Models Cope With Warfare, Regret : Bosnia: Two years ago, they turned down job offers in Western Europe so they could finish school. Today, amid university studies and mortar rounds, they ask how they could have been so stupid.

At 17, the Mandzuka twins turned down modeling offers from Western Europe so they could finish school. Two years later, they dodge shells and haul water just to survive.

Alma and Maja Mandzuka try to keep up appearances. Going about their business as though the siege did not exist is a popular ruse among Sarajevans for coping with it.

The way many people in the city still dress, especially young women, can make it hard for an outsider to realize how desperate their situation is. They play the age-old shadow game of appearance and reality.

Since all of their clothes date from before the war and a lipstick can cost $60 on the black market, the twins rely on occasional gifts of cosmetics and their own ingenuity to put it all together.

One winter day, Alma wore a red roll-neck sweater, a black imitation-fur jacket and jeans. Maja was dressed in an olive paisley shirt over black leggings, with sunglasses holding her hair back. Alma wore lipstick and eye makeup, Maja only eye liner.

About 15 of the girls’ close friends have been killed. For the two blond, blue-eyed teen-agers, budding careers in modeling and television have given way to chores imposed by war.

“We had offers from Italy, France and Germany,” Alma said. “We didn’t accept them because we were very young. But we were very stupid.”

Shells permitting, they continue their business and marketing studies at Sarajevo Economics University.

Evening study is by candlelight because their part of the city is usually without electricity. They walk the three miles to classes, carefully planning the route to avoid snipers, because the streetcar line between their neighborhood and downtown Sarajevo has been knocked out.

Alma and Maja even try to keep up a semblance of social life, meeting friends in cafes, but always get home before the 10 p.m. curfew.

Every day is dangerous. Three shells landed near their home recently, killing five people, three of them friends.

The twins have virtually no income. Their father, Slobodan, a 46-year-old Muslim Serb, is paid only a few coupons a month as an army lieutenant. Their mother, Jasmina, 45, is unemployed. Both parents worked in insurance before the war.

In winter, the sisters nearly always have colds and worry about the skimpy diet they share with other Sarajevans. Breakfast is canned beef from relief supplies, if they have it, or just bread and tea.

“Our health is damaged,” Maja said. “We are ill because, for two years, we have been living on that beef.”

“Fruit! Fruit is a dream,” Alma said. She fears a lack of milk and other foods is damaging their teeth and hair.

Only once every two weeks do they shampoo their shoulder-length hair. They need a total of 13 gallons of water, which means at least two dangerous trips to the pump, and must use precious fuel to heat it.

Their friends tell them they have lost weight, but they have no scale to weigh themselves.

The sisters are tall--5-foot-9--and strikingly similar, but not identical. They worked as a team until the Bosnian war began in April, 1992.

Resuming their careers is still a hope, and they are searching for a way to get to Western Europe.

Life in Sarajevo breeds suspicion, however, and Alma said the twins worry that someone offering work abroad might really be trying to lure them into “some dirty job.”

“We don’t trust anybody,” Alma said, but Maja added: “In Sarajevo, every day we die slowly.”