I have the good fortune to live in Budapest, a city at the core of Central Europe, and on virtually any evening I can listen to the heirs of Mozart and Bartok perform miracles in concert halls that are nearly as exquisite as the music echoing within their walls. There is, a mile from my apartment, the Academy of Music, on Ferenc Liszt Square, home to a dreamlike concert hall that has nourished my interest in classical music. Its interior is decorated with an extraordinary assemblage of turn-of-the-century frescoes, statues, chandeliers and stained glass. The best way to convey its complex beauty is to say that the men who designed it must have been trying to create an architectural companion to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

I’ve brought up the subject of classical music because I am trying to figure out a way to introduce a man I met in Sarajevo. His name is Tajib Saltagic, and he makes me think of classical music. I cannot listen to a symphony without feeling, at certain moments, joy, and other moments, despair. This is the intent of the music. It is the same with Tajib; he makes me feel those things. All I can say in this part of the story, is that he made it possible for me to leave Bosnia with the idea that there is at least as much dignity and generosity in the human race as there is venality and cruelty.