Richard and I arrived in Sophia today, after a bus ride through the snowy Bulgarian countryside. I'm posting this from our biggish hostel room in the middle of the city. As I look around, I see a shelf full of artfully displayed empty wine bottles, a folksy wooden plate hanging on the wall above the Santa doll, a picture of the Taj Mahal, seashells on the nighttable next to the decorated Christmas tree, and a slew of embrodery pillows on the sofa. The dresser is faux wood with barnished metal doors that grate when you open then, and when I attempted to put my clothes away I realized that all of the drawers are full of tools. It's friendly and comfortable here. At the moment we're sharing our common space with two Brits. One is on a two-year holiday from his techie job, and the other has been traveling around for years exploring his love affair with the Balkans. Our bedroom door is open, and I'm listening to Richard and Jason babble on while then drink rakia (a Balkan grape brandy). We'll have a fine time here, although the variety here is a little dizzying: today I ate with relish tofu in a spinach carrot sauce.

Over to Mitrovica

[RH] I went with Chelle up to North Mitrovica yesterday. That's a bordertown of sorts, where a river running through the city divides the ethnic Albanian part of Kosovo from what is effectively Serbia. Mitrovica has been the site of hordes of international media coverage just lately, since December 10th was the deadline for the U.N. negotiations btwn Kosovo and Serbia ... the issue being Kosovan independence. (For example, see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1688462,00.html.)

The Serbs, along with their Russian allies, have been doing all sorts of saber-rattling over the prospects of independence, which they bitterly oppose. They've also been indulging in a lot of disingenuous moaning about how Kosovan independence would represent a violation of international law. Of course, the "cleansing" of 125,000 non-Serbs throughout the Balkans during the 1990s wasn't particularly in tune with international law, but Serbia didn't care much about such legal niceties back in those days.

Anyhow, Prishtina is such a trashy, urban hole, I always welcome the opportunity to leave the city, even for a few hours. And I'd heard so much about Mitrovica just lately, as it's a likely flashpoint for violence and general unrest when Kosovan independence is finally announced, so I was eager to get a first-hand look. (In anticipation, Serb militias, composed, in part, of former war criminals, are reputed to have gathered in N. Mitrovica, planning their opening move ... or so the international media has reported.)

It's against this backdrop that Chelle has been traveling to N. Mitrovica every week since September to teach one of her classes. And when I accompanied her this past week, it was for the final class session before the holiday break. In fact, a holiday party was planned ... one that involved food, as well as some games and activities that exercised the students' English-language skills. The first thing that struck me as we drove into town was how relatively pretty the area is. The city sits at the base of some decent-sized mountains. And with the recent snow we've had around here, they looked fairly alpine and pristine. I learned later, though, that the Mitrovica region is actually dangerously polluted, as these mountains are/were the site of lots of mining. And given the lack of almost any environmental consciousness -- much less actual regulation -- the slag piles are left to drain their toxic affluent into the area water supply and so forth. Nevertheless, it happened to be a sunny afternoon that day (the first one in ages), and lots of people were out bustling around, shopping in the open markets, despite the sharp cold. So, things appeared rather festive and appealing, although perhaps a bit less bustling after we walked across the bridge from Mitrovica into N. Mitrovica.

One thing that took me by surprise was this: Despite my ingrained ideological bias against Serbia, I found, during our walk from the bridge on up to the library where the class meets, that I felt a bit less culturally displaced there than I generally do in Prishtina. Let me explain: In Prishtina, despite the general friendliness of the people and the cosmopolitan nature of the place, I tire of being gaped and stared at continually ... as though I'm a cross btwn a celebrity and a bizarre curiosity. This tendency is certainly heightened when we're walking Hazel (see the previous posts about what a non-canine culture Kosovo is), but I've realized lately that it's not just the dog thing. Despite the aforementioned cosmopolitan aspect, the culture in Prishtina definitely has its provincial side, and it's perhaps more culturally bound (read: traditional and Islamic) than I had initially appreciated. Much of the gaping I mentioned is undoubtedly harmless and even good-natured; and rarely have I felt it to be even remotely hostile. But, still, I wouldn't have guessed in a city with as much of an international presence as Pristhina that my non-adherence to the local fashions and styles (of clothes, hair, ethnic markers, etc.) would draw as much attention as it does. What I'm saying is that I usually feel marked as an outsider around here. And, surprisingly, I didn't feel the dragging weight of that attention in N. Mitrovica. I could only assume that this was largely an ethnic thing -- I'm of northern European extraction, and therefore I appear more like the average Serb than I do the average ethnic Albanian. [To be continued.]

Christmas is part of the landscape here, but in a kooky way. It’s sort of an afterthought, perhaps an attempt to reach out to the Americans that are so well regarded here. Street vendors sell lights and other Christmas ticky-tackies, but these vendors blend in with the cell-phone, mitten, and chestnuts vendors, so it’s easy to pass them by. I recently noticed a structure going up on a newly converted pedestrian street and slowly realized that it was a Santa house. It looks like a ginger bread house and has heart shaped cut-outs on the doors. It opened a few days ago (Imagine that! In the US it would have opened the day after Thanksgiving). I walked by there last night and noticed a Santa sitting inside the house by himself. With the help of a television and some thumping music, Santa’s elf and penguin helpers were outside trying to rustle up some business. Not a good night to do this, as all of the kids were at the 50 Cent concert.

Speaking of Christmas, this won’t be a holiday-with-gifts season for Richard and me. It’s difficult and expensive to send/receive packages here. If you are inclined to do something for Richard and I, maybe you could give to a local non-profit that supports something we care about. First, some background. Richard and I have adopted three stray dogs here: Stochka, Yippy, and Chewy (I’ll leave you to guess the etymology of their names). We both give them love and Richard gives them food. I could write a dissertation on the difficulties of being a stray dog here. There are so many of them, and this is not a culture that cares about them. Add to this the very real fear that people have when the dogs get desperate and hungry and start to threaten people. There are regular shooting patrols organized by KFOR and the local police. As you can imagine, nights can be fraught with anxiety about these dogs. When I hear them barking at night I feel secure that they are still alive and worried that they are getting hurt or shot. I doubt that these sweet dogs will survive the winter, but I want them to feel some affection and love as long as they’re here. The one light in this story is a dog-shelter that opened up in 2004. It’s the only shelter in Kosovo. When I called to see if we could bring Stochka there, the over-worked but kind coordinator told me that the shelter was overflowing. They are, like all fledgling non-profits, desperate for money, so if you would like to give, here is their website:

http://www.kosovodogshelter.org/

I thought I'd send along some of what I've been reading in the international press. Below are links to two articles which focus on North Mitrovica, where I teach Serbian young adults. This semester I go there once a week, and I have plans to start traveling there twice a week starting in mid-January, although my schedule may change as the political situation shifts.

I think the NPR piece is better, since it doesn't resort to hyperbole. One thing to remember: the reporters sweep into town (Mitrovica was crawling with press last Wednesday), get their interviews, and leave. The people that actually live here - I'm thinking of the diplomats up the hill - do not expect this place to explode in violence. That said, there is a great deal of tension and uncertainty here. It's been a stressful week. I teach Serbs and Albanians, and this came up in several of my classes recently. There is so much poison and fear under the surface here: you don't have to scratch very deep to get there. We watched a film in my university class about tolerance and intolerance in America. I asked students how this applied to their lives. I unleashed the genie from the bottle, and what followed was a passionate, sad, and frank conversation about tolerance and justice, and reasons why it's a good idea in general, but won't work in reality. At one point, one student said, "They (the Serbs) killed my whole family. I hate them and wish they were all dead."

So, what's the best thing to bring into this volatile mix? How about a concert by 50 Cent, a gangsta rapper that embodies all the violence and bravado that we associate with rap music. He's coming to town on the 17th, and his blog is filling up with hate speech by Albanian and Serb kids. Just what we need...happy Bajram and Merry Christmas.

Someone reminded me of one of Lincoln's speeches recently. It's from 1861:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Isn't it lovely?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2220393,00.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17122630

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, readers! Richard and I have been socializing and traveling, which partially explains the long blog silence. We finally found a reliable dog-sitter, so last weekend we took our first over-night trip. Destination: Skopje, Macedonia. What a treat to get out town for a night. We started with a leisurely bus ride through some lovely country - hilly and wooded. Skopje is an old city with an Ottoman history. We crossed its medieval bridge and explored the ruined fortress wall. Then we chanced upon the oldest mosque in the Balkans. As soon as we walked into the grounds, the imam of the mosque came to greet us. After taking off our shoes (all the better to freeze) he showed us into the mosque and gave us a long tour of the space. With the help of a multi-lingual, hand-written cheat sheet, we received a surprisingly understandable history lesson.

We also whiled away some time at the contemporary art museum, which provided an interesting counterpoint to the historical sites of the old city. The museum itself is an Polish-designed white square box. Inside this cavernous space we found an exhibit by Macedonian artist Reshat Ameti. The art itself was a feast, but equally important was the experience itself. We had the museum almost to ourselves. The (noisy) exception was the construction workers doing renovations right above our heads. Totally oblivious to the presence of museum goers, the racket eventually drove us out the main exhibit space. No worries, we thought, since we were anxious to see the Picasso that our guide book promised us. We couldn’t find it, so we asked the lonely attendant. After some confusion which we solved via hand signals and a hodge-podge of Russian and English, we were informed that the Picasso was locked up downstairs and unavailable for viewing. Something about the way he said this made us both laugh. We imagined the curator of the museum carrying around a key chain composed of car, apartment, and Picasso keys.

Day in the kulla, part 2

[Richard]: To pick up on the thread I had going in an earlier post (dated November 4th), I had asked the workshop facilitator about whether a traditional Albanian highlands clan might ever decide to absolve a blood debt without receiving a balancing blood payment from the offending clan. The analogy that had come to mind in thinking this through came from the Christian tradition: the widely received notion that there is a ground-breaking difference between Old Testament justice and New Testament justice.

Whereas the Old Testament chronicles a mostly Hebraic tradition, where an eye-for-an-eye code of law and honor held sway*, the books of the New Testament (particularly the Gospels) describe how Jesus' life and example supposedly released mankind from these rigid, robotic responses to offenses against one's honor, one's person, and one's family or clan. And the method of this release took the form of forgiveness and mercy, as documented in The Lord's Prayer: " ... and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Several days after attending the aforementioned workshop, I had the insight (while watching Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus on TV, of all things) how the image of Jesus dying on the cross to absolve all blood debts ("sins" in Christian parlance) is related to the logic behind Albanian blood feuds. Since the notion of paying for an eye with someone else's eye or a life with someone else's life is so ingrained and inviolable in Old Testament culture (as it likewise is in the Albanian highlands tradition), it made perfect sense that the Jesus myth-makers would've used the concept of the savior dying a death that symbolically supersedes all other human deaths and subsequent debt payments, thereby releasing humanity from the rigid requirements of honor and face-saving compensation demanded by Old Testament law.

To elaborate, many of us have heard the old mantra "Jesus died for your sins" and scratched our heads. What does it mean, exactly, to say that someone else died for your sins? For me, it's never been a matter of accepting or rejecting that premise; it's always been about wanting to understand the logic (if any) behind it. I see now that the reason this statement has never made sense is because it's invariably spouted in a cultural and historical vacuum. Most Christians, at least those of the American evangelical variety, are so intellectually vapid and incurious that it apparently never crosses their minds to examine a statement like "Jesus died for your sins" within the historical framework that it emerged from.

Coming out of an Old Testament tradition, where (officially, anyway) all debts had to be repaid in kind, an emerging consciousness of mercy and forgiveness had to be grounded by its promoters in a logic that the people of that time and place would understand. Hence, after Jesus, you no longer had to blindly pursue justice by attempting to redress every offense and trespass and act of disrespect committed against you and yours ... nor did you need to fear the judgment of an obsessive, record-keeping, authoritarian god for every offense and trespass you had committed against others. Why? Because if you accepted the Jesus story, then you recognized that Jesus had already paid all those debts for mankind by giving his life, thus releasing humanity from less-evolved Old Testament ideas about such things. (According to the widely accepted Old Testament logic of that era, someone had to pay ... so let it be Jesus, responded the Gospels.)

In this light, mercy and forgiveness can be seen as a quantum leap forward in consciousness ... in sort of the same way that Einstein's theories completely transformed and revolutionized Newtonian physics. This psychological leap forward purports to offer humanity a way out of robotic notions of causality and reactionary responses and into a heart-level concept of freedom and greater humanness. And whether Jesus was a real historical figure or not is arguably irrelevant in this light. Again, the idea that Jesus paid the sinner's debt by giving his life is more important symbolically -- as a rhetorical device that would've resonated with the audience of that time -- than it is literally. The thing of real importance was the humanity-changing idea of "Hey folks, good news: there's actually a better way! We don't have to be controlled by oppressive dogmas and ideologies." (And like I mentioned in the earlier related post, the Kanunin and the law of Moses actually represented great leaps forward in consciousness in their own times ... it's just that everything evolves and eventually runs its course.)

To finish (for now) this rumination on the nature of this leap forward, the revolution in consciousness that Jesus represents is somewhat of a two-edged sword. In a way that's similar to how relativity theory complicates the neat, simplistic truisms of Newtonian physics (consider, for example, the paradox of Einstein's discovery that light is simultaneously both wave and particle), the consciousness represented by the Jesus narrative undermines much that was comfortably settled by Old Testament dogma. By this earlier logic, if your son were killed by someone affiliated with another clan, the grief experienced by the human heart in such a situation never even came into play. The whole sorry incident was played out and resolved as if on an accountant's balance sheet. A son in the other clan must be sacrificed to pay the debt, and assuming this took place, everything was settled. But the Jesus logic recognizes that it's absurd to assume that the loss of a loved one could ever be resolved in one's heart, or in the world at large, by a "balancing" death. After someone's death, your world is forever changed; and after a revenge killing, the real world is arguably tipped even further toward imbalance rather than back into balance. The grief and the loss have been doubled, not atoned for. This is something that most of us today, whether religious or secular, probably have little trouble understanding on some level. It just makes intuitive sense to us. But the logic associated with this consciousness is not necessarily a given. Loss, grief, remorse, mercy, forgiveness, grace -- all are agents in the on-going evolution of our conception of justice.


* Old Testament notions of justice are essentially grounded in the law of Moses. For example, Deuteronomy 19:17-21 describes this law as requiring "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." This code later became known as "retributive justice," which maintains that proportionate punishment is a morally acceptable response to crime, regardless of whether the punishment causes any tangible benefits.

I started teaching in the political science faculty at the university last week. I was told not to expect much as far as English language level or motivation, since first-year students are required to take a foreign language and sometimes get funneled into English when they don’t fit anywhere else. Imagine my surprise then, when I walked into a classroom of thirty enthusiastic and proficient English language speakers. They realize that they are the future leaders of this country and are hungry to learn the language that will help them help their country. We’re having a terrific time. Long delayed Kosova elections will be held on 17 November, so we started our semester doing rhetorical analysis of campaign posters, which will be followed by a focus this week on political speeches. I’m learning scads about the political situation here, both as I prepare for class and during class itself. It’s a good combination: they are experts on the political situation and I give them the rhetorical tools to focus their ideas. I feel increasingly vested in this place as I learn more about the candidates and the back-stories that are a part of the election. This class has also re-kindled my interest in electoral politics, which in the U.S. only leads me into numbing cynicism. It’s an exciting time here – the leader of the party that wins the election will most likely lead Kosova to independence – and people are anxious to talk about the election.