#PERIOD AFTER Jasmina Tesanovic - 01/04/1999- Belgrade


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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 somebody´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 was´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 NATO´™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.


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