Narrative by Gilles Peress

Bosnia, Feb. 19
As I am walking through this destroyed landscape, through the remains of a war now gone, I am overwhelmed by the silence, the absence of explosions. I can hear the birds singing. The ending of war is almost more depressing than war itself because once you don't have to run for your life, the evidence of waste is fully there to contemplate as slowly as you want, inch by inch, bullet hole by bullet hole.







The sense of hangover of the day after the party, after the house was trashed, after the family was destroyed, the children dispersed, colors every one of my feelings. There is a bitter taste. People in Sarajevo and in the Serbian suburbs are sullen; there is none of the joy that one would expect from the coming of peace.








I am listening to the BBC World Service when a sudden announcement on the 6 o'clock news explodes like a shell in the middle of a sunny day: the Serbs have to leave Sarajevo's suburbs within three days. We, and I suspect they, all thought that the deadline was a month later: the 19th of March.








I quickly check the information; the deadline has been moved for some of the suburbs so that the evacuations would be staggered. The Serbian neighborhoods will go over to the Bosnian authority one after the other at intervals of six or seven days. The first one to go -- in three days, as announced on the radio -- is Vogosca.