The Foreign Service Journal, January 2007

46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 7 nothing further about the Brady case. Winter was nearly over and an early thaw had turned the snowdrifts to blackish slush when I found a blue- and-white congressional envelope in my in-basket with the franked signa- ture of Donald Brady’s choleric con- gressman. Surprisingly, the congress- man had a new request. A constituent of his owned a house on the front lines. It had been seized by the local militia as a sniping post, and its owner, now living in the U.S., wanted it back. Happy to tackle a problem I might actually be able to solve, I drew a four- wheel-drive from the motor pool and headed east, across the shell-pitted countryside toward the front lines. The shattered villages were a depress- ing sight: houses smashed by mortar fire, shops burned, churches vandal- ized, doors gaping open. Grumpy policemen stopped me at a check- point and breathed brandy fumes at my face as they slowly leafed through my car documents, looking for an irregularity that might net them a bribe. Their command post was the battered shell of a schoolhouse. There were bullet holes in the walls, and brown stains on the floor. At my destination, the provincial capital, I found the mayor in a freez- ing, windowless office. I made my pitch for the return of the American’s house. We went to the house. It was roofless. The windows had been roughly bricked up except for firing loopholes. The mayor introduced me to the militia colonel in charge of the district. Bemused, he handed me the key to the house, which no longer had a door. The two men invited me to join them for a drink. “You’re the first American diplo- mat to visit us since the war,” the mayor said. The four-month-old cease-fire had brought back street life to the bat- tered town. Rubble had been cleared from the once-elegant main square,