From Zagreb to Mostar: a Bosnian journey.

The fighting had stopped in Bosnia. At Split airport the lines of UN peacekeeping troops were heading out, while civilians like ourselves were moving in: reporters, aid workers, pilgrims headed for Medjugorje, businessmen-all very purposeful, but also very normal looking. The British television producer who carried a flak jacket and helmet received a lot of condescending smiles. Even Martin and I exchanged an amused look that said, "What a self-dramatizing Johnny-come-lately. Doesn't he know the shooting is over?"

We had just come from three days at the Intercontinental Hotel in Zagreb. Already we were experts, as insouciantly casual about risks as the most war-weary correspondent. Cosseted in a beautiful (and reasonably priced) room, we breakfasted in a dining room where waitresses insisted that we sample the multiplicity of pastries. The reality of what had happened to the people of the former Republic of Yugoslavia was hard to grasp. We had long conversations with military men who had been in grave danger, who had lost comrades in the conflict. We heard desperate stories of refugee displacement from members of the International Rescue Committee, whose offices stayed open during the worst sieges of Sarajevo and Mostar. But when you're gesturing for another fruit tea or pilsner as you listen, there is a distance between reality and the stories about the reality.

Not that Zagreb did not contain its own testimony to loss. The relatives of the dead and missing have painted the names of loved ones on bricks and improvised a two-block-long wall in front of the headquarters of UNPROFOR, the UN peacekeeping force. Candles and flowers keep vigil in front of sections where place names appear again and again: Vukovar, Sarajevo, Mostar. "Some spit on the flag of the UN when they come to pray," the Swedish UNPROFOR guard tells me from his position surrounded by sandbags. "They blame us." He shrugs, "We tried."

But the war is over, and all these people have made it through alive. Zagreb itself is celebrating in a subdued way; it has the sense of a city edging toward a boom. A street of cafes and bars has neon shamrock signs, courtesy of Guinness.

When we fly from Zagreb to Split, the starting point for a trip to Knin and Mostar, we have come to expect war, but with all modem conveniences. With a relaxed attitude born of our "war" experience so far, we boarded the train for the three-hour trip from Split to Knin. There would be a tourist office in Knin to hook us up with a place to stay. We'd have a nice dinner at a local restaurant, and tomorrow start asking hard-hitting questions of the Croatian army spokesman. We wanted to hear the inside story of the push that reclaimed Knin from the Serbs in August 1995. In 1991, the local Serbs had created a separate country, the Republic of Serb Krajina; that, by some interpretations, is what started the war.

The first jolt of reality was our fellow train passengers. Many were young men in camouflage dress and quite a few were drinking. There were some civilians, among them a few women and children, and a lot of shopping bags filled with giant-sized detergent boxes. The conductor came for our tickets. "What time do we get to Knin?" we asked.

A voice from the next bench said, "Seven o'clock." The speaker was a little girl of eleven or twelve, blonde, with glasses. She leaned across a young dark-haired woman and spoke to us. Seven," she said, "or seven-and-a-half." And so we met Anna. She had learned her English from a German couple. She wriggled in her seat and laughed as we used pantomime to expand our common vocabulary.

"Where do you live?"she asked. Mat age have you? What is your husband called?" The questions rushed out of her. The schoolbook sentences couldn't quite contain her energy and her curiosity. Laughing filled in for any missing words. Why was I going to Knin? I mimicked writing. And where was I staying? We would find a hotel. "Hotel?" she repeated. "No hotel," she said. Then she turned and spoke quickly to her mother. "My mother says you will stay with us.' "Thank you," I started, "but"--except that no "buts" were allowed. After two hours of playing cards, singing, telling stories, there seemed no reason to say no.

"It is a big house, but far from the station," Anna warned. "No problem," I thought, "we'll treat them to a taxi ride." "We'll take them out for a nice dinner," Martin said.

It was dark when we arrived in Knin. The gentle drizzle on the coast at Split was a heavy cold rain in the mountains. There were no lights in the station; as we got closer I saw there were no windows either. A small hotel, a nice B&B? What had we been thinking? This town had been blown apart. Broken glass littered the sidewalks and through the gaps where walls and windows had been we could see the empty shells of a market, pieces of furniture in a restaurant. There was nothing but darkness and the rain. Groups of soldiers passed, and I was very glad we were walking with Anna and her mother. The rain let up, but icy puddles filled potholes. These potholes had been made by shells. We saw no moving cars, but many abandoned ones--some flattened by tanks, others burnt. Dogs barked, and we started up the hill into what Anna said were the suburbs.

We came to an intact villa with three stories and a balcony. Anna's grandmother opened the door. She could not quite conceal her surprise, but Anna and her mother were both explaining. By now we realized that if they hadn't invited us we would probably be under interrogation at the police station, or on the train back to Split. I was not about to start in with, "Now if this is any trouble, we'll be happy to go." For Anna, we were like oversized kittens and she couldn't wait to show us off to her grandparents. She settled us adults into the only heated room and started to host the evening. No one bothered with small talk; through Anna, we got down to the story so common in this part of the world.

Her Croatian grandparents, who were in their mid-fifties, came from Vares, a village about thirty miles north of Sarajevo. Anna's mother had left to go to the university in Sarajevo and study economics. She met her husband, also a student, and they married and had Anna. But then....

Anna had been sent to Vares when things got bad in Sarajevo, then Vares came under attack and she fled with her grandparents. Word came that her father had been killed. Somehow her mother had gotten to them, and the four of them spent the next year moving from camp to camp, finally ending up in a place they called "the barracks." A few months ago they had been assigned to this house where Serbs had previously lived.

Adult elaborations on the flight from Vares, the time spent in the barracks, the grandmother's fear that if she returned to Vares, now in control of Bosnian Muslims, she would have to wear a veil--all were passed through Anna. Finally she announced herself exhausted. If she was to continue, we all would have to pay her for this work. Her grandfather, silent during all this talk, now said something. The women laughed. "He told me he doesn't have to pay. He said nothing," a delighted Anna said.

Now we had to eat. First, special cakes for Saint Nicholas Day. "Bosnian," her grandmother said, and all repeated so there was no mistake, "Bosnian cakes." The cookies commemorated a Christian saint, but they had the heavy, dense sweetness of Middle Eastern desserts, and the coffee was poured from the kind of one-handled pot common in Jerusalem. "Bosnian style," they said again and again. Then we went into the dining room for a meal, eggs fried-Bosnian style.

We slept downstairs on a pullout sofa bed in the living room filled with cabinets displaying crystal glasses. Our pillowcases were embroidered. But by whom? And whose glasses were those? The Croatian family that had welcomed us or the Serbian family who had abandoned it? And the cakes, the coffee, the eggs were Bosnian food. Nor child they pronounce Bosnia as we did; it was "Bosnia," with an open vowel that echoed beyond us into a place that was far away, and lost.

The next day, the Croatian colonel told us "the Serbs fought as they could," when I asked if he was surprised that the Krajinian Serb army had not put up more of a battle. Most had simply removed their uniforms and joined the refugees. The colonel had come late to military life and had no interest in waxing eloquent about the fine points of strategy or in bragging about his army's victory. In fact, he preferred to talk about his years on the boats that lugged cargo around the Great Lakes and through the Saint Lawrence seaway.

Outside of town at the UN Force Headquarters, Colonel Shawn Tymchuck said, There was no battle. The Croatians arrived and the Serbs left." The Croatian army and their Bosnian allies had prepared their offensive for a year, but "a small number of very determined defenders would have stopped them in their tracks for a long period of time," says Colonel Tymchuck. "It didn't happen."

From the headquarters above Knin, the countryside spread out. When the area had been in control of the Krajinian Serbs, the UN had monitored the few Croatian villages. Now they were trying to help the Serbs that remained, mostly old people.

For Tymchuck the most heartening dimension of his whole experience has been the cooperation he's seen among nations in their peacekeeping tasks. UN forces were under siege here at this camp. The Krajinian Serbs were antagonistic toward the U.N. When NATO bombed Udbina airfield nearby, they had been attacked.

"Every morning when I brush my teeth I look at the holes in the trailer." A Nigerian soldier had been shot in the head and his vehicle stolen. But now the colonel was heading back to Canada. He did not think any of the remnants of armies in Bosnia or in the Krajina would challenge NATO troops directly. But how could there be reconciliation in a town where no one who is now there had lived there before? He answered with another question: "We had people living in our compound who were in mixed marriages--how did they decide who they were?"

Mixed marriages were very much on the mind of the aid worker that took us into Mostar the next day. Our guide was the son of a mixed marriage, true of 60 to 70 percent of the marriages in the area. "How then do you identify who you are? How did anyone?" I asked. I was afraid the answer was going to be "religion." "It's something like that,' he said. But then he told us how Mostar used to be one big family. "The people who are here now," he said, "are not from Mostar. They have come in from the villages around and taken over the town. The people of Mostar fled."

As in Knin, we asked ourselves will a year of peace give these people a chance to rebuild and to reconcile? "We're waiting for spring. Good weather will test the peace," said a member of NATO Commander, Admiral Leighton W. Smith's, staff. But will it last? To this question all factions answer: "It has to."

Mary Pat Kelly, writer and filmmaker, traveled with the press corps covering President Clinton's visits to Ireland and Germany, from where she traveled to Croatia and Bosnia. She was accompanied by her husband, Martin Sheerin, who took the accompanying photographs.