by Vesna TASIC
Electricity: Sheds on the right side of the road now have different inhabitants. Displaced Albanians have replaced Serb refugees from Croatia. While Nazi explains in the Serb language with a southern accent that he once upon the time believed Belgrade was equal to Paris and New York, although he had never seen it as he had never made it past Bujanovac, he also complains about big electricity bills amounting to $500, which is the same as his monthly salary in the daily newspaper Koha Ditore. He says that on the left side of the road there is only one Serb village left, Babin Most, and that there are a few Serb families left in the village of Milosevo. Between newly built gasoline stations we pass billboards for Magi soups and Nestle chocolate. We pass the untouched monument to Kosovo heroes, the ones from 1389, the thermo-electric power plant that is not working at full throttle and cleaned up ruins of the YA barracks destroyed in the bombardment. "When we get out of the car do not talk in the Serb language, or at least try to whisper," Nazi warns me. Drab, gray Pristina, shackled in concrete, comes into view. There is hardly any greenery in sight, the city is dusty and there is a thin layer of mud on the road. All around KFOR members jog or ride their bicycles, women of all races. "I am not a racist but I'm also not colorblind," is a frequent comment in presence of black men and women with a Benetton smile.
The streets are crowded, as if all 400,000 cars that were imported last year are being used at the same time. In cars bearing KS registration plates drivers and passengers conscientiously use seat belts, because of harsh fines, but some of them do not have driving licenses. Without a single working traffic light, Pristina today has twice as many inhabitants as before the war, close to 500,000, most of them unregistered. Among them, imprisoned in their buildings, live the remaining Pristina Serbs. Some of them daily go to work to the restaurant in the former YA hall. If you are a Serb in Pristina, you're either invisible of silent, and Pristina is probably the only city in the Balkans where you cannot see a single Gipsy. Expected calls to prayer cannot be heard from the minarets of some ten city mosques, probably drowned in the traffic noise. An undamaged and working Serb Orthodox church still exists in the city, while another, unfinished one can be found within the University campus.
Salaries: Some 400 non-governmental organizations are today registered in Pristina. Foreigners in plain clothes and uniforms walk the streets, along the mixed local police patrols wearing navy blue uniforms. "They are not like the Serbian policemen, but they are OK," our Albanian interlocutor is skeptical. "You see, you can come here and everything can be fine. It will always be like that. Until the moment you bump into some crazy guy from Podujevo. And that's that, that would be the end of you. That is the problem," he explains the position of a visitor from Belgrade in Pristina.
There are no ruins dating back to the bombardment, and the post office ruins have also been cleared up. The only striking exception is the black burnt ruin of the sports center "Boro and Ramiz". Poet and translator Fadil Bajraj, the last authentic hippy in Pristina, says that "Veton (Surroi) and Natasa (Kandic)" are supposed to call today. The Pristina Lennon, well-known by his translations of American beatnik poets to Albanian, is bitter about active users of the international funds. "All of them are swindlers, money chasers. Only swindlers live well here. Just look at the local translators! Each one of them can translate 'yes' and 'no', and count from one to ten and gets paid $1000 a month," Bajraj is angry. "I am waiting to make sure my parents are taken care of, refugees from Orahovac, and then I'm going to try to make it to the USA while at least some of the beatniks are still alive."
Administrator Hans Haekkerup's salary is, by the way, about $32,000 a month, the KFOR commander earns $22,500 a month, and ordinary privates about $5,000. Haekerrup, by the way, can save the most, because his family lives in Pristina and two sons are with the Danish KFOR unit in the south of Mitrovica. On the first floor of the hall, where a shopping center is located today, Bajraj shakes hands with a former prisoner of the Serbian police, a small man in a badly tailored overcoat and shiny shoes. "Selam aleykum" he responds. "May Einstein screw you," Bajraj shoots back, loudly. "There, see for yourself whom the Serbian policemen arrested," Bajraj is again angry. The stores are full of goods, but the street vendors are holding out in the fierce competition. They mostly sell CDs and Albanian flags. Fadil's friend, a university lecturer, Anton Berishaj, is currently translating Vladimir Arsenijevic's book Mexico, a war diary to Albanian. Berishaj is curious about new publications in the Serb language and says that in the two Pristina bookstores it is sometimes possible to find only old editions of technical literature in the Serb. He is also asking about the "new age" Otpor's patriotism and says that he would only visit Belgrade to buy books.
The better Pristina bookstore does not have a map of "the Kosovo republic". A car stops, with screech of brakes, in one of the streets.
UCKas: "I have a woman from Belgrade here, if you want to take revenge for ethnic cleansing," Fadil says to the driver. "I can't anymore, I'm tired already," he says, and others in the car wave smiling. "All three of them were in the UCK [KLA]. The one waving at you lost a foot," says Fadil. In the Grand hotel, where one night stay will set you back $75, the former UCK fighters work as bouncers. "The Grand is exactly as before, only the language is different. Instead of Arkan's guys we now have UCK fighters. Sometimes, when I drive by, I throw a bottle through the window, to check how their reflexes are doing," Bajraj says. Later, an ethnic Albanian journalist told me that "all those guys are not the same and not all of them are bad". "I know one of them who is fighting in Bujanovac. His whole family has been killed, and he was left sterile at the age of 23. He is not there because of the independence of the Presevo valley but to take his revenge against Serbs."
The editorial offices of the daily Koha Ditore are in the center of the city. Belgrade press, which naturally cannot be bought in the city, is nevertheless delivered to the UNMiK building, and it can also be found in the offices of Koha Ditore. On-line editions of Belgrade newspapers and magazines are also regularly read. A young journalist explains me the situation in the skies above the city. "This is madness, providers, mobile telephony, media frequencies. Even a remotely guided rocket could not hit here anymore, it would only fly in the circle," he says in Serbian. He says that there are good night clubs in the city, one movie theater in which movies change every week, and the national theater with shows by foreign theater companies. He prefers live jazz. Yesterday, there were no flowers in the city, on Valentine's day. "Tell me, what's it like in Mitrovica? Are the bridge guardians armed?" he wants to know.
Darkness: Going out at night is a more risky business because it is impossible to predict who will show up where. "Now you really have to shut up," the hosts warn me. The team from Koha Ditore sits together at one table. "Did I hear 'dobro vece' [good evening], it can't be," a businessman is surprised. He used to trade and "do business" with Belgrade, a lot at times. Now that's all dead. He and his companions are curious about the look of new banknotes, and continue conversation in quiet Serbian. "I hear that Belgrade is full of Chinese. We also have a Chinese restaurant, but it is actually run by a guy from Macedonia. The Chinese cook and Albanian gangsters get protection money".
The lights die, the third blackout today. The electrical generators immediately turn on and the city starts to hum. No one will get stuck in an elevator because there are no elevators in the buildings, or they never functioned properly anyway. Even when there is electricity, the street lighting is most frequently turned off. When a generator breaks down, panic strikes at the editorial offices of eight daily newspapers that are currently published in Pristina. Although, according to some estimates, the European Agency for Development and Reconstruction of Kosovo has so far invested more than $500 million, a part of the thermo-electric plant that supplies the city is still not functioning.
Astrit Salihu (34), who introduces himself as a philosopher and an unrivaled interpreter of post-modernism in Kosovo, criticizes the current local authorities that haven't been able to at least fix the traffic lights. "Ibrahim Rugova won because the ones who entered city halls from the forest turned out to be lousy politicians. I feel sorry for them. They risked their lives and fought the war, but it turned out that they did not know how to run a city. Rugova's people are also not doing anything right now. They have already started an election campaign in the 26 municipalities in Kosovo, and we still do not have electricity and walk through mud."
Bosniak: The language spoken in the office of Free Europe is not Serbian but Bosniak [differences are minute]. The chief of the office, journalist Shkelzen Malliqi explains his views from an article recently published in Vreme. He is aware of negative reactions to his article, which is a preface for Vladimir Arsenijevic's book that should soon be published in Albanian.
"My article says that Belgrade, in a way, deserved to be punished for what happened in Bosnia, Croatia and in Kosovo. My idea was that Serbia needs a through de-Nazification but, of course, I do not deny the responsibility of others for the past and future in this region. It's not that I am not critical of the Albanian side, but I think that the main evil came from Belgade. I, of course, keep in touch with people from Belgrade an see them at different conferences. But these relations are not as before. Therefore, if they decontaminate themselves, then perhaps something could change... Definitely, I do not know what will happen tomorrow."
The recently adopted Clemency Law has been strongly criticized in Kosovo. Koha Ditore published a sharply critical text by Adem Demaqi. To the question whether there are indications that the Albanian side will do something about 1,500 missing Serbs from Kosovo, Malliqi responds:
"There are a lot of missing on both sides. Albanians also have lists with several thousand missing persons. It is assumed that they are dead.
"There were many missing in all the recent Balkan wars. One must be skeptical as far as information about them is concerned. Actually, it is very unlikely that any of them are alive. The Kosovo war and other wars were chaotic. None of these wars was a war with accurate documentation and documented military activities. That is why it is very difficult to get accurate data. However, as far as possible, something ought to be done."
It is Friday afternoon, the employees at the Koha Ditore editorial office are discussing the bus blown up near Podujevo. Serb civilians were killed. "You have to leave as soon as possible. There will most definitely be trouble in Mitrovica. Keep quiet in the taxi," an Albanian friend advises. A girl drives the taxi cab. Somewhere on the road to Mitrovica she asks: "And why are you keeping quiet?" The same young Albanian escorts me to the bridge. He is actually from Mitrovica and knows some Serbs from the northern part of the city.
It's already dark. The south of Mitrovica has no electricity. In front of the bridge foreign soldiers are surprised to see a Yugoslav passport. They say they haven't seen it before. "A Yugoslav women from Belgrade, a Serb?" After consultations via radio, they let me through to the northern side of the bridge. The bridge is partly under floodlights so that a lonely pedestrian is a good target for snipers. A short walk and I am already in the Serb Saigon. Fire burns in a barrel. There are less bridge guardians than usual in front of the bridge. They were visited that day by KFOR General Cabigiosu, and tomorrow they expect protests because of the explosion in Podujevo. They remove my name from the bridge guardians' list, where it was carefully entered two days ago. They try to keep track of people who cross over and whether they've returned. They do not ask anything. They only watch women who are lighting candles at the beginning of the bridge. It is All Saints Day and they will not be able to visit the graves of their loved ones in the southern part of the city. The Serb part of the city does not have a bus station and the next bus leaves around midnight. In the nearby Zvecan there is a bar with a large poster on the wall. A pretty bad print of the "great Serb migration".