The hit song ‘Kur do t’pushoj kjo kange’ by the Albanian rock band Jericho playing from her iPod is accompanying her while she is walking down The Mother Teresa Boulevard in the city centre of Prishtina.

Although this street is just like any other in Prishtina, famous for its Prishtinian characteristic of being dusty and messy, there is something about this street that freaks her out, something rather bitter correlating to the past.

As she crosses the road at the National Theatre, she realises how much the city has grown and changed over the past decades. However, it is crystal clear to her that Prishtina has fanatically retained the dark history full of demonstrations and riots attached in every corner of every single street.  Be it a student, a parent, a pensioner or a random civilian, she is certain that everyone remembers the ghastly riots of the revolutionary 1981, 1997-99, when streets of this forgotten city of the ‘Brotherhood & Unity Federation of Yugoslavia’ were vociferously  flooded by people whose identity was denied and had nothing else to lose other than their own life.

Back then, there was something unique about being a resident of Prishtina known as the ‘being-a-refugee-in-you- own-city -phenomenon’. This was something special to Albanians only, carefully designed and implemented by the mechanism of the ‘Brotherhood & Unity Federation of Yugoslavia’ and exclusively executed by the person who successfully enriched the world dictionaries with a new posh term ‘ethnic cleansing’, Slobodan Milosevic.

She is now passing by the Kosovo Parliament building where photos of hundreds of missing people from the war are hanging in the banisters of the building. Her iPod is still playing ‘Kur do t’pushoj kjo kangë’, a song dedicated to hundreds of thousands of missing people, which means When is this song going to stop – a subtle way of saying When are we going to know about their fate.

She can’t help thinking about the architecture in Prishtina as she stares at the flats in the city centre. It is very evident to her that some of the buildings in Prishtina are just as similar as the ones in Belgrade or Skopje. All of a sudden, she feels that she must solve the paradox relating to the similarity of architecture betwen Belgrade & Skopje with Prishtina, which does not flow with the beauty of Prishtina. Why is Prishtina uglier? Why is Prishtina less attractive and less developed? It doesn’t take long until she realises that the answer has something to do with the Serbian proverb ‘Sto juznije, to tuznije’ (The further South, the more deplorable) which reveals everything about the social equality policies of the ‘Brotherhood and Unity Federation of Yugoslavia’.    

She stops at the corner shop to get some biscuits and no doubt she buys Plazma Keksa – the tasty Serbian biscuits that any child in the Balkans has been fed on. Their palatable taste attracts people regardless of age, although, everyone is aware and worried about the recent rumours that the products exported to Kosovo from Serbia are poisoned with chemicals that could have a fatal outcome.

It’s Friday today and it is nearly 3 o’clock, Dubrovnik does not ring any bells to her, neither does Yugo 45 car. Something more relevant in her case involving Friday 3.00pm is the day when she got fired from her job 18 years ago along with all other Albanian doctors of Prishtina Hospital. Friday 3.00pm is also the synonym of that flipping day when her children asked her why TV Prishtina was not broadcasting anything in Albanian anymore.

She wonders what the future will serve to this city and its people, but she also knows that there is no need for trepidation any longer. The past is in the past and the future is in the euro-atlantic integration, where the human values, freedom of speech, the right for education and the freedom of movement are virtues that guarantee a better lifestyle – yes, maybe then, but only then, this song is going to stop.


By Kreshnik Hoxha