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RAT Belgrade Diary (long)
Folks, this is the diary of a feminist living in Belgrade. I feel it
important enough to send to all of you. It's from today's Philadelphia
Inqirer.
--brad
May 14, 1999
Belgrade Diary / Jasmina Tesanovic
Like a battered woman, feeling loved when
the bombs don't hit
A feminist writer realizes just how bad life
in Belgrade is, that right or wrong, Serbs there bear the collective
guilt.
Jasmina Tesanovic is a feminist Serb writer
living in Belgrade. These are excerpts from her continuing diary.
Saturday, May 8
My friend's house is opposite to Hotel
Yugoslavia, next to the Chinese embassy: both hit last night. Her windows
fell out,
and pieces of bomb entered her room. I phoned
her immediately after I heard what was the target; she is in computer
business. She asked me: Do you know the name
for the windows in Belgrade - broken windows, windows with
criss-crossed scotch tape? WINDOWS 99. . . .
People here are developing sense of humor to fight back NATO. A graffiti:
'Clinton, give in, we are completely screwed
up. . . .'
Again without electricity, but as I thought,
this time it is much easier. No philosophical despair of the dark, just
concrete
problems with already worked-out strategies: to
find good candles, tame spoiled children, avoid colds. . . . Clinton said he
was keeping his finger on electricity button of
Serbia. I must admit I liked his nonchalant style in Lewinski affair. But
now
I see it differently: He is simply rude, more
rude than guilty.
And today is the anniversary of the famous
funeral of Tito; I dreamt of Tito last night whom I used to consider my
grandfather when I was a kid. And I dreamt of
my dead aunt who during the hyperinflation in '93, being a professor in
pension, could only buy few dozens apples and
bread with her monthly check. Two different life stories divided only by
few years of cosmos time: in my dream, in my
virtual reality, I was calling for justice and an explanation. . . .
Sunday, May 9
Today is Sunday, why? I slept 13 hours because
there were no bombs, tonight I am sure many will fall. I feel like a
battered woman: expecting violence and feeling
loved when the hit misses me.
I gave an interview to an Italian TV last
night: news on life in Belgrade. Whilst I was talking I realized how
terrible our life
is and how actually we have become symbols of
bad guys leading a bad life: Others can sympathize or condemn us, but the
mirror is clear, we are the bearers of the
collective guilt. Now I am sure that if it doesn't exist inside us, as it
shouldn't, it
surely exists outside us, as a wall. Today I am
afraid of bombs more than ever because I realized that nobody knows or
cares that we are bombed every day with many
mistakes after which a sincere sorry follows. . . . My legs are trembling
and I dare not stay alone: I begin to hate . .
. Intensively . . . Foreign languages . . . Words . . . Gestures . . . When
you
cross the line of reparable damage. . . . A big
blast in this moment tells me it is so . . .
And again, as we sat on the terrace, we
political idiots from the same trench, we drank wine, smoked very bad and
expensive cigarettes and fantasized about our
future: Since we have none, we are free to be all we want in our dreams. I
never had such wild ambitions, dreams, joys as
these nights on the terrace: I even offered myself to lead this country out
of
war if my refugee friend from Krajina accepts
to be the minister for finance, and my best friend from Women's Center, the
minister of police. . . . But actually, if I
survive these bombs getting closer by mistake to my life which is the true
mistake,
I will be a fisherwoman on a desert Greek
island: I will catch the fish, look it in its eyes and throw it back into
water, until
I catch a true mermaid who will take me back to
my primordial home and, deep deep down into the sea. . . .
And let me too say something about the Chinese
embassy hit by mistake: Of course it is big, gross, incompetent mistake,
normal in a dirty or clean war, war it is. . .
. But so much noise about nothing: and where are the others, killed whilst
sleeping in their beds, buying food on the
green market with last dime . . . drinking wine on the terrace looking at
the
starry sky above. . . . Those people are not
Chinese, those people are not refugees, they are not even Serbs anymore as
they used to be: The word has been too much
used and abused. They are not permitted to be. As Wole Soyinka said: The
Man has Died, is Dead. . . .
P.S. Big dilemmas going on here: Shall we pay
the bills or not? When I feel good I think we should, but when I am down,
obviously I think not. No rational or moral
arguments come up as they used to, once when we were alive.
Monday, May 10
First night without alarm, silent and dark: the
underground station was full of people, as at the beginning of the war.
Yesterday, in the middle of the day an
unexploded bomb burst unexpectedly in the center of Belgrade: nobody was
killed,
per chance, the weather was rainy, lazy Sunday
afternoon. . . . I tried to get an Italian visa, to have an exit plan, in
case I
go crazy and start doing strange things: Yes
that is my fear, that I will lose my nerves and become somebody else: a
killer,
a cat . . . a zombie. . . . After days of long
and complicated negotiations, with generous help from my Italian friend, the
department for visas in Italian embassy was
hit: My papers are lost, as other shattered hopes. . . . Always too late, my
usual script: I am going crazy after all. . . .
I was driving the car, I haven't done it for over a month now, I turned on
the
radio. Some old nostalgic music was playing:
"April in Belgrade," "Green, green eyes of yours" . . . and all of a sudden
I
got a fit of sobs: I had to pull over because
my eyesight was blurred with tears and I was crying out loud as if in
physical
pain. I said to myself, you are a reasonable
person, you must control yourself and know what is going on in your head.
You never liked that music, you never liked to
drive a car. . . . Yes, but what I loved was a life I lost forever: and
part of it
was the luxury of not loving sentimental music
and driving a big car. . . . It was a feeling of a terrible loss, as if my
life
was killed by accident, and somebody else has
stepped in my place, in my skin, to live this new life. . . .
Tuesday, May 11
A young thin girl of 15 was passing me by on
the street. She seemed very self-conscious and shy: the tortures of
adolescence. I looked at her longer than I
should because I thought of my daughter and myself at that age. . . . At
that
moment a big explosion shook the ground. In a
second she became somebody else, a baby and an old woman; her gestures
changed; from a beautiful urban girl, she
turned into a frightened animal. She took her hands to her throat, as if
somebody
was choking her, then to her heart, as a Greek
fortune-teller, and then she fainted, turning back to an urban princess,
Snow-white . . . Young girls . . .
Today our children got their grades, officially
no more school, mostly they are pardoned. . . . My daughter carries the
burden of my family history, which is not
light-hearted, it is full of deaths, wars, heroes and losses. . . .
Wednesday, May 12
I am running through the city like crazy,
collecting papers, documents which prove that I am myself, doing things I am
doing, as well as members of my family . . . so
we can get a visa. . . . In the meantime I hear, the border with Hungary
was hit last night, a bridge, that Hungarian
customs officers are searching people with guns and asking for bribes,
depends
how they feel that day, and of course, to get
out of the country, if you are a man you need a special permission. And the
alarm, all the time on, night and day, and
detonations. . . . Why am I doing this, in order to do something I guess,
to fake
normality, which at this point is not possible
to invent. . . . I don't even want to leave, I should go here and there, to
a
Congress, to buy medicines, to see the world,
as somebody put it. . . .I hear on all news that last night was with
heaviest
bombardments yet in Yugoslavia, and that they
will increase: All news are finally on the same line, national and
international, I think even our Chinese
channel, on our president's daughter TV, even though I haven't learned
Chinese
yet. NATO wants to break down the regime: The
regime wants to break the New Order and NATO. And we people of
Kosovo and Serbia are not only hostages but
bodyguards, of who gets us first. Not that I don't have an opinion, a vote,
but both sides expect me to break physically
the other, with bare hands and my sheer life. . . .I don't think anybody
deserves to be hit by a bomb to become better.
. . .
Thursday, May 13th
Besides lack of cigarettes producing
interminable queues swirling like snakes round the buildings, corners,
parks,
everywhere they sell them, now we lack
detergent for washing machines. Actually you can find it on the black
market,
doubled the price, as well as cigarettes. . . .
I was wondering last night, how does my diary sound: as an underground
diary, as a diary of the Mother of Anne Frank.
I am actually leading a dangerous life, that is why my diary is interesting
for
people who are aware of the danger more than
me, but used less to it than me. Because my life is just a simple, boring
life
to me, complicated, dangerous, I don't know or
care: I want it to change, as I used to even before the war. . . . My
neighbor, refugee from Knin, a Serb who left
with other 500,000 Serbs under the Croat bombs, with only $100 in his
pocket, said last night as we were listening to
the NATO planes above our heads: "The Third World War, that is what is
going to happen and save us, the interest will
shift. Anyway it has nothing to do with us, it is USA, Russia and China who
are fighting. . . ." His wife looked up at me,
frightened: "I hope the Third World War doesn't happen."
She always contradicts him and is right, but he
is the one who dares, who has visions, always wrong. . . . I wonder, is it
also with other men in power, men who are
ethnically cleansing, bombing, punishing . . . but have nobody to contradict
them, stop them . . . ?