CRUSHED HOPES

On the first afternoon of the recent offensive in which the Bosnian government massed more than 15,000 soldiers and began pushing against the Serbian lines near Sarajevo, the people of the city huddled in their apartments and waited. Some listened to explosions from the battlefields. Others attended to their battery-run radios. For hours the state-controlled media gave no information. Then at 3 p.m., listeners received the news: the government forces were advancing. All Sarajevo seemed to lift with joy. Radios were placed on windowsills so that music could fill the streets. Bottles of brandy were brought out for toasts. Days before, a weekly newspaper had run the headline THE ARMY WILL BREAK THE SARAJEVO BLOCKADE IN 24 HOURS. Now the government had advanced, and with tears in her eyes 43-year-old Senada Hukovic cried out, "We are winning! Dear God, please let it be true!"

But it was not. The offensive petered out last week, and the buoyant hopes of the Sarajevans crashed to earth. In a matter of days, they had experienced an almost unbearable sequence of despair, euphoria and finally the immensely disheartening realization that it would take far more than a single battle to free their city from the Serbs' embrace. The story of Sarajevo in that period shows a city at the breaking point, bent cruelly back and forth.

When the last cease-fire in Bosnia ended on May 1, a period of relative peace that had graced Sarajevo for four months was shattered as the Serbs resumed shelling without letup. As a result, at the time the Bosnian offensive started, the city was experiencing one of its most dispiriting moments since the war began in 1992. Many roads into town had been closed. The airlift, by which half the city's food supplies are delivered, had been suspended for nine weeks. The Serbs had shut off all gas, electricity and running water.

Civil society in Sarajevo had all but disappeared. With most cafes closed, people could no longer engage in the city's favorite pastime, sipping Turkish coffee and arguing. Eating was a dull affair, enlivened only by combining U.N. food packages in inventive ways. (The recipe for one popular preparation, "brains": fry onions in oil, then combine sour yeast and bread crumbs.) Spring had arrived, but children had given up playing volleyball, football and their nameless street games. Many shops were closed, and those that remained open were poorly stocked.

Life was reduced to the daily alternation between huddling in dark apartments and standing in line for hours to fill water containers, which would then be carted home in baby carriages, wheelchairs and trolleys. The war interfered with every act, even one as innocuous as looking out the window; most glass panes were shattered months ago and have been replaced by opaque plastic sheets.

Then on June 16 came the Bosnian army's apparent bid to break the iron ring of Serb artillery that has encircled the city for more than three years. The first reports were of success, and elation overtook even those whose experience seemed to warrant it least. "Victory is ours!" exclaimed Mehmet Gluhic, a worker at Sarajevo's morgue, who tended to 28 bodies the day the offensive started and to 12 the next day. "There will be as many victims as God wishes, but we have proved that we are capable of breaking the resistance of our enemies."