| ||||
|
|
|
|
||
|
Wir versuchen alle Texte in allen Sprachen zu veröffentlichen. Wegen begrenzter Ressourcen ist dies nicht immer möglich. Sollten Sie Interesse haben Texte für uns zu übersetzen, bitte schicken Sie uns eine Email. |
Trudicemo se da sve tekstove predstavimo na svim jezicima. Obzirom da su nam izvori, budzet i broj ljudi veoma ograniceni znamo da necemo biti u mogucnosti da ovaj cilj u potpunosti postignemo. Ukoliko zelite da nam pomognete oko prevoda molimo vas da nas kontaktirate na. |
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 don’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 couldn’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 didn’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 didn’t leave the country, I didn’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 Benigni’s film “La vita e’ bella,” the night before the first bombs fell. The next day, it started happening to us too. Maybe I shouldn’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. We are trying to present all texts in all languages. However, due to a limited resources we are not always able to achieve this goal. If you would like to translate material for us, please contact us. |
||