Sarajevo Street Of Fear

WHAT'S IT LIKE to see your city, your street turn into a war zone - and then be trapped there for two years? Regardless of whether the latest truce in Bosnia holds, for thousands of Sarajevans the adage is too true: War is hell. To bring that horror to American readers, The Philadelphia Inquirer sent a team to one Sarajevo street. Here's their report. -----------------------------------------------------------------

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - In the medieval heart of Sarajevo, Suada Causevic, five months pregnant, worries that her baby will starve before it is born.

Kasema Telalagic struggles to balance a mother's love against a doctor's duty: Should she flee Sarajevo for her children - or stay for the wounded in the emergency room?

Esad Taljanovic saw his father die in his arms. He had been hit by a sniper.

They're all residents of Logavina Street, which in itself is a six-block-long history lesson. To know Logavina is to know Sarajevo, to understand what Sarajevo was and to see what it has become.

On Logavina Street, eight people have been killed since the start of the war in April 1992. Twenty-four have been wounded. The street is home to 240 families, about 700 people, according to city records.

Before the war, a lifetime ago in 1991, the residents of Logavina Street liked to stroll downtown on clear, bright days to do their marketing. Now they prefer the fog and rain because the elements help to hide them from snipers.

Before the war, the best apartments on Logavina were the ones facing south, toward snowy Mount Trebevic, site of the toboggan and bobsled competitions in the 1984 Winter Olympics.

Now the mountain spells danger. The Serbian nationalists who hold Sarajevo under siege have claimed the abandoned ski lodges as their own, lobbing shells on the city below.

50 Logavina: Keeping the kids away

Esad Taljanovic, a prominent dentist who lives at 50 Logavina, has a sunny playroom with a bay window facing Mount Trebevic. On days when the Serbs are shelling, he has to lock the room to keep out his children, ages 5 and 8.

"What else can I do?" he asks with an angry, helpless gesture. "How do I explain to my babies that there are people up there who want to kill them? How could I explain that to anyone?"

Last year, Taljanovic lost his father to a sniper's bullet. "My father died in my arms," he says. "All I could think at the time was: Thank God it was him. Where we'd been walking, there were all these little kids. It could have been one of them."

Not one of the 70 buildings on Logavina Street has been spared from shelling. And hardly a resident has not lost a relative or close friend to the war.

42 Logavina: Grenades outside

At 42 Logavina, a 6-year-old boy was killed when he rushed to a window to gawk at grenades dropping into the back yard. His mother, who was taking a bath at the time, was not quick enough to get out and pull him away from the danger.

40 Logavina: Never this bad

Suad Hajric, who worked as a director of a large furniture exporter before the war, and his wife, Buba, a nurse, now live in their kitchen, the safest and warmest room of their large house.

Their 21-year-old son, their only child, was badly wounded on the front lines in the army. He is now in San Diego recovering from his ninth operation.

When there is enough electricity to run the VCR, they comfort themselves by watching old videos of him, filmed at their former weekend house in the country, which was destroyed last summer by a Serbian shell.

"This street has been through a lot of hard times," says Hajric, a descendant of an old Sarajevo family. The couple still lives in the house at 40 Logavina where Hajric's father was killed in 1945 by a bomb dropped by Allied troops targeting the Nazi headquarters nearby.

"There have been many bad things that have happened to people, although nothing as bad as what is happening now."

44 Logavina: The laundry room

Kasema Telalagic, a 37-year-old doctor, shares what used to be the laundry room with her two children, husband and mother-in-law.

She keeps photo albums in the tiny room to remind herself of the rest of her house at 44 Logavina. Upstairs, she has a four-poster bed, velvet-covered dining-room chairs and a kitchen with a mixer, juicer and cappuccino machine.

But Telalagic is too scared to sleep upstairs. Besides, she doesn't have enough fuel to keep it warm or enough electricity to run the appliances.

"This is the way doctors live in Sarajevo," she says.

Telalagic at least still goes to work. But many Logavina residents rarely leave their homes these days.

61 Logavina: Secure in basement

Suada Causevic is 28 years old and five months pregnant with her second child. She lives in a secure basement apartment at 61 Logavina, fortunately facing north. Like many Sarajevans, she doesn't have enough food. She worries that without proper nourishment, her unborn child will die. Even though her doctor has warned her she stands a good chance of losing the baby, she says she is too scared to go out to visit the prenatal clinic.

"We live like little birds in a cage," she says.

29 Logavina: "God save us"

Zijo and Zela Dzino, an elderly couple injured by a shell that fell on their upstairs kitchen at 29 Logavina, now live in the room that housed their furnace.

"God save us," cried Zela Dzino as she poked her head out of her furnace room.Dzino, 54, stays in the tiny downstairs room on days she is afraid. Last Sunday, the day after the marketplace attack that left 68 Sarajevans dead, was one of them. "My heart can't stop beating. I feel so sorry for everybody."

The outdoor market where the shelling took place is just four blocks from the foot of Logavina Street. It had been an essential component of Sarajevo's wartime economy - a place people would go to barter their clothing and china for food, sometimes their relief supplies for cigarettes.

Her husband, Zijo, was furious. "It is going to take a long time before people will go out again," he said. "I can't understand these primitives. If they were normal people, they would go out on the front lines and fight, not throw shells at civilians."

Zijo, whose family has lived at 29 Logavina for generations, spends his days carving wooden pipes, which he inlays with silver.

39 Logavina: What is this?

While they were talking, an elderly neighbor stopped by, Milutin Djurdjevac from 38 Logavina - a Serb.

Like other Serbs who remain in the largely Muslim section of downtown Sarajevo, Djurdjevac is on good terms with his neighbors. Since the Dzinos have electricity, and he does not, Djurdjevac had brought over a battery to be recharged.

"It is really difficult to talk about what is happening," Djurdjevac said, shaking as he spoke. "When you talk about a civil war, you know what that is; when you talk about a religious war, you know what that is. This is neither."

"You can't stop the children"

But, as tragic as life is on Logavina Street, there are remnants - particularly among children - of Sarajevo's former bustling life.

The street has its own soccer club, the Vrbanjusa. The team of teenaged boys has continued to play throughout the war. The boys even did calisthenics to keep in shape during the four months that most members had to spend their days in a bomb shelter.

Many children sing in a choir that is starting rehearsals this month in a civil defense barracks. Sledding is still a favorite pastime.

"You can't stop the children. You can't stop life," says Telalagic, the doctor at 44 Logavina. "My 13-year-old son, he tells me, `I want to play. What will happen will happen. That is destiny.' . . . It's hard to argue with him."