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 wouldn’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 wouldn’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.