June 26, 2005

 Sarajevo was under siege. Sniper bullets were flying, but what captured the imagination of reporter Scott Simon was one family's bird.

The parrot was starving, so its owners went outside during a lull in gunfire and released their pet, hoping it would fly to a safer place where birdseed was abundant.

''I have no idea what happened to that bird,'' says Simon, who was covering the conflict for National Public Radio, in a phone interview from New York. But he never forgot the story, and he used the scene in his first novel, Pretty Birds.

The novel, set in 1992, follows high school basketball star Irena, a Muslim whose aversion to violence breaks down after she is raped, her father is beaten and her grandmother is slain. Recruited to be a sniper, she sets personal restrictions on her targets. ''Irena decided that she would not shoot at someone who looked like Sting, the Princess of Wales, or Katarina Witt. She wanted to be able to enjoy looking at their pictures without seeing ghosts.'' Her best friend and teammate, Amela, is a Serb, and the girls' dedication to each other, despite the opposite worlds they inhabit, is a testament to the bonds that not even war can break.

Host of NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, who reads today at Books & Books in Coral Gables, knows how to tell a story. He is author of Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan and Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball. He dedicated Pretty Birds to those who fell defending Sarajevo and ``to the real Irena, Amela, and Miro.''

Q: What were the main differences in writing a novel as opposed to writing for the radio or nonfiction?

A: It's different, but that's part of why I wanted to do it. I wanted the creative challenge. There just are a hundred different technical differences. . . . In journalism, we know the name, we know the weight. . . . in novels, you have to make that up. And every detail has to take on some importance. The part that I like to think I conveyed pretty well was in journalism you learn the importance of disclosing detail, telling detail. It was such a pleasure for me write dialogue. In radio you don't get to write dialogue.

Q: Why did you decide to make the main character a teenage girl?

A: It didn't strike me at the time that there was anything remarkable about that. During the day, the city kind of belonged to teenage girls. When I was doing the story there, I found that those were the people I got to know. When it came time to write a novel, I pretty naturally thought in terms of their war. . . . There was a humbling moment. I guess I had some confidence when I had to write about the romantic scene from the woman's point of view. I don't know how many times I wrote that before I showed it to my wife. She was kind of unprepared for that. But she read it. She walked around. And finally she came back with that little French smile on her face. She said, `Darling, this is hilariously misinformed.'

Q: Did you get any other advice?

A: A hundred and a thousand different things. . . . We met a couple of former snipers who now teach snipers. They were wonderfully expansive. They don't get the opportunity to talk about their work much. I wanted to see how they would instruct someone, so they instructed my wife. It was also valuable to see what a woman looks like firing a gun. My wife is a very glamorous and charming woman who turns out to be an excellent shot. She would finish a nice, tight series as they call it in what, alas, is called the kill zone. And these two guys would look back at me and grin like, `You'd better watch your step, buddy.'

Q: There is a lot of humor in the book. Was it difficult to come up with things that would make the characters laugh?

A: My overwhelming memory of Sarajevo is the laughter. That was the only kind of armor that anyone had left. The jokes were constant. The jokes, the humor, the bitter humor, the renewing humor. That part was not difficult, not as difficult as other parts. The humor was just a constant undercurrent of life.

Q: It's a haunting book. Did the experience of being in Sarajevo stay with you for all these years?

A: It remains the most deeply emotional reporting experience I ever had. It's not that I came away from there thinking 'One day I've got to write a novel,' but 'One day I would like to contribute something of more or less permanent value in regard of that extraordinary human achievement.' Ultimately the idea of a novel began to take shape in my mind.

Q: Are there other reporting assignments that might turn into novels?

A: I certainly hope so. I've had such a rich reportorial life. I would like to begin to make creative use of it. I think I can make a small contribution that way. I hope to write novels that are about something, I hope novels written about real people in real situations.