Chapter 1: The Roadblock of Memory
The cold in Kosovo was a different animal. It didn’t just nip; it gnawed. It found the gaps in your coat, the space between glove and sleeve, and settled deep in the marrow. Vanja stared out the passenger window of Rasim’s black Mercedes, watching the skeletal vineyards rush past, each row a perfect, frozen grave. The sky was the color of faded slate, the last bruise-colored light of a January afternoon bleeding away behind the mountains.
“You’re quiet,” Rasim said, his hands steady on the wheel. He drove the way he did everything—with a relaxed, unflappable competence that made the world feel momentarily stable.
“I’m always quiet,” Vanja said, her breath fogging the glass.
“You’re quieter. It’s the road from Peja. It makes everyone think of funerals.” He lit a cigarette, the flare of the match illuminating the sharp planes of his face. “My mother will murder me if she finds out you didn’t eat lunch. You know this, yes? She will blame me. ‘You let her wander the bazaar on an empty stomach, Rasim? What kind of man are you?’”
A faint smile touched Vanja’s lips. “I had a burek. I’m fine.”
“A single burek is a tragedy. We will stop in Gračanica. I know a place.”
“Rasim, I’m not—”
Her objection dissolved as he smoothly downshifted, the car’s tires crunching on the packed snow at the edge of the road. They weren’t stopping for food.
Ahead, in the middle of the narrow road, three figures stood haloed in the Mercedes’ high beams. They wore black, from their knitted caps to their boots, and they held rifles not with the flourish of soldiers, but with the weary practicality of men who’d been holding them a long time. The exhaust from the idling car plumed around their legs, merging with the gathering dusk.
Rasim let out a slow stream of smoke. “Sit still. Don’t speak.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
He rolled down his window. The frozen air rushed in, carrying the scent of pine, snow, and something metallic—gun oil. Vanja straightened in her seat, arranging her face into a mask of neutral curiosity. Inside, a clock only she could hear ticked down in frantic seconds. She saw the rough wool of their jackets, the too-new boots, the way the youngest one’s eyes darted, bird-quick, to her face and away. She knew these boys. Or she knew the men they would become, and the ghosts they would leave behind.
One, square-jawed with a scar through his eyebrow, leaned down to Rasim’s window. The words were Albanian, sharp and guttural in the cold. Where from? Where to? Papers.
Rasim’s reply was calm, almost bored. He fished his documents from his breast pocket. His voice shifted into a tone Vanja recognized—the easy, local cadence that contained a universe of unspoken codes. He said something else, low and fast.
The fighter’s eyes narrowed. Then he barked a laugh, straightened up, and clapped a hand on the roof of the car. He called to his companions, the tension evaporating like breath in the air. “Rasim Ramadani, you fool! Driving around in this light? The Serbs have checkpoints further on.”
“And you’re better?” Rasim grinned, taking his papers back.
The fighter leaned down again, his gaze landing squarely on Vanja. His eyes were a flat, curious brown. “And you bring a visitor to the party.”
Vanja met his stare and offered a small, polite smile. It felt like stretching a frozen muscle.
Rasim answered for her. “My cousin from Switzerland. She likes old churches. Don’t be stupid.” The last phrase was delivered with a familiar warmth, an old insult among friends.
The fighter smirked, gave the car roof two final pats, and waved them through. Rasim rolled up the window, the world going silent again except for the rumble of the engine. He pulled back onto the road, the figures shrinking in the rearview mirror.
“Friends of Burim and Arsim?” Vanja asked, her voice dry. “Let me guess.”
Rasim laughed, a real one this time. “Yeah. Let’s hurry. Mother will murder me if she finds out you didn’t eat lunch.”
The darkness was complete now, the headlights carving a tunnel through the pressing night. The snow-lined fields were an endless, blank page. Vanja watched her own reflection in the window, superimposed over the fleeing trees. She saw the ghost of the woman who had lived through this before, who had seen this road cratered, these fields mined, these same young men in black posing for different cameras, their names soon to be slogans.
The warmth of the Ramadani house was a physical shock. The air was thick with the smell of roasting meat, woodsmoke, and rosewater. As they shrugged off their coats in the crowded hallway, two larger forms detached themselves from the shadows of the living room.
Burim and Arsim. Rasim’s older brothers. They were like variations on a theme—taller, broader, their blond hair cropped short, their smiles white and sharp on handsome faces. They moved with the assured gravity of men who gave orders and expected them to be followed. Leaders in the UÇK, though no one said it aloud over the dinner table.
“The wanderers return,” Burim boomed, pulling Rasim into a rough hug. His eyes found Vanja over Rasim’s shoulder. “Vanja. Still haunting our monasteries?”
“Someone has to remember them,” she said, her tone light. She accepted his kiss on each cheek, his beard rough against her skin. Arsim followed, his embrace quicker, his assessment more direct. They were family, in all the ways that counted here. They had protected her, granted her access, trusted her when a Serbian woman poking around old churches should have raised alarms. They were not her friends—friendship was too simple a word for the tangled web of obligation, suspicion, and genuine affection that bound them—but they were hers.
In the warm, noisy kitchen, as Feride, their mother, scolded Rasim and heaped a plate with sarma for Vanja, the brothers lounged by the stove.
“Besnik told me he saw you in Peja,” Arsim said, nudging Rasim with his boot. “With a beautiful girl. He said he thought you were gay, but now he isn’t so sure.”
Vanja rolled her eyes, focusing on the savory, grape-leaf-wrapped rice on her fork.
Rasim showed his brothers a middle finger, a lazy, affectionate gesture. “Besnik is an idiot. He sees a foreign face and gets confused. It was just Vanja.”
“Just Vanja!” Feride cried, insulted. “She is more beautiful than any of the village girls you waste time with!”
The laughter was easy, familiar. Vanja ate, the rich food sitting heavily in her stomach. She listened to the rhythm of their Albanian, understanding every joke, every subtext, every worried question about supply routes masked as complaint about the price of gasoline. This was the eye of the coming storm. This warmth, this noise, was as fragile as an eggshell.
Later, as the boys argued politics in the living room, Vanja helped Feride dry dishes. From the window over the sink, she could see the endless black of the night, the snow glowing faintly. A set of headlights appeared down the valley road, moving fast. They didn’t pass. They turned off, disappearing toward the Ramadani compound.
A moment later, the front door opened, letting in a blast of cold and two more young men in black jackets. Their faces were grim, all previous humor gone. They spoke in low tones to Burim. Vanja, drying a porcelain plate with meticulous care, caught the words. “Meeting. Now. The units near Glogovac…”
Burim and Arsim stood. The room’s atmosphere shifted, the domestic warmth sucked out by the sudden, serious draft from the door. Rasim looked up from his coffee, his playful face tightening.
Arsim caught Vanja looking. He gave her a tight, apologetic smile. “Business, cousin. Don’t wait up.”
They left, the door closing with a firm finality. The roar of a Jeep engine shattered the quiet, then faded. The house felt suddenly hollow.
Feride sighed, a sound of deep, familiar worry. She took the dry plate from Vanja’s hands. “You should sleep. Rasim will drive you back to Podujevo first thing. The roads are… less friendly after dark now.”
In the guest room, under a mountain of woolen blankets, Vanja stared at the ceiling. The memory that wasn’t hers surfaced, vivid and brutal: the smell of burning insulation, the sound of those same Jeep engines screaming through a village not ten miles from here, a year from now. The names Burim and Arsin Ramadani, read from a Serbian news bulletin, labelled terrorists.
She heard a soft tread outside her door. It paused. Rasim’s voice, barely a whisper, came through the wood. “You okay in there?”
She didn’t answer. She just listened to his breath, and her own, visible in the frigid air of the room, two small ghosts in the dark.
She just listened to his breath, and her own, visible in the frigid air of the room, two small ghosts in the dark.
Morning came not with light, but with sound. The crunch of tires on gravel, the slamming of a car door, a low, familiar voice murmuring in the yard. Vanja was already awake, dressed in the faint grey dawn. She found Feride in the kitchen, kneading dough with a violence that seemed personal.
“It’s Besim,” Feride said, not looking up. Flour dusted her knuckles like ash. “He has come. You cannot go to Podujevo today. The roads… they are not passing.”
“The… meeting?” Vanja asked, her voice still rough from sleep.
“Is here. In the other house.” Feride slammed the dough onto the board. “Besim will go to his brother for a few days. In Gjakova.”
Vanja understood. Besim was anti-war. A kind old man who fixed radios and told long, looping stories about his youth in Pristina when it was just a city, not a symbol. He couldn’t be here while his sons planned it. The silence between the two houses would be his protest.
The other house stood fifty meters away, separated by a bare plum orchard. It was new, three floors of clean, white stucco, built for one of the brothers—whoever married first. It had a huge basement. Everyone mentioned the basement, its cool, earth-floored expanse perfect for storing ajvar and rakija. No one ever said what else a basement that size, in a house so new, might be for.
“Can I help?” Vanja asked, filling the kettle at the sink.
Feride paused, her strong hands resting on the dough. “They will need food. Coffee. A lot of coffee.” She finally looked at Vanja, her dark eyes a network of worry. “But I’m not sure it is a good idea for you to be there.”
“Because I’m Serbian?”
“Because you’re too beautiful,” Feride said quietly, bluntly. “And young. And some of those men… are not like my boys. They are…”
“Dangerous?” Vanja finished.
Feride gave a short, sharp laugh. “All men are dangerous, but not for all women”