Bloodshed Can’t Sully the Beauty That Is Sarajevo

I remember the red arches. The hamburger stand was serving something called a “Big Mek,” which sure did sound familiar. And those arches out front sure did look familiar, golden or not. The meat inside the bun was a mystery, and the McDonald’s people from America were not amused.

I remember the plum brandy. At the hotel, beaming women in 19th-Century serving-girl garb came forth carrying beakers of slivovitz , a colorless liqueur that would have made wonderful fuel for somebody’s car. We drank to their good health, and they to ours.

I remember Yugoslavia.

I remember a movie house along the walk to the Olympic stadium, one with a marquee billing a double feature of “Gregori Pek” starring in a classic film about a great white whale and “Svarzeneger” in a more recent one about a great barbaric warrior, which made me wonder aloud how Moby Dick would have made out against Conan in a fair fight.

I remember sweet-talking gypsy musicians in the mountains, trying to pick my pocket and pilfer my Polaroid camera, while nearby the father of Team USA hockey player Chris Chelios barbecued a goat on a spit. I remember restaurateurs under government order not to gouge their customers, then one offender having his place boarded shut after purportedly attempting to bilk a generous tourist, Kirk Douglas, by overcharging his party for a meal.

Yes, Yugoslavia.

A festive place where Communist oppression and economic depression never kept men and women from gathering together under murals of Marshal Tito to sing along with deafening music and to puff on Turkish cigarettes and to quaff enough foamy pivo to satisfy the thirst of every Norm and Cliff on the bar stools of Eastern Europe.

I remember an oom-pah band at the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony and giggling girls pointing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album in a storefront window. I remember running into Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, as he mingled with the friendly locals in the merchants’ marketplace, and the bug-eyed look on skater Connie Paraskevin’s face when her waitress delivered a pizza with a topping of shredded scrambled egg.

And I remember the conversational mileage an accidental tourist from Detroit got from flagging down a taxi to take him to a Sarajevo historic landmark, only to realize upon reaching his destination that it was not a cab at all but a concerned motorist who merely thought the American was lost and desperate for a lift.

All the joy and generosity of a Winter Olympic party of eight years ago is but a distant memory. That Sarajevo isn’t there anymore. Sarajevo isn’t even Yugoslavia anymore.

Someone has set fire to the Olympic stadium. Civilians have been killed in the streets. Refugees flee desperately into the night. And in the quaint, bustling, once-lovely city where the killing of an archduke touched off World War I, there is no time to be thinking of summer games or Olympic spirit. Not while women are widowed and children weep.

In 1984, the armed guards who occupied Olympic venues and shopping districts had little to do but swap lapel pins with happy children. About the only crisis they had was with a daffy American in a rainbow-colored wig who got himself jailed for distributing religious pamphlets and later perplexed the poor Yugoslavs by identifying himself as “Rock N. Rollen.” When genteel old Will Grimsley of the Associated Press volunteered to post the dude’s bail, he bit his lip at presenting himself as the representative of Rollen, Rock N.

Today, Yugoslavia is a jigsaw whose pieces no longer fit. Sarajevo belongs to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is under bloody siege. Hundreds of Slavic Muslims have been slaughtered. In Croatia during the last year, more than 10,000 soldiers and civilians were killed. Serbian rebels opposing Bosnian independence have left the streets stained with blood, routing more than a million frightened citizens from their homes.

And here I thought the carnage of South Central Los Angeles was horrifying, not far from our own Olympic stadium. Imagine a United States torn in two by riots, a civil war raging coast-to-coast rather than North versus South. Imagine America sending two teams to the Olympics, or one of them abruptly being uninvited, as ostracized as South Africa on its unhappiest day.

I remember Yugoslavia. I remember the Museum of Revolution’s depiction of the people’s struggle for liberation and the Emperor’s Mosque that was built in 1566. I remember the sparkling snow of Mount Bjelasnica and the patriotic all-night party that commenced when Jure Franko raced to second place in the men’s giant slalom, becoming the first Yugoslav ever to win a medal in the Winter Olympics. They put his face on a postage stamp for that.

Yugoslavia was united that day, that week, that year. To your health, all of you. To your health.