Chapter 7: debutdd
The heat in the Stuttgart hospital was a solid, pressing weight, but Vanja felt only the icy focus of the pain. This birth was different. Faster, more violent, a freight train of pressure that left no room for thought. Bahri’s hand was a vise around hers, his other hand pressing a cool cloth to her forehead. He kept speaking Albanian, low and constant, a river of words she now understood perfectly. “You are my mountain. You are my fortress. Push, zemër, push our son into the world.”
She bore down with a guttural roar, the ring of sweat-darkened hair plastered to her scalp. There was a tearing, burning stretch, then a sudden, slippery release. A moment of silence, taut and infinite, followed by a raw, furious cry.
“A son,” the midwife said, lifting the bloody, squirming child.
Bahri’s grip went slack. He stared, his face naked with a wonder so profound it looked like pain. They placed the boy on Vanja’s chest. He was bigger than Vera had been, with a shock of dark hair and lungs that promised formidable will.
“Liridon,” Bahri whispered, the name a prayer. Free. He bent and kissed the baby’s head, then Vanja’s salty lips. “Liridon.”
The apartment in Sillenbuch, already full, now overflowed. Vera, toddling and fiercely articulate, viewed the new arrival with suspicion that melted into a proprietary obsession. “My Liri,” she would declare, patting his head with a chubby hand. The sounds of the household were a cacophony of Serbian lullabies from Dana, Albanian folk songs from Lirije, German children’s programs on the television, and the hum of anxious adult conversation about amnesties, returns, and rubble.
Bahri was a ghost in his own home. He moved with a hunter’s silence, his eyes constantly cataloging exits, his sleep fractured by dreams that made him shout. He would sit for hours, Liridon asleep on his chest, staring at nothing. The war was over on paper. In him, it was a live wire.
One night, weeks after the birth, Vanja woke to an empty bed. She found him in the living room, standing at the window in the dark, holding a glass of rakia. The city lights glinted on the untouched liquid.
“We go back,” he said, not turning. “Next year. When the winter ends. I will build us a house. On our land.”
“Our land?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.
“The land you went to see. Your grandfather’s. The church, the graves.” He finally looked at her. “It is still there. The village is half gone, but the stones are there. I bought the plots around it. We will build something new there. For them.” He nodded toward the children’s room. “For us.”
The return, in the muddy thaw of March 2000, was a dissection of memory. The bus wound through scarred landscapes Vanja knew from two lifetimes—the battered roads of her haunted visions now overlaid with the reality of bullet-pocked walls, burnt-out shells of houses, and the strange, quiet tension of a ceasefire. New, raw Albanian flags hung everywhere. The Serbian houses stood empty, windows like blinded eyes.
Bahri had gone ahead a month prior. He met them at the bus station in Prekaz in a battered Land Rover. He looked more grounded here, the tension in his shoulders belonging to the earth itself. He kissed Vera, then took Liridon from Vanja’s arms, holding the boy aloft to see the familiar, unforgiving mountains. “This is yours,” he said, his voice fierce.
The site was a mile from the compound of the Jashari family, now a memorial under construction, a raw wound of national pilgrimage. Vanja’s grandfather’s land lay on a sloping hill. The old Serbian church, a small stone building, still stood, its roof holed by shelling, its interior desecrated but structurally stubborn. The gravestones, some tipped over, bore names she remembered from childhood stories. The air smelled of wet pine, woodsmoke, and the faint, indelible scent of ash.
A foundation had been dug. A stack of new timber and bricks sat under a tarpaulin. A small cabin, generator-powered, served as their temporary home.
March 5th arrived, heavy and grey. The first anniversary of the end of the war. Bahri dressed in dark clothes, his face a closed door. “You will come with me,” he said to Vanja. It wasn’t a question.
They left the children with Lirije in the cabin. The walk to the Jashari compound was through a silent stream of people, thousands moving like a slow, dark river up the road. The air vibrated with a collective grief so dense it was soundless. Vanja, a Serbian woman, felt every eye on her, a current of curiosity and hostility. Bahri held her hand tightly, his grip a iron band, leading her through the crowd with a possessive, protective ferocity.
The compound was a national shrine now. The walls of the houses were preserved, pockmarked by thousands of bullets, a stark geometry of martyrdom. People pressed against the low walls, weeping, touching the stones, leaving flowers. The murmur was a sea of Albanian, prayers and poetry.
Bahri found his way to a group of men—survivors, veterans, their faces hardened by the year. There were nods, clasped hands, looks that passed over Vanja with a mixture of respect and deep, unhealed suspicion. One older man, with Adem’s fierce eyes, clasped Bahri’s shoulder. “Your wife,” he said in Albanian, his gaze on Vanja. “The one who knew.”
Bahri nodded once. The man looked at Vanja for a long moment, then gave a slow, solemn nod of acknowledgment. It was not warmth, but it was recognition. A place grudgingly given.
A speaker’s voice, magnified and distorted, began reciting the names of the dead. Adem. Hamëz. Shpresa. Besa. The list unspooled, a litany against the grey sky. Vanja saw Bahri’s throat work. His eyes were dry, but his hand in hers trembled. She thought of the vision she’d carried for so long—the smoke, the certainty of death. She saw it now etched into the living faces around her, into the very stones. The knowledge that had once been a terrifying secret was now public history, and its weight was crushing.
When the ceremony ended, they walked back in silence. The crowd dissipated into the surrounding hills, leaving behind a litter of flowers and an echoing quiet. Back at their land, Bahri stopped before the foundation trench. He picked up a shovel, his movements sharp, and began to dig, throwing earth with a savage, rhythmic force.
Vanja let him work. She went to the old church, pushing open the creaking door. Inside, the icons were smashed, Serbian Cyrillic graffiti scrawled over the walls. But the afternoon light fell through a hole in the roof, illuminating the stone floor. She sat on the ground, surrounded by the ghosts of her ancestry, and wept for all of it—for the dead on both sides, for her husband’s shattered soul, for her children who would inherit this soil of blood and myth.
She didn’t hear him come in. His shadow fell over her. He was caked in mud and sweat. He sank down beside her, his breath coming in harsh gulps. He didn’t touch her. They sat in the ruined house of God, two people from a story of hate, bound by something stronger.
“I need you,” he said, his voice raw from the digging and the unshed tears. “Right now. I need to fuck you until I remember I am a man, not just a ghost.”
He pulled her to her feet, his hands rough on her arms. He backed her against the cold stone wall, his mouth crashing down on hers. It was a kiss of anger, of mourning, of possession. He fumbled with the button of her jeans, yanking them and her underwear down her hips. The air was cold on her skin.
“Tell me you want it,” he growled, his own trousers shoved down, his cock hard and heavy in his hand. He pressed the thick head against her entrance. She was wet, her body responding to his brutal urgency, this need to feel alive amidst so much death.
“I want it,” she gasped. “Fuck me, Bahri. Here. Now.”
He drove into her in one deep, merciless thrust, filling her completely, stretching her tight. A broken sound escaped him. He set a punishing rhythm, his hips slamming her against the stone, the ancient walls their only witness. The physicality of it was everything—the grunt of his breath, the slap of skin, the primal smell of sex and sweat cutting through the dust of decay.
“This is mine,” he chanted, his mouth on her throat, his teeth scraping. “This cunt is mine, in this place of your dead. You bear my children here. You are my life, Vanja. My only fucking life.”
His words unravelled her. The coiling pleasure was sharp, bright, a defiance against the surrounding ruin. She came with a sharp cry, her nails digging into his back through his shirt, her inner muscles clenching around his driving length. He followed, his climax a roar that echoed in the small space, his release hot and flooding inside her as he shuddered, his full weight pinning her to the wall.
He stayed there, buried in her, his face hidden in her hair, his breath slowing. Slowly, gently, he pulled out. He righted their clothes with trembling hands. He took her face in his palms, his thumbs wiping the tears she hadn’t realized were still falling.
“I will build you a house here,” he whispered. “With rooms full of light. I will build it with these hands.” He held them up, calloused and dirty. “It will be strong. Nothing will touch you in it.”
The next months were measured in concrete, timber, and the growing strength of their children. Vera ran wild on the hill, her Albanian and Serbian words weaving together. Liridon, sturdy and quiet, watched everything from a blanket on the grass. Bahri worked from dawn until dark, his body finding a different kind of exhaustion. He laid bricks, raised beams, installed windows that looked out over the hills towards the Jashari compound—not in defiance, but in witness.
Vanja cooked on a camp stove, planted a vegetable garden, and slowly, carefully, began to clean the church. She did not restore it. She cleared the debris, washed the graffiti from the stones, but left the scars visible. It was a history, not a revival.
The house rose, a simple, solid two-story structure of pale stone and dark wood. It was not a mansion. It was a fortress of sorts, but one built with spacious windows, a large kitchen, and a terrace that faced the sunrise. Bahri built a wall around the property, not high enough to feel like a prison, but defined.
The day the roof beams were set, Bahri called Vanja and the children over. He lifted Vera onto his shoulders, and held Liridon in one arm. With his free hand, he pointed to the skeleton of their home against the vast Kosovo sky.
“This is us,” he said, his voice carrying on the wind. “This is what we make from the fire.”
That night, in the cramped cabin, the children slept deeply. Bahri pulled Vanja onto the narrow bed. This time, his need was slower, deeper, a claiming of a future. He peeled her clothes off and worshipped her body in the moonlight—the stretch marks on her belly, the full curves of her breasts, the strength of her thighs. He entered her with a deep, rolling cadence that felt like a promise.
“You see what I built today?” he murmured, moving inside her with a devastating slowness. “I built it for this. For the right to be inside you in peace. To make love to my wife in our own land.”
He rocked into her, each stroke a pledge. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deeper, taking all of him—the grief, the violence, the desperate, building hope. They climbed together, the tension coiling sweet and intense, until it broke in a shared, breathless release that felt less like an end and more like a foundation, laid stone by trembling stone.