Exit through the cuckoo’s nest²⁰²⁴

As a teenager in 1990s Belgrade, life felt like being in a kind of limbo, in a country ruled by incompetent idiots and crippled by sanctions and wars. When the blue envelope arrived that sent me to the Kosovo war, all I knew was that I would never shoot. But I had to get on the train to become a soldier, which I never wanted to be. On the train around me were young people like me, in their early twenties: provincials, mechanics, young fathers, failed students, unemployed hairdressers and others with unfulfilled lives. 'Here's the gun. "Now go and kill!" they were told. Many of my comrades died, some of them took their own lives afterwards. I was lucky that I always refused to shoot, but I ended up in military prison. After I became a translator, I suffered a breakdown and deliberately pretended to be mentally ill in order to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. After months of pretending, I was finally released and was able to return home on the very day NATO started bombing my entire country.