Safe in this tranquil wine-country village, twin boys from Bosnia share laughter and love with a French couple who care for them while their war wounds heal.
Half a continent away, in siege-weary Sarajevo, their father weeps, rebuffed at every turn as he tries to get them home again after 13 months apart."There is no life for me without my children," said Ibrahim Zahi-rovic, whose wife died 14 years ago giving birth to the boys. "We've never been separated until they left."
Although they miss their father deeply, Amir, who lost his left leg when shells destroyed their home last year, and Samir, badly wounded in an arm and foot, are wary of returning until the shooting stops.
"I'm scared of being wounded again," Samir said.
So the boys proceed with peaceful, middle-class lives near Bordeaux in the home of Jacques Rousseau and his wife, Paul. They go to school, play table tennis and sample new seafood dishes.
Mrs. Rousseau suggested their father come to France, perhaps with political asylum, but Zahirovic does not want to give up his apartment or live as a refugee.
No official familiar with the case is eager to send the boys back to Sarajevo, and their father's frustration builds as he struggles with the U.N. bureaucracy. By all accounts, the former soldier is the only person in Sarajevo railing so vigorously for the return of evacuated relatives.
Only at the beginning of this month did the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, in charge of most humanitarian operations in Bosnia, draft guidelines for the return of evacuated patients. Returns would occur only if the patient insisted, doctors approved and security conditions were adequate.
"We are at the beginning of a really harsh winter," said Dr. Genevieve Begkoyian, a Frenchwoman in Sarajevo in charge of evacuations. "People are suffering from shelling, no electricity, no heating. It's very difficult for us to bring back children to such conditions."
Communications with Sarajevo are difficult, and the impression Zahirovic gets from his few brief, wrenching telephone conversations with the boys is that they desperately want to see him. They do not tell him of their fears.
"For three months, the U.N. has given me the runaround," he said. "My only wish is to have my kids back, and in the U.N. they don't even want to talk to me.
"I have been a blood donor all my life. Now, when I need help, nobody is there to help me or at least to give me an answer."
If communications were better, Zahirovic would be told that the answer, for now, is "No."
After their house was hit by artillery fire in July 1992, Samir and Amir spent three months at Kosevo hospital in Sarajevo. Then doctors decided they needed treatment abroad, fearing Amir would lose even the upper part of his left leg because of infection.
Their father agreed to the evacuation, but thought the boys would return after initial recuperation.