"Pretty Birds"
by Scott Simon
Random House, 351 pp., $24.95

"... Hell is a place where French and Egyptian soldiers are the army," claims Miro Tedic, a former high-school assistant principal and basketball coach in besieged Sarajevo, "the British are in charge of food, the Ukrainians are the police, and the United Nations is the government." Dysfunctional, in other words, and pretty much the chaotic nightmare of 1992 Bosnia, the setting for Scott Simon's compelling first novel.

Author of two nonfiction books, frequent contributor to many television productions and print publications, as well as host of National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition," Simon has reported from all over the U.S. and has covered wars around the globe.

While filing a series of stories from the former Yugoslavia during 1992 and 1993, Simon interviewed a teenage woman sniper. Each side used them, he explains in his author's note, to disrupt the other half of divided Sarajevo.

Employing women as sharpshooters "freed up young boys to go into frontline fighting units," he continues. "Besides, the girls were good." Not only were they "slender, lighter and easier to conceal," but also "conscientious, careful and meticulous ... "

Simon's first line both illustrates this point and introduces his main character: "Irena Zaric put her last stick of gum in her mouth, winked at a bird and wondered where to put her last bullet before going home."

This opening occurs one November dawn, several months after Irena, a Muslim, 17-year-old high-school basketball star, has been recruited by Tedic to join a small civilian group dedicated to undermining the Serbian cause of "ethnic cleansing."

Her parents think she works for Tedic at a brewery, which is partly true. But while he also oversees covert munitions production in a plant that produces as many hand grenades as it does cans of beer, he trains Irena to become a sniper.

Even in the insanity of this conflict, Tedic teaches, there are "certain rules." Don't shoot children or grandmothers, for example. Why is it acceptable to kill old men? They, like Serbian leaders Milosevic and Karadzic, could still father children.

Irena has come a long way in a short time, Simon's introductory episode reveals, for the story next flashes back to the April day when her bright future as an athlete was snuffed out.

On that day, instead of dating or attending classes or practicing for annual spring basketball tournaments, Irena must pack a gym bag with a few clothes, put her parrot, Pretty Bird, in a cage, and follow her parents into the streets. There, paramilitary squads are dismantling both city and civilization with frightening rapidity, evicting all non-Serbian residents from the Grbavica neighborhood.

Barely escaping with their lives, the family arrives at the apartment building where Mr. Zaric's mother lies dead on the outside steps. The first duty will be to bury her and a neighbor, Mr. Kovac, whose shoes Irena removes and saves against future need.

Hardships start immediately: No water, no electricity. "Mountain and river views now meant exposure to mortar and sniper shots." Barter and the black market replace employment and normal income; Irena is paid in beer and American cigarettes, which she can trade for necessities.

"As the weeks went by ... cheerfulness and courtesy began to wear thin," yet "relative strangers suddenly had to share the same small supply of food, water and breathing space."

Simon vividly details this heartless siege, when saving wax for a new candle or scrounging fuel to boil water for tea — if you had any tea — were common. Citizens of a Sarajevo once wealthy enough to host the Olympics were cold, hungry, living in darkness, sleeping on floors, dodging bullets and plagued by starving rats.

Irena struggles to maintain her close friendship with Amela, a teammate and Christian, who lives on the opposite side of the city. Their affection is tested, however, in an ending whose poignance rivals all of Sarajevo's difficult times.