KOSOVO 1999

M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell
...The bus driver was a burly man
of fifty-three. He was a former
weight lifter with black thick
waxed hair, receding hairline,
edged craggy face who kept on
calling Firouz ‘uncle’...
it is as if people are playing within the ruins of
their former empire after a nuclear war.
Meanwhile
back on
the road to
hell...
Soon we had left the high steppes and plunged
towards the fl at terrain where the roads were potholed,
making it even more dangerous.
plain trees and oaks. Soon this wasteland opened up
to reveal ‘fabrica after fabrica’ of industrial factories
that had decayed and emptied after the collapse
of communism. Even though the technology of
Albanian Communism ceased to develop after
the 1950s it is as if people are playing within the
ruins of their former empire after a nuclear war.
At every turn we are confronted by an awesome
decay. Before there was a organisational structure
but now there is chaos in this society: a territorial
imperative.
As the van hits a bump I lunge into the
passenger beside me as I witness people standing
in an arid field doing nothing. Some are walking on
the road; some are sitting in the middle of the road,
and as we pass them they stand and stare blindly or
blankly back at us as if we are an alien spacecraft
that has appeared and will as briefly as it has
arrived disappear.
It is a different society which they live in the
countryside. Maybe they are more connected to the
earth but it appears as if they have nothing to do.
When we enter to the villages all we see is the men
walking rather, and I wonder where are they are all
walking to. No one is working, they are walking.
The trip along the sinuous mountain side is
beautiful but for the fact that every tree that could
have been there has been razed. Apparently this
did not happen during communism but after the
fall of communism. All the forests were sold to the
Chinese in 1993, and nothing is growing in its place.
For seven hours there are no forests.
Again we are subjected not only to industrial
wasteland but ecological catastrophe they have
made for themselves. Now they must live within it.
As the convoy rolls past the people stare at us.
Nobody actually waves or looks, they just stare
blankly as if we are aliens interrupting their world.
Sometimes they will catch our eye because they will
see a foreigner in the convoy and they will stare. It
is not like in Asia where we as Caucasians are half
prince-half leper.
On the way into Tirana we were stopped by