The Best American Travel Writing 2014 by Paul Theroux

that was just being published. History had forgotten her to some extent, but she had a loyal cadre, mostly men, who adored her. She drank and smoked, but she had a rare femininity.
    That day, I took a train, a bus, then finally hiked over hot fields to reach Catscradle, her remote cottage. I was keenly aware of my youth and inexperience, and felt embarrassed for all that I had not yet witnessed. She answered the door in tailored slacks with a long cigarette in her hand. She was in her 80s by then and still extremely good-looking. She invited me inside and together we watched the invasion of Slovenia on television while she made astute comments about the coming destruction of Yugoslavia. I listened intently, but, as she made clear, she had no interest in taking on a protégé.
    â€œI hope you’re not expecting lunch,” she said rather sharply. She did bring me a glass of ice water, and had laid out a guest towel in her upstairs bathroom for me to use. But that was the limit of her hospitality and, by implication, her professional encouragement.
    A few weeks later, I got a letter from her scolding me for having made mistakes in my article. I had reported that the light in the room was strong, when in fact it had been rather weak. What infuriated her most was that I had mentioned she had once been Hemingway’s wife. You violated the rule of journalism, she wrote. You lied.
    Some years later, shortly before she died (her close friends believed it was suicide), we served together on a panel about war reporting for Freedom House, and she called me “dear girl,” and embraced me affectionately. By then, I had reported on many sieges and many wars. Someone took a photograph of us together, both speaking animatedly, our faces captured in heated emotion.
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    In the lobby of the Holiday Inn, I looked around and tried to be brave. To my surprise, there was an ordinary, if dark, reception area with cubbyholes for passports presided over by a rather elegant bespectacled man who took my documents, registered them, and handed me the keys to a room on the fourth floor.
    â€œThere’s no elevator,” he said matter-of-factly, “since there’s no electricity. Take the stairs there.” He gestured toward a cavernous hallway and told me the hours of the communal meals, which were served in a makeshift dining room lit by candles.
    â€œAnd please, madame, don’t walk on this side of the building.” He pointed to a wall, through which you could see the sky and buildings outside, that looked as though a truck had run into it. “And don’t go up on the seventh floor,” he added cryptically. The seventh floor, I soon learned, was where the Bosnian snipers defending the city were positioned. And the forbidden side of the building faced the Serbian snipers and mortar emplacements. If you emerged from the hotel on that side and a sniper had you in his range, you got shot.
    Walking into the dining room that first night, I felt I had made a terrible mistake. I knew no one in Sarajevo, it was a few weeks before Christmas, and it was bitterly cold. I had not seen the photographer since he’d dumped me at the hotel (declaring, in passing, that he hated all writers). Perhaps, I thought, staring at the blown-out windows and mortar-cracked walls, I should stay a few days and go home.
    Around me, I heard many languages: Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, as well as Serbo-Croatian (which is now often referred to as three separate but nearly identical tongues: Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian). The huge room was full of grizzled reporters, everyone looking slightly dazed—a combination of exhaustion, hangover, and shock. In the distance I heard machine-gun fire and a mortar shell dropping somewhere in the city. No one paid attention to the noise, or to a newcomer like me.
    But I soon encountered warmth and even fierce camaraderie. Over dinner—a plate of rice and canned