Blackbird writes from Mitrovica

Inexplicably, we have enjoyed nearly uninterrupted power since Independence Day. Residents of Pristina—just a few miles southeast of here—may not understand what is so remarkable about this, but I often meet residents of Pristina who are unaware of life in the rest of Kosovo. These residents of Pristina are usually internationals.

They ask, Why is your phone number 64? They don’t understand that a 44 will not reliably reach the north side of the river in my town, where my wife works. They don’t understand that our town is divided between international prefixes: one from Serbia, and one that the rest of Kosovo uses; the one that Kosovo borrows from Monaco. They don’t understand the division in our town, because they leave Pristina as little as possible. When they do leave Pristina, it is usually to go on vacation to another country. They don’t understand that the division in our town isn’t only over some symbolic bridge. They say, You need to get a 44 so that I can call you cheaply. I tell them, Call your friends in Monaco cheaply. If you want to talk to me, it will cost you a Euro.

They say, Oh—The power went out last night! They say it with an exclamation point at the end, because power outages in their cozy Pristina apartments are infrequent enough to be worthy of an exclamation point. They don’t know that the power in my neighborhood in the south goes out for three hours out of every six during the winter… and that I live in the best power zone in Mitro. They obviously don’t know this, or else they would not be so rude as to even mention their negligible outage. They rummaged around in the kitchen for five whole minutes looking for that one lone candle they stashed away for emergencies! They probably don’t even know that no one pays their bills in the north side of Mitrovica, because there the power is delivered to everyone for free from Serbia. It’s not that Serbia has so much electricity that they don’t know what to do with it. No: that’s not the reason.

About water they say… well they don’t say anything about water. Because they have water all the time, and they don’t know that we have rationing every other night.

Those are the things that the internationals say, and I must admit that it makes me angry to hear those things. I don’t get angry because I’m cold in winter, or unwashed in the evening, or because no one calls me on my cell phone. I get angry when internationals say these things because it is clear that they don’t understand a lot of things that are happening in my town. They don’t know that the court staff hasn’t been allowed in the court in the north for a week now. That other courts further north are flying the Serbian flag. They are not sitting here now, as I do in this café every day at a little past 12:44 pm, listening to the loud pops coming from the other side of the bridge, and wondering, and hoping nothing bad...

But it was a beautiful day when I returned to Kosovo a week and a half ago. I said to the cab driver, It’s a beautiful day—not cold at all! He smiled and said, It’s been beautiful ever since Independence! There was a sudden loud clanging noise, and I looked over my shoulder: a train was rolling down the tracks alongside the road! Those empty unused tracks: I had believed that they were only relics from decades past: archeological ruins left by some long-gone civilization. I had never seen a working train there before! Not for the whole year I’d lived in Kosovo. I said to the driver, Well! He grinned again. Independence, he said! He drove me home to Mitrovica, where I unpacked my bags, and when my wife returned from work that evening I said, There was power all day in the apartment! She said, It’s been that way ever since!

And the power stayed on ever since. Don’t talk about it, she yells! Talking about it makes the power go out: we have both come to believe this from experience. So I don’t talk about it, but I wonder how. How is there power now? And money for trains, and… well, never mind the weather. We’ll just say that the weather is good luck, and we won’t talk about it either. But I do wonder, because the power was so very bad right before independence. It was out all the time in my town, and we believed every rumor that we hear about it. Cables were accidentally cut or stolen, we heard. The power is being siphoned and re-routed, it was said. They’re getting us ready for when there’s no power at all: for when the shit really hits the fan… after Independence, we thought.

Instead, there has been power every day, with only two brief hour-long cuts in my apartment during the whole first week of Independence. It feels like luxury; it feels so First World: it feels like… Pristina! I won’t ask any questions of KEK; questions like, Why couldn’t we have this a month ago? And, Were you just punishing us? Or were you only trying to save all your power so that we could celebrate Independence in style? Was it intended to give us hope? That things might get better here after all? That tracks might be used for trains again, and that switches might be used to give us light? It all seems too much to believe, and I don’t know what to believe anymore.

“Declaration of Independence opened the way for Kosovo to apply to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for a telephone country code.

“For land lines, Kosovo uses the code of Serbia +381, and for the other two mobile operators it uses codes of other countries. The first mobile operator “Vala” uses the code of Monacco +377, while “Ipko” uses the code of Slovenia +386. The lack of a country code has cost Kosovo millions of euros every year because of fees for international traffic. Now, Kosovo can choose one of the two free country codes available for telephone network, code 383 and 384.

“Before applying for the country code, Kosovo should initially become member of the International Telecommunications Union.”

“A town in the US state of Louisiana is to be allowed to change its telephone prefix so that residents can avoid a number many associate with the Devil.

“Christians in Reeves have been unhappy since the early 1960s about being given the prefix, 666 - traditionally known as the Biblical "number of the beast".

“For the next three months, households will be able to change the first three digits of their phone numbers to 749. Mayor Scott Walker said CenturyTel's decision was "divine intervention". However, he admitted it helped that Louisiana's two senators had also lobbied for the change with the phone company and the state Public Service Commission.

“The reference to 666 is taken from translations of the Biblical book of Revelation, which talks about the events leading to the end of the world. Revelation 13:18 states: "If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666."

“Although in recent years scholars at Oxford University said that they had discovered a 3rd Century papyrus, from Oxyrhynchus, which gives the Number of the Beast as 616.

“And a manuscript fragment from the 11th Century lists the number as 665.

“The fear of the number 666 is known as hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.”

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