Blackbird writes from Mitrovica

I was a passenger in the back of a van driving from Prishtina to my home in Mitrovica.  The van was full; full of old men, young wives, children and young men.  In front of me sat an American woman wearing a Vetëvendosje (Self-determination) t-shirt.

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I read an article about the construction of a new Catholic church in Prishtina.  People argued about the optimal relative strength of religious institutions in the new nation, and about the history of religion in Kosovo. The most religious man I knew in Kosovo was a Catholic Albanian married to an Orthodox Serb.

I met Europeans from Austria, Sweden and Germany who wrote letters officially renouncing their faith in order to avoid the state imposed church tax. In this respect, Kosovo was already superior to many European nations: there was no national religion here.

Some of those same Europeans found the Muslim culture of Kosovo Albanians foreign.  It simply wasn’t their idea of Europe.  It wasn’t, they thought, like “us.”

On the other hand, many of the American cops and soldiers I met did not find the Muslim culture so strange, even when they had never encountered anything like it before.  The secular Islam of Kosovo was somehowfamiliar to them; like the secular Christianity many of them had grown up with: a religion not tied to national identity.

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I ate lunch in a restaurant.  The table next to mine was occupied by the teenage children of Christian missionaries: their accents were unmistakably American.  “How strange it must be,” I thought, “to be them.” To be spreading the gospel, along with school supplies and food staples.  To grow up secure in the knowledge that God had sent them from their suburban homes in the religious heartland of the States, all the way to the secular mountains and valleys of Kosovo.

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I sat in a café and discussed the situation in the north with four teenaged boys and a friend of mine.  My friend rolled his eyes whenever the boys spoke, but they all agreed that the situation in the north would “calm down eventually.” It made me feel better to hear four young Albanian boys and an older, cynical Albanian man say this.  But my friend laughed when he read the word “Kosovar” in international newspapers.  He would always think of himself as Albanian first and only. 

I joked with him that if George Bush came to Kosovo, I would go protest.  I thought it would be funny to be the lone American dissenter in a sea of appreciative Albanian supporters.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said. “None of them will think it’s funny.”

Maybe it was too soon, but I wanted him to call himself a Kosovar first and an Albanian second.  He was a smart and strong man: he didn’t need the bloodlines of his family to sustain his intellect and will. He didn’t need religion, and he certainly didn’t need the validation of “us” foreigners.  But Kosovo sure needed him.

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I tried to distinguish between “us” and “them,” but in Kosovo it turned out to be hard to tell which was which.  Are those young schoolgirls in plaid skirts and school uniforms from Mitrovica, or are they from Kansas?  Is the activist in a Vetëvendosje t-shirt from Prishtina or Philadelphia?  Was this mosque built by the Saudis or the Arab Emirates?  Is this Catholic church being founded by the Pope or the Albanian faithful?  How can those young men who have never set foot inside of a mosque still consider themselves Muslim?

I listened to arguments about what it meant to be Orthodox, Illyrian and Albanian: arguments that were all based on the premise that heredity was the highest law of the land.  But I hardly ever heard anyone talk about what it meant to be Kosovar.  Maybe they just didn’t know yet.

Comments (4)

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Work Time said:

... "Maybe it was too soon, ..." Yeh, I'd say so, based on the U.S. experience. It was how many generations - two? three? more? - before Americans stopped worrying about differentiating themselves from the British and "what it means to be an American." Even in science a change of paradigm doesn't occur because the adherents of the old theory are won over to the truth of the new one, but because young students start learning the new theory and the proponents of the old eventually die off (or at least, retire). Kids who grow up watching Sesame Street are going to have a different world outlike, whether their parents ever change or not. Be patient.

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July 31, 2008
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edliri said:

	... so true!
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March 19, 2008
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Flamuri said:

	... Fantastic read! Thank you friend!
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March 16, 2008
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Luani said:

	... A good read.
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March 14, 2008
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