Sarajevo, May 23, 1993

      Two lovers lie dead on the banks of Sarajevo's Miljacka river, locked in a final embrace. For four days they have sprawled near Vrbana bridge in a wasteland of shell-blasted rubble, downed tree branches and dangling power lines.

      So dangerous is the area no one has dared recover their bodies.

      No two people have more exemplified the tragedy of the civil war in Bosnia than 25-year-old sweethearts Bosko Brkic and Admira Ismic. The only impediment to their love was living in a country who's people are divided solely on the basis of ethnic heritage. For Bosko, a Serb, and Admira, a Muslim, the love they once expressed only for each other was forced to become a secret.

      In a country mad for war, Bosko and Admira were crazy for each other.

      The couple, who had been dating for seven years, since high school, were both chemistry students at the University of Sarajevo. Bosko remained in the city to be with Admira. With his father dead, no one would have blamed Bosko had he left Sarajevo when his mother and brother fled before war broke out last year.

      Instead, he stayed in the city.

      "He had no one here, just Admira," explains the dead girl's mother.

      "Bosko stayed in Sarajevo because of her. Admira wanted to repay him by traveling with him to Serbia." Finally, in the spring of 1993, Admira decided to flee with Bosko to Serb territory.

      They knew their escape would be a dangerous one. To get to the Serb side they had to cross the Vrbanja bridge, the front line between Bosnian Serb and Muslim forces. While most who wished to flee the city dared not risk the sniper fire, some had successfully crossed over. On the day of their planned escape, carrying two bags, Bosko and Admira approached the government soldiers on the Bosnian side of "no mans land". They asked the soldiers to let them try an escape, and the police snipers assented.

      The young lovers began running as fast as they could across the bridge. They had almost reached the Serb side when snipers opened fire. The machine gun fire came so rapidly that the couple had no chance to seek cover. Bosko was killed instantly, his body laying twisted on the ground. Mortally wounded, Admira crawled the few feet to her lover and wrapped her arm around him before she died.

      "They were shot at the same time, but he fell instantly and she was still alive," recounts Dino, a soldier who saw the couple trying to cross from government territory to Serb positions.

      "She crawled over and hugged him and they died like that, in each other's arms."

      Squinting through a hole in the sandbagged wall of a bombed-out building, Dino points to where the couple lie moldering amid the debris of Bosnia's 14-month civil war.

      Bosko is face-down on the pavement, right arm bent behind him. Admira lies next to her lover, left arm across his back.

      Mystery, and perhaps treachery, surrounds the couple's death. Government and Serb officials admit they agreed to let them pass through the lines. Bosko and Admira walked at least 500 meters along the north bank of the Miljacka river, fully exposed to soldiers on both sides.

      As they passed Bosnian lines and headed for the Serb-held neighborhood of Grbavica, someone shot them.

      An ironic twist to the story of two peoples love that transcended a countries war, both the Serbs and Muslims staked claims to the bodies. As the two sides argued about who would have them, Bosko's and Admira's bodies lay intertwined on the bridge.

      The government side says Serb soldiers shot the couple, but Serb forces insist Bosnian Moslem-led government troops were responsible.

      The young couple had been dead two days before Admira's parents found out.

      "I don't care who killed them, I just want their bodies so I can bury them," says Zijah Ismic, the dead girl's father. "I don't want them to rot in no-man's land."

      Government and Serb authorities have discussed the matter, but so far are refusing a cease-fire around Vrbana bridge to permit recovery of the couple.

"Everyone is washing their hands in this case, Bosnians and Serbs alike," says the girl's father.

      "The world must know about this", said Bosko's mother, from the Serb side. "This can not last forever, the Muslims and the Serbs. They can not fight forever."

      She gave permission to Admira's father to bury her son's body on the Muslim side. She had but one stipulation. "I don't want them separated", she said.

      "We want them to lie together in the ground, just as they died together," says the girl's father. "Love took them to their deaths."

      "That's proof this is not a war between Serbs and Moslems. It's a war between crazy people, between monsters. That's why their bodies are still out there."

　(815 words)