BELGRADE, APRIL 22, 1999 -- I just heard from my wife, Natasha, on the phone. Today is another 24-hour shift for her at the hospital. Belgrade's hospitals are in a much better situation than many of the hospitals in smaller cities, which are jammed with casualties and Kosovo refugees. In fact, at her hospital, there are less patients than usual. Only the most serious cases have remained; all the other patients have gone home.

All of Belgrade's major hospitals have received nearby hits, while one of the largest ones in the suburb of Banjica) was itself targeted -- though not with a cruise missile, or the damage would have been much more severe. Aside from a part of one wing that was hit directly, most of the damage there was caused by the resulting fire. Natasha's hospital was only a few hundred yards from a hit two weeks ago, but that caused only minor damage, aside from the obvious shock to the patients.

Today is a nice spring day, with a fast succession of sun and light showers. Natasha tells me that some of the staff on call, who are not directly needed, have been taking the time to help the hospital's gardeners mow the lawns and plant flowers. In times like these, flowers -- and, in fact, anything of beauty -- are so much more appreciated by everyone. Even more than in normal times, making something grow is an excellent way to relieve stress. Stress is one of our big problems, now that the bombings have been going on for a whole month.

An even bigger problem is boredom. There is a famous Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times!" We certainly have been living in interesting times, so every one of us can truly appreciate the subtle nuances behind this curse. It is never boring here. Each night dozens of cities are targeted; each night a bridge is destroyed, or a couple of factories. Each week the destructive power of one Hiroshima bomb falls on Yugoslavia -- a country that is about the size of Maine -- and we are now starting week number five. The number of civilian casualties is at least 1,000, though it could be much higher than that -- often there is no time to get to the people buried under the rubble before a new "smart" missile targets the same exact spot.

In this spirit, a factory in a suburb of Valjevo, a sleepy old city of 50,000, has been hit three nights running with 37 cruise missiles. In the vicinity there is a hospital, a school, and a large residential area -- all the surrounding buildings have sustained damage. The hospital has been in flames for two days running. I have two friends who live there with their families, whose apartments are within 300 yards of the factory. For them, this has been a month spent buried under the ground in air-raid shelters. No, it is not boring to live in Yugoslavia, yet boredom is one of the most serious ailments. How can this be?

To you, the names of these cities, towns, and bridges connote nothing -- these are just exotic places filled with people you haven't met, people that you don't know at a personal level. Even the most caring person starts feeling a certain mental overload from so many things happening, so many pictures and no concrete person to attach them to. Suffering, when it is abstract, may be interesting, in a weird, ghoulish way, yet after a while it all just seems to be repeating itself, going on and on. The mind's defense mechanisms get activated, and you turn off. As the media knows all too well, disasters, catastrophes, and death make for increased ratings, yet they can't remain in the forefront of the news for too long a time, or the audience becomes bored and tunes out.

Yet to me, to all of us here, all these places carry distinct memories (yes, I am an old Beatles fan). The places are not filled with nameless thousands, but with individuals we care for, with our friends and family, so how can all this be boring? It is boring because a routine sets in -- again, one of the mind's defense mechanisms at work. The bombs fall, the adrenaline is pumping, you battle the fear. You wake up, the sun is shining, your family is OK. You go to work, or to the supermarket to stock up on non-perishable food and mineral water. You call your friends and loved ones to see if they are all right. Most days you find that, like you, they have survived. You thank God. Night comes, and with it the sirens. Some go into shelters, others remain in their homes. The bombs fall, and the whole vicious cycle repeats itself, day in and day out. Is it Sunday, Monday, Wednesday ... ? It becomes hard to tell the difference. As in a horror movie with vampires, the only thing you are aware of is whether it's day or night.

The fifth week of bombings -- that is my measure of time. At the beginning, you count the days; then you start thinking of weeks. Soon time will slow down even further and we will talk of months, maybe even years. All this time needs to be filled with some activity, something to take away the boredom, something to keep the fear at bay. Stores selling all sorts of games are raking it in. Going to work, being on call -- these things are a great help, as are the endless concerts, theater productions, and happenings. You get to read more than ever before; you rent videos by the hundreds. Still, the days are longer than ever. I read a high-school kid's poem recently that sums it all up:

We work during the day, at night we do not sleep.
We are the most awake people in the world.
There is no time for dreams.

For me, it is almost impossible to concentrate on my physics research. So we talk, more than ever before. I spent a 16-hour stretch at the Institute of Physics with a friend of mine a few days ago. We just had to mind some of the experiments and equipment, and be there in case a fire started from a nearby bombing. Needless to say, the experimentalists weren't too happy about having a couple of theoreticians minding their equipment. We planned on finishing up a paper of ours and sending it out for publication. We did do some work, but most of the time we just talked -- not about war, mostly about our various experiences in the U.S. My experiences mostly centered in New York and New England, while my friend lived and went to grad school in the midwest, a totally different, much less sophisticated part of the world. We talked of chess and of Icelandic sagas. The 16 hours passed very rapidly.

If my family and I survive this, if my close friends survive, these kind of moments will have a central place in my memories of this aggression. I'll remember the most beautiful spring in memory, and the faces of ordinary people giving their all to keep the beast of fear and hate at bay. No amount of force can wrench a person's dignity from him -- not unless he lets it.

This war is not about felled bridges, burning skyscrapers, "smart" bombs, or childish politicians who ducked their draft or failed History 101. It is about people -- the refugees in the forests, the people in the cellars, even the pilots in the sky -- all of them struggling with their dignity, all of them united by fear.

-- Alex