War Life

Belgrade by Night

AIM Podgorica, 11 May, 1999

(By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

At twilight, streets of Belgrade empty. Due to high-technology effects of NATO graphite bombs, most of street lights are out of order. At stops, car headlights or lights from shop windows if the part of the city has power supply, illuminate people waiting for scarce vehicles of city transportation; scarce as direct addresses of president of FR Yugoslavia to the nation. Optimists hitch-hike, realists watch for anybody stopping and then try to go along, pessimists just stand and blink. Like in a cheap eastern-European festival film, in the sharp yellow light of headlinghts, the first come to sight on the road with their outstretched arms, then the second ones on the very edge of the pavement and finally the third standing by the wall.

"Did they sound the siren", is the customary question of any new-comer - a middle-aged woman carrying plastic bags or a seller from a kiosk who has just handed over the money made that day to the owner. Having heard the negative answer, the discussion about when during the evening the siren announcing danger from the air would be sounded is inevitable. The opinions are stated based on analyses of CNN reports of that day, theories of high global politics, telephone call of a sister-in-law from Klagenfurt...

Sooner or later, the howling of the siren echoes down deserted streets. It begins with one lonely siren which is soon joined by a chorus and then it finally ends just as it has begun - with a mournful solo howling somewhere in the distance. The decision Belgraders make at this point depends on the state of their nervous system, weather conditions, estimate whether their apartment or house is near a possible target of NATO bombers, personal comformism and similar. Some, usually headed by lively pensioners active in "house councils", carrying blankets, candles, transistor radios, sandwiches, thermos flasks, yelling at children not to run down the staircases, set down to shelters. Others, such as the youth from New Belgrade, first run to near-by stores open around the clock to buy beer and Coca-Cola, and then to places from where they have an overview of strikes on the city - flat roofs of high buildings or deserted stretches of land between them. And some people remain at their homes by television sets and telephones.

Great expectation begins. People are standing in front of shelters, smoking, talking politics, exchanging rumours; faces are serious, gestures significant. Young people, highly strung, giggle and shout. In homes, women do their ironing, cook meals for the next day (who knows whether there will be power sipply), watch films on TV...

There are people who are in none of these places. They are in restaurants and cafes - the ones that are open. Depending on the type of local, people play cards, listen to TV and radio stations, banished rock-and-roll from all over the world, going on a binge... Sooner or later, they are bound to go home. For those who have to cross the bridges on the Sava in order to do that, especially if it is in a taxi, they have a specific adventure ahead of them. After they are told by the taxi driver that on the night when the building of the former Central Committee of the Communist Party (now the headquarters of the Socialist Party of Serbia) was hit that he had driven in reverse for a kilometre and a half (at top speed), in front of the bridges, the passengers perform their own personal rituals. Some of them cross themselves, some spit. At the moment when bombs were falling on the building of the Army General Staff in Kneza Milosa street, a taxi-driver and his customer, speeding over the Branko's bridge, were singing together at the top of their voices: "With Marshall Tito, the hero..."

At the moment when flashes are glittering, detonations sounding, fires breaking out and smoke gushing, accompanied by the sound of engines of invisible planes and cruising missiles, shots of anti-aircraft cannons, everything changes. It is impossible to describe what it is like while missiles are falling. Eyes automatically close, the body - cramped in some hole or trench, mouth full of dust, nose full of stench of explosives, a steady tone buzzing in the ears. The next thing a person becomes aware of is usually calling out of policemen and firemen, blue rotating lights from an ambulance... If one has not been on the site of the explosion, if all the shrapnels have missed one and if it is not necessary to stay on the spot, one will become aware of what has actually happened - from television. One will see, as when the building of Radio-Television Serbia was hit, a man hanging with his head down and feet caught and crushed by ruins of the building and fittings... One will see the head of a young man whose body is buried under enormous piles of concrete and something that until just a few minutes before had been a wall, the head completely white with dust. One will see extremely dense red blood dripping from the back of the head of a man, civilian, who was killed just because he was doing his job that night. Depending on the distance from the location that was hit, pieces fall off building fronts, tiles from roofs, blast tears down locked doors, shades crumble down, buildings shake, windows shatter, detonations are heard.

Refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, who have painful experience from 1991-1995 wars, resumed the vocabulary from the time. Listening to detonations and estimating them according to force and frequency, they give definitions of the bombs such as "it is flattening", "planting", "burying"... In a cafe which is a gathering place of refugees, during one of the severest bombing, it was a matter of honour not to divert attention from the game of cards to the bombing, although windows were quivering.

At the same time - after the first detonation - women and children disappear in the entrance into shelters, and the number of men doubles. Of course, if the place where bombs are falling is not too near. The mentioned young people, on roofs or between buildings, watch shooting of anti-aircraft cannons and cheer: "More to the right, man, to the right", "Shoot all around, shoot, you will hit something", "Look, by God, a hit, over there..." At homes, incessant phone calls. People call relatives, friends - are we all alive, what was hit. They retell what it was like "over here", ask "what it was like at your place", describe their own emotional experience and that of family members, lament about "that man of mine" who is God knows where... What everybody is interested in is what place was hit. The telephone is put down only at the time of news on TV or radio, then they pick it up again. If an explosion was close by, sooner or later, people who just could not stand it any longer or sit quietly any more are bound to come out to the site to see for themselves and help if they can. They then feel that somehow they belong with the howling of firemen's hoses, sirens of ambulances, torchlights, the flames and smoke... And that is how Belgrade lives at night in expectation of new bombs and missiles. At dawn, the sirens are usually heard again to mark the end of danger. Morning in Belgrade is a different story.

Spomenka Lazic

(AIM)