Sarajevo's ancient library, once home to the rich literary legacy of Bosnia's Ottoman heritage, stands empty save for piles of dirt and plaster. The people, however, are out and celebrating their survival. The trams run down Sarajevo's central boulevard again, with scrappy boys copping a free lift by clinging precariously to the coupling devices at the rear. Mosques loudly and regularly issue the call to prayer, and electric lights dot the city through the night. And the lack of water, which drove Sarajevans into the streets and into the sights of teenage snipers during the siege, is no more.
Most houses get a regular, although far from abundant, daily supply.
Even so, sadness lingers. A hitchiker that Neno and I pick uplifts his shirt to show a neat row of puckered scars stitched diagonally by a machine gun across his back. He tells us that he was given up for dead at an overworked local hospital, but a Ghanian doctor refused to go along and under medieval conditions performed two operations that saved his life. Now he can't find work, and doesn't know what he fought for or why he was saved. When Neno and I go shopping in the open-air market, there is an abundance of fresh fruit and produce sold with lively hucksterism.