Prologue

SERBIA IN A HANDY MIRROR
Between Tragedy and Circus

”Circus is an acute form of disguising pain.”
This sentence of great director Andrei Konchalovsky, brother of Nikita Mihalkov, often comes to mind. Sometimes we hang on to it, like to a straw, otherwise we would drown. Maybe, one day, this sentence will be the only thing we can use to justify ourselves before our offspring and forefathers. Before those who will be settling our bills. Justify for what? For indifference, which is only a sugar coated name for cowardice and mercilessness. For all the frivolity, accepting terrible humiliations, for being silent while people like those babbled about things of life and death in our name. For pretending not to see and not to understand what it really means.
And what else could we tell them? What were we (me and you) doing while Jarinje and Brnjak were burning, while the final operation of snatching Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia was conducted, while the ”last migration of Serbs” was being initiated through synchronized attack of ”international forces” and criminal groups, while the central government in Belgrade appeared as a non-governmental organization, and municipal council in Kosovska Mitrovica showed much more maturity and governmental responsibility?
What were we doing, man?
Watching water pool? Discussing the fans of ”Partizan”? Thinking whether two no-names would have sex in a reality show? Laugh at interviewed Americans who thought that Libya is a hip-hop bank and mysteriously impregnated singer? Listened to ”pro-Serbian president” of out country? Fought battles to ensure that sex change surgeries would be financed by the state budget of impoverished Serbia? Peeped through someone’s keyhole at the cover page of a magazine? Apparently disgusted by this entire bloody circus in which we apparently do not take part?
Andrei Konchalovsky offered a life-saving interpretation, at least a temporary one:
”Circus is an acute form of disguising pain.”
And once the cards are dealt differently and all this pain once explode, all these issues will still be here, indivertible. Waiting both for us and those other people.