Lipa on Thu, 22 Apr 1999 16:51:18 +0200 |
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Syndicate: Fw: A Diary from Belgrade 26 March - 6 April 1999 |
Here is an earlier part of the diary I forwarded to the list yesterday. Some readers wrongly assumed that I wrote it. I did not. I am not there. This diary was written by a Belgrade writer who will remain anonymous for the time being. ========================== March 26th, 1999, 5 p.m. I hope we all survive this war and the bombs: the Serbs, the Albanians, the bad and the good guys, those who took up the arms, those who deserted, the Kosovo refugees traveling through the woods and the Belgrade refugees traveling through the streets with their children in their arms looking for non-existing shelters when the alarms go off. I hope that NATO pilots donâ??t leave behind the wives and children whom I saw crying on CNN as their husbands were taking off for military targets in Serbia. I hope we all survive, but that the world as it is does not. I hope we manage to break it down: call it democracy, call it dictatorship. When a USA congressman estimates 20,000 civilian deaths as a low price for the peace in Kosovo, or President Clinton says he wants a Europe safe for American schoolgirls, or Serbian president Milutinovic says that we will fight to the very last drop of our blood, I always have a feeling they are talking about my blood, not theirs. And they all become not only my enemies, but beasts, werewolves, switching from economic policy and democratic human rights to amounts of blood necessary for it ( as fuel). Today is the second aftermath day. I went to the green and black markets in my neighborhood. They have livened up again, adapted to new conditions, new necessities: no bread from the state, but a lot of grain on the market, no information from the official TV, but small talk among frightened population of who is winning. Teenagers are betting on the corners: whose planes have been shot down, ours or theirs, who lies best, who hides the best victims, who exposes the best victories, or again victims. As if it were a football game of equals. The city is silent and paralyzed, but still working, rubbish is taken away, we have water, we have electricity... But where are the people? In houses, in beds, in shelters... I hear several personal stories of nervous breakdowns among my friends, male and female. Those who were in a nervous breakdown for th e past year, since the war in Kosovo started, who were very few, now feel better: real danger is less frightening than fantasies of danger. I couldnâ??t cope with the invisible war as I can cope with concrete needs: bread, water, medicine... And also, very important: I can see an end. Finally we in Belgrade got what all rest of Yugoslavia has had: war on our territory. I receive 10-20 emails per day from friends or people whom I only met once: they think of us, me and my family and want to give me moral support. I feel like giving them moral support, I need only material support at this moment, my moral is made out of my needs. People are gathering at homes, to wait for the bombs together: people who hardly know each other, who pretended not to know or who truly didnâ??t know what was going on in Kosovo or that NATO was serious all along. We sit together and share things we have. Solidarity and tenderness brings the best out of Serbian people. There it is: I knew I liked something about my people... My German friend phones me, she says, I didnâ??t leave the country, I didnâ??t take out my children, even my newborn grandchildren. I am fed up with everything, I want to lead my personal life. My feminist friend asks me to have a workshop with our group of consciousness raising, my other friend wants us to go to Pancevo, the bombed city at outskirts of Belgrade, to give a reading of my novel. But there is no petrol, we must buy bicycles. We phone each other all the time, seeking and giving information: I realized children are best at it, they prefer to be active rather than passive in emergency situations. We grownups harass them with our fears and they are too young to lie or construct as grownups do: they deal with facts and news. Mostly we are well informed, with children networks, some foreign satellite programs and local TV stations. I think of the Albanians in Kosovo, of my friends and their fears, I think they must be worse off than us; fear springs up at that thought, it means that it is not the end yet. I have no dreams, I sleep heavily afraid to wake up, but happy that there is no true tragedy yet, we are all still alive, looking every second at each other for proof. And yes, the weather, it is beautiful, we all enjoy and fear it: the better the weather, the heavier the bombings, but the better the weather, probably more precise bombings. I wish I only knew do we need good or bad weather to stay alive? And finally, I saw Benigniâ??s film â??La vita eâ?? bella,â?? the night before the first bombs fell. The next day, it started happening to us too. Maybe I shouldnâ??t have seen it, but now it is too late: and I realize in every war game led by Big Men the safest place is that of a victim. PS. At this moment the alarm is interrupting my writing...the alarm is my censor and my timing. I switch on CNN to see why the alarm is in Belgrade, they say they do not know. Local TV will say it after it all is over. March 28, 1999 Belgrade is still rocking, shaking, trembling: we are entering the second phase of NATO intervention. The alarm is on for hours, nearly 24, I need go out, to buy some food: we are not really hungry, we are not really falling on our backs, people who have been through a second or third phase of NATO intervention say it can get much worse. At this point people off and on the streets take pills to stay calm, or just cry to stay calm. The shelters are crowded, lively and sad. Children behave like soldiers, notoriously bad mannered Serbian children compared to, letâ??s say, English or Italian. Young adolescent people are the most frightened and Gypsies, the Gypsies with babies on their fronts and on their backs cry, they will kill us, they will destroy us. I think they have been attacked anyway for the past few centuries, whilst adolescent people protest: we want our normal lives, we cannot waste our lives in shelters, first loves, first excitements. We, the others, behave as if we have time, time to stay frozen in a shelter for weeks and resume what is left of our life afterwards: just end it, immediately, never mind how, all the rest are details. Every evening I go with my friends and family to the big underground station in the neighborhood: a shelter, I know people there already, of all ages and social types. They come with stools, and small talk. We think of making an emergency plan. In all cases, we try to list the many possible developments of the situation, hardly any can be good for us, common people who cannot believe anybody anymore, who have nothing but a few dollars in our bags and a lot of bad experience. At least we are not pathetic, I say and our children will not be spoiled. More and more we seem to me as some Indians, stubborn, ridiculous and honest in some absurd way: doomed to nothingness, to physical survival and a true null. I even say, my daughter will be a rarity, a true Serbian raw beauty, ready to die for nothing: wonâ??t some cultures love that? It will be so exciting for those who are afraid of lightening and thunder to see a thin teenager in jeans not afraid of bombs. We watch news all the time, all news all the time, no good news, no precise news, but we do get some information, through the women and childrenâ??s network. I watch Jamie Shea from the NATO press conference. He is terribly precise, you hear him you hear it all, our reality seems only a slight deviance from his course. But of course, it isnâ??t that simple, if it was, he would be God and it would really be terrible to have a military God after a religious God. I fight for my computer every day, every hour, everybody in my family wants my computer, the only one at home, for playing, for studying, for communicating. I always hated computers but I use it for writing and for sending my ideas off to the world. I fight between the urge to write and not to write, writing in war is not like writing in peace, though for me writing was always a matter of biological urge to avoid the pain. We heard from our friends from Kosovo, they donâ??t want to speak on the phone, they are living already what will probably come to us in a few days: killings and looting of flats, houses, complete anarchy. For the time being we are underground, I heard somebody say that 8 million Serbs are underground. I just visit underground because I think it is part of the local propaganda to keep people underground, not to worry about their moves and more than elementary needs. When the sirens come on I deliberately go out on the street, says a friend of mine. The situation is the opposite of demonstrations in â??97 when everybody was outside. Maybe we should set up an underground state with its new democratic laws: maybe a state run by women and children, according to their needs and morals. The people in the underground station are sitting in the trains, for days. The first day they were frightened, restless, waiting anywhere around the huge place, on the sidewalks, benches, mobile staircase. Now they are sitting with barely enough space for their feet, hardly getting out to breathe other than the stale air of a train to nowhere. My friends are inside, a family of dour refugees from Krajina, two grownup sons. They say they spent five years in worse conditions, these are really good conditions. It looks to me like a trans-Siberian journey to nowhere, but I visit them regularly, bringing them food and blankets. They wonder why I go out. I say, yes, I am afraid, but I am even more afraid to stay for the next twenty years obediently underground, whatever happens outside. Not much does really happen, most of things happen in our insides, in our undergrounds. I see a rich, snobbish woman with her baby son in a dirty train compartment. I wanted to say hello to her and then I stopped. I didnâ??t understand or approve her being here: she could be anywhere, the fact that she is here is a sign of political craziness I disapprove of. March 29, 1999 It is gloomy, it is raining, the alarm is on all the time. Iâ??ve just heard that martial law with execution as punishment has been established. I still cannot believe we are living in war, we are living in a nobodyâ??s war but no less true and cruel and in tradition with what war is all about, false heroism and false excitement. Today I havenâ??t been out. I heard some friends of mine havenâ??t been out at all, all these days. As I said, the act of going out has become an act of courage. In few hours my life has changed completely, everybodyâ??s has, but still I think we are becoming at this point different people, in different situations, in different alliances. I gather my strength to be strong and bear the change. Children are changing, surrounded by fear, anxiety and four walls: we have to be creative even in these circumstances, like in Benigniâ??s film â??La vita eâ?? bellaâ??. As usual art comes as an advise, as a cure, and only after you get sick, never as a prevention. March 30, 1999 Today no bombs. I slept 16 hours, no alarm to wake me up. The children went to a rock concert, a terrible rock concert with folk singers mixed with good groups, for children from the underground: a terrible audience too, a mix of nationalists and modern people. I hear they destroyed McDonald's; the café in my neighborhood is called no more New York but Baghdad Café. The fliers that people carry show a heavy vulgar sense of humor, not very witty and anarchic, right to the point as they usually are. A BBC journalist said, Serbian people are big-hearted, they wouldnâ??t have killed the pilot of the fallen plane, they would have given him home-made bread and brandy as they claim. But how come then NATO generals claim that Serbians are committing atrocities against Albanian civilians: I believe them both. I wouldnâ??t offer bread to the pilot nor kill anybody not even in self-defense, only when defending a child. Somebody taught me that, maybe wrongly, but that reflex I carry as compulsive. My God, we are in war, I just heard some rules about war, no contacts with foreign press, court martial for war deserters. People from mental hospitals are in the street, the hospitals are being used for the wounded. My women friends are all gathered in various humanitarian centers working with critical situations, refugees, Gypsies, old and frightened women who live alone. My best friend says, only when helping those who are in a worse situation than I can I stop my breakdown. She is helping Albanian women get out of Pristina. I am different, I get these strong emotions and visions which only by writing I can get out of my body. Without even understanding what I am saying, the words run ahead of me, they make sense to me only after they manage, if they manage, to penetrate my body again. I write so clearly everybody says, but I am so stupid, I know it, my writing is only an honest admission of my stupidity. My father used to dream of bombings long after the war was over, wake up during the night and take me out of my bed and carry me out to the basement: sleepwalking. I remember him doing it, I did it myself last night, to my daughter, a few times. I feel as if a sickness is getting out of my body, a long historical fever, a buried anxiety which I inherited being born a Serb of a Serbian father from Herzegovina: other buried fears are that of hunger, and of unwanted children. But the blessings are sharp survival techniques and a lot of sharp and good-humored language: never give up, the moment you become stubborn, not malleable or soft, or vital, you are done for. We had a flood in the building, maybe because of bombings maybe somebody was absent-minded, maybe it is all my fault. I feel guilty anyway, and responsible, more than ever, but impotent. I feel sick somehow: emotionally and physically, I feel like sleeping and sleeping forever, until the peace comes back. Today Primakov is in Belgrade, the Russian foreign minister. I dare not share any hope with my need for hope. I stand immobile at a certain reality point trying to establish it every day anew, to fix it, nail it and act upon it. March 31st, 1999 Fear has entered in my mind: I donâ??t know if I dare think what I do, I cannot cope with reality: is it possible that we are all sacrificed for somebodyâ??s lack of political judgement, or worse, madness. I am censoring my thoughts afraid to think in personal tones, afraid to be heard, judged and executed. The conflict is escalating, the atrocities are daily happenings. I think of buying some pills for calming down, sleeping and sleeping, maybe forever , if it comes to atrocities. And I think of it rationally, not with pain, not with pathos. I am a well-organized person, especially in critical situations. I hate the fear in the movements and the eyes of people around me, I avoid them and spend time with children, they cannot have that kind of fear yet, or is it that they didnâ??t lose it yet, after surviving birth? My head and language are getting stiff, they have to incorporate all these controversial meanings; I despise getting along in war, no space for feminine language, no free space. The fear is male-gendered, I can tell that, and our male persona suffers from it, even if we are women, acting as such. Women from womenâ??s groups and NGOs are rescuing Albanian women with families from Pristina in flames and terror: risking their lives, as usual, as in the previous wars. Yes, the new feeling I have this morning is that it will end, it must and it will, with or without us, the so-called details... April 1st, 1999 We spent last night in a shelter, three grown ups, five children and two dogs. Actually it is a private house with a good cellar next to a very decent deep underground station where I spent the first night Belgrade was bombed, mostly inhabited by gypsies and mothers with small children. Our group was a large family, a psychological family, we make a group on a psychological not a biological basis. Our group was based I think on fear of being hit by a NATO bomb or some local warrior. Yesterday a band of very primitive vandals was roaring through the city destroying windows and screaming at whomever they felt was different. But then police with shields scattered them: finally the police were doing what I expect them to do. In 1997, during the demonstrations those shielded policemen were on the other side from where I stood. I realized I have no weapons in case somebody attacks me, the only thing I could take was a bottle opener and I did, wondering, would I be able to stick it into somebodyâ??s flesh if I was attacked. If my child was attacked I could do anything, so I thought, maybe it is better not to take it with me. We heard that downtown Belgrade was supposed to be bombed last night: it wasnâ??t, so again we have to wait. My neighbors, refugees from Knin, said: I wish it was us tonight, so we can sleep tomorrow. The wife said: if something happens to my sons, I will kill him, it was him, my man who never wanted to go abroad, he wants to be a Serb among Serbs. And here we are, for the second time bombed to death. I said, it is not the same, she said: for me it is. I realized, for her it was, her script of history contained no other pattern than extermination. It is not paranoia, it is not lack of information. It is her life, who can deny her life in the name of Truth. Last night we were expecting bombs in Belgrade downtown, CNN said so. Instead, three American soldiers were captured by the Yugoslav army, again, CNN says so. It is a dirty dirty war, I say, frightened people in basements, bruised soldiers on TV without names, Albanian refugees crying on TV, all the time saying all those things people should never have to say, especially not in TV. Human dignity is here at stake, in all of us, acters and onlookers. My friend, a Yugoslav who lives new York, half Albanian, half Serbian, phones me: she says, I am living your European time here, I wish I was there with you. But we here are living the American time, awake during the nights, dozing during the day: I guess we are living both times all the time. Tonight if the sirens go on, we may or may not go to the shelter: it has become as a Russian roulette choice, a matter of luck. Phase three says, targets in Belgrade downtown, who knows when, so we people in Belgrade can feel the same way as the refugees in Kosovo. But people in Belgrade know nothing about the refugees, only we few who already feel bad and guilty about refugees and Albanians and the war and the world as it is. Today the sirens gave us more time: I washed my hair, I felt like an Albanian refugee in a safe haven, so NATOâ??s message has reached me. Another thing: every evening, at dusk , my hands start to tremble without control. It goes on for a few hours. I heard that some other women have the same symptoms of fear of air raids after dusk. Men behave differently, they raise their voices and have more opinions than usual on matters of life and death. We are afraid of their death more than of our death, which we do not think of. Only in certain moments, images of violence against my children strike me hard: I nearly faint of pain. I think I prefer suicide to this. Yes, I am ready for suicide now, in case... in certain cases... But I guess suicide is a luxury in certain cases, one needs to plan that luxury. I do. They ask me for an analytical comment for the Guardian: I cannot do that in this moment, who can, probably nobody. I think I cannot do it anyway because I don't believe in my ability to think ahead; if I had had it deep down inside me as I have some other abilities, like to sing or to dance, I wouldn't have been here now. My parents are alone in their flat, they hardly hear the alarm, they watch official TV and every now and then phone me, saying: don't worry it will be OK. And I feel better, the voice of my father calms me, as when I was a kid, he gives me security, I don't give that kind of security to my children. On the contrary, it is a choice not to: this world is not a safe place. I heard that the French, German, American German cultural centers, in the center of Belgrade are completely demolished, I don't want to see the debris, nobody is collecting it, it is a new war sculpture, a public corpse, a warning, a reality we are invited to live with every moment. Some of the graffiti's and badges: The bridge has fallen, long live the bridge, Adolph Goebbels Clinton, Clinton, Serbia is not your Monica, NATO troops kiss my ass, I want to go to school, Only your brain is invisible, Who sings has no bad thoughts, Clinton learn how to sing, NATO in mud, New American Terrorist Organization, We are simply the best. Some Yugoslav pilots are honored publicly on TV by our President; tomorrow we see in the papers on the obituary page that they are dead. We have to speak up, to speak out. If we stay silent, if we get frightened -- and it is normal to be frightened and silent -- we have no future, we will lose our future as well as our country or voice. So become writers, become singers everybody, people from the streets, underground, in the refugee convoys, in the queues...in armies, in all those ridiculous places where you feel safe when the alarm goes on... When the little girl jumps in the flat above me, my stomach turns up and down: how ridiculous, as if the bombs were so tender as to tickle my stomach from inside. Glass explodes, furniture overturns, people think of volcanoes, earthquakes and other natural catastrophes, incredulous that men can do to each other such mean things. April 2d, 1999 Today is Catholic holy Friday, people are getting mystical about it, because of the bombs. They see good and bad signs everywhere, in the pattern of days, clouds preventing air strikes, the celestial signs of a destiny. Another blow to the common sense of a common person. The son of my friend phoned last night from the battlefield: he could hardly speak, he said he was somewhere not saying where and that he was OK but that some of his friends were not so. The age limit for the volunteers who want to join the war has been raised to 75 for men. What about women, no age limit, often they are even louder in their patriotism. Arkan the indited war criminal is promising on CNN lawful and merciful procedure for the three American soldiers: this is freedom of the press. Children are getting sick in the shelters, grown ups are emotionally distressed, our day/night schedule has tightened: we plan by the minute our stay out of home and as the night falls, we plan where and how to spend the night, sharing information we had during the day. Radio B92 is definitely closed, lawfully, a court decision has been made, new people have come, demanding the old ones to collaborate, it happened in the last few years to other independent papers. And still new papers spring up. My hope speaks, you cannot stop creativity. It is pretty much the same everywhere in the world: even where you have absolute freedom, you cannot guarantee creativity. I watch the sea of refugees orchestrated from both sides on the borders with Yugoslavia, Macedonian, Albania. It reminds me very much of the scene I saw in â??95, when Serbs from Krajina poured into Serbia for days and days, without resistance, thoughts, or ideas of what and why has happened. I had the feeling it was orchestrated, everything except for the pain and actors themselves, they were natural. April 3rd, 1999 It is morning, a beautiful sunny morning. I am crying, I am relaxing. Last night the center of Belgrade was bombed with appalling precision, yes the military targets, but only 20 meters from one of the biggest maternity hospitals in the Balkans, the one where I was born and years later gave birth. The destroyed building was the Ministry of the Interior: some of my friends remember being interrogated there. I am relieved and happy with NATOâ??s precision, it was even raining. But I feel visible, exposed to those young responsible pilots who carry their cargo wondering will they make it to hit the military building without doing wrong to a new born baby. They were all in shelters, the babies and the mothers, and I am crying, relieved, all this matter of life and death reminds me of a delivery, of my delivery, of being brave and crying at the same time. I wonder, which words can describe the relief of staying not only alive but not crippled or bitter, but physically and emotionally integral. I heard that in a village near Belgrade, a small village on the Danube in Vojvodina, peasants are looking for the American pilot. They are organized in an all-out war, a partisan guerilla action, ridiculous and most serious, as some 60 years ago or as in a film. I asked why in that village? My friend from that village said: probably they are doing it in all villages, all over Yugoslavia. And what would you do to the pilot if you found him, I made an inquiry, among children, among the researchers. Nothing, of course, they all said. Some would give him food and preach about the big Serbian people, mostly the grown ups, whilst the children would hide and feed him in a cellar. From whom, I asked. >From everybody, like a favorite toy. What a virtual, playful, cruel war. There can be wars lived from inside or from outside: as a matter of proper fantasy, or epic history. Or you can do it both all the time. Personally, my war is a horrid war, made of terrible images of the killings of my dearest and torture and rape ... Those images haunt me when the alarm goes off, it is them that made my hair go white, in one night, last night. The first time I got white hair was ten years ago, at the border with Slovenia, when a drunken customsâ?? officer harassed us because we were Serbs from the still existing federation called Yugoslavia. I knew that was only the beginning, as I know that this is the end, I hope not only for me but for all of us. I feel solidarity with all people in war in every century or country. We receive emails from all over the world from such people, people in war or who have been in war. But then, who hasnâ??t, it is only now our turn. A bad, bad world. On BBC, CNN, SKY TV commentators already speak of the war as a chess game between a very talented human, FRY, and a big humanized but imperfect machine, NATO, praising the skill of human all the time as well as finding flaws in the high technology, thanks to the human enemy. And then the refugees, and then our heavy nights, but nobody really tries to put that picture together. I am supposed to go to Budapest with my daughter: I am wondering is it safe, the roads, and then in Budapest, whom can I turn to, will I be just a Serb or somebody with a face and a story. Years ago, in â??92, as a well-off refugee, I spilled many tears because of the offences I had to put up with. It was more than I could bear, I just ran back home, whatever it would be like. Probably I was spoiled but then, frozen bank accounts, a severe if not impossible visa regime, not even the cheapest jobs available clearly pointed out that we were even less wanted than refugees from other countries, if wanted at all. All the lack of love I suffered in the past came back to me as a wave of unbearable pain, I wished I wasnâ??t born. Now, that kind of exile I cannot stand anymore, that life is too degrading for my child. I prefer hunger and danger, it keeps you vital, it doesnâ??t destroy the human side to war. April 4th, 1999 Again one night in shelter. Another two bridges have been struck down towards Hungary and the railroad towards Montenegro is destroyed in the Bosnian territory by SFOR troops. Facts that make me claustrophobic: the wire is finally visible around our zoo in the cage. Wild bad Serbs from 13th century, some disguised in jeans, most speaking THE language ( English), but still different, aliens. This NATO strategy is completely in line with local nationalists, who said when the maternity hospital suffered the concussions from nearby bombs our babies didnâ??t even cry, because they are Serb babies, different from all other babies in the world. Well, I am not a baby, but I cried yesterday like crazy, hearing the song â??Tamo dalekoâ??, (There, far away ,there far away is Serbia). It is a beautiful sad song from World War One, when Serbian soldiers went to Greece, to Thessaloniki to fight, and only a few came back. My grandfather was one of them. When he came back, my mother was born, whilst all of his children were born much before. When I was a kid he used to sing me that song, when I grew up I sang that song abroad when asked to sing a Serbian song. It is the only Serbian song I know how to sing and make people cry; yesterday thousands of people sang it on the Square of Republic during the daily concert. But I couldnâ??t sing it anymore, this is not my song anymore, this is not my Serbia anymore, not the one that my grandfather fought for. Far, far away is my Serbia, I am now in my own country in a cage and in exile. I am supposed to get 40 liters of petrol per month for my car, but I have nowhere to go, maybe I will exchange it for 40 liters of wine and 40 packages of cigarettes, which are impossible to buy. Maybe in this way I will find again in my own room, in my head, my homeland, my Serbia. My father dreamed all last night that he was saving me from the bombs, he was sleepwalking as he used to do when he was young, taking me as a baby in his arms and rushing to the door. It went on for years, his war trauma, until it stopped with this new war. He passed it on to me, I started dreaming his dream. Last night when he took back his dreams and fears from me, I slept heavily. It is definitely not the same war, and our dreams are not the same, his dreams are male, mine are female. At least that. Today I am going to visit them, my parents, they are only 15 minutes on foot from my place, in the center of Belgrade, too, but since the war started, I havenâ??t managed to go and see them. It seems distant and dangerous, as if in another city, not only another district. Is that how are we going to live, as in a labyrinth, divided in districts, as if they were different states, divided cantons? A NATO officer looking at the map of Belgrade and pointing where they are going to strike said, Belgrade is a lovely city, I used to go often to Belgrade. Yugoslavs had good lives, skiing in Austria, travelling all around the world without visas. We want them that way again if they change. But I don â??t want to live as Yugoslavs lived once, it was a big lie, a big illusion, and I am Ibsenâ??s Nora who lost her world in one second of truth, starting life anew, as cruel as it must be. I hear people say, it is not the bombs I am afraid of, but the sirens I cannot stand anymore. My neighbor who complained about our loud music now is complaining about it being foreign, aggressorâ??s music. The crack in the time, back to the future: the fifties? One second I forgot what happened to us. The next second a commonplace occurred to me: we had a life we didnâ??t appreciate, we quarreled, complained, made each other suffer, and now all the veils have fallen, we are united in love and suffering. Pain it is, I know, but is it love? April 5th, 1999 Today I feel like Rubliov. I donâ??t want to write, Iâ??ve seen too much pain and suffering too close, my language will be silence, and blank space. Whatever I do or say doesnâ??t count anyway. I donâ??t want to be anybodyâ??s accomplice in living and writing as if everything was OK. One day, somebody, maybe I, will make a bell out of the memory of these null days, like the boy that makes Andrei Rubliov speak up again. Last night when we spoke about personal, moral and public war, I thought I was Rubliovâ??s boy who would make the bell notwithstanding the war. But this morning I woke up the invisible anonymous girl I always was and still am; the magic lasted only until the first low flight planes thundered over our heads at dawn. The most terrible thing in a way is that after all, nothing really happens: in the morning we are alive, we have food, we have electricity, we have even luxury articles like whiskey... But in a way, we were there, where it all happened, once again not us but to somebody else. As in false executions we survive our own death every night, our fantasizes of the death of our beloved, with more no physical evidence than a few more white hairs... The nationalist/patriotic heat around me makes me bear even worse the planes above my head and flames in front of my eyes. I am cut off emotionally from my own body, afraid of physical pain, least of empty big ideas like clouds. On the other hand, I fear that until the bad guys come to your door and take you away, we will not know who the bad guys are or believe it happened really to our neighbors. I entered a pharmacy, the shelves were full, fuller than ever, but you couldnâ??t get aspirins or tranquilizers, and everybody was asking for those. The supplies were out. Another detail: sweet shops are full, people are buying sweets like crazy, emotional distress, lack of love... April 6th, 1999 Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Belgrade in 1941 by Hitler. However the major damage to Belgrade happened at the end of the war from the allies bombing, the so called liberation or Britain bombs. I know everybody today here will use this parallel to feel better or worse, whatever... I remember an old librarian whose fiancée died in the first bombing of Belgrade; he never married but became a priest. That story impressed me more than the personal stories of lost lives, furniture and goods I heard from my close family. I was sitting on the terrace this morning, the sun was bathing me with great love, I was dreaming of the sea and the clear sky of which we spoke last night waiting for air raids on the terrace, while the planes were flying over our heads. And the planes came again. But they didnâ??t bomb Belgrade last night: again other places, other victims. I feel so guilty, more than ever this morning for this Other. My friends and enemies from all over the world ask me, do you realize how terrible it is in Kosovo? I do, I really do, and I feel guilty that we feel bad here without having the horror they do. But our war, for the past 10-50 years has always been this kind of invisible horror, we have still a long way to run to the catharsis, to be free from our bad conscience, wrong myths, inertia... I feel we are being cut away from the rest of the world, more bridges down, more friends and enemies pointing out to us here how bad we are, more crazy people here making careers on screaming how we are heavenly people. And the people? They are in cellars or just in beds waiting for nothing. I dreamed last night of bombs falling in my cellar, in my bed and afterwards feeling relieved and free. I should stop writing, I hate my dreams, thoughts and words. But it is a vice. ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/east/ to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress