By Robert Fulghum

It is the year 2050. In a large Eastern European city – one that has survived the vicissitudes of human activity for more than a thousand years – on an open square in the center is a rather strange monument. Not a soldier or a politician. No general on a horse or a king on a throne. Instead, the figure of a somewhat ordinary man, sitting on a chair, playing his cello. There are bouquets of flowers surrounding the pedestal on which the statue stands. If you count you will always find 22 flowers in each bouquet.

The cellist is a national hero. If you ask anyone about the story of this statue, you will hear about the time of civil war in this city. Demagogues lit bonfires of hatred between citizens who belonged to different religions and ethnic groups. Everyone became an enemy of somebody else. None was exempt or safe. Men, women and children, babies and grandparents – old and young, strong and weak, partisan and innocent – all were victims in the end. Many were maimed, many were killed. Those who did not die lived like animals in the ruins of the city.

Except for one man. A musician. A cellist. He went to a certain street corner every day. Dressed in formal black evening clothes, sitting in a fire-charred chair, he played his cello. Knowing he might be shot or beaten, still he played. Day after day he came to play the most beautiful music he knew. Every day again, for 22 days. His music was stronger than hate. His courage is stronger than fear.

Over time, other musicians were captivated by his performance and took their place next to him on the street. These acts of courage were contagious. Anyone who could play an instrument or sing found a spot at an intersection on the street somewhere in the city and made music.

In time the fighting stopped. The music and the city and the people lived on.

A beautiful fable. […] The real world doesn’t work like that, we all know that. Cellists rarely become national heroes – music has no effect on war.

Vedran Smailović does not agree. His photo appeared in the July 1992 New York Times Magazine. Middle age, medium hair, big mustache. He is dressed in formal clothes. Sitting on a cafe chair in the middle of the road in front of a bakery, where a line of people was hit by mortar fire in late May, killing 22 people. He is playing his cello. As a member of the Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, there is little he can do about the hatred and war that has been going on in Sarajevo for centuries. Nevertheless, he braved snipers and artillery fire for 22 days to play Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor. (Listen to the musicvideo here).

I wonder if he chose this piece knowing that it consisted of a fragment of a manuscript found in the ruins of Dresden after the Second World War. The music survived the bombings. Maybe that’s why he played this in the damaged street of Sarajevo, where people died waiting in line for bread. Something must triumph over horror.

Is this man crazy? Maybe. Is his gesture in vain? In a conventional sense, yes, of course. But what can a cellist do? What madness to go out into the street alone and address the world with a wooden box and a bow strung with hair. What can a cellist do? All he knows how to do. Speaking softly with his cello, one note at the time. Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, calling out the rats that infest the human spirit.

Vedran Smailović is a real person. What he did really happened. The line at the bakery, the grenade and the music are not fiction. Despite all the fairy tales, these acts do indeed take place in the world we live in. Sometimes history knocks on the most ordinary door to see if anyone is home.

Almost everyone in Sarajevo now knows what a cellist can do. The place where he played is an informal monument, a place of honor. Croats, Serbs, Muslims and Christians, they all know his name and face. They place flowers where he played. They commemorate the hope that must never cease to exist, that one day the worst of humanity will be overcome by the best, not by unexpected miracles, but by the actions of many.

[…] Now that you know the story, tell it to others. Keep it alive. […] Never regret or apologize for believing that the world will stop for a moment to listen to a man or a woman who decides to take the risk to speak the truth.

[…] Who can say whether the monument will ever be built? […] The myth of the impossible dream is more powerful than all the facts of history.

A little shortened, by Nina Koevoets. Article taken from “Engage. Exploring Nonviolent Living,” which is from “Maybe (Maybe Not): Second Thoughts From a Secret Life,” (New York: Villard Books, 1993).

See another short description on peace.museum

The photo of Smailović playing the cello comes from this Wikipedia page, and was shared by Evstafiev Mikhail under CC BY-SA 3.0 license.