"Will the world bomb the Serbs again?" asks Miroslav, a Serb out shopping for car parts at Kosovo Polje yesterday. "We are surrounded by Muslims and extremists, we are the ones in fear, yet they will attack us again. The whole world thinks the Serbs are always wrong."
No more than 20 km to the west, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) controls the roads now. The Serb crackdown on "Muslims and extremists" since early this year has swollen the ranks of the KLA. It has been further assisted by the international attention which has at least temporarily blunted the Serbian sweep through the Albanian-populated villages of Kosovo, which, the Serbs say, are KLA strongholds.
The current speculation is that once the present flurry of international interest wanes and the media move off, the Serbian efforts will be redoubled and the badly-armed KLA will be easily routed. However, Miroslav believes none of it.
"The KLA will take control unless they are stopped," he insists. "They want an independent Muslim country, yet when we defend ourselves Clinton sends in the planes and the bombs."
Kosovo Polje - in English, the Field of Blackbirds - is the most sacred site to Serbian nationalism. Now it is in a region populated almost entirely by Albanians and people such as Miroslav feel like frontiersmen. Here, in 1389, Serbian forces were routed by the Turks, thus, in Serbian eyes, starting centuries of Serbian subjection to Turkish Islamic hegemony.
Just nine years ago the site saw another historic moment. Here in 1989 President Slobodan Miolsevic gathered more than a million Serbs from throughout Yugoslavia and abroad to mark the 600th anniversary of the great battle. The event both demonstrated and further encouraged the extraordinary revival of Serbian nationalism that came before the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Today Kosovo Polje is a plain with a dusty four-lane highway and giant electricity pylons running through it. Low-rise factories - remnants of communist era industrialisation - are scattered throughout.
A Sunday market yesterday sold car tyres, hubcaps, engine oil, and engine parts. The dilapidated, dirty railway station advertised entirely fictional train times - many do not run now as one main line passes through KLA-controlled territory.
There were no aircraft or bombs above Kosovo Polje yesterday afternoon. There are, however, new sanctions already being felt in Serbia. At least 300 people have been killed and 50,000 have fled their homes since the Serbian action began early this year.
While the international community has not been able to agree on a coherent threat of military action, it has agreed on some punitive measures.
Saturday saw the last Yugoslav Airways flights from airports in Contact group states (except Russia) into Belgrade. A new ban on international monetary transactions rendered most foreign credit cards useless from Saturday morning.
Djordje, who works in a clerical job at Belgrade airport for £70 a month, said he did not know how long the ban on flights would last. "A day? Three days? Ten years? It was four years last time so who knows?" He says he is very sorry. "Enjoy your stay - if you can," he says.
In an embarrassed note to all guests, the Hotel Intercontinental in Belgrade explains that the restriction on credit cards is due to the international sanctions.
"We apologise for the inconvenience caused and shall assist you the best we can to solve the situation."
However, neither Djordje nor the Hotel Intercontinental can do much to solve the situation. President Slobodan Milosevic's flight to Moscow this morning for talks with President Yeltsin will be unaffected by the new sanctions. Any real developments will take place in Moscow today.
"Russia will not approve NATO bombing strikes," a government official argues, "and so they will probably not happen. Without UN support they will be an invasion force, not a peacekeeping force. These are our borders, Kosovo is in our country, and so it is our business."
Miroslav may see some NATO planes above Kosovo today, but there will be no bombs. NATO "exercises" are planned for the region today to demonstrate a flexing of muscles behind the West's wagging finger. But nobody here is convinced yet that the muscles will be used.