Beauty Amid Bloodshed : For the Women of Sarajevo, Trying to Look Their Best Is One Way of Defying the Tragedy Around Them--and of Clinging to Some Normalcy

Amra Zulfikarpasic’s sequined cocktail dress glistens as the late afternoon sunshine passes through windows sheathed in plastic, the only visible reminder that a war is going on.

Her brother’s wedding reception is warming under the influence of rakija (homemade brandy), and guests in pressed white shirts and little black dresses over lace stockings indulge in tea cakes baked with ingredients scrounged from humanitarian aid packages.

But the surreal elegance defies the reality of survival in a city where running water has been an intermittent luxury; where electricity is supplied sporadically; where simply being clean entails hauling water jugs from central pumping points in the city and, until only the last few weeks of a cease-fire, exposing oneself to shelling and snipers.

During nearly two years of war, appearing elegant has been a sub-battle of the cosmopolitan women of Sarajevo--a move of personal defiance against the often baffling powers that surround their lives. Here, women cling to the wish to look their best, groping for normalcy in a city pocked by mortar fire and constrained by an uncertain future.

But because not all of war’s battles are fought with guns, Zulfikarpasic and other women in Sarajevo have sought a more personal expression of their resolve to remain free. The 47-year-old graphic designer says that it has been her own fight within Sarajevo’s war to look as she chooses, rather than have circumstances dictate her appearance:

“It always meant a lot when you saw people on the street, because it meant they were alive, that they hadn’t left the city. So, I always wanted to be clean. I didn’t want to seem dirty. I always felt bad when I ran into someone who had really deteriorated.”

Like other women trapped within the siege, Zulfikarpasic has snitched items from humanitarian aid packages to create the staples of her daily regimen. She has combined yeast and cooking oil with water to make face masks; other women just used the oil straight as a moisturizer. Some women have sold their food allotments to buy items on the black market, although a single tube of mascara can cost more than five times the average monthly salary.

Women have glued together slivers of old emery boards to eliminate any waste, and have begged from families of those who have left the city for creams and other priceless items that might have been left behind. Some have substituted beer for hair mousse, while others have mixed precious supplies of sugar with water in place of hair spray.

Most women, including Vesna Musovic, draw on supplies purchased before the war, desperately clinging to old routines. Women received haircuts while shells fell, and paint their nails in startling shades of red and orange.

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The affinity for style and fashion displayed by the women of Sarajevo comes in stark contrast to the babushka-clad women of Bosnia’s hinterlands, who also have suffered enormously during the war and whose pictures have graced the front pages of newspapers around the world.

But Musovic, 40, a switchboard operator, notes that the urbane Sarajevans have much in common with women in the West in terms of style and taste.

And now, particularly during the city’s first lasting cease-fire, women in business suits teeter in high heels along the shell-pocked sidewalks of their city, drawing distinctions between past and present as they stroll beside the brittle facades of buildings destroyed by bombs.

“It wasn’t just Muslims that were killed here. It was the death of everything beautiful,” Musovic says, explaining daily efforts to keep up her appearance. “Beauty is the only thing that gives you hope to go on. Times are bad. There’s a war on. It’s better, in times like this, to try to hold on to beauty.”

Musovic, who lost an arm two years ago when a shell slammed into a crowd waiting for a bus, says working on her appearance has been part of her personal struggle to move beyond the injury. She has handled the absence of running water, for example, by learning to balance a canister between her knees, pouring the water onto her hand and splashing it up into her face. Although it takes her longer than it once did, she still never goes to her job without makeup.

“People just don’t give up,” she says. “Now, in a time of war, this is something you really understand. . . . Women used to be beautiful here. But to me, they seem more beautiful than ever.”

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Many have survived by clutching the little indulgences of the past; some women have even insisted on applying lipstick before racing off to the bomb cellars.

Cafe owner Ermina Music, 34, says she has refused to walk out the door without a few spritzes of Magie Noire or whatever else she had around: “If nothing else, I had to have my perfume. Even when everyone was going to the shelter. I wanted (others) to smell the trail of my perfume on the way.”

Still, the basics of daily hygiene have dominated. Zulfikarpasic can tell you just how many liters of water it takes for a bath; she’s been carrying that water in huge plastic jugs, uphill and up stairs to her family’s flat in Sarajevo’s old town.

So precious were those five requisite liters that she would race outside in the middle of the night if it began to rain, collecting water to wash her hair. And when there was no rain, she could only sprint to central water-pumping stations, literally risking death, to avoid looking disheveled at work.

“I wanted to leave the impression of a woman people would have faith in,” she says. “I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.”

While looking good has helped some women keep their spirits, at times the challenge of sheer physical survival must prevail.

Casually--as easily as mentioning that she would rather go hungry than give up her face cream--Zulfikarpasic says that one morning last winter, she burned all her shoes except the ones she now wears and a spare pair.

Her mother used the heat to bake bread.

“Shoes burn really well,” she says. “People die in a few seconds when a shell falls. Why would I feel sad over a few shoes?”