She was only just getting used to the slick city streets and to the smell of gasoline and oil and lead. By then she had more or less got the hang of swerving sharply to the right, or sharply to the left, straight on, over the bridge, before the traffic lights turned red. But her early life was spent on the Ravna Romanija mountain with a chap called Miloš, who put her to work on the hardest, dirtiest jobs. When I first saw her she stank of cement and manure and liquor. It was not long after she’d come back from the building site on the premises of a glamorous café, which is nowadays the watering-hole of Chetniks rather than lorry drivers. I agreed a price with Miloš without fuss. He obviously wanted to be rid of her as quickly as possible. In his village the least expensive car was a Golf, so having a rusty old Beetle around the place was kind of an embarrassment. It was already dark by the time we drove back from the Romanija, through Pale and the tunnels on the outskirts of Sarajevo.
