Part II pages 80-119
Arrow dresses in silence, grabs her rifle, and leaves her apartment. It is quiet in the streets; the sun has just risen. It seems like the war stops just for a little bit at this time of day. There is no shelling, and the silence is like music. She arrives at her destination and sits where the mortar landed and the cellist will play. She thinks of how those people died simply waiting for bread; life is made up of small decisions and inconsequential junctions that “can lead to salvation or disaster” (82).
The cellist confuses her, as he does not seem like a man who has lost the will to live. She does not know what he thinks he is doing but it is clear he is “increasing the speed of things. Whatever happens will come sooner because of him” (83). She is resolved to keep this man alive, though, regardless of whether or not she understands him.
She looks at the surrounding buildings, knowing the sniper will have to shoot from this territory, not their own, and that they will want to escape. It will be a properly trained army sniper, someone who is very, very good. She sees the one area he will be in to make a shot. She also knows he will anticipate her presence and will try to keep himself safe first and foremost.
A plan begins to formulate in her mind and she smiles. She wonders if the cellist knows someone is protecting him.
Later she sets up in her chosen spot. She cuts two holes in plastic, one to look at where the sniper will probably be, and one where he will think she is. In another abandoned apartment above the cellist she places a rifle and a baseball cap, whose shadowy outline will cause the sniper to shoot that first. Hopefully he will fire at the decoy and give his position away.
But Arrow isn’t entirely sure that the apartment where she placed her bait is deserted, and it would not be good if a person returned to it. She has decided if she ever detects movement above the cellist she will fire but not hit anything, which will make the person drop down out of the sniper’s sight.
She is confident about the apartment she has chosen. She thinks it was once a nice place, but she concentrates mostly on the details so she can tell if anything ever changes. As she waits she becomes more confident about her plan, and feels certain she knows the sniper is in one of three windows.
The cellist steps out. She thinks she sees something, but is uncertain, and chides herself to let things happen as they will and then react. No details seem changed.
The cellist begins to play. Arrow watches everything but only sees girls approaching to watch the cellist. The fourth-floor window she’s been watching is unchanged, but a bit of panic sets in and she knows she cannot fire blind.
Arrow waits, and the cellist eventually finishes and leaves. Arrow is stunned; she thinks the sniper must have had the shot. He was there, she knows now, and she feels like she has failed even though the cellist is still alive.
Later that day she even walks by the place where the cellist played, and sees the pile of dried flowers. She will be back tomorrow.
Kenan can barely look at the once-beautiful National Library as he passes it. It was one of the men on the hills’ first targets, as they knew it was a symbol of what the city was and what people wanted it to be.
Kenan sees the Seher Cehaja Bridge ahead. A man and a woman also approach and do not stop; he thinks they can be his guinea pigs. Kenan feels a sense of impending doom and does not think they will make it, but they do. Another woman joins him and she considers going with him, but decides to wait.
Kenan finally ventures out and runs as he thinks is best—to zigzag, to keep movements random. The water bottles clank against him. He almost trips but does not. The woman watches; he is her guinea pig.
Kenan collapses in relief when he makes it, and silently curses Mrs. Ristvoski’s water bottles. He remembers when he and Amila first met her when they moved in, and how she gave them a plant that soon died and told them she hoped they’d be better with children. Kenan often halfheartedly defended her to others, reminding them her husband died and she’d been alone for decades, but he still does not know why he agreed to take her water bottles. He doesn't like her and is even a little afraid of her, but not enough to give in to her every wish.
He rouses himself and keeps climbing up the hill toward the brewery. More people are out now, making their way to the same place. He is happy and apprehensive when the brewery comes into view, for even though he is here at last, “he knows he has a long way to go before he is home again” (106).
Dragan asks Emina, even though he does not know why, if it is better to be wounded or killed. She says wounded, but he says that there’s not much of a chance because the hospitals cannot even do much for someone. She seems a little frustrated with him and says the hospitals are fine, so he asks why, if they are fine, she is risking her life to bring medicine to someone. For a second it looks like she is going to hit him. She does not, but he knows he deserves it and apologizes. She says nothing. He says he does not understand why she is not scared.
Emina replies by mentioning the cellist and how he plays at the same time every day and people listen, and she has gone several times. Dragan listens but is not sure why she is telling him this. She does not know the piece, she says, but it is not sad. She wonders why he is playing and what he hopes to accomplish, and who he is playing for. It seems like she is actually asking Dragan, so he suggests the cellist is playing for himself. He thinks to himself maybe the cellist wants to stop things from getting worse.
Emina seems satisfied. She says that Jovan thinks the cellist is crazy and it is an act of futility that will get the man killed. Dragan simply responds that Jovan is a fool, and Emina agrees. She sighs that she is afraid of everything, of dying and not dying and this war going on forever. Dragan agrees with her.
They look at the intersection. A man crosses, then a few more people. Now only Emina and Dragan are left. Dragan’s mind wanders to his son, who will turn nineteen this week, and then his attention is caught by a stray dog. The dog passes by but does not acknowledge their existence. It seems to have a purpose, as if it knows something. Dragan wonders if the sniper would shoot a dog—do the men on the hills see themselves more as dogs or humans?
After it passes Emina and Dragan remark upon its seemingly urgent task. Dragan is struck by how similar he and the dog are—they are both trying to survive and he felt the same amount of concern for it as it crossed as he did for the people.
Emina decides she will cross now, and Dragan wants to go with her but he begins to panic and says he cannot go yet. She hugs him and tells him to give Raza her love. This cheers Dragan, and he realizes she is not covered with the gray the rest of the city is.
From the other side two people are crossing. The man is halfway and the woman is beginning. Emina steps out. A young man comes up beside Dragan. As Emina is crossing, she is suddenly thrown aside to the ground and the sound of gunfire rings out. The young man pulls back. The other woman turns around and the first man, who wears a hat, ignores Emina and rushes toward Dragan. Emina is not moving.
The young man moves forward and Dragan is shocked to see he is going to try to help Emina. Dragan wants to as well but cannot make himself move. The young man and the man in the hat reach Emina at the same time, but shots ring out and the man’s hat flies off and he falls.
Those around Dragan all pull themselves, and him, down; it is clear the sniper can hit them from a farther distance than they thought. The young man is carrying Emina and it is clear she is alive, but her sleeve is soaked in blood. Shots ring out again but miss them. The man who was wearing the hat feebly reaches up and begins to try to crawl to safety but a shot bursts his head open. The young man and Emina collapse when they reach safety.
Dragan looks down and finds he is holding the man’s hat and he does not know when he picked it up.
Analysis
Arrow knows why she has been given the assignment to protect the cellist—because she is extremely talented and Nermin knows she will succeed—but this does not mean she fully understands why the cellist does what he does. She wonders if he is insane, then dismisses that. He must not think he can stop the war, she reasons, and “He can’t believe he can save lives” (83). He does not seem to want to die, as he “appears to care about the quality of his life” (83). Overall, she cannot figure out what he believes “and it bothers her that she can’t say exactly what it is, or whether she wants to believe it too” (83). Given what we know of Arrow’s personality, it makes sense that the cellist flummoxes her. She survives by seeing things mostly in black and white—soldier and civilian, the war and after-the-war, alive and dead. She also believes that life now is “a series of tiny, unavoidable decisions” (82), but the cellist has made a big decision that he could most definitely avoid. Regardless of why the cellist does what he does, Arrow “tells herself that she will not allow this man to die” (84). He will continue his playing and by doing so, continue bringing some hope and solace to the people who gather to hear him.
In an article about modern war and the destruction of cultural heritage, scholar Azra Akšamija explains why the real-life cellist was so important to the city and what his act of playing signified: “[A] lesson that we learn from Bosnia is that preservation can be a form of culturally driven resilience in times of crisis. Instead of an approach to preservation that signifies defiance of war and destruction, we can build on those examples that use cultural practices and heritage preservation as a form of ‘creative tenacity’ against the destructive powers of war. One might recall the famous photograph of the ‘Cellist of Sarajevo,’ showing the musician Vedran Smajlovic performing Albinoni’s ‘Adagio in G Minor’ on the ruins of Sarajevo’s National Library — one of his regular performances on various crumbled heritage sites during the war. These performances were meant to signal how citizens of Sarajevo are different from those who have been attacking them and destroying the city. Many others followed his example: in the midst of a rain of grenades during the siege of 1992–95, citizens of Sarajevo risked their lives to see or create art. Museum workers and librarians faced snipers and grenades going to work every day during the war, risking their lives to protect books and museum collections from decay and destruction. Architects created provisional structures to protect already destroyed monuments from further damage. Affected by existential crises such as wars, people value art and cultural heritage as a form of survival and expression of home and, ultimately, humanity. Moreover, the act of creating art or playing music on the rubble of war transforms destructive acts into the creation of something new: hope for a positive future.”
Galloway’s characters are affected in various ways by the cellist. Arrow is protecting him, clearly, but the first time she hears his music she is overcome; she thinks the cellist holding the neck of the cello is “the most beautiful thing she has ever seen” (62) and when he begins playing, it is as if “Sound has vanished from the world” (62) and she is flooded with memory and sensation. The sniper tasked with killing the cellist is also affected, as Arrow realizes: “She knows what he’s doing. It’s very clear to her, unmistakable. He’s listening to the music. And then Arrow knows why he didn’t fire yesterday” (135). Emina tells Dragan how she has heard the cellist play a few times and even though the piece is a “sad tune” it “doesn’t make me sad” (109). And Kenan has perhaps the most intense reaction, first relaxing “as the music seeps into him” (186) and then closing his eyes as he “watches as his city heals itself around him” (187).
Scholar Katie Harling-Lee suggests that the novel is part of a genre called a “musico-literary novel” and analyzes the aforementioned responses to the cellist’s playing in such a context. Referencing the scholar C. Robertson, she explains “Robertson’s tied concepts of recalling and reconstructing resonate within Galloway’s novel. As noted earlier, the cellist chooses to play Albinoni’s Adagio because of its composition history of reconstructing from fragments; Arrow’s listening experience causes her to recall her past self and reconstruct her future ideal of Sarajevo through nonviolent action; and Kenan watches the city around him heal itself in a vision when he hears the cellist. Even Dragan, who hears of the cellist but never hears his performance firsthand, is prompted to recall and reconstruct his lost city . . . Robertson identifies that ‘In the process of remembering, it becomes possible to recreate a sense of co-operation in the future since it can be imagined in the present’.” The three main characters’ listening to the music, then, is not a passive absorption of sound but an active encounter that prompts them to search for and construct meaning and memory.
