Sarajevski dani, sarajevske noći

by Elma Softić

Sarajevo Days, Sarajevo Nights is an extraordinary document of life deep inside one of the world's most war-ravaged regions. Until the spring of 1992, when she was thirty, Elma Softic led a relatively ordinary, happy, middle-class life. She lived with her parents and sister, taught philosophy at a business college, and enjoyed the typical cafe life of a cosmopolitan city. When the Serbs began bombing that spring, Elma began a diary, her attempt to bear what seemed increasingly unbearable, to stay focused while living in a state of siege. Eventually, she "got sick of it. The war was no longer something to put oneself out for." Rather, what she needed was a listener, someone to talk to about day to day life in Sarajevo. Through ham radio correspondence, she made new friends in Zagreb, who asked her to put her observations on paper in the form of open letters. It was these letters, first passed hand to hand, then reaching an ever-larger public in Croatia and throughout Europe, that create