Put on the mask and be silent

During the first wave of the coronavirus, Montenegrins, like shamans, preached togetherness and thanked the epidemic for restoring nature. The people applauded the doctors and called the police when the isolated neighbors went to the store. Volunteer youth toured villages and towns, while their parents sat on sacks of flour and gave professional lectures about the corona virus. Begić received stickers on Viber, and Mugoša was as famous in the media as his last name when he led Podgorica.

Rich friends from abroad gave us masks and respirators, like we gave them the best country by the sea. The municipal police received the status of a punitive expedition, and people went to prison for holding hands on a bench. We worked and studied from home - never far from our bosses and obligations. The government was coming up with magical aid packages, while we wrote "Don't give up small" on social networks. The prosecutors worked in three shifts, and the police chased the priests to prevent them from spreading the virus around church gates and cemeteries.

Then the Prime Minister said that we defeated the pandemic and in the Official Gazette Montenegro became corona free, just as it is ecological in the Constitution. After the disappearance of the virus, parliamentarians returned to our lives, and people lined up in front of shopping centers. The shamans were drinking the drink again, and the volunteer youth scrolled through their phones. Until yesterday, enthusiastic citizens remembered the party booklets and envelopes that many doctors preferred to receive than applause from the terrace. Communalists only controlled the markets, and the policemen continued to chase pops and hold the protestors by the neck.

The government was forgetting the magical aid packages, but 19 NKT secretaries were wearing medals for eradicating the virus. The sea near Budva and Kotor was becoming a wet dream for Serbian tourists, while the prime minister asked Europeans to rest on empty beaches and believe in Montenegrin healthcare. The father of the nation scheduled the first summer elections, and the profession confirmed that voting is allowed from a distance.

Until the virus sneaked out of brotherly Belgrade and neighboring Tutin, hidden among fans' props and tubs of young cream. Lovers of walking in Belgrade again became enemies of the state, and Rožaje, like Tuzi, a cluster of municipalities good for fascist mockery on social networks. The government no longer published lists because we personally knew the infected, and the virus spread through cities faster than gossip in Podgorica's pubs. Taverns were open until dusk, and Montenegrin beaches resembled the streets of Chernobyl, where foreign tourists walk as a rare form of life. When there were no more Russians and Belgraders, desperate hoteliers dreamed of Podgorica eating half-price octopus by the sea, or at least drinking milk.

Epidemiologists and doctors visited morning programs again, and policemen continued to control churches and cemeteries. Regardless of Facebook epidemiologists' doctorates, the virus did not retreat from the heat, as much as from the masks that Montenegrins wore under their chins and on their elbows. The infected hid their contacts from doctors like old Vujadin jataks and innkeepers from the Turks of Lijevna. As in the prophecies about the new 1918, in which the thousand-year statehood disappears, Montenegro was losing its hard-won status as a corona-free state before the eyes of its citizens.

Even though all the magical powers of NKT could not return us to a corona-free state, the first pre-election miracles began to happen on the eve of the August collective vacations. The administration grabbed family packages in domestic hotels, while the people were shown a third magic package with a billion in it. The Prime Minister promised to park official cars and help Montenegrin programmers and startups as once party comrades and godfathers. In the miraculous government contracts, the promised Montenegrin church disappeared and the state did not take the holy places, but registration was established in the section with fine print. The deceived clergy were baptized and swore at the Government again, but the leaders had already used the rejected contract to bring back the party comrades intoxicated with incense. The opposition was stunned and, as always before the campaign, forgot about unity and electoral reforms. Coalitions for the census were hastily put together, and the parties boasted the support of unknown professions and wasted intelligence. Fighters against Satanism threatened to persecute guest workers inclined to vote in their homeland, while Montenegro was preparing for the biggest election fraud since the Milo and Momir feud.

And then in the post-election September, everything will go back to the way it was. Like horses and princesses in fairy tales, third packages will become mice, and citizens will become cinderellas in the welfare state of stepmothers. The opposition coalitions will fire already after the confirmation of the parliamentary mandates and we will again hear about boycotts and transitional governments. When the celebratory champagne is poured, some hero of the NKT will occupy the chair in the government and the former minister will be promoted to ambassador. When they defeat the opposition and the people, the Montenegrin leaders will start the pandemic and re-introduce the curfew. Former shamans will then become alchemists who support families on reduced and irregular wages. We will know people who have lost their jobs, as we now know infected people. We will keep quiet in the four walls and pray to the heavens to protect our jobs when NKT is already protecting our health. We will wear a mask on the street and keep silent under it. Until we all get well.