Arrow hears another mortar hit as she reaches the ground, and
although the front entrance leading to the street is only steps away she
continues to the basement, where she feels her way along a dim corridor until
she finds a door. She shoulders it open. The immediate shift from darkness to
light momen-tarily blinds her, but she emerges without hesitation into a low
stairwell on the north side of the building, somewhat sheltered from the men on
the southern hill. Before her eyes adjust to the world around her she begins to
notice the percussion of mortars affecting her hearing, and it reminds her of
being in a swimming pool, of a day when she and a friend took turns shouting
each other's names underwater and laughing at how they came out, all garbled and
distorted and foreign. When she turns east, away from the building, she feels a
pain in her side, and she looks down, half expecting to see her stomach
distended between splintered ribs. A quick inspection reveals only a slight cut,
a small nothing that attached itself to her at some point during her exit.
As she walks toward her unit's headquarters in the city
center, she notices that the sky is beginning to darken. A few drops of rain hit
her forehead, make her feel her own heat as they evaporate. When she touches her
side, her hand comes away without any fresh blood on it, and Arrow wonders what
it means that the insignificance of her injury does not bring her any particular
sense of relief.
Reprinted from The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (pages 3-12) by arrangement with Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., Copyright 2008 by Steven Galloway.
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