Good Morning, Belgrade

AIM Podgorica, 21 May, 1999

(By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

After sunrise, around five or six o'clock - as the case may be - sirens for the end of danger from the air are sounded. At that moment, people who have spent the night in shelters in basements of buildings, start upstairs towards their apartments to lie down for the first time that night or continue to sleep - in their own beds. For others, who have listened to the detonations from their own homes, and watched flashes of explosions and lights of shells shot by anti-aircraft defence from their terraces or flat roofs of buildings, the uniform flat sound of the siren is a sign that it is the end of their "night duty" and that they can go to their deserved rest. There are yet others; the siren, and not bombs has awaken them, and now they must make a decision - will they try to continue sleeping or get up and have their first cup of coffee. One thing they all have in common - a night spent with the roaring sound of plane engines and explosions.

In the past days, Belgrade wakes up late. Immediately after they open their eyes, people turn on their TV and radio sets and wait for a full hour for the news with broad and rather comprehensive reports about the damage done and victims in the city and around the country in the past twelve hours or so. They compare what it was like "at our place" with that "at your place". Have any of the windows been broken or cracked, were the tiles on the roof thrown off or scattered, or did the whole building just tremble, how long the planes circled, whether the hissing sound of the missiles was heard in that direction. If they have a common past experience of a detonation, all the descriptions are based on comparison with that particular case. Conversations unmistakably end with wondering "for how much longer will all this last" and exchange of news and speculations linked to the Russians and the Americans, Milosevic and Clinton, Chernomyrdin and Rugova.

Depending on the situation and inclination, all the citizens without even leaving their homes have turned into some sort of war reporters or diplomatic commentators. There are those who have turned into specific refugees in their own city. If they live in the vicinity of some facility NATO planners might have listed among their military targets or for some other reason, these people spend their nights with their relatives or friends in "safer" parts of the capital. In the morning, by rare city buses, they return dreading in what condition they will find their houses and apartments. There are no words to describe the look in the eyes of these people: both in the situation when everything is intact and when treading on broken glass of their shattered windows they unlock the doors and face the scattered furniture, knocked out door and window-frames, and a very fine dust on everything in the apartment.

In morning hours, in the streets, market places, cafes and similar places, there are much fewer people than before the beginning of NATO intervetion. These people also look different: they are less in a hurry, silent, more introvert. And with obvious traces of a lack of sleep. When they go out of their homes, many people visit places hit by bombing in the previous night. They stand there for some time, watch, smoke, estimate and comment on the damage. Acquaintances retell the developments of the previous night, interrupting each other, exchanging memories and impressions linked to the destroyed facility. Then they go on: to their work, in search for cigarettes, shopping...

The struck places are mentioned many times during the morning. Eye-witnesses tell their colleagues from work what the remains of the building are like, whether the ruins are cleared up by members of the army or the police, explaining where it is exactly, drawing sketches... And then, gradually, it is forgotten. They turn to everyday life in the war: information on coupons for fuel and gas stations where it can be bought, on places where cigarettes can be bought, on lists of those who might be sent on forced leave.

Depending on their own indivisual priorities, people soon set out to do what is most important for them. Ones, having learnt where cigarettes can be bought will hurry to the end of a fifty-metre long queue. "It is no problem for me having to wait for an hour", says an experienced veteran of queueing, "but the problem is that I smoke half a package before my turn comes to buy my two packages of 'Morava'". Others will try to get hold of some fuel, renew their supply of candles, reach the final decision to buy a gas-stove. In marketplaces, people roam around stands with vegetables and spring fruit, winking and giving signals to certain vendors, asking whether, along with lettuce and chalotte, they might have a package of Lucky Strike or LM cigarettes to sell. The more cautious ones do not buy any fruit or vegetables fearing pollution or radiation. Hardly anything can be heard from official sources on this topic.

There is another thing they will not miss doing. They will take the children out to fresh air. Aware or not of everything that is happening around them, boys and girls, like the ones in New Belgrade, play with their balls or dolls, but also "shooting down the invisible F-17". Mixing water in all sorts of glass vessels, one of these mornings in Belgrade, to a question what they were doing, a group of children answered that they were making "a secret weapon which will blow away NATO".

In the meantime, the city is gradually becoming wide awake. As the time goes on, the city reaches the rhythm of something that should resemble its normal life. But nobody has any illusion: after the morning which like every other in the past two months brings relief, another NATO night follows.

Spomenka Lazic

(AIM)