The explosion was deafening. I was lying in bed, watching TV. I got up before I heard the next whizzing, opened the windows, and put the blinds down. Such are the rules for these events.

The second explosion was much stronger. The whole building— a solid three-story building— trembled as if it would collapse at any second.

I continued watching a film on TV.

The bombs fell only a few hundred meters away from our house, at the corner of Vardarska and Maksim Gorki Street. A 20 year-old girl was killed. She was buried in her wedding dress two days later.

It was the 36^th night of bombardment in Belgrade. It was not 1984. We were not waging war against Oceania and Eurasia.

We had simply gotten used to it.

Any dramatic event, of course, immediately becomes a story, and telling that story makes the event more and more unreal and absurd. The next day, I told everyone that bombs had crashed almost into the inner courtyard of our house. I notice that, like other Belgrade "narrators,” I am putting a peculiar undertone into the telling, as if I had something to do with making something so dramatic happen to me.

Later, I meet Milorad Belancic, who lives in the same area. Bombs really did fall right into the courtyard of his house. He also knows something more, a fact that I did not know. Those bombs did not go off. Had they done so, none of us would be there now. We proceed to develop, jointly, a theory of "shortened" determinism, linking our lives with the finger of the pilot who pressed the button. We conclude that our lives are worth less than that button in the cock-pit of that jet airplane.

My godfather has a story of his own. He had come home very late. His wife began saying that things could not go on like this anymore. He replied, “Let's not discuss that now.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I want to talk about this right now.”

In the same moment that she uttered her energetic "now,” three bombs slammed into the Chinese embassy, right across the street from their apartment. They flung themselves on the floor and did not continue the conversation.

But like my story, their story also had a rival-- the tale told by their next-door neighbor. When he heard those three explosions, he ran out into the street to see if his new car, which was parked in front of the Chinese embassy, was damaged. Seeing that it was not destroyed, the man thought coolly and rapidly. He decided to drive his car to a safer location—the parking lot in front of the hotel "Yugoslavia.” He arrived just in time to see bombs hit that hotel too.