#PERIOD AFTER Jasmina Tesanovic - 08/04/1999- Belgrade


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April 8th, 1999
Last night we sat on the terrace waiting... We heard a few big detonations. My right ear became deaf and it hurt, as if travelling in a plane. We started to bet, my absolute pitch won me the bet, and of course my female body as the pain map of world: a government administration building was hit in downtown Belgrade, only half a mile away from us. Nobody really knows why that building and not the general headquarters as was expected. Nobody tells us either anything: call it civil or military target. Anyway , good, we are done with that, we've been waiting for that for days, we from downtown Belgrade. We started laughing with relief when we heard there was no collateral damage, as NATO calls the dead, by the Criminal Aggression, as TV Serbia calls the NATO. My father's voice was trembling, he heard nothing, he saw nothing, he is already deaf and old to move: but he kept saying: «what can we do now, nothing, can we? I thought it was the frying pan falling in the kitchen but then it was bombs, what can we do now?»
Last night the daily rock and folk concert moved to the bridge, the bridge over Sava that brings together, new and old Belgrade. We are all split families between new and old Belgrade, we dare not cross the bridge in order to stay with your part of the family, in case the bridges are struck down.

Yesterday a football game was held between Greek and Yugoslav teams: it was a big national event, people were crying, singing, kissing, and the players hardly played the game. I always thought that the energy of football audiences was wasted, finally they got a humane cause: to stop the war.

A BBC military commentator spoke about Serbian people as horrible and incredible people who care about nothing except their own lives. I was very much hit by his remark, I don't like to praise or degrade any people ethnically or globally. I never realized there is something like British people, even though I spent 12 years in a British boarding school but after his remark I did. I wonder what would British people be like in Albanian or Serbian conditions.

So much comes out of all of us in these border situations, so many discoveries: I realized that my fear, the enormous fear I deal with every night when the sirens go on, could be only balanced by some act of heroism. If I only knew what to do to stop the war...
The Gypsy woman from the basement next door, my old friend, is rather stable since the bombings started: her only distress seems to be the fact that we can't buy cigarettes anymore. She asks me every time I pass by for a cigarette. Her speeches now are balanced and wise, no more foul language, curses, personal offences. Instead of going to a lecture of the Alternative Belgrade University, The reasons of NATO Aggression on Yugoslavia, I listened to her, Mica. I didn't like the title of the lecture, whilst she uses big words together with small ones. The margin between her Gypsy girl and me white girl now is minimum, we both live in basements, on too many emotions, with too few cigarettes and too much beer...

A Gypsy boy asked me for a dime, I said I just gave it to my girl. He asked me when do we paint our Easter eggs. I said, I don't know, I am an atheist, but I will dye my hair for Easter, it has gone surprisingly white these days.


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