41

I HAVE NO WAY of knowing what time it was, Nexhmije Gjinushi, or whether it was the rain or the wind that woke me. At first, I was certain I heard voices; I convinced myself it was merely the wind whipping branches in the trees.

Another sound, and this time it was unmistakable. Voices rising above the elements.

I shook Veton Dardani, my hand covering his mouth so he would not give us away. He opened his eyes slowly, closed them, and then opened them again, quickly appreciating the gravity of our situation.

We had few choices. Running seemed foolhardy. The rain and darkness would make it impossible to gain any ground. But here, crouched in the hollow of a tree, we were sitting ducks.

Already, the voices were all around us. Who knew how many men there were: a dozen, probably more. They spoke in low voices, an almost constant babble from one hidden place or another: melodious Albanian spoken too softly, too quickly for me to catch anything more than a word here and there.

Veton Dardani looked at me for direction, but I could only shrug.

We sat like this for several moments. The boy’s lips were moving, silently, and I at first thought he was praying. But no. Rather, he seemed to be having a conversation with himself, weighing the imaginary pros and cons of a possible course of action. After two minutes of this, Veton Dardani shook his head decisively. “Po,” he muttered, and pushed himself to his feet; he stood for a moment. By the time I realized what he was planning, it was already too late. He called out, “Alo!”

The woods immediately went silent.

Veton Dardani raised his hands to surrender and stepped forward into the blackness.

“Eshtë! I mirë jam shqiptar . . .”

He took one short step, and then another before a shot rang out.

42

THE SACKCLOTH RUBBED my chin raw, Nexhmije Gjinushi. It had begun to hurt like shit, was a constant irritation, torturous. Even the slightest movement — the jiggling of my head as we drove over the rough roads, for example — and my chin would chafe against the inside of the burlap hood and disturb me some more. Sleep was out of the question. I was simply too uncomfortable, propped in what I assumed was the bed of a pickup truck, my hands tied tightly behind my back. There was no give and no conceivable way to get comfortable. Instead of sleep, I drifted in and out of a half-consciousness, never sure which was which, traipsing Kosovska bitka — the pleasant plain, site of the presumed battle — with Miloš Obilić and a regiment of hallucinatory martyrs or thumping along the invisible back roads that serpentined the Šar Mountains.

I assumed it was dawn. I had no way of knowing, of course, but the darkness which had blanketed me for the first — what? hours? days? — of my journey had given way to a dull light, a golden crepuscular insistence that permeated my hood. When I opened my eyes, I could now see the inside of the bag, the coarse lines of the fabric. This was my horizon, my sunrise. This was how I defined my world.

I tried to adjust my arms to relieve the pain in my shoulders and lower back. Nothing worked. I could not move my arms enough to make a difference, and ran the risk with every unnecessary motion of falling to one side or the other and making the situation worse.

More distressing than the pain in my back, though, was the wrenching of each breath. We are used to it, this automatic function, this breathing, that when we have to work at it, apply conscious effort, it brings about the most deadening hum to the soul. Within this hood, no breath came free. Everyone was bought and sold, was haggled over. There were no bargains to be had.

If my hands had been free, I could have at least pried my fingers through the bottom of the hood and pulled it back from the skin, just enough to capture an occasional fresh breath. But I had no such luxury. You had to hand it to these guys; they’d even found a way to squeeze the joy out of breathing.

Where I was, I could not say, although it seemed a safe bet that I was somewhere in the Šar Mountains. Where I was going, I couldn’t even begin to speculate. They could have killed me right away (they had me defenceless, hunched down in the burnt-out pine) and thrown me onto the warehouse of corpses that had become Kosovo. Instead, they chose to spare me.

This was business as usual, wasn’t it? Exodus and explosion . . . again. For what was this captivity if not another kind of escape? Certainly, I’d avoided Death, and who knows, perhaps I was already on freedom’s path. In any case, exodus is a process and not a specific outcome; it doesn’t necessarily bring deliverance. Just ask the Jews.

As for the explosions, they were constant now. Mostly distant rumblings, like thunder growling at the door. Sometimes, though, a shell would land close enough to the truck that the driver would swerve to one side and come sliding to a stop, throwing me forward once again on my face. Thank goodness my nose was already beyond destruction, since that was what was regularly breaking my fall. These sudden stops were usually followed by the sound of a shell pounding into the ground nearby, as a rain of dirt and stones and leaves and other debris showered down on my back. Then I’d be stuck, my face plastered against the dented metal bed of the truck, squirming to right myself like an inverted turtle.

And throughout it all, my captors barely spoke to me. They had interrogated me briefly on the mountaintop, and I had answered their questions in the most basic Albanian, trying to avoid any phrases that would reveal telltale Serbian gutturals (and fully expecting, quite honestly, to be shot at any moment). Somehow — perhaps it was the thread-worn UÇK field jacket that threw them off? — they made a decision quite quickly to spare me. They’d given no such consideration to Veton Dardani. They’d shot the boy without hesitation as he crept toward them, his hands raised in surrender, cooing softly to them in perfect, pleasant Albanian. The bullet struck him in the chest and he spun when it hit him before falling to the ground. He landed on his hands and knees, shrieking in a most bestial and disturbing way, and then began gasping for breath, a sure sign that the bullet had punctured his lung.

He crawled forward on his hands and knees, his eyes wide with terror, desperately trying to recover his breath, as one of the UÇK guys marched up to him and held a pistol against the back of his head. A moment later, a bullet put Veton Dardani out of his misery.

I had not cried when Dobra Beba disappeared for good, or when Tristina and I were torn apart. When my mother wrote me to tell me that Brati had gone missing in Bosnia and was presumed dead, my eyes remained dry. In my short time, I’d seen such atrocities, such horrors — women raped and tortured, children slaughtered like pigs — things that would reduce more sober men to tears. For me, nothing. But when I saw Veton Dardani on his hands and knees, begging for one last gulp of air, asking God, in his Infinite Mercy, for one more crack at life, his eyes wide with innocence and death, I had to steel myself. There would be no tears for Veton Dardani — that would be suicide — but I must tell you: my heart broke for that boy.

Without a second thought, the ape that had killed Veton Dardani came toward me, barking orders in rough Albanian. He pushed me to the ground, alive with the smell of soil and rotting leaves, and as he pinned me down with a hard knee to my back, another guy bound my wrists and covered my head with this curious hood they seemed to have brought for the specific purpose of adding to my misery.

At least the walk was downhill. The ground itself was still wet from the rain, and without the benefit of my eyes and arms, it was difficult to keep my footing. But, as I quickly learned, falling down only earned me a kick to the head or ribs. I became a blind tightrope walker: cautious, determined, and completely at the mercy of Mother Luck.

43

“LET US PRAY to the glorious God who has delivered you.”

I found myself drifting in and out, increasingly drawn to the Kosovo field of my imagination. By this time, I had been bundled up in the back of the truck for at least two days. I had not eaten or drunk the entire time, had not even been provided with an opportunity to use a toilet: I was swaddled in my own filth.

“I am sorry, Miloš Obilić, but I do not feel like praying today.”

“Not feel like praying? One should always feel like praying. It is how you connect to God; it is how you connect to everything.”

Miloš Obilić was kneeling before me, at the point where imagined reality and the darkness of my hood converged. His hands were upturned to the heavens and he spoke without anger. He never lost his temper, which made him, I suspect, an even more fearsome warrior.

“Oce nash, izhe jesi na nebesjeh, Da svjatitsja imja Tvoje . . .”

My Obilić was washed in an aurulent haze, the morning sun shining from his helmet and visor, his mail and breastplate, his gauntlets — all a certain shade of gold — that created the illusion (an illusion of an illusion) that he was both here and not here.

“Da pridet carstvije Tvoje; da budet volja Tvoja . . .”

If my delusions were to be believed, Kosovo fields were gentler, vastly more pastoral, than one might assume. You must understand, every Serbian child is brought up on stories of this place, fairy tales of mythic knights and black-hearted Turks. One comes to imagine a desolate place, a barren desert of stones and dirt, devoid of vegetation or any semblance of life.

“Jako na nebesi i na zemlji, Hleb nash nasushni dazd nam dnes . . .”

The field itself is almost in the geographic centre of the region called Kosovo and sits on the edge of the town of Kosovo Polje, a suburb (to use a Western term that may not exactly transfer to this context) of Priština. At the start of the Troubles, Kosovo Polje had been home to a large population of ethnic Serbs. Perhaps as many as a quarter of the townspeople claimed allegiance to the ancient House of Lazar. In the lead-up to the war, kidnappings and assassinations were common as Christians and Muslims strove to take control of this worthless little city.

“I ostavi nam dolgi nashja, Jakozhe i mi ostavljajem dolzhnikom nashim; I nevovedi nas vo iskushenije; No izbavi nas ot lukavago . . .”

Today, Nexhmije Gjinushi, a massive medieval rampart rises from the crest of the low hill that overlooks the battlefield. A picture of it hangs on the wall of every grade-school classroom in the country. Known as the Gazimestan Memorial — the word roughly translates to mean “the meeting place of heroes,” and implies a point of transformation and ascension — the tower is a lasting monument to distrust and division, and both a challenge and a threat to anyone who looks upon it. It is here that Slobo gave his famous speech to commemorate the six-hundredth anniversary of the mythic battle between Lazar and Murad. He spoke of the “resolve, bravery, and sacrifice that was present here in the field of Kosovo in the days past” and called on Serbs everywhere to ensure that the memory of heroic sacrifice made in this field would live forever. His words were read as code by Serbs and Muslims alike: the battle was on again.

“Jako Tvoje jest Carstvo i sila i slava, Oca i Sina, i svjatoga Duha, ninje i prisno, i vo vjeki vjekov,

“Amin.”

Miloš Obilić pushed himself to his feet. He moved slowly, as befit a man who had lived on the edge of reality for almost seven hundred years. He took a deep breath and then executed a short series of deep knee bends. “Have I told you,” he began, raising and lowering himself methodically, “the story, Young Knight, of the eve of the great battle, how I stood up to the boastings of that traitor Vuk Branković and vowed to personally slay Murat Hüdavendigâr or die in the attempt?”

“Most certainly. You have only four or five stories, and I’ve heard them each a dozen times or more.”

“And so I’ve told you of how I lay on the fields of blood in wait for the Turkish Sultan, only to rise from the corpses and cut his head off with a single stroke of my sword?”

“Been there, done that, Obilić, a hundred times.”

“And how Prinze Lazar himself commissioned me.”

“Yes, yes, Miloš Obilić. You have the disadvantage of existing in only myth and song: the marrow of your life is indeed rich, but it would never make a feast for dogs.”

Miloš Obilić stood upright and stretched his arms over his head. “We had a good fight here, Puppy. We fought for the Holy Golden Cross of God and Freedom. You know that. Certain, these hills are rich with minerals — lead, zinc, silver, chrome, nickel, andesite, basalt, granite, limestone, marble, and gold — and this point, Young Prince, this exact spot, marks the crossroads of the Balkans, the point where East meets West in brotherhood and battle. But we did not fight for material gain. We’d made a pact with God. We fought for honour and to secure for all Serbians a seat among the Sainted Martyrs of Heaven.”

Obilić bent down and picked up a stone. He examined it closely, then stood up again and surveyed the sky. He pointed to a cluster of limestone boulders nestled in the green grass not five metres from where we stood.

“This is the spot where the battle began. Murad’s akıncı came at us first, attacking a division of foot soldiers ten-thousand-strong under the leadership of Vlatko Vuko. A good man, Vuko, honourable in battle — but a devil with the ladies . . .”

Obilić smiled distinctly and threw the stone. It just missed a blackbird flitting through the morning air.

“They were crazy as shit, these akıncı, mounted horsemen who descended on us with no thought to their own safety or the safety of their steeds. Their aim was to terrify our troops and produce pandemonium. Vlatko Vuko stood strong, and his men followed suit. Although they outnumbered our division two to one, the akıncı were repulsed.”

Obilić turned and pointed to a cluster of bushes at the mid-point of the field.

“Right there, Little Dog, that is the place where an archer’s arrow felled Bayezid, Murad’s eldest son, who sat on his father’s right-hand side at the battle’s outset. Bayezid had raised his visor momentarily to clear his head, and at that exact instant, the arrow struck him, piercing his eye. Could there be a clearer sign from God as to whom His chosen people were? Bayezid fell from his mount and, upon regaining his footing, grabbed the arrow in both fists and — I saw this myself, mind, or I would have never believed it — tore the arrow from his head, extracting it eyeball and all. Without another thought, he regained his mount and threw himself back into battle. I must confess, I was never fond of Bayezid, but he was an excellent soldier, I have to give him that, and he comported himself admirably in battle that day.”

Obilić walked up the hill a short distance, then turned around, and walked back toward me.

“This is the exact spot, the exact spot, where John of Palisna fought both Savci Bey and his lover Andronicus, the son, no less, of the Byzantine emperor himself. The three stood hand-to-hand, armed with heavy swords and shields emblazoned with, alternately, the cross and the crescent, for over two hours — it exhausted me just to watch them struggle — without a decisive blow ever being struck. In the end, they all fell to the ground, beyond exhaustion, and had to be carried off: John, by a contingent of Knights Hospitallers; Savci Bey and Andronicus, by a harem of young and hairless eunuchs.”

Quite suddenly, Miloš Obilić leaned his head back and roared to the sky, a sound halfway between terror and joy. He ran to me, his usually mad look risen to an even higher level of insanity, grabbed me by my shoulders, and shouted: “Look well upon Kosovo Polje, My Son; look well! History lives in this place. It reaches forwards and backwards and up and down and to one side and to the other. Kosovo is history, Little Prince, and History is nothing but Kosovo.”

Then he calmed himself and begun to hum softly, a lilting, distressing melody perhaps Sephardic in origin, but certainly as ancient as these green hills. The humming grew in intensity, and presently he began to sing in a language I could identify as somewhat Serbic, yet neither the words nor even the sounds were completely recognizable.

He droned this way for several minutes before grabbing my hand.

“Come, Vida, do not be intimidated. The glory of ancestors should not prevent a man from winning glory for himself. Sing with me. Sing the Song of History. It is your song, Vida. It is the song, my son, of Kosovo.”

“I’m too tired to sing, Miloš Obilić, and frankly, the music turns my stomach.”

There is no Gazimestan Memorial in the Kosovo Field of my hallucinations. It is pristine and green and always captured in the morning light. There are farmhouses in the distance and, just beyond the hill, a grove of walnut and mulberry trees. A breeze is always wafting in from the west, disturbing slightly the hair and brightly coloured shawl of the Kosovo Maiden, who stands forever at the edge of my vision, her arms folded, her back towards me . . .

44

“IT'S YOUR LUCKY DAY.”

“Not now, Miloš Obilić.”

Deprived of sleep and food and water, of any real visual stimulation, I had lost my capacity to distinguish reality from hallucination. When I heard the voice, I assumed it was Obilić reaching out to me again from the void.

“Miloš Obilić?”

“Or whoever you are: Boshko Yugovich, Srdja Zlopogledja, the traitor Vuk Branković.”

I was drifting further and further from reality. I could not guess how many days we had been travelling. I was hoarse from thirst and way past the point of hunger, reaching a kind of ascetic discomfort that brought with it a consciousness all its own.

The voice outside the hood continued to speak.

“Who I am doesn’t matter to you, Lucky. I am the one who comes to tell you that we are not going to kill you. Yet.”

“Thank you, sir. Can you possibly extend a further courtesy and untie my hands?”

The owner of the voice grunted by way of laughing.

“I don’t want you to get too comfortable, Lucky. You won’t be staying with us much longer.”

By the smell of things, we had stopped to take on petrol. I assumed I was talking to the driver, who had decided to extend to me the minimum of human courtesies: small talk.

“Can you at least tell me where I am going?”

“You have been summoned, Lucky. You are going to places no Serb has gone before.”

I thought of protesting, of proclaiming my pretend Albanian heritage, but realized it was of no use.

“There are many places where no Serb has been: Bangladesh, the Arctic Circle, paradise. Tell me then, good brother, where is this Serb going?”

“All in good time, friend; just know that Korbi Artë has taken an interest in you. That is either very good for you or very, very bad.”

Korbi Artë! See how the threads of my testimony keep drawing together, Nexhmije Gjinushi. I knew of him, of course, through military briefings and Jadranko Kovač’s ravings, which had the UÇK leader associated with everyone from al-Qaeda to the Bask Euskadi Ta Askatasuna. At a time when it seemed that anyone with a patriotic uniform and odd haircut could become, with the help of the right photographer, a military leader, Korbi Artë had distinguished himself as a man of some intelligence and acumen, who, in his interviews with the press, was just as inclined to quote Nietzsche and Sun Tzu as spout political rhetoric.

“Korbi Artë? What would he want with me? I’m less than insignificant. I am a fragment of a molecule . . .”

“You are insignificant, Lucky, that much is true, but useful nevertheless. Korbi Artë needs prisoners, and you’ll do fine.”

“Prisoners?”

“Trade-zies, Lucky. Some of theirs for some of ours. All in good sport. We’re not animals, after all.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that, Brother, unless you are willing to take this damned hood off.”

And there it was. The gods had changed their plans. That I was now to be part of a prisoner exchange seemed hardly just. I’d only been a captive for a matter of days. Surely there were others more worthy than I? It’s a strange world, Nexhmije Gjinushi; it’s a strange, sick, fucked-up world, my dear.

And so we continued, and by now the roads, which had never been good to begin with, were getting considerably worse. At times, it seemed we were traversing a collection of potholes rather than an actual road, and we now made regular stops as the driver and his passenger (I was almost sure by this time there were two of them) worked to dig the truck out of yet another mudbank.

Comfort was simply out of the question. I had given up trying to maintain my balance sitting up and had now allowed myself to flop to one side, where my head was left unprotected and was also the primary point of contact with the bed of the truck. After one particularly violent pothole, my head rose up impossibly high and slammed down again, my mouth smashing into the ledge of the flatbed. Immediately, a warm liquid flowed across my lips and I could taste my own blood. I savored the tang. It was the first sustenance I’d had in days.

We were for the most part going up, although steep inclines were often followed by shorter, steeper declines. Up, down, left, right — it was meaningless to me. I had drifted beyond almost all level of thought. Even Miloš Obilić had abandoned me. And that’s why I cannot be certain when the first shell struck. It wasn’t the sound of the bomb going off that hammered me into reality; it was the abrupt stop of the vehicle. I could hear the truck engine revving and felt the back end slide as the tires spun in the mud. Another shell landed even closer, and I felt the rush of debris around me and the sound of shrapnel slicing through the air. The driver and his comrade were yelling at one another inside the cab, and I heard the passenger door open. The engine revved again, and the tires screamed as they strove to get a grip. Finally the truck lurched forward, stopped briefly for the passenger to hop in, then took off quickly. The driver was racing madly now, as I slid around the flatbed like a load of garbage, and then — a thunderous howl that vibrated through my bones. The force of the blast lifted me clear out of the vehicle and deposited me on my backside in a thick pool of mud.

I listened carefully. I could no longer hear the truck engine and silent too were my captors. In fact, the silence only intensified the sense of dread that had overtaken me: surely another shell was on its way? It is the spaces between the moments that are the worst.

I did a quick inventory. Arms, legs, penis. In place and functioning as far as I could tell. My neck seemed intact, and I was able to turn it from one side to the other. All good. I rolled over onto my side, struggled to my feet, and crouching as low as possible, made my way forward. I was aware of the absurdity of my situation. For all I knew, I was skulking through an open plain, surrounded by hostile soldiers with guns at the ready. But I was compelled to move and was consumed with the belief that, if I could find the truck again, everything would be okay.

I continued creeping forward, feeling with my feet for any clue that might lead me back to the truck. A few steps forward and with my boots I felt a tire lying on its side. It’s possible that this tire had come from another vehicle — of course, I could have been standing in the middle of a junkyard full of tires. I took a few more tentative steps and came upon a large piece of metal, which I soon ascertained was a vehicle door.

And in this manner I plodded forward, mentally reconstructing the truck a piece at a time. Eventually, I came across the flatbed, blown free from the chassis and lying half embedded in the mud. Just beyond that I found the head and partial torso of one of my captors. Whether it belonged to the driver or his passenger, I had neither the means nor the inclination to discover.

I made my way back toward the bed of the truck but must have listed off to one side, because try as I might, I could not rediscover it. The more I looked for it, the more disoriented I became. I had come to the edge of the road, as the sand and mud embankment gave way to stones and low shrubs, and tried to follow this natural line back to my starting point, but soon the road edge came to an abrupt halt. I almost walked into the trunk of a large tree and turned to make my way around it. As I seemed to circle it and circle it, without ever coming back to the road, dread descended. My only hope for survival was to be spotted by someone — anyone, friend or foe.

As I stumbled to regain the road, I felt I was wandering further into the labyrinthine forest. In my panic I called for Miloš Obilić, but being the most unreliable sort of delusion, he did not appear. Then I called for my mother and my father, I called for St. Sava, Prince of Zahumlje and founder of the Holy Orthodox church, and for Jesus and the Holy Martyrs. I called to Sventevith, the four-headed god of war and divinity, called to him in his many names — Svetovid and Suvid, Svantovít and Zvantevit, Vid — and implored St. Jude the Apostle to deliver me from my lost cause. I tried to slow my breathing and find a point of meditation, to summon the Buddha himself to deliver me to the Path of Enlightenment, or any path for that matter. I even prayed to the God of the Albanians, to Allah, conjuring as many of his attributes that would come to mind: Ar-Rahmaan, the Compassionate One; Al-Muqaddim, the Expediter; Ar-Raheem, the Merciful; Ar-Rasheed, Guide to the Right Path; and on and on until my voice was raspy.

And still I crept forward into the woods, fighting like a ram through the thickets and brambles that clung to me like leeches, over fallen logs and rotting stumps, through fetid bogs that threatened to swallow me whole, and on until I took one hesitant step in the wrong direction. My foot seemed to come to rest on a strong log, but as I shifted my weight forward, the log cracked in half and I tumbled down a steep embankment. I rolled like an acrobat, careening first off a rocky finger and then off the hard stump of a tree. I came to rest in some nettled shrub, almost face down, with my legs and neck entangled in the branches. The more I struggled to free myself, the more imprisoned I became. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. I intended to rest for a moment only, but I found myself instead beginning to weep. Perhaps it was out of frustration, perhaps desperation. For the record, Counsellor, a single tear soon gave way to another and another, and before I could catch myself I was wailing like an old woman, weeping and groaning in a most unseemly, self-pitying way, and calling out, between schoolgirl sobs, a single word which brought me a comfort of sorts, a single collection of syllables that both defined my misery and articulated my one slim hope for redemption.

Tristina!

The next thing I can remember, Nexhmije Gjinushi, is awaking under a mountain of comfort: a crisp linen sheet, three or four bright quilts, my head on a thick, goose-down pillow. It took me a moment to realize: I could see! And somehow I had made my way into a small, tidy bedroom. How I’d arrived here, I could not say.

I looked around the room. My guess was that it belonged to a little girl. It was sparsely furnished. My legs from the knees down hung off the end of the bed, which seemed better suited for a fairy-tale dwarf than a man. Other than that, there was only a wooden chair in one corner and, in the other, a small dresser with a mirror propped up on it. Beside the mirror, an antique hairbrush with an ornate silver handle and a collection of toy ponies. The walls were bare except for two large posters of the Backstreet Boys.

I adjusted my position slightly and felt an intense pain shoot from my elbow to my shoulder and down right to my groin. I turned to my left and realized that my arm, from the wrist to the elbow, was secured in a makeshift splint.

“Water.” The word came from me automatically. “Please someone, water.”

I waited in silence. I spoke again, louder. “Hello? Someone? Please, water!”

A moment later, a primordial woman entered, her wrinkled skin absorbed inside a colourful kerchief. She looked at me sternly: “No Serb!” She ordered, in a thick Albanian accent. And first held her fingers to her lips and then shook her fists — suggesting to me some dire consequence if I continued speaking in this manner.

“Ajo e gjyshes në rregull. I flasin shqip,” I responded, assuring her that I could speak her language.

She carried with her a ceramic tray and placed it on the foot of the bed. She took a glass of water from the tray, and propping my head gently with one hand, she brought the water to my lips. I drank fully, deeply, the entire glass. The old woman let my head fall back to the pillow. She set the glass back on the tray and retrieved what appeared to be a small cylinder, but which I quickly came to realize was a hypodermic needle. Placing one hand on my forehead to soothe me, she began to sing, using words that I could not understand but a melody that seemed at once foreign yet familiar. Gently, almost lovingly, the grandmother pulled up the right sleeve of my borrowed nightshirt and rubbed my arm to lift a vein. She continued rubbing intently for a moment, then pressed the needle into my arm. I felt nothing except a warmth that immediately emanated from my arm across the universe of my body. I had tried heroin only one time before, but knew enough that, when the brown dog came calling, you were wise to simply stand back and let it enter.

I doubt you’ve ever tried heroin, Nexhmije Gjinushi, but I can tell you the feeling is simply indescribable. A delicious, orgasmic presence that takes over your body and connects you with, perhaps for the only time outside of heaven, your soul. It’s as if the volume on every pleasure centre you have is suddenly turned to high. It is like being planted in the most wondrous dream you’ve ever had and feeling as if you have always been there and always will be, and yet knowing completely that it is not a dream but a new reality that is exponentially greater than any dream world or any reality you have experienced or ever will. It’s like glimpsing the face of God, realizing that you must cling to the memory forever, as you will never see His visage again.

And that’s when you come down, which is not unlike descending to hell. Every fibre and molecule hurts, vibrating not just in physical pain, but in a genuine spiritual angst as you realize you will never feel such a glorious high again, outside of heaven.

And then you sleep, deep delta sleep, without dreams, your breathing slowing, your body as close to death as it can get. And the only thing you recall when you wake up is the depth of the silence, and then the strains of a soft melody, rising in the distance like smoke from the darkest corner of the universe.

How long was I under? I could not tell. I know that, when I finally awoke, golden sunlight flowed through the tiny window. The cumbersome splint on my left arm had been replaced by two smaller bandages: one on my wrist and the other wrapped around my elbow. And, on the small wooden chair in the corner, sat a child. It was nine or ten, its mouse-brown hair clipped short. It had large Asiatic eyes that stared at me, deeply blinking every moment or so, as if it were watching an exotic pet snake or lizard in a terrarium. The child wore a rough, red sweater, with patches dutifully darned over the holes in the arms and collar, and a pair of yellow corduroy pants. I assumed it was a girl, because of the hairbrush and Backstreet Boys poster, but nothing about the child’s appearance completely assured me of its sex. Was this one of the virgjëresha Boz had spoken of?

“Mëngjes i mirë, motra e vogël,” I greeted her, as pleasantly as I could.

Immediately she leapt to her feet and ran from the room, screaming for her father.

A moment later, a sad-eyed man entered the room carrying a plastic plate with some bread and cheese on it, his curious daughter weaving between his legs, well out of my reach. The man placed the plate of food on the dresser, then spoke to me firmly but not without a certain warmth.

“I have welcomed you into my house as guest; I expect you to honour my courtesy.”

He spoke in a most straightforward manner, and I responded in kind.

“I honour it and more, my brother. I owe you my life.”

My host snorted and shook his head.

“We owe each other nothing beyond common courtesy.”

His name, as I learned, was Fisnik Valboni. His daughter — indeed, little Didi was a girl — had discovered me while the two of them were searching for stray sheep in the woods that ran along the edge of their property. Not a tall man by any means but as broad as two Zavida Zankovićs, Fisnik carried me two kilometres on his back, and brought me to his modest farmhouse to tend to my wounds and pull me back from death’s greedy arms. I was so severely dehydrated that my skin was dry as paper; my left elbow had become completely dislocated (whether from the fall in the woods or the explosion on the road, I had no way of telling) and was likely broken, as was the wrist; my stagnating shit and piss had burned deep holes into my skin, while the rope burns on my wrists, my split lip, and the sackcloth sore on my chin had all festered and were boiling with pus. A full seven days had passed since he pulled me from the nettles. Gjyshe (who was in fact one of Fisnik’s maiden aunts) had nursed me back to health, dressing my wounds with a herbal poultice made of sheep’s waste and lule basani, and spoon-feeding me an oat-mash pabulum commonly sold as feed for horses.

As to the heroin — I had not dreamt it. Gjyshe applied it at regular intervals to keep me in a semi-catatonic state and allow the healing process to work.

“But heroin, Fisnik? Excuse me, but I must say it hardly seems in keeping with the rustic image of the mountain farmer.”

I was enjoying my first full meal in weeks — hard bread, herbed goats’ cheese, wild greens, and boiled lamb — and slowly fermenting in the heat of the Valboni kitchen.

Fisnik shrugged. “These woods, they are full of many things. Some good, some bad, and most neither good nor bad.”

“With all due respect, my host, that is not really an answer.”

Fisnik dropped his head and looked at me with his sad eyes, a Balkanoid Buster Keaton. “Look, you are sitting in the midst of one of the most significant drug routes in Europe if not on Earth, Davidi. Drugs flow from the poppy fields of Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan through Turkey and into Kosovo. This is the heroin warehouse for central Europe. The sheep, they’re nice to eat, and keep you warm with their wool and fat with their milk. But heroin, it’s how we pay the bills.”

Fisnik began to lay out for me his theory of Heroin Everything, how the Communist invasion of Afghanistan, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo — everything — could be traced back to the heroin trade.

“It’s a four-hundred-billion dollar business, Davidi. You can see why Clinton would want a piece of it. Forget about what you’ve heard about geopolitical ideologies in conflict, East versus West, Muslim versus Christian. The war here is about one thing, and mark my words, Davidi, the fighting across the region will continue for as long as heroin is produced and people need to find an escape.”

And so, Nexhmije Gjinushi, that is how I came to stay with Fisnik Valboni and his small family. As I regained my strength and health, I was able to help Fisnik around his farm and learned many things in a short time.

Sheep, for example, have excellent hearing but, despite seeing in colour, bad eyesight. They suffer from a limited field of vision (often impeded by the wool on their face) and poor depth perception. For these reasons — combined with their timorous nature — sheep avoid shadows and high contrasts, and like the souls of the survivors of near-death experiences, they prefer to head toward the light. They are sensitive creatures too, and do not like the feel of water on their feet or of the wind at their backs. Given their druthers, sheep will always move into the wind and uphill, and Fisnik’s dog had to forcibly drive them back down the mountain every night to get them safely into their paddocks. Sheep are also like turtles, in that if they fall on their backs they cannot right themselves. They will lie that way squirming until they die unless some helping hand comes along and rights them.

I also learned about my host, Fisnik. A man of quiet dignity, he made his living raising sheep and using every part of them as efficiently as he could: the wool, the milk, the meat, even the teeth and entrails and hooves — he had a market for all of them. On the side, he worked for the heroin traders and UÇK, acting as a guide and occasional driver, helping convoys of trucks make their way through overgrown roads and trails that ran like arteries just below the mountain canopy.

His wife, Mirjeta, had died from a bronchial infection while Didi was still an infant, and another daughter had contracted encephalitis from a tick bite. The infection was unusually severe, and she had succumbed to it after six agonizing days in the paediatric ward of the Priština University Hospital. Gjyshe (I never learned her real name) had moved in a short time later to help raise the daughter and care for the widowed Fisnik.

Fisnik was an ethnic Albanian and his people had shared these mountains with Serbs, Gorani, Roma, and Turks for centuries, while his grandfather on his mother’s side was a full-blood Serb whose own great-great-great grandfather had forsaken the Patriarch Arsenije’s Grand Migration, opting instead to stay put in Kosovo, a decision that six generations of ancestors had no reason to question. Since the Troubles began, Fisnik told me, his Serbian cousins had all been driven from their homes and fled north, to the refugee camps of Novi Pazar. The UÇK gunmen were one thing, but what really terrified Fisnik’s cousins was the inevitable infiltration of KFOR troops — NATO’s Kosovo land troops.

“As they saw it, the Albanians were a known commodity; but could my cousins really trust that a coalition that has bombed them relentlessly, killed their children as they slept, murdered their grandmothers as they cowered in their dark little rooms — could they really trust that these people would now march into Kosovo and protect them? No, America hates Serbs more than we Albanians do. My cousins had it right. They had to get while the getting was good.”

When it came to religious practice, Fisnik was reluctant to go into much detail. He was not being diplomatic, mind, but simply felt that his faith was far too complicated to describe to an outsider.

“I could explain it to you, my friend, but that would entail me understanding it myself.”

He explained that he was a Bektashizmi, a member of a mystical Islamic order somewhat related to (if not derived from) Sufism, yet vastly more subtle. The main tenet was the veneration of the Trinity made up of Allah, Muhammad, and Ali and a disposition that questioned existing authority and accepted the reality of other mystical experiences. Fisnik, for example, did not pray to Mecca, instead preferring to commune with his God before a small shrine in his sitting room, a shrine that included a plaster statue of Hajji Wali, the Persian saint who founded the Bektashi order, and a chipped ceramic mosaic, clearly Byzantine in origin, featuring the Holy Blessed Virgin, her hands outstretched in wonder.

“Personally, I must tell you, Fisnik, I have given up on religion. I studied for some time to become a pretend Buddhist, but now I am content being a closet atheist. Although, I’m also rather fond of football.”

Fisnik nodded. “It’s easy to give up on God. He is not evidently reliable. But then I’ve come to accept that, while faith in God makes all things possible, it makes nothing easy.”

And so my health returned, and to bide my time, I set to work for Fisnik Valboni, Sufi mystic, sheep farmer, heroin runner. I repaired his fences, chopped his firewood, drew water from his well, tended his sheep. The last bit I particularly enjoyed, and quickly came to understand why the great monolithic religions of the world — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — all emerged when shepherding was a legitimate career option. It was both rhythmic and unpredictable, like watching waves roll across a lake, and therefore highly meditative. I fancied that I could easily become used to this life. One needed only a pastoral disposition and enough intelligence to out-think your charges. It didn’t take a lot of investment up front: some sheep (I’m sure Fisnik would have spotted me a couple, if I’d asked), a smart dog or two, a hooked staff (largely for effect; the dogs did most of the actual work keeping the sheep in line), and perhaps a cloak. It was a far lot easier than dealing drugs or working the black markets and vastly more productive than soldiering.

I spent more and more time in the hillocks and pastures just beyond Fisnik Valboni’s farm, with Engjell, the cheerful and somewhat lazy mutt charged with marshalling and protecting Fisnik’s herd. Part Qen Šar, an ancient breed of Albanian mountain dog, and part God-Knows-What, Engjell made for the best of all companions. As content to lie at my side, his head resting on my ankles, as to run about pointlessly, he nevertheless kept one sleepy eye on our charges and, being something of a bully at heart, enjoyed snapping them into line whenever he saw fit. Most of all, he was an excellent listener, glancing up at me every so often to reassure me he was paying attention, flunking his tail heavily once or twice whenever I used his name, and nuzzling his muzzle into the crook of my ankles when he sensed emotions rising in my voice.

“I am thinking of writing her again, Engjell, to bring her up to date on my curious adventure.”

Engjell’s tail instinctively slapped the dirt at the sound of his name.

“She must be sick with worry by now, wondering if I am ever going to come home. Be brave, my little flower — that’s what I would tell her, Engjell. Be brave my little flower, I am thinking of you and longing to be in your arms again.”

Engjell peered up at me.

“What, Engjell? What? A little sappy perhaps, but I am still young and allowed my romantic excesses. Besides, you’ve been in love before, my friend, I’m sure. You know that it reduces a man to a child, it unsexes him at the same time as it turns him into a complete sex machine.”

Engjell yawned and I could see the black spackling on the pink skin inside his mouth. Qen Šar are big dogs, and unlike other herding dogs, which get by on their wits and a neurotic tenacity, Qen Šars have a vicious streak and a reputation as fierce brawlers (in fact, they were a favourite breed in the dog-fight clubs of Moscow, Bucharest, and Beograd). Although as much mutt as anything, Engjell had the Qen Šar size and colouring — thick reddish brown fur with black mottling — and a primitive glint at the back of his eyes that suggested the bestial power that lay just beneath his cosy surface.

“Do I bore you with my talk, Engjell? My Tristina doesn’t interest you? I always thought that everyone liked a good love story, the sadder and more desperate the better. But it will end well, my friends, everyone is destined to find their soulmate, and no god is as cruel as to keep true lovers apart forever.”

Engjell suddenly lifted his head. He sniffed the air intently.

“What is it, Engjell? a fox? wolves?”

Engjell continued sniffing, then lumbered to his feet, his ears forward, his tail alert. He began a low growl and pawed slowly toward our flock.

“What is it, boy? What’s up?”

Engjell took a couple more delicate steps, then dropped to his belly, his lips pulled back, the hair on his spine and tail on edge.

“Go boy, go! Kill! Kill!”

Spurred by my words, Engjell took off and ran to the far edge of the flock, just at the point of the treeline. Already sensing Engjell’s anxiety, the sheep were now in an accelerating frenzy, each one pushing towards the centre of the flock and the relative security the sea of wool brought them.

Engjell ran along the line of trees, barking furiously and stopping every few metres to lower his head, sniff and growl, before starting off again. I scoured the woods, but could see nothing, and decided it was most prudent to draw my service revolver.

“What is it, boy?” I climbed onto a rock to get a better look. “Who’s out there?”

Engjell looked back at me, all business now. He hesitated for a moment, looking to the woods then back to me one more time. He cautiously penetrated the forest, his dark fur quickly blending into the shadows and trees. And then all was silent. In that moment of anticipation, I caught something out of the corner of my eye, and turning to my left, I saw her for the first time. She was positioned at the forest’s edge, perhaps 150 metres from my vantage point, very close to where Engjell had hesitated only moments before. Although her back was turned toward me, I could see her elbows protruding from her side and could tell that she was standing with her arms folded across her chest. She wore a bright, old-fashioned cloak — festooned with intricate needlework — not unlike those you see on the Roma women Sunday mornings as they wander the streets of Beograd. The collar of the cloak went halfway up the back of her head, and strands of her hair spilled over the collar and down her back. From where I stood, it could have easily been Tristina (save for the raven-coloured hair) and I had an urge to call her name. But that would have been too foolish to consider.

“Miss?” I called hesitantly in Albanian. She did not budge. “Hello?” I tried in Serb. Nothing. Not a muscle moved.

I lowered my head and stepped off the rock. When I looked up again, she was gone and Engjell was lumbering toward me, his fat tongue drooling from his mouth, his expression now careless, his only concern that I would be pleased to see him.

“Engjell, where’d she go? The woman, Engjell, what has happened to her?”

45

I RETURNED TO that same spot every day for the rest of the week, Nexhmije Gjinushi, but saw nothing of my mysterious maiden. Fisnik was dubious from the start.

“I know we live simply, Davidi, but that does not mean we are simple people. We have TV and read books. Myself, I have a degree in organic chemistry from Universiteti i Prishtinës. We don’t believe in spectres and wood nymphs. Baba Yaga doesn’t chase me through the night.”

“I understand completely, Fisnik, and I am not suggesting she is anything but a real woman —”

“Well that’s the other part, Davidi. We don’t normally have beautiful maidens hanging around in our forests. This isn’t actually a hub of activity, my friend. There are no shopping malls or water parks.”

“You seem to be questioning my . . . I don’t know what. Sanity?”

“I am far beyond that, my friend, but that is beside the point. What I am suggesting is that you have been through a lot and are still recovering, and that both the heart and eyes are prone to play tricks on us at the best of times. You saw something, I am most certain, but a shadow or a light or a speck on your eye. The thin mountain air, the hot sun, and the hypnotic bleating of those damn sheep did the rest.”

I was prepared to give in; it was just a figment of my imagination. What else could it be? The fact that this Kosovo Maiden was an almost exact double of the Kosovo Maiden who haunted the edges of the hallucinatory Field of Blackbirds was proof enough. When confronted with the impossible, one could be certain that the heart was playing tricks.

And that was what I was entirely prepared to believe, as I set out to tend my flock in the early morning on the Sunday following St. Jovan Vladimir’s feast day. It was hazy when I started off, but the warm June sun dissolved the low-lying clouds and left me with a clear and unobstructed view of the meadows, mountains, and woods. I was up in the high pastures, perhaps half a kilometre higher up than I had ever been before. The sheep settled into their ruminations quickly, while Engjell inspected the area, nose to the ground, revelling in a spectrum of scents that I could not even begin to imagine. I’ve heard it speculated that smells are like music to a dog, an endless fascination and captivating sensory experience that helps inform, define, and elevate canine existence. But from my own observations, I suspect that these olfactoral compositions are vastly richer than anything we humans can conjure up with a pinch of Šaban Šaulić’s novokomponovana or a healthy dose of Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Deprive a human being of music and they would go about their life slightly less distracted but no worse for the wear. Deprive a dog of its sense of smell (as Pavlov’s protégé Boris Babkin demonstrated in a series of experiments conducted in the waning days of the Russian Provisional Government) and it will lose interest in itself and its surroundings, and grow more and more despondent until it slips into a deep sleep. At that point, recovery is unthinkable; the dog is as good as dead.

And so Engjell swept the area, his tail held high, concentrating on the important job that lay before him. As he moved to a stand of immature pine trees on the far side of the pasture, he once again stopped and lifted his head, sniffing intently. I watched without speaking as Engjell walked toward the green pines.

Suddenly, Engjell stopped and whined. He made a circle, and then another in the opposite direction, before crouching down to slither away from the pines. After about ten metres, he turned back and examined the trees, his head now low, his tail dropped, an attitude of submission. He crouched in the tall grass and emitted a soft growl that can only be described as plaintive.

And that’s when she appeared again. I saw her first through the trees, taking slow, weighted steps that ensured she remained just on the edge of my view. Then I lost sight of her, only to catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. She was looking at me (as near as I could ascertain in the moment my brain registered her presence), a puzzled expression on her face, as if she were trying to remember how she knew me. And then she was gone.

When I saw her again, it was far up on the edge of the trees, now standing with her back to me, her arms folded as in our first encounter. I rubbed my eyes once and then once more, but she remained in my sight. I looked around sharply, to see if there were any other Kosovo Maidens imposing themselves on the landscape. But no.

“Come,” I called to Engjell. “We shall investigate.” But the mutt was having none of it, and no matter how I chirped and whistled and cajoled, he would not follow me into the woods.

“Be a man, Dog! It’s only an imaginary woman.” Engjell dropped to his belly. I forged on without him.

Up and up I headed, always, it seemed, just missing her as she disappeared on the crest of another hillock. She had an eerie omnipresence, like one of those paintings of the Saviour where the eyes follow you wherever you go. If I lost sight of her or came to a fork in the trails, I could arbitrarily turn right or left, take a few steps, and emerge from the trees just in time to see her fade once again into the horizon.

I was fully aware of the futility of the exercise — and of the danger. These woods were full of UÇK men and drug runners. I had dodged the bullet, literally, so many times, why bother to tempt fate again? I also completely understood that in pursuing my Kosovo Maiden I was chasing a kind of madness. Every disappearance and sudden reappearance, every slow dissolve into yet another horizon, every step further into the dark and hostile woods — all of it was illusion of one kind or another. Why did I continue? We’ve all felt it, that compulsion that drives us forward, overtaking our willpower and undermining our judgment. Whether we’re on the trail of pussy or chasing our next deal or sinking into the mud of a heroin undream or flushing out stragglers in an enemy village, every one of us sometimes shuts off our rational mind and allows ourselves to be swallowed by pure impulse. I would argue that it is an intensely meditative experience, as savoury as if one were praying on the lips of death.

And so I persevered. Eventually I lost sight of my Kosovo Maiden. I was in a shallow gully, with steep rises on all sides of me. I tried to take the path going up one slope, but the ground was too dry and crumbled as I stepped on it. I could not get traction. I tried the other direction and found the brambles simply too thick for me to pass. My one choice appeared to be a low trail, a rabbit warren really, overgrown with hawthorn and stinging nettles. I crouched down, then lay almost flat on my belly and, despite my tender elbow, pushed myself forward along the tight trail with my hands and knees, like a proper soldier. The nettles clung to me like history, and very quickly I was enveloped in a near darkness, although it was not yet midday.

A wave of panic washed over me, but I calmed myself and took stock. At this point, I had only two options: go back and try and retrace my steps (which seemed impossible, with the innumerable twists and turns my journey had taken) or forge ahead into the unknown. I was not ready to commit to either and wormed my way forward a few more centimetres. That was enough to bring a shard of light into view. I pushed forward a little more, and there was now an even larger break in the undergrowth some twenty-five metres away. I pushed forward, tearing my way through the nettles, as determined as a badger.

I emerged at the side of a dirt road. It was deserted as far as I could see, although the forest grew thick on both sides, threatening to swallow the road at any time. I walked around, studying the trees carefully for any sign of life. Then I looked down into the dust and scanned for tracks. The road was definitely in use: there were several lines of tire tracks running in both directions. I bent over a little and looked some more. There, near the side of the road, I saw what appeared to be small boot prints in the dust. I got down on my hands and knees to get a closer look and imagined myself Engjell for a moment, my muzzle to the earth, my ears and tail alert.

Yes. They were indeed boot prints! Much smaller than mine, and narrower, but boot prints nonetheless. Had I been an Indian tracker in some Karl May western, I might have been able to ascertain with confidence all sorts of valuable information. I was left to speculate: were these perhaps the prints of my elusive Kosovo Maiden?

“What are you doing, bumpkin?”

The sound of a man’s voice ripped me from my investigation. I turned quickly to see two paramilitaries smirking down at me.

“Are you lost, vella?” the shorter of the two asked me. He had a broad flat forehead and looked vaguely like a cartoon caveman.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“If you are missing some sheep, we passed some back on the road a ways.” His friend was speaking now, the taller one with a perpetual smile emerging from below a moustache that would have done Stalin proud.

“Thank you, vella.”

“Not much of a shepherd, if you get lost trying to find your strays.” Happy Stalin smiled even more.

“It’s not as easy as it looks, friends. I don’t just sit around all day doing sit-ups and jerking off, like you army boys. I’ve got responsibilities.”

The two men laughed, and one of them offered me a hand up.

“And why have you not joined the good fight?” Stalin was speaking now, without malice.

“First, I am a lover, not a fighter. Second, I have very carefully avoided being press-ganged and do not intend for it to happen now —” I looked from one to the other for any sudden sign of hostility. They only continued to smirk, perhaps believing they had stumbled upon a yokel simple enough to provide a few moments of diversion in their otherwise invisible day.

“And, third, I am a father, vella, and there is no one else to care for my daughter since my wife died . . .”

I silently apologized to Fisnik Valboni for stealing this part of his life and then I turned away to suggest that I was experiencing a rush of emotion; curiously, as the words came out of my mouth I found myself tearing up.

The two men nodded compassionately, and my new friend Stalin put his arm on my shoulder. At first he seemed friendly, but he soon tightened his grip and forced himself directly into my view.

“Tell me, friend, do I detect a bit of a Beograd accent?” He smiled thinly.

I could do nothing but hold his look and smile back.

“Meaning?”

“Nothing friend, really. Just that there is a certain cadence to your speech, a rhythm that is rather not of here and not of us. Something more Serbian perhaps . . .”

Stalin’s eyes narrowed as his talons dug deeper into my shoulder.

I paused for a moment, barely entertaining the thought that I had come too far to find my wandering angel to be struck down by a matter so trivial as the truth. I merely shrugged.

“Of course,” I said. “Ja sam srpski rođen i odrastao! This coat” — I elegantly straightened the fraying lapels — “I found in a ditch. I took a wrong turn, you see, at Niš and have been wandering ever since, like the proverbial Jew. I’ve come to throw myself on your infinite mercy, Kosovo brother.”

I tilted my head slightly and raised my eyebrows, pleading, softly I suppose, for my life.

Stalin stared me down, and suddenly exploded into laughter, little machine-gun bursts that left him and Alley Oop bent over double. I was indeed the amusing bumpkin. Eventually, Stalin threw his arm around my shoulder again.

“Come, Bo Peep. We’ll walk you to your sheep. We’ll share a joint. Do you have one?” He looked at me quizzically for a moment, then sounded another short laugh. He yanked a fat spliff from behind his ear.

“Yes,” the Caveman piped in. “Walk with us, shepherd. We don’t want to run the risk of you getting lost again. The road is only so wide, with hardly any signs at all.”

And so we walked, Nexhmije Gjinushi, wary comrades in arms, united by our mutual humanity, some harsh grass and a deep-rooted desire not to get shot. Both men were from Novo Brdo, an antique city several hundred kilometres to our immediate east. They had grown up blocks from one another in the shadow of an extinct volcano and the decaying shell of a medieval Serbian fortress.

We talked of nothing. The boys recited some of the most recent jokes they’d heard, and we spent an inordinate amount of time discussing our favourite foods. They told a couple of amusing stories about one of their troop, Dita, a compulsive masturbator, who was renowned within the unit for collecting his stuff in plastic film canisters and mailing it off to his girlfriend in Priština once a month, like clockwork. What she did with it, we could only speculate.

Mostly we just got stoned and walked in relative silence.

We had walked maybe twenty-five minutes, smoking two of Stalin’s harsh joints and drinking blackcurrant wine from a sheepskin flask, when we came to my new friends’ base camp. I was a little apprehensive at first, concerned that I might run into someone who would recognize me from my earlier travails, but I’ll save you the burden of false suspense: the men for the most part ignored me, going about their business without a second glance. Outside of a couple guys imitating sheep, I was left alone.

And there I might have parted with my new comrades, but as I set off on my own, a curious sound caught my attention. Somewhere a radio was playing, and while it was too distant to make out the specific words — KFOR, maybe, and the optimistic use of “surrender” — something in the cadence of the voice caught my attention. I stepped off the road and walked toward a collection of tents bivouacked in a clearing by an ancient walnut tree. It seemed the voice had changed now. Gone was the singsong lilt, replaced by the perfect modulations of an Albanian news reader. The words were clearer, but I could still only make out the occasional one. And then, there it was again. That voice: slightly wheezy but measured and calming. I walked closer to the sound and came across an older recruit, perhaps in his mid-forties, sunning himself and flipping through what appeared to be collection of Paul Celan poems, a battered transistor radio at his side.

“Excuse me, brother. What are you listening to?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Only me, brother.”

“And who the fuck are you?”

“No one, sir. A lost shepherd.”

The reader thumbed through his book silently for a moment and then, having decided, I suppose, that I would not go away until he dealt with me, he looked up.

“It’s the RTP news from Priština.”

“And who, may I ask, is that speaking?”

“So many questions, nosy fellow. Be careful, or I will have you shot as a spy.”

“Please, I am just curious.”

The fellow paused and listened for a second.

“It’s the news reader I suppose. Dževahira Koljenović or Sanela Bilalović perhaps.”

“With all due respect, sir, I think it is neither Dževahira Koljenović nor Sanela Bilalović.”

Then the fellow raised his eyebrows and dropped his book to his lap with a dismayed and studied sigh. He turned his head for a moment to listen to the radio, then looked at me, raising his hands in disbelief.

“Are you serious?”

I shrugged.

“Man, you’ve got to spend less time diddling your sheep and more time paying attention to the world around you.”

“Please, sir, if you could just tell me. Who is it?”

“Why, it’s Korbi Artë now, isn’t it?”

“That is Korbi Artë?”

“Of course; any fool can tell. But you are obviously not just any fool. You’ve studied the art.”

I paused, then pushed a little bit more.

“If you could, sir, do you have a picture?”

“Do I have a picture?”

“Yes.”

“Of Korbi Artë?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind.”

“Why, of course, yes. I’m keeping a Korbi Artë scrapbook. I’ll just get it from my dresser. It’s right next to my pink diary and autographed picture of Ebru Gündes.”

“Please sir, if you could. A newspaper photo, a magazine, anything.”

The man sighed deeply and slammed his book on the ground.

“I will check the library.” He got up out of his cot and began searching the area. A moment later, he came across a discarded Koha Ditore. He thumbed through the paper, scowling all the while, then finally stopped and folded it open.

“There,” he said, thrusting the paper toward me. “Now if you don’t mind . . .”

He lay back down on his cot and picked up his book.

I smiled and nodded my thanks, then looked down at the picture. Two men in ornate military uniforms, reviewing a field map and looking pensively off-camera, as if studying the future. The one man I recognized as Gjarpëri, the ferret-eyed leader of the UÇK. The other was even more familiar.

“Brother, please. One last question, if I could.”

I held the photo up for him to see.

“This man, here, beside Gjarpëri — he is Korbi Artë?”

“No, that’s Elsa Lila, Kosovo’s entry in the 1999 Eurovision Song Contest. Of course that’s Korbi Artë! Now, if you don’t mind, I am trying to make the world a better place, one poem at a time.”

The reader returned to his book, but I had to pester him still.

“Please forgive me friend, but I must ask another thing. Korbi Artë, do you know where to find him?”

“Do I know where to find my Commander-in-Chief? I suppose I could track him down.”

“Then could you help me find him, sir? Could you contact him and ask him if I might speak to him?”

“Of course. And after he’s finished shooting me and feasting on my brains, perhaps he’ll give you a hand job as well.”

“I rather suspect he won’t be angry, sir. Please, could you contact your headquarters and tell them that someone wishes an audience with Korbi Artë.”

“By all means. And whom shall I say is wishing to pop in and say ‘Hi’? The Duke of Windsor? Bono? The Lord God Jesus Christ Himself?”

“Tell him that it is indeed a wonderful day! Tell him that his son Zavida is back from the dead.”

46

I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE thinking, Nexhmije Gjinushi. Are you certain, Zavida Zanković? Korbi Artë, your father? It’s almost too perfect to believe. And in truth, I didn’t completely believe it myself. The man in the photo certainly looked like my father. He was stouter than when I had last seen him, and his hair, once salt and pepper, was fully grey. There were deep lines on his face, although I recall distinctly that the last time I had seen my father his face was smooth and pink. He stood there in his army fatigues, his head stuffed into a camouflage-coloured qeleshe, eyeing the future suspiciously, a strange severity to his aspect, a sharpness to his eyes, and a confidence to his manner that I had seen only once before, in the aftermath of the explosion at Crnilo.

But what great alchemy was this? From denigrated Serbian outcast to Albanian warlord? It’s just my father’s way, I suppose. If the lie is big enough, and you commit to it with your whole heart — anything can happen!

I continued to inspect the photograph in the newspaper, transfixed by this vision of my almost-father.

“Well?”

It was the reader, whose solitude I had disrupted with my questions.

“Shall we call your father, young prince? Or should I just go back to bed and pretend this nonsense never happened?”

I was hesitating, absently biting my finger as I considered my next course of action, when I heard a voice calling from by the road.

“Bo Peep! Come on now.” I looked up. It was Stalin, holding a small lamb in the crook of his arm. “We found her, little Adelina Ismajli. Come take her before someone else makes their move.”

I took a step toward Stalin and then another, then quickened my pace and met the soldier at the edge of the road. He handed me the lamb, which maaaed dutifully as it reached my arms, then he slapped me on the back.

“Follow this road just around this corner and down maybe half a kilometre. You’ll come to a crossroads. Simply turn left and follow the road downhill; you’ll be back to where you started soon enough.”

I thanked the soldier and, holding the lamb firmly in my arms, began walking to the crossroads. I stopped a time or two, looking back to the encampment and trying to decide which direction I should choose. I thought of Korbi Artë and couldn’t help but wonder if my father had done it again, working his absurd alchemy, turning base Dobroslav Zanković into pure Korbi Artë, who now stalked the Balkans like some wildcat, bringing the Serbian dogs to their knees.

A moment later I reached the main roadway and encountered a steady flow of people — civilians mostly, loaded like mules with anything they could carry — and hesitated a moment. I decided without any real thought to turn right and not left, because right, I reasoned, seemed to be taking me to a wider road, paved on both sides, and left would only take me back to where I had been.

But as I began my trek, holding my woolly charge close to my breast, a voice called to me from behind.

“Bo Peep, a moment if you will.” I turned to see Stalin now standing with the reader and two heavily armed men whom I immediately took to be paramilitary police. They stood erect, their hands near their side arms, as Stalin smiled ever more broadly and gestured to me with open arms. “It’s your lucky day, friend. Korbi Artë is anxious to see you! Won’t you stay a while longer and enjoy our hospitality?”

47

THE REST OF THE STORY you know, Nexhmije Gjinushi. I suffered the long ride from the UÇK mountain base, seated on the back of an ancient Russian motor scooter, hanging on to Vasile Lupu with one hand, cradling little Adelina with the other.

We rode for four hours, along the rough, winding, and sometime treacherous roads of the Šar, to a housing compound where you find me now. I was held for three days under what could only be described as notional freedom before my subsequent arrest, at which point Adelina and I were immediately moved to a room across the hallway. It was almost identical to my previous room except that it had an iron bolt on the outside of the door and contained a wash basin in one corner and a tiny fridge in the other. The transfer took mere minutes.

And so, I was duly arraigned. I sat on the edge on my new bed as Vasile Lupu read the formal list of charges to me.

“Fomenting Treason. Conspiracy to Conspire. Impersonating a Prisoner of War. Impersonating an Officer of the Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës . . .”

Et cetera.

Vasile Lupu processed me most thoroughly, detailing my name, rank, unit number, my father’s name (Korbi Artë — he wrote it dutifully on the Register of Prisoners), my mother’s maiden name, my date and place of birth, everything, recorded in a delicate and studied script.

At the end of my intake, Vasile Lupu slid the registration form over to me and offered his pen. I noticed that his hands were impossibly small, like those of a very young child. I suppose I could have easily grabbed the pen from Lupu’s little fingers and plunged it through his sparrow ribcage, deep into his heart. Instead, I took the instrument and dutifully signed. He handed me a yellow receipt.

“Don’t lose this. It includes an inventory of your personal effects, all of which will be returned to you pending your release.”

“And what is to become of me, Vasile Lupu?”

“Personally, I cannot say. I have no influence on the future. My job is to ensure that the present is accounted for.”

“But this father of mine — do you not perceive a certain . . .” I had to think carefully, and choose my words with diplomacy, “a certain imaginative energy at work?”

“I do not follow you, sir.”

“It’s just that my father —”

“You say he is your father, sir. I note, however, that you are currently facing charges of identity theft and fraud, with a civil suit pending in the high court, brought forward by Korbi Artë on a matter of defamation of character.”

“Very well. My alleged father, don’t you think he lacks a certain . . . consistency of manner?”

“I cannot speak to that, sir. I am not the sort given to speculation or the asking of questions that do not require answers.”

And that brings me up to the here and now, Nexhmije Gjinushi. And I must say, I am feeling rather abandoned. Not a word from you now in three days, Counsellor; not a word from anyone. Beyond the twice-daily ministration of Imbrahim Kaceli — to bring my simple meals and tend to my bedpan — I am left to myself.

I am determined to keep on writing, Nexhmije Gjinushi. That’s a commitment I’ve made to you, and otherwise I spend my time lying on the bed in a half-sleep or stroking Adelina. Occasionally, I peek through the barred slit that passes as my window, seeing only the very tops of mountains in the distance or, closer, the garbage overflowing from a rusted green dumpster by the cinder-block wall.

Sometimes, I listen to the shells falling here and there, sometimes close, sometimes far away. I count the seconds between explosions. One could almost imagine it is thunder.

At other times I have long, imagined conversations with my father. We discuss trivial things mostly — the weather, family history, coal production in pre-industrial Wales — and he grills me on the details of the lives of the Holy Martyrs of the Serbian church.

I can hear Miloš Obilić prowling around the grounds beneath my window, tossing pebbles at the turret to get my attention and calling to me, inviting me to pray to God most high.

“I’ve given up praying,” I tell him. “I am now a devout atheist, Miloš Obilić, and worship only those things unseen that have yet to happen.”

I even held little Adelina up to the barred window as if to imply that I had my own sheep now, and would no doubt at any moment be founding my own religion.

48

AND SO, IT HAS COME to this, Nexhmije Gjinushi. The waiting game. Today, by my reckoning, we should be wrapping up our case, preparing our final arguments, practising, perhaps, the cross-examination — I was expected to speak in my own defence, was I not Counsellor? Instead, here I sit, my thumb up my ass, the pot of tea, brewed in anticipation of your arrival this morning, growing tepid.

I understand now my naiveté. You are a professional, after all, hardly one to be taken in — or frightened off — by my schoolboy advances. There are larger forces at work, even in this tiny room. I forget that sometimes, Nexhmije Gjinushi. Does that endear me to you?

We Serbs have a saying (indulge me one last time, Counsellor): it is not at the table but in prison that you learn who your true friends are. By this measure, I have learned that Vasile Lupu is a true friend. He laid it all out for me this morning, Counsellor. The war, he said, is all but done. The trial, as you well know, has been postponed indefinitely now that NATO is running the show. No need to fan the flames further, I suppose. Besides, my understanding from Vasile Lupu is that judge and jury himself may not exactly be in any frame of mind to attend, let alone conduct, the proceedings.

I suppose these latest developments put your own position in flux, Counsellor. I assumed you were in the direct employ of the UÇK or some other agency of the Kosovo Provisional Government. But now that the war is almost over, NATO seems to have taken control. NATO likes to run a tight ship and already this compound is crawling with those KFOR people. A relentlessly cheery lot, these Western troops. Do they know there’s a war going on? I was introduced to Captain Blum already this morning. I am hoping that he is just a temporary stand-in for you, but am beginning to fear that, with the prospects of a trial diminishing, you and I may be seeing less and less of one another. (Do not fret, my dear: I will continue to maintain these records, as I promised!)

My introduction to Captain Blum was rather lacking in formality. I was awoken by a soft hand, shaking me, and a strange, narrow face staring at me.

“Piss if you must. I’ve brought you some coffee.”

His Albanian was rough and heavily accented. I rubbed my eyes and seemed to be staring into the face of a hairless badger. His nose was long and slender, with two black eyes set far back on the head and almost no cheeks or chin to speak of.

“Here.”

He handed me a white mug. I stared at it for a moment, then blew on top. A curl of steam rose up.

“I’m trying to place the accent. Swiss? Swedish?”

The badger smiled, and for the first time I noticed he had a thin moustache. It was light, almost flesh-coloured.

“Norsk; Norwegian.”

He smiled.

“Norwegian? Is that a country?”

“Norway, my friend. I know you’ve heard of it.”

I had, of course, but that at that point, in that timeless placeless place, my memory failed me. I stared blankly.

“You know, a-ha? Raga Rockers? Jokke & Valentinerne?”

I shook my head. The captain turned his head and smiled.

“Darkthrone? Burzum? Gorgoroth?”

“I fear you’re playing with me now, friend.”

“I am sorry, Zavida — may I call you that? — you are right. I’ve really come to ask you some questions.”

I took a sip from my cup. Real coffee! A good roast too, with a thin cream on the top. What magic was this?

“First, may you be so kind as to tell me who you are and what the fuck you are doing here?"

His name was Reidar Blum and he was a captain with the Forsvarets Spesialkommando, a Norwegian special forces unit that was, he told me, cooperating with the UÇK as part of the NATO advance on the Serbian army. He had come to ask me about my father.

“Korbi Artë?”

“No. Dobroslav Zanković.”

“I see. What do you care to know?”

“Nothing too specific. Just tell me about him.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m curious.”

“I am curious as to why you are curious.”

“Let’s just say that we both have a vested interest in your answers.”

I grunted and adjusted my blanket. I was sitting up by now, and very much in need of a toilet.

“He’s just a normal fellow, I suppose, after a fashion.”

“And his health, it is good?”

“I haven’t seen him for months. You tell me.”

“But normally, is he . . . sick?”

“In a manner of speaking. He suffers from a bad case of history. What is your real question?”

“Can he . . . is he someone to be trusted?”

“My father?”

“Yes, your father. Not, say, Korbi Artë.”

“Is my father to be trusted?” I considered the question for a moment. “That’s a tall order. He is a person better understood than trusted. He’s an alchemist, you know, which, if I understand the science well enough, means he is something of a magician. Not a wizard — not supernatural — but hyper-natural, a studied conjuror pulling ever larger rabbits out of ever smaller hats. If you understand this, understand the limitations, you may not be able to trust him but you can perhaps trust yourself around him.”

Captain Blum leaned back, took a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket, and offered it to me.

“Thank you,” I said, helping myself to a half a dozen smokes. “Do you have any weed, Captain?”

The Norwegian shrugged. “I can get you some, Zavida, would you like that?”

I nodded, and leaned forward as he struck a match to light my smoke.

“I would kill for a bag of pot right now. And a shower. A bag of pot, a shower, a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken — I used to get it in Beograd, you know — and a crap. Those are my demands.”

Blum laughed. “You’re asking a lot, for a prisoner of war.”

“Well, I’m beginning to suspect, Captain Blum, that you want something from me. And so I am taking the initiative. I always like to lead a negotiation. I feel that at strong opening position gives one the upper hand.”

Captain Blum laughed again.

“Well, the shit is yours, I’ll write that on paper if you like. The weed — the shower too, and I could probably throw in a run in the sack, if you like. We have a woman under contract for just such purposes. The chicken — that’ll be a problem.”

I folded my arms and pretended to be offended.

“You know my price, Captain. Now tell me yours. What is it you really need from me?”

The Norwegian took a moment to collect his thoughts, running his index finger across his invisible moustache. Finally, he folded his hands in his lap and looked me square in the eyes.

“Your father, is he mad?”

I took another long drag and blew a series of small smoke rings.

“Mad may be overstating the matter. Then again, it may not.”

“Well, we need him to be sane. We’re reaching a critical point in” — and here the captain struggled to find the right words — “negotiations. We need everybody on board.”

“There are degrees of sanity, Captain, and while certain degrees are available to some of us, other degrees can be as elusive as my fried chicken. So let me put it this way. My father’s problem is not with sanity or insanity; his problem is with truth. He is a man of honour, you see, and great intelligence, but hampered by an active mind that does not clearly delineate the boundaries between fiction and fact. He’s not a liar — I would never say that about my own father — but he is a man, as I mentioned, of great integrity, and for men like that, a lie once uttered becomes fact. How could it be otherwise? He would not say these things if they were not true. And so I’ll ask you again, Captain. What is it you want from me? What is on the table?”

“What’s on the table, Zavida Zanković, is your freedom —”

It was my turn to laugh. “Freedom: that’s like saying ‘sanity’ or ‘truth.’ Very relative indeed.”

“Be that as it may, your relative freedom awaits you. All we need you to do is speak to your father, talk to him and tell him that the war is at its end. For the sake of Kosovo, for the sake of history, Korbi Artë needs to disappear and your father must rise once more.”

49

VASILE LUPU ESCORTED ME there himself, Nexhmije Gjinushi. Down through a series of concrete corridors burrowed into the earth below the compound to a dank, lightless bunker that stunk of moisture and rat urine.

“He prefers the quiet,” Lupu offered.

I shrugged, to let him know that no explanation was required.

“And the light . . . it hurts his eyes . . .”

Lupu led me to a doorway at the end of the bunker and quietly knocked. He waited a moment, then pushed the doorway open a crack. Immediately, the smell of shit hit me like a stone wall.

“Commander? Sir? You have a visitor. Your son is here to see you, sir.”

Lupu fidgeted for a moment, then found the switch he was looking for. He turned on a dim light, humming on the far wall. I held my hand up to my face to protect my nose and peered in. I could make out the details of the cramped room: a small writing table in the far corner, surrounded and piled with white buckets of what I assumed was human waste, and a metal cot pressed against the far wall, straining under the weight of my father, in full military uniform, his head stuffed into a camouflage-coloured qeleshe, and a long row of medals, including, somewhat anachronistically, his Medal of Merit in Economy, Third Class, stretching from his breastbone to the edge of his arm.

“He hasn’t been himself for weeks,” Lupu whispered, with genuine concern in his voice.

I raised my eyebrows and responded. “He never was.”

“Hmmm?”

“Himself. He never was.”

Lupu nodded and gave a pained smile.

Indeed, Father did not look well. He was pasty and unshaven, and his flesh appeared bloated, like that of a corpse.

“Sir? Commander? You have a visitor.”

Lupu stepped toward the bed and tugged on my father’s toe.

Slowly, Father opened one eye and then the other. He squinted for a moment, as if trying to get me in focus, then closed his eyes again.

There was a long pause. “Who is it?”

“It’s your son, sir. Zavida.”

Slowly, Father opened his eyes again. He lay there for several moments in his army fatigues, staring at me like a fish, unblinking. I realized that I too had likely changed for the worse since the time he had last seen me. I’d always been thin, but now I had wasted away to nothing, and my poor beard had gone weeks without a trim or even proper cleaning. I rubbed my face self-consciously.

“What does he want?”

“I’ve come for you, Father. The war is over and I’ve come to take you home.”

Father stared at me for a long time. A fly landed on his forehead and still he stared, never bothering to flick it off. At one point, he opened his mouth as if to speak, but soon shut it again. Several minutes passed before he closed his eyes again.

“Tell him to go away, Vasile Lupu. Tell him Korbi Artë is indisposed and not receiving visitors.”

50

HOW LONG DID I STAND there in the stinking darkness, Nexhmije Gjinushi? minutes? hours? days?

I cannot be certain, the hum of the light, the weight of my father’s breaths, the dim shadows . . . these are the sorts of things that have a negative effect on one’s perception of time.

Eventually, Father opened his eyes again. By now, Vasile Lupu had excused himself. It was just my father and I.

Finally, I took the initiative.

“You’ve been well, Father?”

He snorted and tried to raise himself up on one arm.

“What time is it?”

I shook my head.

“Day?”

“I haven’t been keeping track, Father.”

He dropped back down on the bed.

“What good are you then?”

“Not much, Father. Not much good at all, I’m afraid.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, broken only by my father’s laboured wheezing.

“Mother sends her love . . .”

Father spat a ball of air. “Ha! You obviously haven’t spoken to her.”

I recoiled for a moment with the realization that not only was he quite correct, but I hadn’t actually spoken to her for months.

“Of course I am lying, Father. Mother sends no one her love. That’s not her style.”

Father smiled, briefly. I now managed to convince Father to take a sip of the soup Vasile Lupu had left for him. He leant on one elbow and took one short draw from the spoon I held out for him.

“She’s a cold pot of porridge, your mother.” Father almost sounded wistful.

“We should go visit her, Father. Come.”

I offered him my hand. He slapped it away.

“I’m not going anywhere, son. My country needs me.”

“Your country?”

Father slid back down on the bed and, turning to his side, closed his eyes.

“You know. This place, these people. You get the picture.”

51

“WHAT IS THIS LATEST MADNESS, Father?”

The soup, Counsellor, had given him a little energy. He had pushed himself up into a sitting position, allowing me to adjust his pillows for him.

“Father?”

“What is it now?”

“I’m asking you, what illusion are you providing? And for the benefit of whom?”

Father closed his eyes. His breath became laboured.

“Vida, Vida, Vida . . .” His eyes suddenly sprung open. “You want there to be a simple answer for everything. I am Korbi Artë. What else do you need to know?”

“Well, that tells me nothing, Father. I’m owed, I think, at the very least an explanation of what you are doing here and what plan you have, if any, for me.”

“You’re a big boy now, son, I am assuming you can take care of yourself?”

“Are you serious, Father? As I recall, you are the one who had me arrested. You ordered a trial for me. You are the one who has imprisoned me and put my liberty and very life at risk.”

Father closed his eyes again. After a moment he shrugged and mumbled something.

“Pardon, Father?”

“I said, it’s just business.”

“It’s just — what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just business, son. You can’t take it personally.”

I stared at Father, still not comprehending.

“Look Vida, Korbi Artë can’t very well have someone out there claiming to be his son.”

“But I am your son!”

“More so the requirement for your silence.”

By now, I found myself growing angry. I threw my hands up and turned to the door, taking a few paces back, then turning again to face my father. He had slid back down on the bed and, rolling to his side, closed his eyes, a shallow frown on his face that landed him somewhere in the range between indifference and self-pity. I considered walking out on him but remembered my purpose.

“Look at you, Princess. Lying about in your bed, crying for yourself.”

“Do not measure the wolf’s tail, my son, before the wolf is dead.”

“Your folk wisdom will not help you now, Father. I am expecting a lot more from you; we all are. Is this how a Serb behaves?”

“I am not a Serb, Vida.”

“Or a Turk? Or a man, for that matter, Father.”

“I’ll warn you, Son, you do not want to make my blood boil.”

“Or what? The great Korbi Artë will rise from his bed like a wet dog from its bath and shake with fury? You’re past that, old man. You are a dry seed, a slack cock. You’re a former person, Father, you’ve blurred the boundaries to become something less than nothing, a stain, a reeking memory . . .”

This was becoming too much for Father. He did indeed push himself from the bed, righting himself like a capsized boat, slowly at first, weighed down by gravity and history, but then springing forward with such energy that he had to take a moment to stabilize himself and find his balance. We fell together, two dry sticks, each trying to grip the other’s collar and get the upper hand. It was a sad fight indeed. Neither of us had any spirit left, and any passion we may have felt was simply a shadow of our former passions. Still, Father was deft in his way. He managed to get one hand around my throat and pressed his thumb into my Adam’s apple with enough force to bring me to my knees. I grabbed his arm with both my hands and dug my dirty nails into his skin. If he felt any pain, it did not register on his face.

I was panicking now, flailing at him with both hands, and managed to catch on his beak with enough strength that he loosened his grip. I fell forward holding my neck, gasping.

“There’s a . . . nastiness to you . . . now, Father.” I spoke between breaths. “I’m not sure . . . being an . . . Albanian warlord brings out . . . the best in you. Besides, Father, I am a lover, not a fighter.”

“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? You’re neither a lover nor a fighter. You’re a lamb, my son, a vassal of history. I expect — demand — a lot more from you.”

Father had made his way back to the cot.

“There it is again, the nastiness, Father. It is very unbecoming. In any case, I respectfully disagree with you. I am by nature, a lover. Why, look at my relationship with Tristina —”

“Relationship? What the fuck does that mean? Relationship!”

“I think it speaks for itself.”

“Your relationship consisted of scurrying around in her shadows, worshipping from a distance. Even when you were with her, you were not with her. She’s a convenient excuse, for you, son; that’s all. A thing that provides you with the illusion of greatness without actually having to get in there and do the dirty work.”

“The dirty work of love, Father? You are talking nonsense.”

He was sitting on the edge of the bed now; I kept drawing myself back an inch at a time, moving closer to the door.

“Love, real love, is all dirty work, Vida. It is an act of constant sacrifice and therefore constant destruction. You are bound to get a little grime on your hands.”

“Love is sacrifice, is it Father?

“Everything is sacrifice, my son, or at least a gradual unwinding. We must, all of us, fight for something, must, all of us, seek to uncover the truth beyond the superficial . . .”

“You’re a champion of the Truth, are you now Father? This from a man whose entire existence depends on convincing people he’s something he isn’t.”

“You are focusing, Vida, on the uniform and the little hat and all the trappings of Korbi Artë.” My father smoothed the lapel of his officers’ uniform. “But these trappings are exactly what I am talking about. Was I born Serb? a Turk? a Croat? a Brahmin outcast? a circus clown? What does it matter? These people, all they care about is that they’ve found someone who’ll stand up to history. Not ignore, not defy it, not worship it like some timorous lover, but grab history by the balls and spit in its face.”

“And that is you, Father?”

“That is me.”

“The Big-History-Ball-Grabbing-Face-Spitting-Son-of-a-Gun.”

“At your service,” Father smiled, and lowered his voice.

“You see, Vida. I’ve never asked a lot of you but have expected much. It is my wish, my firm desire, to see you make something of yourself, to stand up to the forces of this world, to embrace Death as wholly as you have scurried away from Life, to join the Pantheon of Heroes and Martyrs. A lofty ambition, to be sure, but a father can dream, can’t he?”

“The days for heroes have come and gone —”

The shelling had begun again, and even in this grave, the walls growled and shook. Milošević’s army was launching one mad, final assault before the inevitable defeat.

“You have to understand, Father: I don’t want to join the Pantheon of Heroes. I don’t want to live or die for the Greater Good of This or That. I want to slither away, Father, to sleep off the rest of my natural life in the arms of My Sweet Angel of the Dogs, dissolving a molecule at a time while my love fixes my supper and scavenges my back for blackheads. I am done with war, Father. I am done with history. I am done with Eternity and Enlightenment and Politics, I am done with the myriad of ways we insignificant many try to distinguish ourselves. I am ready to move on, Father, to live out the rest of my life in useless joy.”

Father grew silent again. The combined effect of the thin broth and insults was already wearing off. The light that had danced through his eyes for a moment or two had begun to fade again.

“How did we wind up here, Father?” I asked, after a long silence.

He shrugged.

“Me? I found a uniform at the side of the road. It happened to fit. The rest, as they say . . .”

“No. I mean here, in this place, this Kosovo, so far from where we started?”

“Son, this is exactly where we started. We haven’t moved an inch.”

Father put his head down and pulled the thin blanket up from his feet.

“You should go now, Vida.”

“Come with me, Father. We’ll go — somewhere. America, I think, or Buenos Aires.”

“Goodbye, Vida.”

“The war is over, Dobroslav Zanković. You are no longer needed here.”

“Wars are like buses: there’ll be another one coming soon. I’ll wait it out.”

I hesitated, and then leaned forward to embrace him. Father ignored me. He rolled to his side and pulled the blanket over his head.

“Goodbye, Zavida Zanković. Turn the light out when you leave, please, and tell your mother that I love her.”

Was he joking? I could not tell. But I did as I was asked and shut the door softly behind me.

52

THEY HAVE TAKEN AWAY my lovely iBook, Nexhmije Gjinushi. It seems they’re going out of business. But I managed to squirrel away a pencil and paper to scribble these last lines and bring my sorry story to a proper end. Shall I mail it to you, my dear?

To: Nexhmije Gjinushi, c/o the Priština School of Law and Cosmeticological Sciences?

Let the record show, my Kosovo Muse, that Adelina and I got a ride in a Norwegian transport truck to the edge of a paved road. The driver left us there to make our way on foot. We were once again in the human river, even larger than before, swelling with people coming from every direction, emerging from the woods and fields, old men in muddy caps, women in ill-fitting overcoats, children, and, more and more, younger men in tattered uniforms or ill-fitting suits, no doubt pilfered at the last minute. It dawned on me that perhaps this war was really over.

“Excuse me, brother,” I called to an older man limping along the side of the road carrying a small motor scooter in his arms like a sleeping baby. He turned when I spoke to him and looked at me with sunken eyes that, while not filled with hope, reflected a certain certainty of purpose that I can only characterize as determination. “Where does this road take us?”

The man shrugged. “Somewhere, I suppose. The camps perhaps.”

Somewhere. Well, that was better than every other place I had been, I thought, and a good deal more promising than anywhere else I might go. And following the flow I continued walking for several more kilometres until I encountered another intersection, this one splitting off onto a major highway with concrete embankments on either side. There were private cars and UN transport trucks and the occasional Red Crescent ambulance, not to mention a constant stream of pedestrians, each of them carrying what was left of their lives on their backs or in plastic shopping bags or inside bulging suitcases held shut with thick rubber cords. I clutched my lamb even more tightly. One sheep, I thought; not much, but a beginning at least, and halfway to starting my own herd.

I looked as far up the highway as I could. There were thousands of people before me, their heads undulating like plum blossoms in a spring breeze. I parsed each one searching for a familiar sign. My mother? No. My brothers, Jovo, Djordje? No sight of any of them. Miloš Obilić, in the guise of some mendicant Turk? No sight of those other heroes, Boshko Yugovich, Srdja Zlopogledja, or Yug Bogdan? And the martyrs, Father Stefan Puric, Hariton Lukic, Gavrilo Gabriel . . .

I saw none of them. Only fellow refugees and scores of children, darting back and forth within the throng, playing tag, saddling up to the Dutch and Norwegian soldiers in their blue UN vests and helmets, angling for a piece of candy or perhaps a slice of apple.

And so I walked and walked and walked and walked, clinging to my lamb with both hands I continued on, past a first checkpoint and then a second, eventually arriving at an enormous processing station, where my fellow travellers and I were asked to form single-file queues that seemed to go on for miles, queues so long, in fact, that they transcended any sense of inconvenience or annoyance and became things simply to be marvelled at, like an enormous stack of dishes balanced on an acrobat’s head.

It was some time past two in the morning when I finally took my place at a rusting metal desk. An official sat there, holding a single clipboard on his lap.

“Name?” he asked in broken Albanian, barely looking up.

I thought for a moment, then smiled.

“Amerika,” I said.

“Amerika? That’s it?”

I nodded.

“One word, like ‘Cher’?”

I nodded again.

“Place of birth?”

I paused. “In all honesty, I can’t remember. I was just a baby, you see.”

“Occupation?”

I held up my little charge. “Shepherd.”

He shrugged, then turned his attention to a yellow form. He ticked all the right boxes and wrote down whatever responses I gave him. Then he scribbled on the form for a moment, stamped it triplicate, and handed me a copy.

“Here you go, buddy. Welcome to No Man’s Land.”

I took a couple of steps forward and for a moment marvelled that at some point, over a distance no thicker than a blade of grass, I had stepped out of Kosovo, beyond the once and future Serbia, stepped clear of history and family, and now stood outside of it all.

I surveyed the scene. Row on row of identical white tents, as far as the eye could see, like the reflection of a reflection of a reflection. I placed Adelina on the ground and, taking off my belt, fashioned a leash and secured her firmly. Together, we set out to find an empty tent and a place where we could rest our heads and sleep. And later still, as I lay on the soft ground contemplating the stars and a future without a real name or a family or a place or a history, I heard music wafting down from the hills like smoke. Some insomniac refugee, perhaps, already pining for his ancestral lands. It was a soft simple melody, played on a guzal or kaval, that rose and curled and tried to wrap itself around me like a snake. I rolled to my side, blocked my ears with my arms, and found that, if I concentrated on my breathing hard enough, I could almost completely blot the music out. I closed my eyes tightly and thought of Tristina for what would be, as I had already decided, the very last time. Already, I was starting to forget the details of her face and could not remember at that moment the exact colour of her eyes. I thought to ask for her forgiveness. But there would be plenty of time for forgiveness and I decided instead to sleep. When the daylight came again, I would have forgotten her, forgotten everything I had seen and heard in my short life. I would find a place and speak to certain people, acquire a visa to Canada or Luxembourg or Panama, and be done with it. And, Tristina, I decided, if she really loved me, would dream of me at night sometimes and would eventually, sooner rather than later, I prayed, forget me, too.