Here's the latest installment of perhaps why it may be time to retire. Enough stuff has been packaged into twenty-four hour segments around here too frequently, that the four months I have been here seem like eight, or ten. Last Tuesday evening I was being driven home by two physicians with whom I had had dinner, one a Norwegian now living in the U.S., the other a Bosnian from Tuzla. We are looking into collaborating in the development of the Bosnian's hospital; the Norwegian surgeon had already been helping out there on and off for about a year.

We drove up the steep, winding hill, Pantovcak, I live a little past the top of the road. We get to the circle at the top, a bus is occupying the natural drop-off spot, so we park on the close side of the circle. We are sitting for a few minutes because of indecisiveness: tomorrow, should I take the bus into town, or will they drive up the hill to get me? We want to be on the road early, to get into Bosnia with plenty of daylight to spare. Our indecision lasts only three or four minutes, but already we have a visitor: we have stopped at the foot of the driveway to the president's house, and Franjo Tudjman's guards come out to check on us. Our explanation for stopping there doesn't suffice, he wants our passports. Two Americans and a Bosnian in a Volkswagen Golf with Bosnian 'ST' plates, ST for 'stranac:' stranger, foreigner. Apparently this trips off some sort of protocol, and we are detained. More military guards come, and then the military police, then the state police. Nice vehicles, pretty serious faces. They look, they ponder, we move to across the street, it starts snowing. We stand there for an hour, then an hour and a half, in the snow. Actually we could have gone in the car but it was a beautiful night, big fat snowflakes. Jacob wants to challenge the detention, Emir talks him out of it, he'd be the one carted off, not the foreigners. Nearly two hours go by, almost midnight, before we are finally allowed to go, but not until we have received clearance from the state police, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior, and finally the Vice-Minister for Police Affairs. Two hours in the snow, apparently a direct threat to the safety of the president, and they never did search our car for weapons.

The next day I took the bus down the hill, it had snowed fifteen new centimeters up there, I more than half hoped the trip would be called off. The desire for daylight stemmed from the fact that we would be crossing through the newly opened 'north corridor' through Serb-held territory, and this made Emir and Gorin a bit nervous. I myself preferred to stay home, but they showed up at the square, ten minutes late, ready to go home to Tuzla. We picked up two more cars to form a convoy, including one with diplomatic plates. The snow tapered off about an hour out of town and we made it to the river by 1:15, with plenty of daylight to spare. About 100 meters upstream from the two military pontoon bridges constructed over the Sava River is a landing for a small cable-and-tugboat ferry, it can handle about ten cars at a time. The pontoon bridges are for the military only, so we waited in the mud for our turn on the ferry. We were fourth in line when it was decided to put a bigger ferry platform in service for the first time; it would handle twenty-five cars, perhaps a few buses and trucks. This took three hours, and then it didn't line up right and the cars couldn't come off at first. They got the kinks out, the sun went down and we got across. Up through the mud, through the Herzig-Bosna checkpoint, and onto the road.

Our convoy was gone, having given up waiting. Emir apologizes for the bumpy ride, saying that he wanted to drive as fast as possible to avoid any unauthorized checkpoints.' Otherwise he and Gorin are silent as we enter the Serb-held corridor. We quickly get behind a long line of American hummer vehicles moving at close to 100 kilometers an hour, our new convoy. This lasts for fifteen or twenty minutes until they turn off the road to the right, and then we are on our own. No one is talking, although I am silently cursing having taken this trip, and this job. It is pitch black, if we are passing villages there is no electricity in them. This goes on and on, the eeriness never fades. Way up ahead there are two small but tall lights, as we get closer there is a soldier in the road, heavily dressed, as the Americans are. Another soldier's silhouette can be made out, it is a checkpoint, they are standing under a two million dollar tank. The first soldier's flashlight doesn't work.

You got any weapons?' A strange question. He slaps his flashlight into order, and seems a little nervous as he peers into the car. He walks quickly behind it, and then over to the driver's side, looks in past Emir to Gorin. "Are you muslims?" It sounds rude. "Yes." "You are? So am I." Emir looks dumbfounded. I cannot see Gorin. ("Joe, is it true?"). "Where are you from?' "Louisville, Kentucky. Salaam alechim."

He never did ask for our passports.

Joe

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