Svetlana Raznatovic, better known by the diminutive "Ceca", wore a tailored white trouser suit, glittering earrings, a diamond crucifix and a black and white bullseye marked "Target?" on her chest.
Nearly every man, woman and child in the throng of 7,000 at the open-air concert in Republic Square wore the same "target" graphic stuck to their clothing. Six days into the war, the bullseye symbolises the Serbs' fear that frustrated NATO generals will mount indiscriminate attacks against civilians - while at the same time it defies the generals to do so. By organising free daily concerts, Belgrade city authorities want to boost morale and send Serbia's enemies the message that their people are brave enough to stand together, outside, through rain and air raid warnings.
"I know a town, its name is Belgrade," Ceca chortled into the microphone, pacing the stage and tossing back her long, brown hair. The crowd cheered and sang along with Ceca's throaty voice, swaying to the music and waving their thumb and first two fingers in the Serb salute. Burly, blue-uniformed toughs from her husband's Tigers militia maintained a loose cordon around the singer.
"I know a man who lives there, but he lies," she continued. A certain Belgrade liar came to mind, but perhaps he wasn't the one alluded to by Mrs Raznatovic's song writers . . . "Once I kissed your lips that tasted of poison. I did it just once and you betrayed me . . ."
Belgrade, lies, love, betrayal and poison. Ceca's pop song tells more about Serbia's war culture than a dozen learned theses.
So does her story. For Ceca, an attractive young woman in her mid-20s, is the third wife of Zelko Raznatovic, better known as Arkan, the Serb politician, football club owner and militia leader who has been singled out by the British Defence Secretary as "an obnoxious thug".
Arkan's Tigers "ethnically cleansed" large sections of Croatia and Bosnia in previous wars, and NATO fears they will soon be dispatched to Kosovo. But when Serb television tracked the couple down in a Belgrade restaurant on Sunday night, Arkan said he would only fight in Kosovo if he were given a chance to kill British soldiers.
Yesterday's three-hour concert brought together Serbs of all ages and description, but it was Arkan's boys, with their yellow and white Tigers flag, shaved heads and boisterous beer drinking, who made the deepest impression. Young men like these went on a rampage down Knez Mihailova Street the previous day, smashing the windows of the French and American cultural centres and the Air France office. They daubed the walls with crude drawings of sexual organs and graffiti about President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
Some of the placards at the concert were more subtle. "Sorry, we didn't know it was invisible," a slogan mocking the US for losing a Stealth fighter said. "I am not Monica Lewinsky," said another. Young people atop the equestrian statue of the 19th century Serb ruler Prince Mihailo Obrenovic waved burning American and German flags. But will the flag supply last until the war ends? Serbs pride themselves on their black sense of humour.
"What will happen to the White House?" said another banner at Ceca's concert. Maritonca, a popular, Monthy Python-style television programme, always begins with the question, "What will happen to the house?" The answer, invariably, is: "I'll burn it down."
Another joke mocks Serbia's first family. Marko Milosevic, the son of the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, is building a "Bambi-land" theme park in the President's home town of Pozarevac.
While Marko was building Bambi-land, the story goes, his father was preparing Bomb-land.
The NATO assault has also aggravated a Serb penchant for superstition. One young woman who dislikes President Milosevic listened silently in the air raid shelter while a neighbour - who supports the Serb leader - read out the prophecies of Deda (Grandad) Miloje, a perhaps mythical Orthodox prophet, from the pages of the newspaper Ekspres Politika. Miloje is a sort of Yugoslav Nostradamus, and his books portray President Clinton as the antiChrist, Mr Milosevic as the saviour of Serbia. This seer is said to have been born in 1914 and is destined to die at the beginning of the third World War. The Russian politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has said that NATO's war on Yugoslavia is the beginning of the third World War, and some Serbs fear he could be right.
Signs at the Republic Square concerts bear the Serb symbol, a cross with the cyrillic letter for "s" in each quadrant. It means: "Only unity saves the Serbs." Yet the accordion music and patriotic folk songs about the 1369 Battle of Kosovo cannot mask deep divisions between monarchists and former Communists, between Milosevic supporters and his more educated, city-dwelling opposition, between the police - who under the orders of the interior ministry have done most of the "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo - and the army.
IN THE old days before the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the army were an honoured elite, but their privileges have evaporated under Mr Milosevic, who promoted the police instead. Many high-ranking army officers are said to blame Mr Milosevic for getting Yugoslavia into the war with NATO.
In their opinion, it was his duty to resolve the Kosovo problem - whether by harsher or more lenient methods - and he failed to do so.
A similar divide runs through much of the Serb and Yugoslav governments. The Serb government is composed of hardliners determined to keep Kosovo at all costs. The federal government, which includes tiny Montenegro as well as Serbia, is marginally more open towards the world. The continuing battle of the information ministers - in which the Serb information minister wants to expel foreign journalists and the Yugoslav information minister wants to let them cover the war - is a classic example.
In a telling moment a few days ago, the Yugoslav information minister told a press conference that he was not allowed to divulge casualty figures, nor did he have the authority to authorise television feeds by foreign networks.
The Serb information minister has shut down virtually all of the independent media in recent months, and the Serb offensive in Kosovo is totally absent from the controlled information received by the average Yugoslav. Since the war began on March 24th, Serb media have not once mentioned ethnic Albanian refugees - now believed to number more than half a million. At most, the offensive by Serb interior ministry police and troops in Kosovo is vaguely alluded to as "antiterrorist operations".
"This is a very dirty war," a young Yugoslav military officer admitted to me. "We are not allowed to tell the truth." In the circumstances, he said, it was better to say nothing than to lie.
The citizens of Yugoslavia must have been surprised to hear a Russian government minister claim yesterday that the war has already taken the lives of more than 1,000 Yugoslav civilians.
Only 24 hours earlier, the Yugoslav deputy Prime Minister, Mr Vuk Draskovic, estimated that "about 100" civilians had been killed.
Not one name of a war victim has been released, and when Gen Spasoje Smiljanic, the commander of Yugoslavia's air defence network, gave the military's first official press briefing yesterday, he said that seven soldiers had been killed and 17 others wounded in six days of war - lower than the figure of 10 killed and 38 wounded, which was broadcast on the second day.
The government has been surprisingly frank in admitting that NATO is striking mainly military targets, although Gen Smiljanic said targets have shifted to industrial facilities, schools, hospitals and refugee camps in the past two days. His presentation mimicked NATO and Pentagon performances, down to the map projected on a screen showing "the US and their satellites".
Had the US and the former Soviet Union ever gone to war, briefings in Moscow might have sounded like this (until the first nuclear blast). The general accused "the US imperialists" of attacking Yugoslavia to extend America's sphere of influence eastward. He then catalogued the NATO forces arrayed against Yugoslavia, without providing any details about Yugoslav forces. The General's brief allusion to the F-117A Nighthawk his men shot down conveyed the Serb propensity for poetry and wounded feelings.
The aircraft had, he said, "flown from New Mexico to rest on our Serbian territory, never to fly again. It is a pity. Because if it had come as a friend, it would still be flying."