeat at the hands of) the Ottoman Turks-the date also chosen by Slobodan Milosevic, seventy-five years later, to begin his own Serb campaign, which culminated in so much contemporary bloodletting.

But all this, for the tourist, was now moot. Those who once came to read the tablet and to ponder the notion that Princip had somehow initiated "liberty"-that he had somehow performed some n.o.ble deed-no longer have no opportunity to do so. The tablet is gone, torn down by the Bosnian government in 1996 simply because Princip was a Serb nationalist, no different in his way from the artillerymen and the snipers who, in the name of Greater Serbia, made life for Sarajevo's Bosnians so wretched and so dire.

The town government had long ago torn up the paving stones bearing Princip's supposed footprints. So anyone who visits today will find nothing to see at the corner that bears his name. Perhaps Sarajevo has come to believe that its siege was the more important event in its history, and that what happened here on that Saint Vitus's Day, though it may have had effects that rumbled across the rest of the world, had but little impact on this ancient Balkan town. I asked Anja what she thought: She was very much a child of her times, and said that in her opinion whatever Gavrilo Princip had done was far too long ago to be of any importance.

People are still working among the ruins of the Oslobodanje. Oslobodanje. A long while ago the besieging Serbs had it in mind to use the building-grand and up-to-date as once it was-as their headquarters. But after their gunners failed to dislodge the workers from it, they simply sh.e.l.led it into what they thought was oblivion. The crumbling sarcophagus of the main tower is still terribly dangerous, with slabs of broken cement swinging from rusty girders, and gla.s.s falling in torrents whenever there is a high wind. But the office building beside it, like the printing plant below, is still more or less intact; and if you pa.s.s through the back doors and in front of an elevator that is still peppered with bullet holes, there is a half-intact gla.s.s door and, beyond it, a scattering of desks, computers, and workbenches-a newspaper office, as messy and smoke-filled as any anywhere. It was from here throughout the war, as it still is from here today, that the bulk of Sarajevo's more independent-minded newspapers and magazines were being edited, published, and printed. A long while ago the besieging Serbs had it in mind to use the building-grand and up-to-date as once it was-as their headquarters. But after their gunners failed to dislodge the workers from it, they simply sh.e.l.led it into what they thought was oblivion. The crumbling sarcophagus of the main tower is still terribly dangerous, with slabs of broken cement swinging from rusty girders, and gla.s.s falling in torrents whenever there is a high wind. But the office building beside it, like the printing plant below, is still more or less intact; and if you pa.s.s through the back doors and in front of an elevator that is still peppered with bullet holes, there is a half-intact gla.s.s door and, beyond it, a scattering of desks, computers, and workbenches-a newspaper office, as messy and smoke-filled as any anywhere. It was from here throughout the war, as it still is from here today, that the bulk of Sarajevo's more independent-minded newspapers and magazines were being edited, published, and printed.

Zlatko Dizdarevic was the paper's publisher when the war began, and his columns, published each week, were gathered together as one of the most moving testaments to the conflict. "This is not a war," he wrote famously at the start of one column. "This is a horror that has no name. It is a black hole in the spectrum of all reasoned thought."

Dizdarevic is a Muslim, born in Belgrade, and he is married to a Serb. He looks older than his fifty years, very much a European, sitting behind his desk in tweeds and a sport s.h.i.+rt. He knows that the spotlight has s.h.i.+fted away from Sarajevo, and he understands that the world has other wars, other concerns.

His own concern that day had nothing directly to do with Bosnia either: He was wondering whether it was right for the NATO bombers to have attacked the Belgrade television station, as had just been reported on the wire service. He wasn't sure what view to take in his next column.

"It is all to do with principles and realities, you know. Of course I am not in favor of anything that harms free speech, that amounts to censors.h.i.+p-as this bombing was meant to do. It was meant to silence the station, of course. But the reality of the situation is so different-that station was pumping out so many lies, it had to be silenced. But then again-we say they were lies. But were they? How do I know that what that nice Mr. Shea* in Brussels was saying was true? They were only bombing Belgrade to halt the spread of what they consider a perversion of the truth. So even the reality gets a little clouded at times. Often, in these parts, actually." in Brussels was saying was true? They were only bombing Belgrade to halt the spread of what they consider a perversion of the truth. So even the reality gets a little clouded at times. Often, in these parts, actually."

I asked him how things were in Sarajevo today. He looked downcast. He, too, had heard the Serbian broadcast about captured Serbian children being fed to the lions in the local zoo, and it made him wonder if matters were ever really going to get better.

"At times I feel really nostalgic for the t.i.to era. Maybe we were less free. But t.i.to kept the lid on all this crazy nationalism. As a newspaperman I hate the censors.h.i.+p, the very idea of a government-controlled press. But so much about t.i.to's time was good, compared to this. Better even than now, while we have SFOR to protect us, and that nice, well-meaning Mr. Westendorp to help us rebuild.

"In theory I feel now that the Balkans need not be the black hole of Europe-I feel that a real mixing of the cultures here could be a good thing. They've mixed them pretty well in America, in London. Why not here? I keep asking myself. I am just not convinced that we here are pathologically unstable, that we need a heavy hand from outside to keep us in check. I feel that all this trouble is due simply to criminal manipulation-a few really, really bad people have made a business of stirring things up. They are profiting, and we are all losing."

But did he see any hope? "Not until we have something like the den.a.z.ification programs they had in Germany after the war-because we do have real n.a.z.is here, you know. Real fascists. Terrible people. They need to be found and rooted out. The politicians they control have views that are rooted in the nineteenth century. They need to be elected out of office. We need new people, a new generation. And economic recovery. Then the Balkans might have some hope. But not the heavy hand of outsiders-not for long.

"Even I have some nostalgia for the war, you know. A terrible thing to say. But in those days there was some semblance of fatalism, all being in this together. Now we are divided again-feeding children to the lions, for heaven's sake!-and we pretend that things are going to get better. I don't think they are; I am afraid I truly don't. Three years ago, when I was writing those columns, I was optimistic, and I knew that I would get my children, whom I had sent away for the siege, to come back and help rebuild.

"But now I won't ask them back. One of them is in Kansas City. One is in Italy. I don't want them to come back here to live. Bosnia is not a good place, not for one with hopes and dreams. Everyone who is young and full of hope wants to leave. There is a sickness about this place. This is a place for old people now. For memories, and most of them bad memories."

That night was the last we spent in Sarajevo, and we took Anja out to dinner and then to a smoky bar that was filled with men she knew, all drug dealers or arms dealers, or men who could sell you an Australian pa.s.sport and smuggle you across the frontiers and get you out and away. And we were going back to the hotel when I remembered that I hadn't seen a Sarajevo rose, and I asked her what it was.

She laughed, looked down at the roadway, and pointed at a spot a few yards away under a street lamp. "There!" she said. "Take a look."

A Sarajevo rose is the scar of a sh.e.l.l burst, a deep central core surrounded by a ring of smaller depressions made by the exploding shrapnel. Some wit had had the idea, a year or two before, to fill up all the remaining scars with pink molten plastic. There are now hundreds of them, pink road sculptures commemorating each cannonade of sh.e.l.lfire, pretty in their own macabre way.

I told the young woman that I had been told to look at a Sarajevo rose and ask what it foretold about the future for Bosnia. What did she imagine?

"A lot more like this, before too long," she said. "This is not the end-it is just a stay. I just hope it is a very long one. But I am not so sure."

And she scuffed the pink plastic with her shoe, got back into her s.h.i.+ny white car, and sped off into the Sarajevo night.

We sped off too, down what during the siege had been the ragged and dangerous western escape route toward the sea-and along which the internationals now left for weekends of waterskiing at Split. There were high mountains along the way, covered with snow that was melting into the road tunnels and making the road treacherous. It took two difficult hours to reach, just before the Croatian frontier, the ruined old Herzegovinan town of Mostar, where I knew we would see one of the saddest sights of all, one of the low points in this world of misery and ruin.

5.

The Fortress by the Sea

EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD the Muslims ever went, they left as a legacy something, most often a piece of architecture, that was and still remains entirely beautiful. The great palace of the Alhambra in Granada. The domes of Cordoba and the caravanserais of Iran. The the Muslims ever went, they left as a legacy something, most often a piece of architecture, that was and still remains entirely beautiful. The great palace of the Alhambra in Granada. The domes of Cordoba and the caravanserais of Iran. The hammam hammam of Kiraly in Budapest. Timur's mausoleum in Samarkand, or that of the Samanids in Bukhara. The shrine to the Imam Reza in Tabriz. And the countless mosques and minarets just about everywhere. of Kiraly in Budapest. Timur's mausoleum in Samarkand, or that of the Samanids in Bukhara. The shrine to the Imam Reza in Tabriz. And the countless mosques and minarets just about everywhere.

Even the simpler, humbler structures in the small, unnoticed towns have an astonis.h.i.+ng beauty, an integrity, an a.s.suredness of style and grace. The day, some weeks before, when we had driven south after being among the north Bosnian Serbs, and as we finally came to Travnik nestled in the hills, I remember remarking to Rose on the simple loveliness of all the minarets, rising as they did with such precision and economy from the more ordinary buildings of the town.

No more graceful, precise, and economical structure could there ever have been, I used to think, than the bridge across the Neretva River, in the Herzegovinan capital of Mostar. It had given the town its name: Stari Most, the Old Bridge. It was quite a modest structure, crossing the deep and swirling green river with just a single graceful arch, no more than fifty yards across. It rose from two large b.u.t.tresses that seemed to have been annealed into the very limestone river cliffs. Its underside was a perfect upward swoop of carefully chamfered and fitted blocks, its upper parapet a low-pitched roof, its walkway s.h.i.+ning with the pa.s.sage of a million slippered feet.

From a distance it looked like a simple arabesque decorating the river valley. Up close it was a busy, teeming place, with cafes on each side, and bazaar shops selling beaten copper and bra.s.s, and in the old days stern Turkish policemen wearing the fez, and Serbian janissaries in their baggy trousers and brocaded waistcoats. It was more than four hundred years old when the latest round of Balkan wars began, and it did not survive them.

We saw it begin to crumble, piece by hallowed piece, in the summer of 1992. The fighting here, once properly established, was between Croats and Muslims-groups that, for a short while, had actually dreamed up the imaginative idea that they might form an alliance against the Serbs. The Balkans, however, are a place where the only alliances tend to be those with parties from the outside: Within the region everyone seems bent on eventually fighting everybody else, and almost all alliances turn out to be deeply cynical, very, very brief, or, like this one, complete fictions. (The Serbs themselves had once very much wanted the city of Mostar, and indeed had envisioned all the land of Herzegovina and south Dalmatia as far as the ancient port city of Dubrovnik itself as belonging, in their wilder dreams, to some utopian vision of Greater Serbia. But in the early summer of 1992 the Croats beat them in battle here and drove them away from the bank of the Neretva for all time. The stage was then set for a war for control across the river, between the Muslims on the western side and the Croats on the east.) The bridge was built well, and for a while it stood up to the barrage of sh.e.l.lfire from the Croats on the hills above town. The Muslims, with a mixture of pride, affection, and simple economic need, tried their best to protect the old structure with automobile tires, hung over the edge as fenders, to minimize damage from shrapnel. But they were no match for the sustained and willful cannonade. One day late that autumn, and with an exhausted and exasperated roar that could be heard above the gunfire, the old bridge collapsed, its last stones-which had been painstakingly carved by Turkish masons in 1566-cras.h.i.+ng into the river canyon and being swept downstream with the current. One should not mourn lost architecture so much as lost people, I suppose: But this was one of the loveliest bridges in the world, and it seems peculiarly terrible that it was in our enlightened times that we decided to demolish it, and to ruin a work that had survived so long.

Rose and I stopped for lunch on our first day in Mostar at a cafe on the west side. The road beside us led up to where the bridge had been, and some obliging urban planner had stretched chicken wire across the entrance to stop people plunging into the waters below. The gentle curve of the mantel rose up from the stream and hung there in midair, like a broken tooth-as did its brother mantel on the far side. An old lady waved at me from the b.u.t.tress on her side of the river, inviting me to her caftan shop, indicating that I might double back upstream and use the new replacement bridge-"Built by 36 Regiment, Royal Artillery, in 1994, a Gift of the British People to all the People of Mostar." I pointed to my watch, and to the sirnica, sirnica, the cheese pie that the waitress had just brought, and indicated that I would think about it. the cheese pie that the waitress had just brought, and indicated that I would think about it.

I saw her later, and when I chided her for greeting me in German, and said that I was in fact English, she launched into what sounded like a timetable recitative: "Ostend-Dover-Ashford-Westminster-Greenwich-Norfolk-Harwich!" She had been to England once, and had traveled by train. She thanked me for the bridge, as though I had built it personally. She explained that she had very much hoped I wasn't German, as it was Germany that had first given formal recognition to Croatia and Slovenia, and she, as a good Muslim, could not abide the Croats. "Besides, see what they did to our bridge!"

And to the rest of the town besides. The front line, still visible a hundred yards or so west of the Neretva, is as frightful a zone of destruction as I was to see anywhere in this war. It stretches along a wide street called the Boulevard Hvratski Branitelija, where the Croats had sited their artillery in the great buildings on its western side, and the Muslims had been holed up on the east. The scale of destruction makes it look like Dresden, or the London docks after a night of incendiaries, in World War II. Such walls as still stood were pockmarked with a million sh.e.l.l bursts; great jagged gaps show where building burned and crashed; there were weeds, pools of stagnant water, flies, and forgotten relics from those who lived and worked here-a sofa, a pair of spectacles, a baby's pram, trousers.

And in the open s.p.a.ces behind there were graves, too, with hastily carved markers-Haris, Ivan, Milhija, Jovan-leaning drunkenly at all angles. This must have been a h.e.l.lish place. But now the fig trees were in bloom, and blossoms drifted down from a plum tree, and in the scrubby banks leading down to a rus.h.i.+ng rivulet there were purple larkspur and b.u.t.tercups. The Balkan landscape, usually so unforgiving and harsh, can display moments of tenderness, too, and when it chooses to, nature can always reclaim the worst of human excess.

But between Mostar and the coast the landscape is as cla.s.sically unforgiving as any rain-shadow country can be-it is harsh and dry, with scrubby stands of forest and low and barren hills, and there are said to be innumerable snakes. Rocks, snakes, and guns, the locals say, are what the householders of Herzegovina know best. There was only a cursory frontier check at the town of Gabela, where we pa.s.sed back into Croatia, before the car heaved up one final range of hills and then we saw, with breathtaking clarity, the coastline and the Adriatic.

Here at last was the coast road from Split to Dubrovnik, along which I had driven on my way to India in 1977. Here at last I thought, was civilization once again. Here was normal life, and an extraordinarily beautiful one at that.

The road onto which I was now turning left, to head down to Dubrovnik-is in truth one of the loveliest in all the world-it makes California's justly celebrated Route 1 seem ba.n.a.l by comparison, because in the Pacific you are beside the ocean alone, whereas here you look down on islands. islands. Not long ago this very coastal highway was a proud symbol of well-tempered normality. Until 1991 you could drive for four hundred miles, from Trieste to the Albanian frontier, without so much as a customs post or a police check, and certainly no need to show a pa.s.sport. And yet you did all this across lands that until recently had been a muddled mosaic of once-competing suzerainties: You drove through large territories that had been variously Austrian, Italian, Roman, Venetian, Serbian, Ottoman, Slovenian, Croatian-and microscopically independent, too, as once Dubrovnik had been (when it was called Ragusa), and as poor Montenegro had been, when it had its own king. Not long ago this very coastal highway was a proud symbol of well-tempered normality. Until 1991 you could drive for four hundred miles, from Trieste to the Albanian frontier, without so much as a customs post or a police check, and certainly no need to show a pa.s.sport. And yet you did all this across lands that until recently had been a muddled mosaic of once-competing suzerainties: You drove through large territories that had been variously Austrian, Italian, Roman, Venetian, Serbian, Ottoman, Slovenian, Croatian-and microscopically independent, too, as once Dubrovnik had been (when it was called Ragusa), and as poor Montenegro had been, when it had its own king.

The creation of Yugoslavia ended all this colorful inconvenience, at least for a while. Under the astute presidency of Marshal t.i.to, and for eleven more years after his death in 1980, this was a single country, and once you had left the Italian town of Trieste and had pa.s.sed through the relatively mild strictures of t.i.to's Iron Curtain, you were on a coast road that told of his skillful eradication, or so it seemed at the time, of all the contrary statelets of the years before. Their relics were there-the churches, the mosques, the Venetian crests-but their att.i.tudes and hatreds were not. This was a road for all the southern Slavs, and for those who cared to come visit.

But then came 1991, and the borders went up and the fighting began. Today between Trieste and the Albanian frontier, you are compelled to pa.s.s first in and out of Slovenia, then in and out of Croatia, then in and out again of a tiny strip of Bosnia near a quay-less and so quite useless port called Neum,* then once more in and out of Croatia, then in and-if the Albanians are feeling cooperative-out of Montenegro. Five frontiers, ten pa.s.sport stamps if the guards are in a liverish mood, ten openings and closings of the car if the customs men are similarly inclined. An amusing inconvenience to foreigners, at worst. Another aspect of the dystopian nightmare of the Balkans, to those who live there. then once more in and out of Croatia, then in and-if the Albanians are feeling cooperative-out of Montenegro. Five frontiers, ten pa.s.sport stamps if the guards are in a liverish mood, ten openings and closings of the car if the customs men are similarly inclined. An amusing inconvenience to foreigners, at worst. Another aspect of the dystopian nightmare of the Balkans, to those who live there.

On this day, though, we had only to endure the single inspection coming in from Bosnia to Croatia-from BiH, as the Bosniaks know Bosna i Hercegovina, to Hrvatska, as the Croatians officially call their country. From the junction it was an hour to the outskirts of Dubrovnik, and to the jewel-city of the Adriatic that has been practically emptied by the war that has been raging at its doorstep all these years.

We a.s.sumed we would stay at the Excelsior or the Argentina, both of which stand a little south of and a little above the city walls. The view from either was magnificent, magical. The entire city-state could be seen, glowing by night (when we arrived) like a golden star at sea, or by day hemmed in by blue water and with its huge walls and towers rising from the waves, majestic, timeless, and imperturbable. Of all the city-states of the Mediterranean-like Venice, Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa-and of others beyond, like Bremen-Dubrovnik still has the look and feel of being all of a piece, so compact, so contented and confident of its standing. It was subjugated by Napoleon in 1808 and turned over to Hapsburg control in 1815-but for more than a thousand years before that, this exquisite walled city, doing business either under its own name, which means "city of a grove of trees," or until 1918 under the Italian name of Ragusa, was powerful, rich, and free to all asylum seekers (including Richard the Lionheart, who arrived after a s.h.i.+pwreck), a place of n.o.bility, beauty, and style.

It was when we were looking for a hotel, strolling along the streets above the harbor and planning to ask for rooms at a place called the Villa Dubrovnik (which turned out to be closed and barred, a victim of the war like so much else around here), that we came across an ancient and, from her dress and appearance, evidently Croatian woman who was giving an evening hose-down to her equally ancient and rather decrepit dog. She spoke English with a notably cut-gla.s.s accent and demanded in an imperious manner that we clamber up the stairs to meet her and Wookie, as the beast was called. When we got there she extended a frail and blue-veined hand.

"A very good afternoon," she said, and then began a staccato, nonstop curriculum vitae. curriculum vitae. "I heard you speaking English. I get to see very few people these days. I like to speak to people. But there are none here now, because of this blessed business. I lived in Chelsea, do you know, for thirty years. I would shop at Gorringe's all the time-you know Gorringe's, don't you? Now I eat "I heard you speaking English. I get to see very few people these days. I like to speak to people. But there are none here now, because of this blessed business. I lived in Chelsea, do you know, for thirty years. I would shop at Gorringe's all the time-you know Gorringe's, don't you? Now I eat d.i.n.kel d.i.n.kel all the time-I would be dead by now if I hadn't discovered it. It comes from Germany-I have heaps of it, literally heaps. all the time-I would be dead by now if I hadn't discovered it. It comes from Germany-I have heaps of it, literally heaps.

"Would you answer that telephone?-I am getting dirty calls from a man who breathes down the line. It is rather disagreeable. I'm ninety and then some. He must think otherwise, though goodness knows why. And I'm descended from a Serb who fought at the Battle of Kosovo. All these things may be of interest to you. So will you stay awhile? And might I interest you in some d.i.n.kel, d.i.n.kel, and perhaps a cup of tea?" and perhaps a cup of tea?"

She was called Jelka Lowne, and she was well known at this end of Dubrovnik. "The mad Englishwoman," they called her, though she was neither very mad nor at all English. Her husband, an engineer with the British Post Office, had come from Kent. She had lived in England from 1935 until he died in 1963-they had a apartment opposite the Chelsea Town Hall, which is when she shopped at the now long-defunct (but among the well-heeled London elderly, still much missed) department store. They had then moved up to Coventry, which she gamely said was "a very decent sort of town."

She lived in some congenial squalor, with books and newspapers all over an unmade bed, congealed gruel in the bottom of a saucepan, dishes piled up in the sink, unopened letters from a branch of Barclay's Bank in stacks everywhere. "Some difficulty with a trust fund," she said-"perhaps you'll be able to help sort this out?" Wookie, a large and ever-bounding black dog who had the most unattractive mange and seemed to be at constant war with his coat, guarded his mistress with unfailing zeal, and whenever she rose to do anything-to open a letter, to make a cup of tea for us-came rus.h.i.+ng to her side, panting, eyes gleaming, back leg scratching furiously. "My only friend," she explained. "No one comes to Dubrovnik anymore. This frightful nonsense is driving them all away. I had some friends from Suss.e.x who used to come, and they would bring me tea and Marmite. But they write to say it is too dangerous. I say fiddlesticks-is that the word? I have been away so long!-but they don't come anyway."

She told us of her famous ancestor, a General Hrebeljanovic, who had fought at Kosovo alongside the legendary Serb leader Prince Lazar. On seeing my interest, she went to a locked drawer, extracted a manila folder and pulled out a sheaf of papers that she said would prove her ancestry. I was amazed and delighted.

Hrebeljanovic, from all accounts, was Prince Lazar's family name, and so there was every likelihood that this lady-and her papers had the look look of authenticity about them, though I had only a cursory look-was related not merely to a general at the Battle of Kosovo, but to the great Czar Lazar himself. At least this is what I wanted to believe, for here I was, taking tea with her: It struck me as splendidly incongruous and almost impossibly serendipitous. Lazar, after all, was the one true hero of Serbian history, the man who in 1389 had his head cut off by the Turks in Kosovo after choosing to die rather than surrender, a man whose death all Serbs have since been avenging, and whose memory all Serbs have since been honoring. And here, sitting in a tiny overheated room on the Adriatic coast with her boisterous dog Wookie and nibbling at puffed of authenticity about them, though I had only a cursory look-was related not merely to a general at the Battle of Kosovo, but to the great Czar Lazar himself. At least this is what I wanted to believe, for here I was, taking tea with her: It struck me as splendidly incongruous and almost impossibly serendipitous. Lazar, after all, was the one true hero of Serbian history, the man who in 1389 had his head cut off by the Turks in Kosovo after choosing to die rather than surrender, a man whose death all Serbs have since been avenging, and whose memory all Serbs have since been honoring. And here, sitting in a tiny overheated room on the Adriatic coast with her boisterous dog Wookie and nibbling at puffed d.i.n.kel d.i.n.kel-here was a woman who claimed to be his supposed direct descendant! It seemed, of course, too good to be true.

But then so much else did too. Almost everything about Lazar himself is clouded and enfolded by myth and legend, as is usually the way with heroes who become the subject of songs and epic poems. The Serbian tradition of the blind Gypsy, traveling from Balkan town to Balkan town, playing the one-stringed instrument the Slavs call the gusla, gusla, and reciting the long series of poems known as the Kosovo Cycle, endures to this day. and reciting the long series of poems known as the Kosovo Cycle, endures to this day.

Lazar, glorious emperor,Which is the empire of your choice?Is it the empire of heaven?Is it the empire of earth?.................."Kind G.o.d, now, what shall I do, how shall I do it?What is the empire of my choice?Is it the empire of heaven?Is it the empire of the earth?And if I shall choose the empire of the earth,The empire of the earth is brief,Heaven is everlasting."And the emperor chose the empire of heavenAbove the empire of the earth.

His choice made-so the myth has it-he was promptly executed and his head cut off by the Turks who would then go on to defeat his Serbian army. His body was dried, he was dressed in the cloak with lions rampant which he was said to have worn on the battlefield, and a red-and-gold cloth was placed over him. His remains were placed in an open coffin in a monastery nearby. The monastery, at a place nearby called Ravanica, became for three centuries the center for a cult following that attracted hundreds of thousands of Serb pilgrims from all over the Orthodox dominions.

Three hundred years later Czar Lazar's withered and headless body and his red-and-gold-shrouded bones left Kosovo for the relative safety of the north. They were taken there by the Orthodox patriarch of the Pec monastery, the holy man who was leading a column of thirty thousand Serbian faithful to a safe haven in the Slavonian and Croatian, the frontier land that had been gifted by the Austrians and that would in time become the Krajina. And then they went to off another church near Budapest, and in 1697 to yet another at a place called Srem. Finally, in 1942, after the Croatian Ustas.h.i.+ fascists stole some of Lazar's rings, the Germans-who had no love for Orthodox Serbs but did have some respect for tradition and holiness-helped take the relics to relative safety in Belgrade.

And there they stayed until 1987, when, at the urgings of Slobodan Milosevic, their priestly guardians allowed them to begin a rabble-rousing progress around all of Yugoslavia. The remains of Czar Lazar Hrebeljanovic-his coffin lid of transparent plastic, his thin brown hands, withered and frail, visible, sticking out from under their covering-were one of the early devices used to whip up the froth of nationalistic fervor that would keep Milosevic in power, and all Yugoslavia in turmoil. The czar's bones were central to the glorious mythic memory that Milosevic was to cite in his infamous speech on Saint Vitus's Day 1989, at the old battlefield near Kosovo Polje, the Field of the Blackbird. "Six centuries later again we are in battles and quarrels...."

"But the odd thing," whispered the ancient and now tiring Mrs. Lowne, "is that I am hardly a Serb at all. I am a Croat, really-I am Catholic, for a start-and I am part Hungarian. Yes, I have Serb blood-who doesn't, in these parts? But it is droll, don't you think, that a living descendant of the greatest of all remembered Serbs is a Croat-Hungarian, living beside the sea in old Ragusa. I suppose that shows what six centuries of interbreeding can do.

"And that's what makes this nonsense"-and she spread her arms wide, gesturing toward the distant war-"all seem so utterly crazy. We are all Slavs, for heaven's sake. We are all the same people. Why do we fight so much among ourselves? I have seen so much in ninety years. And it is ending no better than when I was a child. That is so sad. So sad."

We stood up to leave. Her dog had caught the melancholy mood, I thought, but he jumped up and began racing furiously around the moment that we made a step for the door. Wookie's sudden excitement snapped her from her glum mood, and she became animated, too. "Will you stay? Will you stay?" she asked. She found and pushed into our hands a large bag of puffed d.i.n.kel d.i.n.kel-which turned out to be the German version of the grain known elsewhere as spelt-and then asked forlornly if whether, instead of staying at a hotel, we might consider staying with her, in a shack at the end of the garden. We went up and looked at it, but it was like a potting shed, full of broken implements and yellowed copies of ancient English newspapers, and it smelled of mold and Wookie's leavings, so we thanked her and politely said perhaps another time. I needed telephones, I said, and a good long bath-particularly a bath, after all the exigencies of Sarajevo and Mostar. Mrs. Lowne sighed, and then drew herself up, recovered, and became her old imperious self again. "Then stay at the Excelsior, do," she said. "I know both of the managers. The man at the Excelsior is a cultured man. The fellow at the Argentina is perfectly nice but quite frankly, a bit of a peasant." a bit of a peasant."

Wookie stood stock-still beside Mrs. Lowne as we made our way down her garden stairs and off to the hotel. "Think d.i.n.kel, d.i.n.kel," was the last thing she said. "I think I would have died a hundred times over if I hadn't eaten it for so long." We had an enormous bag of it, her parting gift, and it lasted us for a week.

There is a large map screwed to Dubrovnik's old city wall, just inside the Ploce gate. It records, with black diamonds and red stars, where every artillery sh.e.l.l and mortar bomb and incendiary device fell on the Old Town, during the eight months of the siege that began in 1991. The map is covered with symbols, like insects on flypaper; and it is a testament to the pride with which Dubrovnik itself and Croatia beyond regard this incomparably beautiful place that so much is now repaired. The city burghers once apologized that they had had some difficulty matching the exact color of the ancient clay roof tiles that had been destroyed, and indeed, from the distance of our window at the Excelsior, the roofs within the walls did have a mottled, mosaic appearance. But I thought it rather added to the magnificence of the place, the mite of imperfection underlining the otherwise impeccable.

The siege of Dubrovnik still seems to me to have been a pointless act of savagery. Just as with the Croats' wrecking of the lovely Turkish bridge at Mostar, and just like the systematic wrecking of Muslim houses in the villages in Bosnia, it seemed yet another indication of the brutish, unnecessary spitefulness of this wretched war. What military need had there ever been, "for heaven's sake," as Mrs. Lowne would have put it, for the Yugoslav army to fire artillery rounds from within the safety of the Montenegrin mountains, directly into the center of one of the world's most revered architectural sites? It was a monstrous crime, as unthinkable before it happened as would be the bombing of Oxford or Kyoto. But the Serbs in their army seemingly felt no attachment to a town that was 90 percent Croat anyway, and in a country that had declared its independence: And so in the middle of October 1991 they unleashed their guns, and the battering of the almost undefended former city-state began in fearful earnest.

The dramatic geography of this southern portion of the Dalmatian coast turned out to be both the deadliest curse for the fate of the town and yet, in the end, a blessing, too.

The Dinaric Alps here are almost at the waterline, and plunge precipitously down into the sea within a mile or less of horizontal distance-they are, in other words, almost cliffs, and very high cliffs at that, almost sheer. The borders with Bosnia and Montenegro-not that there were were true borders back in 1991, when the siege began, but only the unformed lines of future states-wind among and in some cases along the top of those cliffs-meaning that artillery pieces could be placed high on the mountains overlooking the Old Town, and from safety positions in front of the soon-to-be-declared Croatian frontiers, fire a barrage of sh.e.l.ls down into the city with unceasing impunity. true borders back in 1991, when the siege began, but only the unformed lines of future states-wind among and in some cases along the top of those cliffs-meaning that artillery pieces could be placed high on the mountains overlooking the Old Town, and from safety positions in front of the soon-to-be-declared Croatian frontiers, fire a barrage of sh.e.l.ls down into the city with unceasing impunity.

A Yugoslav army bombardier would watch with glee as he conducted his sport-firing sh.e.l.ls into the parking lots below, for example, and gawking as the ensuing fire leaped from car to car to car, as the successive fuel tanks exploded like firecrackers on a string. The artilleryman could be confident that there was virtually no chance of retaliation: From down below his firing positions would be no more than a couple of dots on a horizon that loomed neck-breakingly high over the town. But the Serbian firing master had merely to peer over the cliff-edge and select which building-which Catholic church, which shop, which apartment house, which segment of the thousand-year-old wall-to destroy, then load, aim, and fire! As with some diabolical arcade game he then had only to peek over the cliff once more to watch his whistling outbound sh.e.l.l land, and perform its gruesome task.

But the steepness of the Dinaric hills had for the attackers a disadvantage too. Soldiers could not clamber down the slopes rapidly enough ever to invade the city below-the descent would be too dangerous in and of itself, and besides, the men would be picked off one by one by snipers firing from below. The ground was open: Only a few cypress tress afforded any protection, and cypresses, though now abundant on the hillsides, grew here as solitary specimens, not in forests that might give an invading army cover.

So no land invasion of Dubrovnik ever took place-only the merciless nightly sh.e.l.ling. On one spectacularly horrible day in November 1991 the besieging army, using wire-guided missiles, destroyed and sank, with deliberation, every single boat that was moored between the moles of the old Dubrovnik harbor: The television pictures of this most wanton act, the blowing up of sailing yachts in one of the best-loved sailors' harbors in the world, did much to nudge Western opinion, at least for a while. Why are they doing this? Why are they doing this? wailed half the world. wailed half the world. What danger could a small schooner or a sloop from Ma.r.s.eilles ever pose to the Yugoslav army? What harm have these old walls ever done to the memory of the heroic fighters of Kosovo? What, for G.o.d's sake, is the blessed point? What danger could a small schooner or a sloop from Ma.r.s.eilles ever pose to the Yugoslav army? What harm have these old walls ever done to the memory of the heroic fighters of Kosovo? What, for G.o.d's sake, is the blessed point?

And in the end the Serbs gave up and went away. They never breached the walls, never sent men down on ropes or in parachutes to invade and occupy the old city, never extended their influence beyond the boundaries of their own areas in Bosnia. Croatia won its independence; the sh.e.l.ling was stopped for good. Dubrovnik was safe, at least for a while-safe, and able both to rebuild itself physically and to rebuild its reputation as a place of tranquillity and serene loveliness. It has been, by all accounts, difficult beyond words.

We had dinner, several times running, in one of a number of cafes that line Ulica Prijeko, a narrow street parallel to the Placa, the magnificently wide, s.h.i.+ning marble pedestrian street that runs between the cathedral and the monastery that, respectively, mark each end of town. The food was perfect*-lobsters and crayfish and fresh garden salads and pancakes, and a red Croatian wine called Dingac. But there were no other customers, except for a group of internationals down from Sarajevo for the weekend, and a group of archaeologists, investigating Roman sites on an island nearby. A genial but out-of-work jazz musician named Ben, who normally played saxophone in a group called the Dubrovnik Troubadours, was sitting nearby: Not for another year or so, he said, would the town revive.

"People are frightened-and who can blame them? I lie in bed at night, when the sea is quiet, and I can hear the NATO bombs dropping on Montenegro. We always have the fear that there will be fighting in Montenegro once again, and that the remainder of the Yugoslav army will be back in the mountains again, making trouble for us. It is not so good."

But he perked up when I told him I lived in New York. He was due to come to play in Weehawken, New Jersey, in a few weeks' time: The Croatian-American Fraternity Union paid the fares and then was sending his band on to Pittsburgh, where a quarter of a million Croats live. He slapped us both on the back, and folded us in his arms, and led us off to his tiny bar beside the Church of St. Blaise. We sat there drinking slivovitz (plum brandy) until two in the morning, when his exceptionally disagreeable and very ugly dog bit Rose in the ankle, and we decided to limp back to the Excelsior.

A few days later I met a man who looked, with his wild gray hair and straggly beard, and sounded, with his strange theories and propositions, charmingly but disconcertingly mad.

He approached me almost out of the blue and proceeded to tell me a story that for a long time afterward made me wonder whether he was certifiably insane, and whether or not to write about him. I asked others, too, and indeed, on the very eve of planning the writing of what follows, I received an E-mail from a professor at Yale University who urged me in no uncertain terms to ignore all that the man said, and to give him no credence whatsoever.

But one aspect of the man's story, even to the skeptics who insisted that I not give him a second thought, did ring uncannily true-a truth that bothered me, made me wonder. And so in the end I decided to ignore the Yale professor's caution and tell what happened when I met a Swedish mathematician named Jan Suurkula. We met by chance at an airport, and although he knew nothing about me or why I was in Dubrovnik in the first place, he proceeded to tell me in some detail his particular interest in (a) (a) unified field theory, and unified field theory, and (b) (b) its connections, if properly harnessed, with the lessening of human chaos. Since there was a very great deal of chaos in the area just now, he said, I would surely be interested in anything that might lessen it? its connections, if properly harnessed, with the lessening of human chaos. Since there was a very great deal of chaos in the area just now, he said, I would surely be interested in anything that might lessen it?

His basic thesis, though hardly simple, was easily stated. Proving the unified field theory, the notion that all the main forces of physics-electromagnetism, time, s.p.a.ce, and gravity-are somehow linked together in a kind of all-encompa.s.sing multidimensional geometry, has been the Holy Grail of great scientific thinkers for most of this century. That human beings might somehow contribute to, or somehow affect, the frail gossamer threads that link all these physical elements together is what mathematicians like Dr. Suurkula have come to believe.

He and his similarly minded colleagues, of whom he said there were many thousands in almost every country in the world, were now working to make sure that human interaction with these forces was channeled for the good of all humanity-and quite specifically, so that humans could control their own destiny by harnessing forces within themselves to mitigate the chaos-tending forces of physics: that some humans, in other words, had the power to reduce chaos. "And to stop war," he said brightly.

"You are, of course, here for the congress?"

I said that I hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about.

"The Croatian peace conference. Perhaps the most important conference going on in the world today. You are not attending?" he said, incredulous.

"We are on the brink-the very brink, you know-of bringing about peace in the Balkans. There are two hundred of us here just now. We only need a few more people. This why I am coming down from Sweden. People are coming in from all over. America. Italy. England. South Africa. We need just a total of, let me see"-he took out a chewed pen and scribbled a quick calculation on the palm of his hand-"two hundred and fifty-four people. Once we have them, all a.s.sembled in one room, then peace will happen. I a.s.sure you. It always works."

I must have looked more than a little mystified, for he sat down beside me and with an accomplished bedside manner, began to explain. These, it is important to say, are Dr. Suurkula's words, not mine. No product endors.e.m.e.nt here. Just mystification and, because of one singular fact that was to emerge later on, a degree of impressed acceptance.

People, Dr. Suurkula said, can learn the secret of channeling their internal energies in a way that will communicate vibrations that will, or may, intersect with all the invisible webs that link the various fields of unified physical geometry. The secret to making that intersection useful, allowing people to make, by their mental powers alone, a measurable electronic effect on the way the physical world works, is to gather together a certain critical number of people so that, just like the critical ma.s.s in an atomic pile (or bomb), their presence and common effort creates a kind of mentally powered fission.