Wednesday, May 26th 1999

Bombs and Nightingales

    The warbling of the nightingales came through the window. The common nightingales, brown, red-tailed birds that keep to the bushes and include an endless "tee - tee - tee - tee" sequence into their songs.

    Somehow I was awake. I don't know why, but I remember I was rearranging my pillow under my head. Then two small detonations were heard. Silence. Is that silence? It is an endless "tee - tee - tee - tee" sound followed by a warble.

    KABOOM! The building I live in shook in the same manner it did yesterday, and two more times a week or two before. This time there was no sound of broken glass. The first two nights of nearby detonations have shattered them all. But I heard something that looked like gravel falling of the building.

    I grabbed my pillow under my left arm and my blanket under my right arm and I jumped into the hallway. I forgot to take my glasses from the table. I sat there on the floor. There seemed to be nothing I could do.

    My mother and my sister appeared from the other door. It seems my sister was watching television and my mother was clearly in the state of panic. We waited some time, and my mother had to drink several medications before she could go to sleep. I went to the living room and sat in the armchair, wrapped in my blanket and holding my pillow in my arms, looking like the Afgani woman with a baby. I tried to sleep sitting but I could not. The voices of the nightingales come out of the window. There seemed to be two nightingales. They alternated their songs. While one was making the "tee - tee - tee - tee" sound, another made a warble.

    Two more small detonations and then one large again. The window swung open. I went and closed it, leaving my pillow and blanket on the armchair. My mother was heavily sedated so she slept. My sister, who is a teenager, seems to be able to sleep through anything, once she forces herself to sleep. The last time she slept through the entire attack.

    The nightingales were not puzzled at all. They sang right through it. "Tee - tee - tee - boom - boom - tee - tee - tiu - tiu - KABOOM - tiu - tiu - tiu". After what seemed to be hours of sitting and thinking, I forced myself to go to the bed again. I put my left ear on the pillow but I could not sleep until dawn. I kept receiving the sound of repeated small detonations mixed with nightingale song. Then I realized it was the pounding of my heart.

Zeljko, 25 ecologist