Kenan

As Kenan prepares to go and get water for his family he realizes that today is the final day the cellist will play the adagio. He has been going to hear the cellist play every day since the shelling at the brewery: “Each day at four o’clock he stands in the street with his back pressed against a wall and watches as the city is reassembled and its people awaken from hibernation” (220).

Although he dreads going out today and facing the men on the hills, he finds strength in the thought that today is the final day of the cellist’s adagio to honor the dead and in his conviction that he will be one of those who rebuild the city: “He knows that if he wants to be one of the people who rebuild the city, one of the people who have the right even to speak about how Sarajevo should repair itself, then he has to go outside and face the men on the hills” (220).

Kenan braces himself for the day ahead, and knocks on Mrs. Ristovski’s door.