Serendipity strikes. Darkness has just fallen here in the Balkans so NATO air raids are hours if not minutes away. I’ve been put on assignment again for the next week. So an opportunity to be useful and get back into the paper has landed in my lap. Since all the hotels are full I have rented out an apartment for the month.

I suppose that in writing this letter I should inject some solemn tone, some introspective comments about the eve of war and so on. But of course for me it has already been five weeks of war in Kosovo.

(The NATO air campaign began that evening with strikes on Pristina, Belgrade, and other points throughout Yugoslavia.)