A Serb housewife's vacuum cleaner breaks down, according to a war joke circulating in Belgrade. Her husband used to work at Sloboda, the factory that produced half of the appliances in Yugoslavia - and a few weapons on the side - until it was destroyed by NATO. "If you were a good husband, you would have stolen a spare part every day, and I'd have a new vacuum cleaner," the woman complains. "I did," the former factory worker protests, "but when I put them together, they made a machinegun."
A month after NATO attacked in an attempt to halt the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanian Kosovans, Serbs are resigning themselves to a long conflict. The circumstances of Serb civilians cannot be compared to the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Albanian refugees, but that is of little comfort to an ill-informed, ill-governed and increasingly helpless and hopeless population.
The lucky ones cope with a mixture of humour, ingenuity and sometimes blind patriotism.
NATO says it has now destroyed all of Serbia's oil refineries, and the motorists who wait for hours to buy petrol wonder how long they will be able to obtain even the present meagre rations. But another NATO target - tobacco - has also struck a blow to morale.
Until the war started, contraband cigarettes were readily available, thanks to President Slobodan Milosevic's son Marko and his rival smuggler, the President of Montenegro. The bombardment has stopped shipments, but Serbs continue to smoke foul-smelling Balkan tobacco everywhere and at all times, especially in closed rooms and buses. NATO bombed the cigarette factory at Nis for the second time on Monday night, so yesterday nervous smokers puffed away in long queues in the rain. Rumour says the military will soon requisition all remaining cigarettes.
Dragan Veselinov is a member of parliament and university lecturer in political economics. All schools, from day-care centres to universities, were shut down when the war started.
The country will continue to function at reduced levels, he predicts. "If you ration food and fuel, it can continue indefinitely. People can live on two potatoes a day and keep fighting. Remember Vietnam; remember the second World War. This regime has the power to control people."
Belgraders seem torn between the need to curse foreigners and a desire to enlist their sympathy. At a clothing store in Vasina Street, the shop assistant tells me how frightened she is living across the street from the headquarters of state-run Radio Televizija Srbije (RST), which NATO has repeatedly threatened to bomb.
"The cellar is cold and dirty," she says. "Some people bring chairs to sit on, but others stand up all night. I couldn't take it any more, so I stopped going." A chubby, red-faced woman in a cleaner's smock joins in. "When will this end?" she asks pleadingly.
It is a question I hear every day now, for many Serbs seem to think foreigners know the answer. "What have we done to deserve this?" the cleaning woman asks, and her voice breaks in a sob.
Some dream of escaping. Every morning, there is a queue in front of the Croatian embassy, one of many that were vandalised at the beginning of the war. A former banker and his wife, a teacher, would like to leave with their young daughter. It is not so much the bombing that terrifies them as the impoverishment and lack of freedom they see in the future.