In Europe

how to deflect cruise missiles from their course: a big sheet of cardboard or chipboard painted green, in the shape of a tank, with a hole in it. Behind the hole you lit an alcohol burner for the infrared, and even the smartest of warheads thought it was homing in on a tank. ‘It costs ten marks, and it will take out a missile that costs a million.’
    We walk past the big gleaming headquarters of the NIS, Miložsević's state oil company, close to the bridge. It had not been scratched. In Shanga, however, a Gypsy neighbourhood, we end up by the ruins of a hovel that did take a direct hit. The woman next door is willing to talk to us, and invites us in. Her name is Dragica Dimić, she's twenty-three, she has two children and her world consists of a leaky roof, a dark room that measures three metres by four, two brown, lice-ridden beds, a wood stove and a little flickering TV. She has nothing in the world but herself, her intelligence and her unconditional love for her children and her husband. The only bright things in the room are a loaf of white bread and her eyes.
    ‘It was last June,’ she says. ‘Late in the evening, we were standing outside talking to the neighbours across the fence. They'll probably come after the refinery again, we told each other. We heard the planes coming, there was a bright light. We went inside. Suddenly there was this sound: ssssss. We were thrown against the wall, everything shuddered and burst. More explosions. We threw ourselves on top of the children, covered them with our bodies. Then we raced out of the house, it was all dust and smoke. Our youngest son was covered in blood. Water was spraying out of the pipes, power lines were hissing and popping. We ran out into the field. I could hear my neighbour screaming in the distance. Their house had been hit, her husband was bleeding to death. I was so frightened, I thought: they're going to start shooting at us with machine guns, from the air. Our house was in ruins. That week, it rained the whole time. We built it back up more or less by ourselves.’
    We talk a little about her life, while the children nuzzle up to her. ‘Do you ever go out these days? To a wedding, or a name day, or something?’ žZelimir asks. ‘Sometimes I go out with my friends, to gather wood in the forest. Then we're gone for half the day. That's always a lot of fun.’ Her husband works on building sites, he earns just enough to buy a fewpotatoes, a couple of kilos of fat and a carton of cigarettes. ‘I'll tell you the truth: I like this life, as long as the war stops. I'm happy that my children and I can sleep together again, the way we used to, please write that down.’
    Ever since the early 1990s, a bus full of young people has left each night for Budapest: you save your hard-earned money for a ticket, you pack your bags and you go. After receiving their diplomas, students pick up their suitcases and walk straight to the bus. In a gallery along the street, beneath the words ‘We have left’, the wall is covered with passport pictures, thousands of them; politicians, journalists, professors, young people. All the stories of flight come down to the same thing: gather your wits, take a good look at the situation, save your money, buy a ticket, get out and then see what happens.
    In a survey taken in those years, the Serbs were asked what they would prefer: a secure job and a fixed salary for the next twenty years, or four times the salary with a fifty-fifty chance of losing their jobs. Ninety-five per cent of them chose job security. ‘Every family here has gone through terrible things,’ someone tells me. ‘At this point there's only one thing the people want: stability. They have learned from bitter experience that every change brings with it huge risks. I'll tell you this much: poor people don't want a revolution, all they want is security. That's the first law of poverty, but they don't know anything about that in the West.’
    Sarita's parents welcome me warmly to their home again. Father Matijević still believes whatever the Serbian television tells him. Our conversation always returns to talk of plots and spies. The Serbian war crimes never took place, and within an hour father and daughter are fighting like cats again. During the bombardments, Sarita's parents had worked together to build a new brick shed in the garden, they went on working no matter what, it was their way of making a stand.
    After dinner, Sarita takes me to the beauty