As I step through our front door, Ajshe looks at me as though I were a ghost. It is a mid-spring morning and there is a chill in the air, and she is wearing an apron; her eyes look ridiculously large, her tongue is numb, it rests at the bottom of her open mouth like a dead eel, her dry hands, white as paper, on her bony hips.
“Is it really you?” she stammers as I take off my shoes.
“Hello, Ajshe,” I say mundanely, though I almost burst at the sight of her; my home is clean, the smell of food and freshly laundered clothes brings to mind those quiet, shared mornings when the children had already gone to school and we could bury ourselves in the languid slumber of our everyday for a while. “I have to go.”
I walk past her into the bedroom, and the first thing I do is unpack the books I got from prison and pile them on Ajshe’s bedside table. From the closet I take the old suitcases, the ones we packed our belongings in after we fled Kosovo and came here, and place them on the neatly made bed. My clothes, my underpants, my socks, everything has been washed, ironed, and folded.
As I place my clothes into the suitcases—for some reason I am in a terrible hurry, though I should have plenty of time, at least that’s what I’ve been told—Ajshe, standing in the doorway, begins to whimper.
“Ajshe,” I say. “Please.”
“This is terrible,” she whispers, holds a hand across her mouth, glances quickly at the helpless-looking men still standing in the hallway, wipes her cheeks, and takes a deep breath.
“Very well,” she says, steps to my side, and grips my trembling hand.
The walls are white and unadorned; trapped in a white throw our bed looks like a polar bear in winter sleep, and the light brown curtains descend from the rail like two men dangling from the gallows.
“Let me,” she insists, and I almost forget to tell her something important, my wish that she give the books to the children when they grow up as gifts from me, then she pulls me with her into the kitchen, where she sits me down and begins preparing an omelette, which is before me on the table complete with accompaniments within five minutes.
“Eat,” she commands, strokes my hair, and disappears from the kitchen, and as I begin to chew I can hear Ajshe plumping up my clothes in the bedroom, quietly singing a song—I can’t make out the words—and as she packs my belongings I imagine her picking up each piece, touching every single shirt, every sock, gripping them the way she used to hold my hand.
Twenty minutes later Ajshe carries the packed suitcases into the hallway and marches back into the kitchen. She is not the same person as a moment ago; her eyes are bulging feverishly now, her lips taut as though she has just bitten into a bitter fruit. She sits down opposite me.
“I’ll tell them that you have gone, that you have left us,” Ajshe begins sternly. “My sister and Besnik, everyone. That’s what I’ll tell them,” she continues, unflinching, and I stare at the empty plate in front of me.
“Ajshe,” I interrupt—and there is so much I want to say to her, I want to apologize for everything, tell her this is all my fault, that I have broken us, that the shame you feel toward me is completely justified and is nothing compared to the humiliation into which I have driven myself and that will eventually take everything from me, my face, my honor—but she doesn’t give me the chance to say anything.
“And if anyone asks you about us, you will answer in the same way. Right?”
“Yes.”
“I will get married again, if I want to. To a foreign man. Or a Kosovan. Or whomever I wish. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
She would never dare set out demands like this if we were alone. Then she takes an envelope from her pocket and lays it on the table. She places a finger on the envelope and slides it in front of me. “There is half of our savings.”
“Ajshe,” I say again, and she pulls herself farther away from me.
“You can have it, but on the condition that you promise never to tell anyone the truth about what you did, about what you are, I heard what you did and who you did it with, you raped that poor boy, didn’t you, that’s what everyone’s saying, and it disgusts me,” she whispers through clenched teeth, her eyes almost translucent, and lifts her finger from the envelope.
Then she stands up, takes the plate from in front of me, and hurls it into the sink, and the sound of the shattering plate is almost like a ringing phone.
“Dreqi të hangt!” she shouts, gripping the edge of the sink and collapsing in inconsolable wailing, and it’s as though she were about to split in two; her slender back drops and hunches as she sobs in fits, her legs dangle limp from her hips as though she is holding her entire body weight with only her arms.
I stand up, slip the envelope into my pocket, and step behind her, I grip her shoulder, but she flicks my hand away instantly.
“Don’t touch me!” she shouts, lowering her face toward the sink, and at that the men come running into the kitchen.
“Everything all right, madam?” one of them asks her while the other looks at me as though I were an angry, unleashed dog.
“Yes,” Ajshe replies, and wipes her face clean with a sheet of kitchen paper, and I begin walking toward the hallway, pull on my shoes, grip the suitcases.
“Ajshe,” I say once more, and a moment later she appears in front of me, takes off her apron, and hangs it on a hook.
At first her arms are folded across her chest, then they point toward me, and a few cautious steps later they wrap around me as around a precious vase.
“Thank you,” I say and notice a tear or a droplet of my sweat soaking into her cotton sweater, and I hear one of the men clearing his throat.
“Goodbye,” Ajshe says, whimpering, lowers her arms, and retreats toward the kitchen doorway. “Goodbye, Arsim,” she says once again, this time more emphatically; her gaze is piercing. “Take care of yourself.”
The door closes, and I enter the silent stairwell, walk down the stairs, the corners of the suitcases knocking against them, then another door opens, and it leads outside into a day that smells like my wife’s hair and an opened freezer, into the pale spring sunshine that ripples through the nearby forest in a wave whose kaleidoscopic waters glide inland like a giant stingray rising up into the mountains, washing their scarred backs.
12 DECEMBER 2000
THINK ABOUT THIS IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER
SOMETIMES:
one day we will leave here
one day we will all leave
and we will fly there
wild
III
The Devil locked God’s daughter and the snake together in one of the caves inside his mountain.
“First eat the cockroaches, the moths, the spiders, and the scorpions, then the rats, and bats, the foxes and wolves, and give half of each meal to the girl,” the Devil instructed his snake, which was thrashing in horror. “I will come to you once a year, on Saint George’s Day, to make sure you are doing as I have advised you,” he explained, hurled the viper dangling from his hand at the rough cave wall and glanced over at the girl, sleeping calmly, whom he had wrapped in beeswax. “And when the last wolf’s bone has been licked clean, one of you will eat the other,” the Devil decided.
In the thirteenth year, the Devil was met by the most astonishing sight he had ever laid eyes upon: the girl had now become one with her prey, clothed in a magnificent snake skin, in winged majesty, both the girl and the snake living from the darkness and each other.
“Bolla,” said the Devil and allowed the sun to shine in through the mouth of the cave, to light his creation.
Then the girl felt sunlight for the first time, and it was beautiful.
11
PRISTINA, 2004
The years away from here condense into a flicker as I step through the doors of Pristina airport. In the early-evening April light, the valleys around me look like a smoker�
�s withered lungs, and throughout the taxi journey into the city’s heart I stare in bewilderment at the buildings, many of which look as though a merciless whirlwind has torn off their roofs and kicked down their walls, leaving only the foundations among which the people now live; I look at the dust hanging in the air, the streets full of potholes half filled with black, oily water, billboards propped in the gravel and blown askew in the wind, mountains that look like imams in their sarëk headdress, crouched in prayer, the edges of the fields where burned litter has clawed at the bone-dry earth.
I arrive downtown, and carrying my suitcase I walk along the only pedestrian street in Pristina, sit down on a bench, and light a cigarette.
It tastes really good, my first cigarette in months, the smoke seeps inside me, cool and minty, but after a moment I feel faint, the smoke and all the people I see, the language they speak, the way they are dressed, the surprising number of women covering their heads, how people buy food from miserable-looking, tiny convenience stores, then pack it in small plastic bags that tear in your hands. This place is a prison, far worse than the one I have just left.
I spend the night at a cheap hotel near the center of town. I switch on the lights in the room tinted with a wine-red bedspread, an olive-green carpet, and a set of brown curtains. I sit down on the edge of the bed but immediately spring up again and switch off the lights; I close the curtains and allow shame and regret to do their job: to crush my insides, to batter my head against the floor and ceiling, to repeat those unconditional words tumbling from the wall of night, the ones we say to ourselves at the worst moments, the ugliest words that we only dare speak out loud while the rest of the world is sleeping.
It is the most barbaric night of my life, the kind I wouldn’t wish upon even the worst of men.
* * *
—
The following day is baking hot, and in the afternoon I arrive at my former home in Ulpiana, my palms blistered from carrying my suitcases and my clothes soaked in sweat. I cautiously step into the stairwell, leave the suitcases in the soot-covered entrance hall, and walk up the familiar stairs to the door of our old apartment, which is new and now has three locks.
The sound of footsteps comes from behind the door, and in front of it there is a mat wishing me welcome, two pairs of plastic sandals, a pair of children’s sneakers, and black leather shoes, torn at the seams. My head is starting to ache and I knock stiffly at the door; my palms feel like there are worms moving around inside them and my mouth is dry as sandpaper.
“Who’s there?” comes a low, serious voice from behind the door.
I say nothing; instead I knock again.
“Who’s there?” comes the question again, then I hear a woman’s voice, quiet and panicked, speaking the man’s name.
Bashkim.
“Bashkim,” I begin. “Stop messing around, it’s me. Open the door.”
The man is big, determined, and angry looking. Beneath his tall, wide brow, I can barely make out his threatening eyes, which look as though they have been walled shut. I stare at his face, at once jaundiced and ruddy, his hands dotted in a patchwork of calluses, his suit pants, threadbare at the knee, his bare feet covered in scratches, his cracked toenails, then my gaze returns to his eyes, which now I can see better.
“Who are you?” the man asks.
“This…,” I begin and swallow too much air. “This is my apartment,” I manage to say, correcting my posture and pushing my rib cage forward.
The man folds his arms and assumes a wider gait so that he fills the doorway, and his eyes retreat, while his brows form into a single, hairy strip.
“I’ve fought in the war,” he says. “I’m not afraid of guns, prison, or Allah, but I will defend my family,” he continues sternly, as unflinching as a bodyguard.
Then a woman appears behind him and casts a fiery look at me; she is carrying a baby wrapped in a towel and holding a preschool-aged boy by the hand.
“I bought this door,” the man says. “And everything else you can see. After the war there was nothing here, the walls were covered in graffiti, the floors ripped up, only the pipes left in the kitchen. In the bathroom there was nothing but debris and a pungent, unpleasant smell.”
“You are living in my apartment,” I interject firmly, though I believe the man’s words, though I know and accept that the apartment, which once was my home, is no longer my home, that it will never be my home again.
“I live here, this is my apartment now,” the man declares and slams the door shut, and not a sound comes from behind that door for the five minutes I stand in the corridor before turning and walking back down the stairs.
I take my suitcases to a café, order a coffee, watch the people walking past me, eat the sugary cookie wrapped in thin plastic that comes with it. There was a time when men shot each other if they stole from each other, I think to myself, but that time is in the past, and I’m not sure whether it’s more a good or a bad thing.
As I listen to a group of girls cackling with laughter at the next table, it dawns on me how pathetic I am. It’s a thought that’s hard to swallow: to have once been so many things—a student, a writer, a father, husband, and companion—and suddenly so little, nothing at all.
I pull my phone from my pocket and dial Ajshe’s number, as I am consumed by an abrupt need to tell her about all this, our occupied apartment, the ubiquitous smell of meat and frying fat, the Albanian they now speak here, which is somehow different from the way we speak it, the grime and dust and dampness that have enveloped the streets, the jewelers, the clothes shops and seamstresses and kiosks and general stores, whose clutter spills out into the streets making the whole city look like a dump—even the fact that many Chinese entrepreneurs have moved here and opened up shops, and I can almost see the confusion on Ajshe’s face: why on earth would someone from China come and open a business here?
A small boy walks up to me. He is carrying the bottom of a cardboard box in which he has organized packets of cigarettes and prepaid cards for local phone operators. I buy two packs of cigarettes and ask where his parents are, and the boy tells me that his father has died and his mother is ill, and I don’t know which feels worse to me: the fact that he is selling cigarettes on the street or that I doubt the veracity of his story.
I can’t think what words to use to talk about all this—should I greet her at the beginning of the call or apologize or ask how she is—so I slide the phone back into my pocket.
The waiter, a swarthy young man barely out of high school, asks if I’d like to order anything else. I give him a fifty-cent coin for the coffee, then put a five-euro note in his hand.
“You’ll get another two of these this evening when I pick up my things,” I promise, looking down at my shabby suitcases, which contain everything I own.
“Right,” he says, nods, and grips their scuffed handles.
“There’s nothing valuable in them, old clothes, two sets of sheets, a few towels, shoes, and some papers I’m not going to do anything with. Have a look, if you want.”
“Right,” he repeats. “Don’t worry, zotëri, I’ll be here until closing. If you don’t see me, ask at the counter. My name is Naim.”
“Good,” I reply, stand up, and offer him my hand. “Thank you, Naim.”
First off, I visit Miloš’s apartment, but where it stood there is no longer a residential house but a poky hotel. Disappointed, I walk off toward the city center, past the café where we first met, and when I notice that in its place there is now an empty retail space, to my surprise I’m almost relieved and continue on my way, past the National Library, which still looks like a cluster of wasps’ nests, past the Faculty of Philosophy, a building resembling an industrial warehouse, past the entire campus area, covered in uneven lawn. Again I arrive at the only pedestrian street in the city, at the end of which is the National Theatre of Kosovo, its steps leading down into
Mother Teresa Square. Standing in the middle of the square, the statue of Skanderbeg on horseback looks, from afar, more like a muddy raven’s claw rising from the ground than a depiction of our national hero. At the end of the street, I turn right because I want to go for a walk in the City Park, but just before the entrance a white sign in front of one of the houses offering a small room for rent catches my eye.
The tin-roofed building is old and crooked, and the windows that open out onto the busy street are small and rickety, but nonetheless I call the number on the sign.
A man quickly answers. I introduce myself using just my first name and get straight to the point. In an absentminded voice, he tells me he lives there himself and that he’ll be at home for a little while yet, so if I want to, I can come look at the room right away.
A few minutes later he steps out of the house’s metal gates and glances around; he is gaunt and hunched, his movements exhibiting the same kind of indifference as someone terminally ill, and from his ringless fingers, his unshaved jowls, his disheveled hair and oversized, badly fitting clothes one can tell he has nobody to look after him, to make sure he doesn’t waste away further still.
As I cross the street, the man sees me and gives a cautious smile. He has only a few teeth, and even they are cracked and covered in black spots.
“I’m Behxhet, how do you do?” he says over the noise of the street and limply holds out his hand, and as I grip it I feel as though we two were cut from exactly the same cloth, grown from the same root.
“Arsim. I’m well. Yourself?”
“Fine, fine.”
His tired eyes stand lazily in their sockets, and his cheeks and forehead dangle like hand towels on a clothesline.
We descend a few steps to an unpaved outdoor corridor giving private access to both rooms. Between the doors, against my wall, is an old stove, and on the open shelf above it is a collection of dishes and plastic containers, packets of tea and coffee, canned food, a sack of white beans, and a bag of overripe tomatoes. On the ground is a breadbasket, a few buckets, and a hose winding its way into a shower cubicle, which is also outdoors and cordoned off with a curtain. The toilet is in a tin shack in a small garden, in which is the same plastic dining set that can be found all over the place here, a round white table and three chairs, one of which is missing a leg.
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