I said, “Surely the world is getting better.”

She frowned and began listing the reasons why I was mistaken. She was probably right, having lived and worked in Kosovo for many years longer than I, but I was only half paying attention, thinking at the same time about what it was to grow up wanting to work for the United Nations. We were seated with a man from Nepal, an Irish woman, an Algerian, an Italian, three or four Serbs, two Americans and more. Between those different people there was little agreement on any subject, but we weren’t really trying either. The sound of fireworks and automatic gunfire in the streets had increased until it was nearly a solid wave of white noise, broken only occasionally by tiny explosions of silence.

I thought that the human condition must be improving, but it is true that I had little evidence for my position. Perhaps I only imagined that my own condition was improving, as we drained our glasses of rakia again and again. In fact, our town is no success story, but only a population living under an imposed armistice, a city that has been cut into two by occupying forces and the vengeance of its own citizens. After awhile I stopped listening and instead watched children leaning out the windows of their flats across the street, pointing bottle rockets at the KFOR soldiers walking towards the bridge. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in what she was saying, but only that I was getting very drunk, and so where we all. At midnight, we all kissed one another on the cheek three times. We wished each another a happy new year, and I feel pretty sure that we meant it too.

We staggered home across the river Ibar to our apartment on the Albanian side of town. Clouds of smoke hung in the street, from which packs of children occasionally appeared, only to be consumed again by the smoke of another volley of fireworks. A few of the youngest Albanians dressed from head to toe in the pants, coat, beard and hat of Santa Claus. The winter holidays have been co-opted and combined here into a single month-long celebration: New Year’s fireworks, Bajram’s sacrificial goats, small plastic Christmas trees and Orthodox observances too. The armistice was imposed, but no one thought twice about taking time off work for the holiday of the people they stood in opposition to. We fell into bed before the chaos showed any sign of subsiding. Through our window we could see the colored lights reflecting off the apartment buildings, turning them green, pink and then green again.

But what I meant to tell her was this: Surely the world is getting better… because you’re in it, and because you wanted to work for the United Nations since you were very young. How is it that you grew up with such an ideal? Because surely the ultimate goal of that organization is not governance like that which we live under in Kosovo, with its mixed successes and undeniable failures. Surely the ultimate goal must be its own eradication, in some future era when humanity takes precedence over nationality, and when nations finally become useless anachronisms.

Someone told me about the many good things you did when you lived in Kosovo. I hope they told you too. I would have told you myself, but on New Year’s Eve I was too distracted by the noise. Tusen takk.

Blackbrid is an American artist living in Kosovo. This post describes last year's celebrations in Mitrovica.