While my father was here visiting we had the opportunity to explore many areas both around Sarajevo and in the region with our trusty rental car. One of these areas was Ilidza which is a "suburb" of Sarajevo and boasts a great park and promenade among other things. Before he actually arrived though I had spent some time there because a professor who works closely with MwB lives there. One day, after he took my supervisor & I to the "best" cevapi place in Ilidza (everyone, in every town and every city of BiH will tell you they know where to get the "best" cevapi) he led us to a nearby elementary school, asking if we "wanted to see his piano?" I wondered what he meant by this, and as we approached the building he took us around to the side where an old, half-destroyed piano was enshrined in a glass case with a plaque below. The piano had in fact belonged to his sister. However, during the war, when Serb forces came to Ilidza they gathered all the instruments at the music school there and others from nearby houses and burned them. This particular piano was one of the very few that survived the incident- but certainly showed the scars.

Observing it was very upsetting- physical evidence of the completely unnecessary cruelty that had been inflicted. What could have been gained by the destruction of such things? The inner strings and hammers- the guts - of the piano had been left exposed, many of the keys gone, and the body was badly charred. Viewing it on display in such a fashion somehow seemed obscene- like openly gaping at a badly disfigured person in public. I can remember playing our piano at home when I was little, before ever knowing anything about notes, chords or measures. I discovered that if I moved the wooden covering as though getting ready to close the piano and cover the keys, but not actually let it fall all the way into place, I could glimpse through a small crack into the secret inside of the instrument. This afforded only the most limited observation, but it was wonderfully exciting to know I was seeing just what made my experimental playing and banging possible. What I had once regarded as so special and private, here was brutally laid bare.

There are plenty of other reminders of the war here; buildings which have been left unrepaired and stories people share of their experiences. But unlike the buildings, this instrument is such a personal and intimate thing, a means for expression of human emotion. And unlike people, who have had the benefit of time to distance themselves from the war and are expected to go on with their lives, the piano has been frozen in the past.