KOSOVO 1999

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M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell the police because they wanted to check whether incoming refugees were slipping through into the main city. Their desire is to limit the number of refugees from entering the capital, but ironically there is no real documentation as regards the number of refugees which are allowed into the country. After the tragic poverty of Kukes and the relentless drizzling rain, Tirana is sunny, urbane and opulent. It is like the film The Sheltering Sky based on the book by Paul Bowles. After the protagonist passes through Tangier to the Sahara initially the port appears exotic, but when he finally returns to Tangiers from central Sahara the traveller discovers that he is returning to a very western environment. Tirana seemed more funky yet the same. The city has been sandblasted by coffee shops and bars but absolutely nothing else. Here is the first tentative attempts a cowboy capitalism, similar to Russia, but it is a cosmetic veneer. In Kukes there are a thousand coffee shops and one mosque. In Tirana it’s the same. So this is a place where their Muslim religion has only just begun. The Albanians ability to procrastinate is cultivated with great acumen and discipline. If laziness be a discipline than this they have. As we enter the city in the main square in front of the Opera House there is a big billboard which says ‘NATO and Kosovo’. I remember the train station in Thessalonica and how it was the opposite. The shadow of the past hangs over the grandiose stucco buildings that have an imperialist stamp. Everything is decaying, and on every street corner instead of a Macca’s or Seven-11 there is a 1960s’ bunker in the paranoid Dr Strangelove preparation for final Armageddon and all-out nuclear war. A little bit of Mutual Assured Destruction to get your citizens to stay well behaved—a war they were anticipating but which never occurred. So that as good little workers they could be distracted from their own unhappiness and keep their betters in fat supply of caviar and ZILLS, how does the cliché go? Divide and conquer. Arrival at eight that evening on the corner of our street. We walked across and went straight up to the fourth floor to see Arben, our friend, and crashed out immediately from fatigue and an overdose of benzine fumes from the van and slept twelve hours. Tuesday, 27th April, <strong>1999</strong>, Tirana, Albania The day was composed of visiting the ‘Café Artist’, the translation of a document to the people of Kosovo, and then spending the evening with Arben. The document went something like this: ‘To the people of Kosovo an invitation to come. We are unveiling the billboard at the centre square Kukes on the …. of May <strong>1999</strong> at …. ‘The billboard shows something of people from war and violence and says we have all suffered enough. This message, because it is English, can be your message to the world. You have all suffered enough and you may have lost your homes temporarily but you have not lost your dignity as human beings. By being present at the billboard you can speak through the media to the rest of the world; we have all suffered enough. This is an image to the futility of war and those that instigated it, that war cannot solve the problems of humanity. ‘Please come and fill your afternoon by sending a message to the world that you have all suffered enough. The artist who has made the invitation hopes that the image of people suffering will not be offensive to those have already suffered. We look forward to see you there. Dominic Ryan and the Peace Process.’ ’Café Artist’, the guide book told us, was the café where ‘the arty types’ hung out. Therefore it seemed the appropriate place to find an enthusiastic student who could help us with the erection of the billboard. As it so happens it was hardly a bohemian hangout but just a plumed garden where mature women in fake Chanel sunglasses with blue rinses sipped Devonshire teas, while men in lounge suits lounged around with young secretarys. I could see overhanging umbrellas and a wooden duck board over the mud which crisscrossed the area so people would not be affected by it. Firouz had tea, or rather, he asked to purchase a glass of hot water and pulled out from his pocket his traditional tea bags that he carried around with him.
M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell ‘Please come and fill your afternoon by sending a message to the world that you have all suffered enough. The artist who has made the invitation hopes that the image of people suffering will not be offensive to those have already suffered. We look forward to see you there. Dominic Ryan and the Peace Project.’ Two hundred meters south we found the Art School of Tirana where the odd cracked plaster bust from a Communist past stared nostalgically down its broken nose at us, while students languished chatting innocently on the chipped steps along with the odd mangey dog. I erected a notice up on a notice board. Otherwise it was a sedate morning while we wandered around feeling separate from the milling population. Firouz and I went separately on selective chores of finding various items to purchase, including tape for the exhibition and paints. I still must delete some human anatomy from the billboard in case it will offend people, but I do not think the Muslim sensibilities here are extreme or radical. On the same street where we lived we found in a basement a Xerox shop, where a woman who was able to translate the invitation into Albanian. I sat with her while she translated and also typed it into English. She was sweet and had a huge raspberry blotch that covered one side of her face. With a slim build, fair skin and black pantaloons, she wore her hair bobbed and had nylon slip-on shoes with a floral pattern. A possessive, heavy boyfriend lingered on the other side of the counter while I sat beside her. I felt anger and jealousy exude towards me as I sat with her and proceeded to assist her in the translation. Once we had finished I smiled at him, and again there was an empty blank expression and sneer that eclipsed his face and then we were gone. The capital, Tirana, is filled by men who have cultivated the fine art of the café society. Idiomatic for doing nothing. I must find a new word to describe the professional art of sitting in cafés. It is the urban art of doing nothing but appearing to be accepted. It is a café doer; no that won’t do. Café-sitter? Perhaps that could be the word. When the door of communism fell open, or closed shut, or fell off its hinges, these people whose jobs were specific had one long endless holiday imposed upon them. Another coffee has just come my way. Espresso. Too many coffees I drink. So the afternoon was spent with this woman doing the translation and then we left. On the way back to our apartment we encountered the security guard who sits on the second level beneath Benny guarding a judge’s home. His Justice Department had been blown up two months ago. I gave the guard of the Peace Project cards and then we met up with Arben. Although Benny is only a year older than me with graying hair and an olive complexion he appears ten. Age is irrelevant and appearances even less. I like him and that is enough. His swarthy appearance is Mediterranean, yet because his parents were diplomats he has had more privileges than the rest of the population he has a cultivated and sophisticated air. He has built a small apartment beside his apartment that has a separate door, metal of course, where paying guests come and stay. Because of the influx of journalists and aid workers to the country this accommodation has given people like Benny a new financial lease of life.
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KOSOVO 1999

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