BRANISLAV Zerajic has not seen his wife and child for four years. She lives in the same municipality in the same city, about 15 minutes walk away. If she stood at her top window, she could probably see the suburb of Grbavica, where he lives.
Branislav (34), used to be a truck driver and now he is a Serb soldier. For more than three years, he has been shelling and shooting his enemies the Bosnian Muslims. His wife Svjetlana, also a Serb, lives in the line of fire of his fellow soldiers, on the hills behind Pioneer Valley Zoo. Their six year old daughter Vanja was two when he saw her last, he says.
Most of the animals in the zoo starved to death during the war. Their keepers came under sniper fire when they tried to feed them. Now it is divided into three strips, one end in Muslim hands, the middle no man's land and the other end under Serb control.
Branislav was born in Sarajevo and says he had many Muslim friends. Now he believes they are fundamentalists who trying to create an Islamic state.
In Grbavica, the high rise suburb on the opposite side of the Miljacka river, he says "This is my country", as he surveys the wreckage of the suburb. The rest of the city is not. "Here I am a free man."
His friends, some dressed in army fatigues, roast a sheep on a spit and drink beer and yellow Bosnian brandy, slivovitz. "Muslims call Serbs animals", he says. "But fight is fight."
He wears a blue anorak over his green army fatigues. In his friend Zoran's apartment, the TV provides the final window on the old multi ethnic city. The first channel is Serb TV, the second is Muslim, the third is Hayat, a Bosnian station. They call it Mudzahedin. It shows nothing but Muslim propaganda, they say.
My translator says later Hayat was one of the things that kept them going during the war as it showed new films every night. The fourth channel is Croatian.
Zoran's wife, Milieu, is eight months pregnant. They do not know where the child will be born. Towards the end of March, under the Dayton peace agreement, the Serb suburbs come under Bosnian government control. They will have to leave, they say.
"I don't like life on the Muslim side," Branislav says. "I have no job and I can't eat."
According to the 1991 census, there are about 70,000 Serbs in Sarajevo. The Route Medoc out of the city has been lined with trucks carrying carpets, machinery and other possessions. Some of the Serbs are leaving with the bodies of their dead, dug up from the graves in Serb suburbs and put into tin coffins.
Branislav gives me a message to bring to his wife on the other side. Signing himself "Forever yours, Dragana" (a woman's name), he tells her he is planning to leave today. When you come over, tell them you are going to your aunt and uncle's. I don't know what to write any more. Please come as soon as possible so that we can cross the borders. I love you more than anything in the world."
