REWIRED March 27, 1999
Living in Bombland: A Serbian Diary
by Vladislava Gordic <insomnia at EUnet.yu>
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Vladislava Gordic is an assistant professor of American and English Literature at the University of Novi Sad. We met in Ljubljana nearly two years ago, poking around for literary resources on the Web. We'll be updating Rewired with her diary entries as they come in. /dwh
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Living in Bombland
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 06:21:43
I'm writing this as the morning breaks; the third night of NATO aggression over Serbia is over. The restless night, which I mainly spent in ups and downs -- running down to the shelter, then every two hours up to my apartment, where the first thing I grab is not food or water but -- the keyboard of my computer... As long as we have electricity, as long as phone lines, my modem (which is quite an oldie) and my swollen tooth permit, I will keep on writing, taking this down. Taking this disaster down. Remembering a Kate Bush's song, which goes, "as people around me grow colder, I turn to my computer..."
What is to be said about the coldness of people? It is just that somebody with a big dick and a cold heart decided to become (luke)warm-hearted and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe by creating a greater one... It is just that somebody decided to turn this sanctionland in which I live into a bombland.
When they first threatened to bomb Serbia last September, people from Belgrade made a joke about how the city will become renamed -- it will be called BOMB-ay. That is precisely what happened on the night between Friday and Saturday -- Belgrade was bombed, the very heart of the city, blazing in flames, the poisonous gasses started leaking out of demolished factories on the outskirts of town.
Burn, baby, burn -- that's what probably was ringing in the ears of the aggressors. Children have been killed, Serbian medieval monasteries (which are under the protection of UNESCO) were hit yesterday, the university campus in Nish, a town in southern Serbia, has also been bombed. The bombs fell on the student dormitory; museums and schools have been shelled as well.
What a nice cluster of military targets. Burn, baby, burn.
I'll be back with you, as soon as i can. I'll try to rest for a while, to refresh myself before the next attack starts.
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Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 10:56:29
Bombland Revisited
The morning of March 27th, 11 am CET. We are here fearing the next emergency siren, which will take us into damp, uncomfortable shelters with no air conditioning and no furniture. I seem to be catching a cold to accompany my swollen tooth which is inoperable now. We are fearing further attacks, because CNN seems to take for granted rumours of ethnic Albanians killed in Kosovo. They obviously need a further excuse to bomb schools, petrol stations, picnic areas, factories.
CNN reporters lament on clouds which hampered harrier planes to be even more destructive. Shall we here, frustrated and traumatized civilians (soon to be poisoned, since they did their best to hit the chemical factories near Belgrade) confide only in bad weather to stop the NATO invasion?
I try to read, but I cannot. My father takes shelter in a book by Roald Dahl, called _Stories of the Unexpected_. The proper title, that is.
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Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 11:00:24
NATO bombed the Serbian medieval monastery Gracanica, which is under the protection of UNESCO.