“Professor” is a title granted virtually any teacher or holder of a diploma, earned or bought, so we are amused but not surprised to hear an elderly professor on a local television game show misidentify Mariah Carey as the scientist responsible for discovering radium. No, Professor—I’m sorry but the ‘T’ in ‘NATO’ does not stand for ‘Turkish.’ Let’s not be hasty to judge him. Trivia, like bread and liquor, is a cultural phenomenon. The boundaries of societal knowledge are drawn by need, and even intellectual nonessentials must be accompanied by the appropriate documents and a wad of Euros before being cleared through Customs. Like everything else, even trivia clears Customs twice: one upon entering, and once on leaving, on its way to the halls of other government buildings.

Even Kosovo’s largest export must clear Customs twice. Because before Kosovo’s largest export can be exported it must first be imported. Rusting cars, from Slovenia and Greece, stacked neatly on top of each other, in piles and rows till they reach the fence on every side of this old cornfield. Cars come in, carrying family members, dignitaries and assorted human traffic; and then they go out again, on the backs of other trucks. The come in bearing imports: Brazilian coffee and German vacuums. They come bearing glad tidings and gifts. They come bearing American political consultants who will teach Mr. Thaçi to raise his thumb in a manner that is oh-so Bil Klinton. They come bearing ambassadors holding Latin texts. The Latin texts clear Customs and are widely disseminated, becoming a sort of common currency—like cash; they are code. Soon everyone in Kosovo will speak Latin, and you will hear the shepherd, the mechanic and our good professor all intoning ancient words that most Americans will never know.

But Americans don’t need to feel stupid about this! My fellow Americans: we have long ago accepted that we will only learn Latin when the need arises, and even the shepherd, the mechanic and the professor may not be able to admit to knowing the literal definition of sui generis. They only know that these are the Right Words for this Time. The word used to be status, but special Times call for special Words, and Latin is universally agreed to be substantially more special than English. So sui generis it is, and sui generis it will be, until the Times change and it behooves Kosvars to find themselves somewhat less exceptional.

And there can be no doubt that these Times are indeed special. It is special times that convinced the president of the righteousness of increasing his pay, so that he might become the highest paid leader of a Balkan nation, even of the poorest Balkan nation. With special times came extra work for which he required extra special pay: sui generis, a unique case that cannot be compared to any other. The reporters will nod their heads affirmatively, and accept that there is a certain irrefutable logic to the Latin language.

The website counter has ground to a halt. “Kosovo thanks you!” The floating pink hearts on that website seem a bit desperate now, drifting and unsure. But, if the counter has stopped rolling over, then where exactly are the fruits of the president’s extra special labor? Perhaps this is not his fault. When, before independence, the newspapers confidently declared that overwhelming recognition was a swift declaration away, that was surely only the breathless wishing of the same journalists who will gladly choose to speculate rather than investigate. If a tree falls in the forest and the UN does not hear it, are the member states still obligated to sign a declaration granting recognition to the sound? Of course not; other considerations come into play, each case is unique, and Kosovo is sui generis. And we can hardly blame the president for failing to get the ball rolling again when the delegation from Abkhazia extends its cynical hand. For, as sweet as it may be to hear that counter roll over and then click once again, to do so would counter the new Latin law.

Imagine a Kosovo that is not at all unique. Imagine that most of the world’s population cannot find Kosovo on a map. Does not know the ethnicities that inhabit its borders and does not know the religions they practice. Imagine that Kosovo, like most places in the world, is so ordinary as to be virtually unknown outside of itself. Contains no natural wonders that can rival its neighbors’. No historical monuments that cannot be easily outdone in countries directly north, east, south and west.

Imagine that Kosovo’s elderly population is widely comprised of laborers, farmers and bureaucrats. That its youth immerse themselves so completely in Western culture that they are virtually indistinguishable from the youth of Turkey, Georgia or Tennessee. Imagine that their government was not unique but as cynical, corrupt and opportunistic as governments everywhere. That its society cannot yet claim to have generated a great philosophy or cultural movement—that it is like most of the rest of the world: affected by strong outside forces but hardly affecting them.

This imaginary Kosovo would also be like most of the rest of the world in that it would suffer from racism and inter-ethnic strife. Its politicians would describe their nation as “multi-ethnic” without understanding the common usage of that word. Its population waves flags and wears emblems adopted from the other places. Imagine that Kosovo is more like other places than unlike them.

Imagine that the economy of Kosovo is supported by other nations, and that it cannot yet claim to have a resource that will insure its future. That someday the donor nations will cut the purse strings and then the economy will stumble, as it would anywhere else in the world. That there are worse places more in need of that money, truly exceptional places that are so unique that the world must pretend that they do not exist at all: places like Angola and Western Sahara.

But that is not the Kosovo we have. We have a Kosovo that believes itself truly unique, and I sometimes I even find this endearing. An entire tiny population that believes themselves to be wholly unlike any other, even though they cannot really tell you why. With a flag torn from the standard of the European Union and a slogan torn from a Latin grammar book. We will have to read about Kosovo years from now and see. Because words like sui generis actually belong to history books, not newspapers, and one day they will be gone from the newspapers even here. The professor and shepherd will no longer speak Latin, and the mechanic will consider moving to Las Vegas, a place that he imagines is bright, dreamlike, and altogether unique.
 
"Blackbird" is an American artist living in Kosovo.