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| Apartment Building |
BELGRADE, SERBIA The buildings are blackened, broken down, and filthy; laundry hangs off balconies; streets are strewn with cigarrette butts and other trash; people are dressed in soviet era hand-me-downs; a sweet but grimy seven year-old holds out her cap asking for money. I feel sorry for her and look around to see where her adult handler might be hiding. A seedy sinisterness hangs in the air. I'm not feeling safe.
"Aren't you a little scared," A young man asks, recognzing my American accent, as I'm about to check into the nearest hotel.
"Uh?"
"It's been just eleven years since you bombed them."
"Where are you from?"
"Norway."
"Wasn't that a NATO operation and isn't Norway a part of NATO?"
"Yes, but that's not how they see it."
A sign over the military museum reads: "65 Years of Victory over Fascism." They think they've been victorious? All those years under communist rule, the legacy of which you can see in the squalor of those grimy concrete block apartment buildings, the disfunctional transportation system, the bureaucratic passport controls, and the stolid gloom and lack of enterprise. They've experimented with democracy and the free enterprise system; they chose the genocidal Slobodan Milosevic. I don't know where this country is headed, but it's certain, it's too soon for them to claim victory.
