Zlata's Diary Read Free Page B

playing was improving. For a short while, it also made her forget that outside in the streets below her, a war was being fought. And all the time, she kept on writing about her daily life.
    During the summer of 1993, Zlata submitted her diaries to a teacher, who had them published by a small press in Sarajevo with the help of the International Centre for Peace. She became an instant celebrity , with packs of journalists and television crews climbing the stairs to her apartment to quiz the small girl about her life. Zlata responded graciously in her careful schoolgirl English. She had lost so many of her friends that she became friendly with some of the journalists. But journalists do not stay for long in Sarajevo, and whenever one left Zlata suffered a feeling of loss.
    I first met Zlata when her school temporarily restarted last autumn. A small figure with bright blue eyes bounded up to me enthusiastically with an outstretched hand and addressed me in English. We sat on a wall and when a shell fell I noticed that she did not flinch. As we walked to her house, she talked about her life, her dreams, her sadness. She told me about the death of Nina, a friend she had known since she was very young and who had been killed. “How many of your friends have died?” I asked her gently. She thought for a moment. “Too many to count,” she replied. I thought then that she seemed more adult, more resigned and stoical, than most of the adults I knew.
    In October, during one of the worst days of shelling, I drove to Zlata’s house to make sure that the family was all right. Her mother answered the door; she was shaking with fear. “We were in the basement all morning,” she said, and her voice broke. She sat on the sofa in the “safe room” and collapsed into sobs. Zlata and I stood by watching helplessly while she wept for half an hour. “No more, no more, we cannot bear any more.” I gave her a cigarette, but her hand shook so heavily that she could not bring it to her lips; her foot tapped violently against the bare floor. I sat on the floor with Zlata beside me, but there was little I could say. Certainly not “I understand,” because I did not—as a journalist, I was able to leave Sarajevo at free will—and certainly not “Don’t worry, the war will end soon,” because we would have known that it was a lie.
    At one point, I turned around to see Zlata. I placed my hand on her shoulder and asked, “Are you all right?” She looked at me gravely and said, “I have to be all right.” Her voice was very old and it chilled me. Not only had she lost her innocence, those wonderful years when she should have been meeting boys and laughing with her girlfriends, but she was in the terrible reversed position of having to be strong for the sake of her parents. Even if she wanted to, she could not fall apart.
    That afternoon, Zlata’s mother asked me if I would drive to a very dangerous part of town to make sure her sister was still alive. Her family lived in an area where the shelling was intense. I said I would, because I had access that day to an armored car. But the area was deep in the territory of a war-lord who was notorious for stealing cars and flak jackets and for dragging Bosnians out of their cars and forcing them to dig trenches. My driver, who had Serb identification, refused to go and told me it was suicide if I did. Frustrated, I abandoned the attempt and drove back. I used my Deutsche Marks to buy all I could find on the black market: the selection was pathetic, but I knew that Zlata and her parents would welcome anything. So I climbed the stairs to their apartment with a few bags of wilted vegetables, a few cans of Coke, some chocolate, a few cans of meat, some candles. When I entered the room, the family’s eyes lit up: as though, instead of a few onions, I had brought a turkey from Harrods. When I talked to Zlata later about food, she