Here are some snapshots I took during a visit to Sarajevo in 1998. The reason for gathering them was to try to feel, in some feeble way, what it must have been like to live in a cosmopolitan city under siege for four years. When I returned to my village here in the U.S., I tried to compare the scenes from the photos with scenes from my everyday life. It was too difficult to do.

A small part of me awaits the day the last Mercedes SUV in my village is destroyed by mortar fire or comandeered by pillaging foreign troops, if only to allow us the realization of just how good we've had it, and how never to take that for granted again.

As harsh as it sounds, I still do not believe the events of September 11 have done that for us. This country is too large and rich for that.

A.G. Vermouth, December 2001