Fragments about War (III)
by Mihajlo Pantic
Vreme, Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, June 12 1999
Sometimes it seems to me that, outside the story about geopolitics, state of the civilization, and struggle of interests, the Serb misunderstanding with the world stems from the difference of our image of ourselves and our image in the eyes of the rest of the world. Serbs, as an ancient European nation with long history, tradition of culture and very strong mythical consciousness about belonging to a collective, see themselves as a large community and behave appropriately. Our myth is large enough for 100 million inhabitants, and there are only ten million of us. To others, our behavior stemming from that discrepancy is, to say the least, unusual and produces a series of prejudices which later turn into stereotypes. The way in which we today try to explain ourselves to the rest of the world is, unfortunately, highly ideological, deficient both professionally and in the media sphere, anachronistic, highly uncommunicative (unintelligible to the rest of the world which, objectively, does not want to hear our point of view), and highly resembles propaganda. Furthermore, western media are demonizing Serbs and the misunderstanding becomes hopelessly deep. War only deepens that chasm. Because of that I wonder whether we will be willing and know how to transform the experience of this Calvary once it ends, and it certainly will one day, into energy for a new beginning in politics, economics, and culture, or whether we shall continue to live submerged in old illusions. Serbs have never so far learnt that historical lesson. So far, here, myth has always been stronger than reality. I wish that, this time, we have finally realized that, since the price with which we are paying for the old lesson is bloody and too high. But I would be lying if I said I was confident that that would happen.I know that this essay will definitely be spoiled by my personal story (the story that will never be turned into fiction, a true story) but I simply do not know how to do it differently. My wife Jelena works as a junior editor for the state TV. On one evening, good God loved my wife. By chance, that evening the Alliance, taking Serb TV for a military target, which is an ingenious innovation in the history of war, targeted the building in which Jelena was correcting full-stops and commas in the news about the war.
She went to work at about 8p.m. She was working the night shift, and I stayed at home with the boys. After the usual routine (dinner, watching a movie, reading, phone conversations), I went to sleep with an unpleasant, indeterminate premonition. I managed to dispel that premonition just before falling asleep, finding an excuse for it in my weariness...
I woke up and looked at the clock. It was 2a.m. sharp. I got up, covered the boys and went to the bathroom. Then I returned to the bed. I couldn't fall asleep. Outside, in the streets, the complete silence reigned. Thus, staring into the dark, I waited for a strong explosion. Like a witch, I waited for it, exactly that one, no other. It shook the window blinds and blew windows open. One window pane popped out of its frame and fell on the floor with a loud crash.
"That was a big one," said Bogdan, my younger son.
"Yes, it was, son. Go back to sleep."
What else could have I said? I thought that they hit a bridge or the Federal Government building, several hundreds of meters away from our apartment. The explosion was really horrendous. I was fooling myself, just to avoid thinking about what I already sensed. I turned on the radio. For more than 30 minutes, the local radio station Studio B had nothing about the explosion. Then, the phone rang. A male voice, coming from afar, with effort broke through the crackling noise and shouted in panic: "Please, wait for a moment".
I waited.
"Mihajlo," said Jelena after a long, excruciating brake. It seemed as if she was trying to recall something. "They hit the television. I am fine, I'll be home as soon as I can".
Silence. I hung up. I was peaceful as if someone had just told me ordinary news. A room is a room, the blanket is still warm and under it my son Bogdan was breathing calmly. In the next room, my son Djordje slept. When he called me, I went to give him a kiss.
"What did they say?"
"Nothing. Mother called. She said she was fine and that she was coming home soon."
"They hit the television?"
"Yes, they did."
Streets were suddenly noisy. Fire truck sirens were howling. Then, the phone rang again, and that sound reminded me of the sound of the breaking of glass, somewhere far, far away. My buddy Sasa was calling to let me know that he had seen Jelena on TV. I turned the TV on and watched, petrified, images of a ruin that was still smoking, feeling my heart racing. Creepy. I shall never comprehend the need of some people to rush to such places, out of some demented necessity or necrophiliac curiosity, who knows...
Jelena came home at 4:30a.m. She was peaceful. At first she could not remember how she had made it out to the street. Then she took a shower. I felt nothing. All that, in those early hours, was happening to someone else. Jelena lay on the bed to get some rest. She could not fall asleep. Then, fear, pure concentrated fear arrived. It came from my innards and overpowered my body. I was shaking. On the pillow (it was already dawn) her hair smelled of gun powder.
"I'm going to wash my hair," she said.
And with that simple sentence, our new life began.
...The rocket hit some ten meters away from her office. It dislocated and destroyed a whole wing of the old building. The missile was not incendiary but only destructive. What cynicism. If it was the other way round, in a fire and smoke (fire exits were blocked, obviously because of someone's irresponsibility and carelessness), many more people would have died... All the wounded and killed were from the technical support, security, and support services...
We were quiet. Then the phone rang and it did not stop until the end of that day. It was ringing literally every second, as if it were crazy of broken: only then, unintentionally, we found out how many friends, acquaintances and relatives we really had.
On that and several following days I only felt some quiet, throbbing, great happiness of pure existence.
And now, after all of that, I feel weariness that could be a step in the right direction, since the bombardment so far has been so senseless that it cannot go on like this, unless they have decided to bomb us until the end of the world. And what after that, when we are all bombed out? Stone age, said a high official of NATO. A comforting reply. In reality the intensity of the war is not decreasing, although I feel that time slowly passes by. And then I realize that there is no politics: this could have been invented only by an absolutely sick global Mind, a metastasis of that Mind at the end of a technological civilization gone berserk, because everything else is a collection of small, now almost meaningless stories; to me the story that the Western Alliance is not actually bombing the people of Yugoslavia (as if the hundreds of dead died suddenly, from a heart attack) but that they are introducing democracy and helping us to integrate in Europe seems especially grotesque. For me Europe is Leonardo Da Vinci rather than a group of demented political technocrats who only know how to increase the amount of misery in the Balkans. Until the whole world is bathing in blood. It is the blackest sort of cynicism to talk about "collateral damage". A three-year-old girl dying in her bathroom hit by shrapnel from a guided missile is an angel, not "collateral damage".
Translated on October 7 1999
