This Sara­jevo cemetery is one of many sprinkled through­out the city.

It was freez­ing. Cold and wet, the kind of chill you just can’t escape. It pried its way through the folds in your jacket, wound its way up your pant legs, and seeped its way into your bones. I have been to the north, I have felt the burn of –45 C. This was a dif­fer­ent kind of cold.

George and I had ren­ted a room. The entrance was down an alley off the main square and up a crooked flight of stairs. We had two win­dows, four beds, a space heater, and a shower. It was the closest to home I was going to get. We spread out our gear and the detritus of travel: Mad Magazine com­ics in Greek, old bus trans­fers, phone num­bers, cam­eras. George chain smoked, I didn’t care.

A sur­prise snow blankets Sebilj Square and the Bas­carsija Market.

The room was a work in pro­gress. The win­dows were large and cur­tain­less, single pane, unin­su­lated and poorly fit­ted. I propped the extra mat­tresses against the win­dows at night to keep out the draft. The space heater was a giant mon­ster, a relic from the eighties that sat in the middle of the room. It took three or four hours to get up to speed. The cir­cuits couldn’t run the heater and the shower at the same time. We took turns get­ting up at six in the morn­ing to turn off the heater and turn on the shower. By eight the room was still cold, but just warm enough to run to the shower.

We were a couple of kids, play­ing pho­to­grapher in a place we didn’t under­stand. Our assets were more curi­os­ity than plans, and slightly more guts than brains. Even so, we made a good team. I had done my home­work. I had a list of people to call. My Hun­garian friend, who worked for and NGO, who was invalu­able. George was indefatig­able, his com­mit­ment to mak­ing some­thing of his time was aston­ish­ing. Still, we weren’t get­ting very far. We’d both gone days without pho­to­graph­ing any­thing of substance.

Then we met Bego. He was drink­ing rakija in the bar around the corner. He peered at me through his coke-bottle glasses and said “bonjour.”

Mor­tar dam­age — patched and repaired.

It was the late after­noon, and he was already a little bit drunk. We got to talk­ing, and every­one made friends. I trans­lated for George. Bego was in his mid-fifties, an engin­eer. He had trained in Paris. He was unem­ployed, save for a single stu­dent that he tutored in math. He lived alone. He looked incred­ible in his tweed jacket with his coat on, even though it was warm inside the bar. I couldn’t help set­ting aside that nervous appre­hen­sion that accom­pan­ies trav­el­ing far from home.

We talked for some time, about life, about what it means to be a man, about math and tobacco. It was get­ting late. Bego sat up, looked around, nar­rowed his eyes ever so slightly and asked if we would like to come to dinner.

He led us up the hill, on the path next to the cemetery. Bego anti­cip­ated my ques­tion, “they are all from ’93,” he said, “mostly chil­dren.” I asked him how he could do it, to get up and  walk past every day: “I just do,” he replied “would you like chicken for din­ner?” I hadn’t been that cold in a long time.