A City Without Hope

By EDWARD BARNES/SARAJEVO

Asif Imamajovic stands in the shrapnel-scarred doorway of the Bjelave orphanage, watching the chaos around him. More than 60 children, abandoned by their parents, fight, scream and run through the empty corridors of the three- story school. Though he is not on the faculty -- most of the instructors have fled -- Imamajovic says he is their mentor. "I teach them to steal and not to share," he says. "I teach them to survive. The city may die, but some of them will live."

One of the children reaches over and pushes up the sleeve of the teacher's shirt. Just above the right wrist is a large tattoo of a spider, the mark of a criminal. The children are afraid of him. But, says one, "at least he helped. The other teachers did nothing but wait for the aid shipments, then steal the food and go home."

Every day the children, in gangs of five or more, make their way to the city's main black market. In carefully choreographed routines they loot the stalls. Two boys approach a seller from the right, two from the left, and they begin to argue. While the seller is distracted, a fifth boy grabs a jar of jam or milk. Sometimes, when the hunger is bad, the boys will simply run up to a hawker, grab a handful of food and run. And sometimes they are caught. "The cops know we're only trying to survive, and they let us go," says Alen Berglerovic, the best thief in the school. "What can they do to us? We already live in a prison."

| Five weeks ago, the last frail supply links to Sarajevo were cut off. The city is essentially without fuel, without water, without electricity, without medicine and with barely enough food to last another week. No longer do residents talk of the future. There is only today, and today, for everyone, is a grim struggle for survival. "It has never been this bad before," says Rosa Tutundzic. "I used to have hope, but I can no longer believe we will be saved. It will just go on until we are dead."

The city's agony has moved the U.S. to dispatch 30 military aircraft, including A-10 attack planes and helicopter gunships, to Aviano Air Base in Italy. Without being specific, a Pentagon spokesman said the deployment gives NATO the muscle to take action in Bosnia to protect U.N. forces struggling to deliver humanitarian aid "if the U.N. gives the signal." The allies, he said, are agreed on the mechanism and procedures, and the targets have been selected. "We know how to do the job," said the official. "The ball's in Boutros-Ghali's court."

Tutundzic, 69, is standing in the mud on the banks of the Miljacka River, where scores of people have come to collect water. She is crying. Clad in a black skirt and green woolen jacket, with her hair tied back with a ribbon, she has dressed as if she might be going to lunch with friends. To get there she walked along the airport road dubbed Snipers' Alley, and she does not flinch at the crack of rifle fire and the occasional thud of exploding shells. "I have seven people at home, and my friend was supposed to meet me here to help me carry water, but she hasn't come," says Tutundzic. "No one else can help me. My two sons are wounded, and my husband is an invalid. I no longer know what to do."

Around her people fill their jugs and bottles, trying to carry enough water home to get through the day. Every drain spout in the city has a collection bucket under it, and when rains come, the buckets are jealously guarded by old men and women grateful for water that does not have to be dragged up the city's steep hills. "It is all we do. We look for water. We look for wood. We try to feed the family, and then we begin the process all over again," says one woman who has struggled up the embankment with a 10-gal. jug.

Back in the orphanage from their market raid, the children live a modern version of Lord of the Flies. The school was once home to more than 170 children, but last winter the U.N. agreed to evacuate them. All those ages three to 14 were taken out by convoy and sent to Denmark. The older children say they would have gone too, but one of the convoys was attacked and two children were killed, so the U.N. stopped the evacuation.

The children left behind are on their own. "We are without parents, without love, without anything," says Sanala Beslija, 19. "Our lives are stupid things." She fights back tears. Virtually every one of the children has been robbed or brutalized by the others in the corridors. Several of the older girls say the boys have raped them. Most have sealed their rooms to protect themselves from the others. During the day they will play together and steal together, but in the terror of the night, they often turn on each other.

Alen came to the orphanage when he was two, and has been there for the past 13 years. He shares his room with three others and keeps his stolen food in a night table. The door is always locked, and one of the boys always stays inside to make sure the purloined food is not taken by someone else. The room is bare but for two beds, the night table and three blankets. One of the windows is shattered and the other held together by tape. Alen calls himself Deutschemark "because that is all I believe in," he says. "I will tell you more for Marlboro cigarettes."

Mithat Alagic lives with his wife and seven children in a one-bedroom apartment with walls blackened by soot from a wood stove. Alagic, 36, was groundskeeper for the Sarajevo football team for 15 years before the war, but has not worked since the fighting began. His family survives on dwindling supplies from the U.N. "It just isn't enough," he says. "All we get is some flour, rice and oil. The children are sick all the time." He supplements the U.N. rations with grasses, mostly broadleaf weeds from surrounding hills that look a little like cabbage but, according to the children, taste much too bitter. They dip small pieces of bread into the unpalatable grass soup, eating only enough to stop their gnawing hunger.

Alagic's wife Mirsada, 39, wipes away a tear. She will not meet the visitor's eyes because she is mortified at the state of their lives. The house isn't clean, the children are always hungry, and the last of the food is almost gone. She says she has only one wish, which she prays for every day: "I want to survive."

The wood stove in the living room provides the only warmth on cold days. The seven children huddle together under a thin, frayed blanket. Sometimes they play word games, but mostly they just sit and listen to a car radio hooked up to an old battery. The most popular song of the day is "Soldier of Happiness." It goes:

I am a soldier of happiness

I don't like bullets

You can kill my summer

But my spring will survive

If a bullet should shoot me

Please don't cry

Put a smile on your face

It is not too bad when you die for your town.

Dulic Muhamed is commander of one of the Bosnian army's diversion units: his 100 or so men make feints at Serb positions, giving other troops the chance to surprise the enemy. He says he continues to fight "because there is nothing else left to do."

At home for a few hours' rest, Muhamed visits friends at the last restaurant still open in the city. He used to own a restaurant in Stuttgart, and being in this one helps soothe his nerves, even though there is very little food on the tables. Muhamed has just buried his 19-year-old son Rihad. "We cannot hold out much longer," he says, but laments that there seem to be no choices except slow starvation or fighting to the death. "We have nothing left," he says. "This is now a city without hope."