In the fall of 1995, the future of the UN-designated safe area of Goražde is murky. It is the last surviving eastern Bosnian enclave, surrounded by Serb forces. After the UN abandoned the failed safe areas of Zepa and Srebrenica, British peacekeepers left Goražde. The people of Goražde worry for their safety because they are cut off. The Serbs only allow UN relief convoys into the town again after a NATO bombing campaign.

Peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, begin, and journalists wonder what will happen to Goražde. They speculate that it could be traded for territory around the capital of Sarajevo.

Sacco and other journalists arrive in Goražde to much excitement. They are put in the hotel that has been restored after suffering damage during the war. Goražde has the media’s attention.

Sacco and his colleagues are in someone’s living room asking questions about the previous three-and-a-half years. He speaks with their translator, the teenager Emira. He tries asking what she does for fun, but she instead asks him to bring her Levi’s jeans if he ever returns to Goražde. She promises to pay.

Goražde is a Muslim enclave, surrounded entirely by armed Serb forces. While Emira and the rest of the town remain trapped, Sacco carries a UN-issued Blue Card that provides easy access to Sarajevo. With peace not yet assured, it is a means of escape if violence erupts again.

Despite the threat of violence, Sacco enjoys being in Goražde. He attends a party organized by Edin, a local schoolteacher. The party is at Edin’s friend Nina’s house. They sing karaoke, and Sacco notices how happy the people around him are, looking toward a new future after the war. Sacco meets Nina’s son Mela, who demonstrates swear words that he learned from the British peacekeepers. Nina tells Sacco that Mela was shot in the leg by a sniper and that he still has shrapnel in his face from a burst shell. Edin and Sacco become friends, and it is through Edin that Sacco truly sees Goražde.

Edin is a great guide, and each of the journalists wants him, as he knows everyone in town. He teaches at the technical school, and when he brings the journalist to his class, a student asks why they have come to Goražde. Sacco thinks about this and admits that it is because Goražde survives when the other enclaves did not.

Sacco returns to Goražde three times, and each time, Edin shows him around. He shows Sacco the evidence of the war, such as tire tracks from tanks, the footbridge beneath a bridge to protect people from snipers, and even the car of his best friend, who was killed in the first attack on Goražde.

Sacco wonders why Edin works with him, and though Edin tells him that it is to practice his English, Sacco suspects that it is Edin’s way of moving on from the war.

Edin tells Sacco that before the war, Goražde was a town with a mixed population of Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, living peacefully together. Growing up, his friends were from each community, and no one noticed or cared.

Modern Yugoslavia was formed after World War II from the remnants of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The post-war president was Josip Broz, known as “Tito,” a communist resistance leader. Six republics were formed and brought together, though Bosnia was the most ethnically diverse. Though Croats, Serbs, and Muslims in Bosnia were distinctive, with a unique cultural identity and history, they all spoke the same language. Each followed a different religion, with the Croats being Roman Catholic and the Serbs being Orthodox Christians. Goražde, in the east of Bosnia on the river Drina, was primarily a Muslim and Serb community.

Tito united Yugoslavia by discouraging ethno-nationalism, instead promoting a unified Yugoslav identity to his citizens. Despite the authoritarianism of Tito’s rule, many appreciated how his approach maintained peace in Yugoslavia, particularly after the violence between the groups during World War II. When the Axis powers dismantled the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, they facilitated the rise of the Croatian fascists, the Ustasha, in both Croatia and Bosnia. The Ustasha sought to remove the Serb population, forcing religious conversion and committing ethnic cleansing.

Two groups rose up in resistance, the Chetniks and the Partisans. The Chetniks were a group of Serb nationalists who wanted to create a Serbia free of Croats and Muslims. The Partisans were the communist resistance force led by Tito, who defeated the Chetniks. More than a million Yugoslavs died during World War II, many of them Muslim. The Chetniks killed indiscriminately and burned farms and houses, erasing entire communities. Edin’s grandfather once hid under a cow shed for nearly a year to avoid the Chetniks.

When Edin introduces Sacco to his friend Riki, Riki begins singing “Born in the USA.” Riki thanks Sacco for the US bombing the Serbs and forcing them into a ceasefire. Riki initially fought in Sarajevo, where the war interrupted his schooling, but he walked back to Goražde to defend his hometown. When Sacco asks Riki about the possibility of Goražde being exchanged for land around Sarajevo, Riki tells him that they should not trade.

The next night, Riki invites Edin, Sacco, and other journalists to his mother’s house. After he sings for them, one of the journalists, Serif, tells her story. She is from Turkey and came to cover the conflict for a few days but stayed for two years, working to help children and refugees. Riki is impressed by her bravery. The next day, Riki returns to the front on the mountain above Goražde.

The Serbs nearly overtook Goražde in 1992 and 1994, and Edin and others show Sacco how far they pushed into the town. Even now, Serbs control many of the hills around the town, and snipers still occasionally shoot at people.

Sacco meets an old woman and her husband who lived in an abandoned and unsafe house near the frontline. When the Serbs advanced in 1994, they burned the house down, and the couple barely escaped. The old woman tells Sacco that they lived there despite the danger because of its garden and there being no space downtown. The house was in the neighborhood named Kokino Selo, or Chicken Village, which houses many refugees from other parts of eastern Bosnia.

Edin’s family lives in the neighborhood, and Sacco begins staying with Edin on his visits. The house was damaged, as Serb neighbors burned it, but Edin and his father and brother are working to repair it. The field behind their home extends to the river; the Serbs control the other bank. During the war, Edin’s family tended their animals and the garden at night to avoid snipers. Edin tells Sacco that his Serb neighbors would yell over the river to him, asking about his family and their own houses. Edin never responded.

Dr. Alija Begovic tells Sacco that right before the conflict began, a Serbian friend asked him how they could end the tension. When Begovic suggested that they live and work together in Goražde, the neighbor said that they had to be separated.

Ten years after Tito’s death in 1980, Yugoslavia began fracturing. Slobodan Milošević, Serbia’s future president, facilitated his rise to power by promoting Serb nationalism, which then spread from Serbia to other parts of Yugoslavia. This led to Slovenia and Croatia declaring independence in 1991. A bloody war between Serbia and Croatia broke out, and the Serbian population in Croatia formed their own statelet. They purged it of Croatians with the help of the Yugoslav People’s Army, which sought to establish a Greater Serbia.

In Bosnia’s election in 1990, three parties, formed along nationalist lines, formed a new government. The Serb party wanted Bosnia to remain in Yugoslavia, while the Croat and Muslim parties wanted independence. The president, Alija Izetbegović, was from the Muslim party and advocated sovereignty. The Serb party began stoking fears that this would lead to the establishment of an Islamic republic and that Serbian citizens would be the minority. The Serb party’s leader, Radovan Karadžić, hinted at war, and Serbians began creating autonomous areas. The Serb party left the government to create their own parliament, and the Bosnia government achieved independence on April 6, 1992.

When this happened, Edin, a student in Sarajevo, began to worry and returned to Goražde to be with his family. When he returned, none of his Serbian friends wanted to spend time with him, worrying that others would criticize them for it. Worries over outside violence rose, and soon, armed guards from both the Muslim and Serb populations of Goražde began patrolling the streets at night. The two populations then stayed clear of each other, only patronizing their own businesses. Edin tells Sacco that neighbors would no longer even greet each other.

War broke out in the towns of Bijeljina and Zvornik in April 1992, where the Yugoslav People’s Army and others purged the area of non-Serbs. Goražde, however, remained peaceful. Sacco interviews a woman named Bahra, who tells Sacco that she saw several Serbian families leaving Goražde for Belgrade and worried that something was going to happen. One night, she saw a Serb neighbor unloading guns from a truck into his cellar, though he denied it, saying that it was cheese.

After that, the Muslims of Bahra’s neighborhood decided to send their families away to Sarajevo. On the trip, the bus was stopped multiple times by the Yugoslav People’s Army and Chetnik groups. Bahra arrived in Sarajevo with her mother and kids, but after their relative’s house was bombed, they moved to a refugee center. When the first list of casualties from Goražde arrived, Bahra discovered her husband’s name near the top.

Edin’s family uses a woodstove, as do many in the town. It is cold, and as Goražde prepares for winter, everyone, young and old alike, chops wood. The town has no traffic, with only 10 vehicles remaining, and though the town once boasted 10,000 factory jobs, no factories remain.

The town also has no running water or electricity, as it was cut off when the Serbs captured the nearby hydroelectric plant. At night, the town falls dark, except for some lights here and there in houses powered by car batteries or the mini centrales on the river. These small hydroelectric contraptions are made of whatever the townspeople can find. Edin made four over the course of the war, but their position on the river makes them vulnerable to Serb snipers.