They weren’t risking their lives, but they certainly were incurring enormous disadvantages to themselves.And then there was the handful of Muscovites who went into Red Square in August 1968 with placards, in protest against the invasion by Russia of Czechoslovakia They were promptly hauled off to jail. Their children were denied access to the University, they lost their apartments, and all because they signed a petition. They thought I was crazy.And I’d say, “Well, look at those people in Czechoslovakia.” I meant those people, mostly intellectuals and professionals, in Czechoslovakia, who signed those petitions in 1968 after the Russian invasion, every last one of whom lost their job and ended up being a street cleaner or a window cleaner. “No, can’t imagine it, can’t imagine risking my life for anything that wasn’t, you know, my mother being run over by a car, my child or something like that.” Not of risking your life out of a sense of moral duty, or out of a sense of solidarity with other people They didn’t actually get it, they didn’t understand.

It was an odd lesson to learn.When I was going to Bosnia and I would come back periodically to the States where I was working for Bosnian refugees, people would say, “Why are you doing this?” And what they meant was, “Why are you risking your life?” And I would say, “Can’t you imagine risking your life for anything?” Lots of people said no. And I know it might seem easy for me to say that, because I was a foreigner who could come and go. I had UN credentials, I could, with difficulty, get in and out on UN troop planes, and the people there were stuck. But I also heard them say the same thing, that it was sort of nice to be done with a whole lot of nonsense and just to live very simply. But absolutely nothing to buy, nothing to acquire, nothing to dispose of.

That actually felt quite good.I don’t want to make romance out of the siege, but there is something about being stripped-down that was extraordinary. The waste-basket stayed empty, and I thought how interesting it was to have this experience of feeling totally stripped-back, just having to stay alive, holding hands with people – there’s a lot of holding hands – huddling, and then doing very normal things as you dodge bullets while you cross the street. I wasn’t buying anything; there was nothing to read, no daily newspapers or magazines to throw out; there were no wrappings or packages. So in one metal waste-basket there would be water for a bit of token bathing, slapping on of a towel in various places, that is, when you dared to take your clothes off.

It was so cold – the same temperature indoors as out.And the other waste-basket was to be used for the normal purpose, and I realised that the waste-basket was always empty There was nothing to throw away. At every level you would see people continuing with their lives.In a room where I stayed, there were two metal waste-baskets, one of which I would fill with water which I would painstakingly procure (the pumps were, of course, very dangerous places to go to, because the Serbs were always firing at people in water lines). And any moment you could have your head blown off, and people were to your right and your left And yet there is an amazing continuity of behaviour. You cannot imagine the degree of deprivation that went on there.