Marketplace massacre brought to life
Zijad took us to the marketplace where the infamous 1994 killing-spree happened. I remembered the footage of numerous innocent casualties being helped by rescue workers on the news. As I stood there ogling the plump, colourful vegetables and foods that had been brought from gardens and farms in surrounding villages I reconnected with that grim reality and marvelled afresh at the senseless cruelty of firing a mortar shell into the heart of a crowd peaceably shopping for groceries.

The names of the dead are printed in red on the main building in the market place. Many women and children were killed on that raw February morning but suddenly the haunting memories of the mortar attack come crashing into the present. We meet a wonderful man named Zoran who had been selling plants, as he still does today. Zoran spoke a little English and humbly relays how he put his own life in jeopardy that day in order to drag another wounded man out of mortal danger - such bravery from a man who had just been shot himself.

Zoran lifts his shirt to reveal a livid red scar zig-zagging down his back. The damaged lung had to be removed and today his health and ability to work still suffer. Benefits don't exist in Sarajevo and he makes a paltry £5 a day - hardly enough for his family to live on and certainly insufficient to allow him to pay for petrol to go to his sister's forthcoming wedding in nearby Mostar.

Zoran is our first personified reminder that the ghosts of the destroyed city have not been laid to rest. Today virtually every building and citizen remains part of the ongoing battle to restore Sarajevo's former glory.

Destruction of Sarajevo Library
Appropriately, our next stop is the library which served the University of Sarajevo and had also been the national library for the Yugoslav Federation. The centuries-old edifice, which fused Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian architectural styles, had housed ancient and priceless manuscripts. The majestic building was a symbol of civic pride, as well as an unrivalled repository of the region's history.

But in August 1992 a Serb artillery bombardment blasted Bosnia's national library. A devastating phosphorous bomb fired from across the river sparked a fire that obliterated rare books and manuscripts, the entire catalogue system and computer files.

Over 600 periodicals and the archives of Serb, Croat, Bosnian and Jewish writers went up in a smoke so thick that it obscured the sun. Former chief librarian Kemal Bakarsic wrote an article for a small New York Magazine (The New Combat) in which he pointed out that the destruction of approximately 1.2 million 'book items' amounted to what was probably the biggest single book burning in recorded history.

As 25 mortar shells struck the building, a further 40 shells were dropped in nearby streets to prevent the fire brigade coming to take action - a futile gesture of needless added destruction given the water supply to the district had been cut-off before the attack. But as flames tore up 50,000 feet of wooden book shelves and the ornate central atrium, librarians and volunteers braved sniper fire and formed a human chain to pass books away from the burning building.

Distressingly little was saved but following the tireless work of Tatjana Lorkovic, a Sarajevan émigré, the universities of Yale, Harvard and Michigan have all contributed to the re-stocking of the library.

A lone guitar player strums his haunting
music in Sarajevo Library

Re-building is clearly happening but at a painfully slow rate due to funding shortages. But despite the loss of the irreplaceable materials, this building seems to symbolize Sarajevo's indomitable spirit. It's a place struggling but committed to a phoenix-like revival. As I look around I feel the strength and spirit of this beautiful place - overcome with emotion I wander off alone, when the lilting sound of music wafts to me. I follow the exquisite, hauntingly beautiful sounds and see a dark-haired man, in his early thirties, sitting on the ground playing a guitar. This evocative music and the atmosphere here are enough to make me weep. I re-join the others who all seem equally moved by this place - we don't speak for some time.

Emerging from the library we look at other buildings around the city - the scars of war visible everywhere. This is hardly surprising considering around sixty percent of all houses in Bosnia, half the schools and a third of hospitals took a pounding during the conflict. Apparently 10,000 shells and projectiles pounded much of the historic architecture of Sarajevo including 1,200 mosques, 150 churches and four synagogues. For some buildings here, the damage was evidently too great to repair and the remains of rubble serve as poignant memorials of last decade's destruction.

The secret lifeline - the Tunnel of Hope
Zoran had recommended we take a trip to the city's outskirts to learn about the secret airport tunnel. The thousand yard (800 metre) tunnel was dug by besieged volunteer citizens who worked gruelling eight hour shifts for eight months during 1993. Work was ongoing 24 hours a day and latterly miners from Middle Bosnia joined the indefatigable diggers. It was dubbed the tunnel of hope and many believe the underground corridor was the lifeline which saved Sarajevo. It linked the city, cut-off by Serbian forces, to a neutral suburb of Sarajevo outside Serbian siege lines. The tunnel ran under the airport from where the United Nations operated. The legendary route allowed vital food, humanitarian aid and people to pass through its dank interior.

One million people are believed to have passed in and out of it and 20 million tons of food is thought to have entered the city through it. This is no mean feat considering the excruciatingly cramped conditions inside the tunnel which was so low men had to stoop whilst walking along narrow planks using flashlights to see. Gas masks were also needed to aid breathing in the thin, fetid air. During its construction, water from the tunnel had to be removed in buckets and canisters but still people often had to wade through knee-deep water when the makeshift pumps siphoning off underground water broke.

Of course, there were thousands who made the nightly overland crossings across the airport to try and fetch food or escape the siege lines. But these desperate people knew they were running a gauntlet and subjecting themselves to heavy machine-gun fire from the Bosnian Serb nationalists who surrounded two sides of the airfield rectangle. It was they who retained de facto control of the airport despite it's being under the so-called governance of UN peacekeepers. Virtually every night several making the dash across the tarmac died, whilst others were wounded by the indiscriminate fire raining down upon them. Even the UN humanitarian flights carrying food and medicine were repeatedly fired upon.

We visit a house near the airport belonging to the Kolar family. Edis Kolar was just 18 in 1993 but he made countless journeys smuggling much needed supplies through the tunnel which his former home sits atop. Today it is a museum that tells the story of the tunnel. The dirty yellow building is full of mortar holes and shell casings and empty sacks of humanitarian aid have been kept to bring the recent past to life.

The international community acknowledged that the Sarajevans had been starving to death. At the time one United States official commented that most citizens were reduced to a diet of flour and nettles. It is fascinating to actually be standing in the place that was so instrumental in saving so many lives.

CONTINUED….

Sarajevo's secret tunnel