corruption, from the Latin “corrumpo” - to break up, destroy, annihilate, spoil, weaken

The plan was to get one and a half billion Euros.  The Euros were to be spent on building an infrastructure that would be self-sustaining, thereby eliminating the need to ask for more money in the future.  The most significant hurdle in the implementation of this plan, everyone said, was corruption.

The city was papered with posters promoting debates about institutional and individual corruption.  Politicians made speeches, and t-shirts were printed with anti-corruption slogans.  I felt ashamed.  I knew that I was the cause of all these campaigns.  I was completely corrupt, and I often committed a dozen acts of corruption in a single day before sitting down to watch a movie in the evening.

That morning I lit the fire in the stove.  I had bargained for a good price on the wood and felt proud of paying cheaply for it.  But I knew the real reason the wood was so inexpensive.  Illegal logging was common, and it was very easy to let go wood cheaply when it came to you freely.  But I never asked the grinning man with the ax where the wood came from.  I only asked him “Sa kushton?” Then I rolled my eyes and shook my head until he chopped another ten Euros of the price.

I went to the cafe for a cup of coffee.  Along the road were dozens of clothing shops offering the latest brand names for prices that would be impossible in the United States.  I needed a new winter coat, and I had my eye on one particularly good buy.  The Timberland and North Face logos were, at these prices, undoubtedly counterfeit, illegally imported or both, but they looked warm.  I left with a blue coat bundled into a bag under my arm.

I reached the cafe and took a chair, watching the construction on the other side of the street.  The new apartments would offer a beautiful view of Pristina.  I liked my current apartment, but for the same money I thought that I might enjoy a modern place closer to the center of town.  It did not really bother me that the construction was most likely illegal.  I paid for my coffee and went to join friends for lunch. 

We paid nearly nothing for a meal that lasted hours.  Only yesterday this restaurant was in the newspapers.  The owner was delinquent several thousand Euros in taxes.  We ate our meal and paid, knowing that the owner would not use our payment for taxes, but we didn’t mind or even consider this.  It was a good meal.  We shook hands as we left, satisfied.  Around the corner, a kiosk selling DVDs advertised the new Batman movie.  The movie poster was reprinted on cheap paper in the DVD sleeve.  I paid a Euro for the pirated disk.  I wanted what I wanted.

At home, I remembered that it was time to pay rent.  I knew what a local might pay for my apartment, but I was charged the international rate: an informal scale set quite a bit higher.  I didn’t mind: everyone did it. 

I sometimes told myself that it was not my fault I was so corrupt.  It was not me that chopped the timber, loaded counterfeit jackets and shoes into the back of a non-descript van, failed to file the appropriate construction permits, tossed aside unpaid tax bills or sat in a theater aiming a camera at the screen.  But I knew that this was really only an evasion.  The only reason people did these things at all was because they had a buyer. 

In Kosovo they call it “getting a good deal.” Getting the cheapest price makes you smart.  Those t-shirt slogans and embassy sponsored ad campaigns were aimed at shadowy politicians accepting wads of cash to block legislation and faceless doctors wheeling patients from the public hospital to the private clinic.  But secretly I knew that corruption not only described the action of politicians and doctors, loggers and pirate videographers.  It takes two people to make corruption, to break something apart: a seller offering the cheapest rate, and me, paying for it and feeling satisfied, while helping to destroy, annihilate, spoil and weaken an economy and a country.

I wasn’t worried about being caught.  The posters and slogans were not meant for me.  They were meant for other people that I would never meet.  No one called what I did “corruption.” Instead, they called it “smart.”

That night I watched the new Batman movie.  The film was of a very poor quality; often audience members rose and walked down the aisle, obscuring the screen.  I cursed the bootlegger for not doing a better job and eventually became bored.  I was in a bad mood, perhaps upset with myself for being so corrupt.  I turned off my DVD player (I had bought it cheaply in the market) and resolved to be a better person.  Stepping onto the balcony for my last cigarette of the evening, I noticed that there was no tax label on the cigarette pack, but I enjoyed the cigarette just the same.

 

Blackbird is an American artist living in Kosovo.