At the confluence of Sava and Danube there lies Kalemegdan. What had been an ominous stronghold for millennia is but a park today. It is commonly divided in two parts: upper and lower. Somewhere between the two, in the moats of the sprawling fortification, there lies the Belgrade Zoo. My mother, and sometimes my aunt, used to take me there when I was a boy, as it was not too far from the place where we lived: eight or nine blocks along our street, across the streetcar tracks, another block or so uphill through the park, and there stood the green gate of the Zoo. I always wanted to see the two lions, although they were quite unimpressive from close up. The reason for this attraction was that I had listened to their desperate roars every single night, around bedtime, when they would sound like the sighs, groans, and moans of a very sick, very old, and very big man in the distance. The sound has never left me. I can still imitate the monstrous groans almost perfectly, but the trouble is that nobody I know recognizes the poor lions in my interpretation. It just crossed my mind a few moments ago that there must be thousands upon thousands of people from that part of Belgrade who would appreciate my art. They, too, listened breathlessly in the dark, their eyes opened wide, their African hearts pounding with excitement and awe… They, too, grew up very far from their natural habitat.