Sarajevo

Seconds into this morning's performance, and Sonja was already irritatated. Late for the first time, his signature grand jete entrance looked forced and unconvincing. Hoping for a distraction from her turn of mood, Sonja looked up from her rifle's scope and scanned the surrounding area. These days, she had that luxury. Her corner of sniper's alley had become a placid refuge from which she could quietly "work" without interruption. It must have been a mortar explosion last night that cleared away the stage-right side of the road , flipping an abandoned bus over to its side, revealing its remarkably clean and ordered under carriage. A large tire wearily rotated. Sonja imagined for a moment that a dead, fully sized adult elephant must look something like that lifeless steel mound, hulking and random as it lay. A small cloud of black smoke rolled slowly across at Sonja's elevated eye-level. A raindrop annoyingly tickled her cheek. Sonja wiped it away with a violent swipe of her camoflaged, overly long sleeve. The sharp pain from the canvas jacket sleeve brought Sonja back to the present. She crouched behind her sniper's nest of neatly stacked slate-grey rock and yellowish brick and gripped the handle of her rifle more tightly, bringing it comfortably to her breast. "Stupid, lazy idiot. If Daddy saw me now." Her train of thought turned back toward herself. Have their few brief meetings this past week so distracted her that she had forgotten her commitments to her country? Her duty to kill until the enemy has surrendered? After all this time, and all she's done, how could she be so careless, even reckless, with herself? And, if she continued to let her mind wonder like this, she would soon join the dead. From a Serb point-of-view, Sarajevo had become quite peaceful these past few weeks--only an amateur could forget where the land mines are planted, or be so blind as to not see the very occasional presence of an enemy rifleman perched in some all-too obvious location. Typically, Sonja had no such worries. Not until this dancer entered her life. Sonja regained his performance in her telescope and moved in for a close up. Sonja had delayed the inevitable well beyond what she ever imagined possible when it all started. These performances had come to serve an important personal purpose for Sonja; one that suddenly became quite clear to her the moment he appeared late and unprepared. All this time, where had her thoughts gone? Sonja came to the conclusion that she had fallen into some dream since that first time, and that he had come to help her forget all she's done and all that had been done to her. His talent and--if it can be believed--his professionalism, on display for her under the most impossible of circumstances, had helped her forget her past. They helped her forget the future she lost and the future she forgot she once had. He was the avatar of all she once honored but had now layed in ruin, by her own hand or with the aid of others. As long as he could come back the next morning, she had something to look forward to. Up until the moment of his late, awkward and indifferent entrance, she felt they could go on like this forever. This one misstep, a few seconds delay, and Sonja recalled again all he had helped her forget, and she resented him for it. Her body came back to her: a tingling, numb right foot whose now muddy boot she had tied too tightly that morning. Sonjashifted her body so as to relieve her foot. She looked more coldly through the scope. Ignoring his artistry, she rested her shoulder comfortably on her black Zavastava M-76 and adjusted her view until her prey was couched in the middle of her three-lined crosshairs. Sonja followed every move he made for she knew this routine by heart even before the war, before all that's happened, before him. Her finger was now so close to the trigger she could feel the steel. A sudden twitch and it would be over. Still, she couldn't help but notice: he had clearly found his center of energy again. Sonja removed her finger from the trigger. She would let him finish. "After all this, I wonder if he sees me at all?," she thought, and a sincere, natural smile curled across her mouth as she squinted her eye through the lens. There was a time when that smile came across Sonja's face with ease. It would settle into a slight curl on the left of her mouth. It had the power to make new friends or put the odd distressed old friend quickly at ease. It could charm anyone (except her mother, from whom she inherited it). "The one good thing she ever gave me," she once told herself. It had been so long since she last felt like smiling, she had now forgotten she once had such charm on others.