The Cellist in the Ruins

On May 27, 1992, a mortar shell struck a bread line in Sarajevo, killing twenty-two people who had simply been waiting for food. The city was under siege — buildings crumbling, sniper fire cracking through the streets, the mountains surrounding the valley turned into instruments of destruction. The earth, quite literally, was giving way. The next afternoon, Vedran Smailovic, principal cellist of the Sarajevo Opera, carried his cello to the crater where the shell had landed.…