Chapter 13: 99
The morning came cold and sharp, the air in their room at the Jashari compound smelling of woodsmoke and damp wool. Vanja woke to the solid warmth of Bahri pressed against her back, his arm a heavy weight across her ribs. His hand had found its way beneath her nightshirt, cupping the full swell of her breast, his thumb stroking lazily back and forth over her nipple until it hardened into a tight peak against his palm.
She shifted, feeling the hard length of him against her backside. “You’re awake,” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep.
“I haven’t slept,” he whispered into her hair, his voice gravelly. “Thinking.” His hand slid down over the curve of her stomach, his fingers tracing her unblemished skin. Then he moved lower, slipping beneath the waistband of her underwear. She gasped as his fingers parted her folds, finding her warm and slick from sleep. “Thinking of this.”
He turned her onto her stomach with a quiet urgency, his body settling over hers. He yanked her underwear down to her thighs and spread her legs with his knee. There was no tenderness this time, only a hungry, focused need. He positioned himself at her entrance and pushed inside with a single, deep thrust that forced a choked cry into the pillow.
He fucked her like that, facedown, his body covering hers completely. One hand braced beside her head, the other tangled in her hair, pulling just enough to arch her neck. His pace was relentless, a hard, driving rhythm that pushed the breath from her lungs with every snap of his hips.
“This cunt,” he growled, his voice strained. “This perfect, wet cunt. It’s home.” He drove into her, his balls slapping against her skin. The crude words, the possession in his tone, sent a sharp bolt of heat through her. She pushed back against him, meeting his thrusts, the friction building a coil of pleasure deep in her belly.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his breath hot on her ear. “Tell me whose it is.”
“Yours,” she panted, the word muffled by the fabric. “Always yours.”
He groaned, his rhythm faltering for a second before he plunged deeper, harder. “Gonna fill you up,” he rasped. “Gonna keep you so full of me you’ll never forget what you belong to.” His control shattered. His thrusts became erratic, primal. He bit down on the meat of her shoulder, stifling his roar as he came, pulsing inside her with a violence that shook them both.
He collapsed atop her, his weight a crushing, welcome anchor. For long minutes, the only sound was their ragged breathing merging with the distant crow of a rooster.
Later, washed and dressed in simple wool trousers and a thick sweater, she followed him to the main house. The large common room was full of men, the air hazy with cigarette smoke and tension. Adem Jashari stood by the cold hearth, his frame imposing, his bearded face grave. Beside him was his brother Hamez, whose wary eyes flicked to Vanja and then away, a gesture that now held respect instead of suspicion. And there were two others.
Hashim Thaçi was younger than she’d imagined, dark-haired with sharp, intelligent eyes that missed nothing. He had a politician’s careful stillness. Albin Kurti stood slightly apart, his intensity a different brand—zealous, intellectual, burning with a quiet fire.
All conversation died as Bahri led her in. Thaçi’s gaze locked onto her, sweeping from her face down her body with an appraisal that was both clinical and distinctly male. Bahri’s hand, resting on the small of her back, tightened perceptibly. She felt the muscle in his jaw flex against her temple.
“Don’t be stupid,” she whispered, so only he could hear, her lips barely moving. “He’s a peacock.”
A sudden, unexpected laugh burst from Bahri, breaking the silence. He shook his head and dropped a kiss onto her hair, the tension in his shoulders easing. The room seemed to exhale.
Adem gestured to a space on a bench. “Sit. Bahri says you have things we need to hear.”
She sat, feeling every eye upon her. She spoke not as a journalist, but as a witness. She told them of the coming brutal spring, of the planned Serbian offensive dubbed “Operation Horseshoe.” She named villages—Glogovac, Srbica, Dakovica—that would be targeted for “cleansing.” She described the mass graves, the columns of displaced, the world’s delayed, horrified reaction.
“They will try to provoke you,” she said, looking directly at Adem and Hamez. “They will want a massacre, something they can show the world to justify their brutality. You must not give it to them.” She took a deep breath. “Order your men. Killing civilians, any civilians, is forbidden. Even if they are Serbian civilians who spit on you. It is a trap. The moment you retaliate against a village, you lose.”
Thaçi leaned forward. “And how do you know this?”
“I just do,” she said, meeting his gaze without flinching. “You can choose to believe me or not. But if you want the West to intervene, you must be the undeniable victims. Not the instigators.”
Kurti spoke, his voice low. “You speak of morality in a war of survival.”
“I speak of strategy,” she countered. “The only strategy that will work.”
The meeting stretched for hours. Maps were laid out. Arguments flared. Bahri watched her, his pride a palpable heat in the chilly room.
The two months that followed were a descent into a particular kind of hell. The mountains of Drenica echoed with the thump of distant shelling. Serbian police patrols became more brazen, their convoys roaring through the valley roads. Raids happened in neighboring villages—houses burned, men taken, sporadic gunfights erupted.
But Prekaz remained untouched. No armored vehicles rumbled up its dirt track. No police descended on the Jashari compound. It was an island of fragile, terrifying calm in a rising sea of violence. The men knew it. They’d look at Vanja sometimes, a strange, weighing look. Marko’s word, unspoken but felt, hung over them like a ghost.
Vanja lived with a constant, sick dread in her throat. She helped the women stockpile food, tend wounds from skirmishes elsewhere, care for the stream of hollow-eyed relatives fleeing other villages. At night, she and Bahri would lie awake, listening. Sometimes he would make love to her with a furious, silent desperation, as if trying to fuse their bodies together against the coming storm. Other nights, he would simply hold her, his face buried in her neck, saying nothing.
Then, in late March, the sky changed. The sound was different—not the sporadic thud of mortar fire, but a high, screaming whine that tore the air apart. NATO jets, screaming over the mountains. The first explosions shook the earth miles away, great plumes of smoke staining the horizon. Relief, immediate and nauseating, washed over her. It was working. The world was acting.
The bombings were relentless. Bridges, police stations, barracks—all Serbian military targets, but the fear of stray bombs was constant. Then, the ground invasion. KFOR troops, a patchwork of international uniforms, moved in from the Macedonian border. The Serbian military withdrawal was chaotic, a retreat littered with scorched vehicles and abandoned weapons.
The day the first British APCs rolled into the valley, Vanja stood with the Jashari women on the hillside. She felt no triumph. Only a hollow, acidic sickness. She had changed the story. Prekaz stood. Adem and Hamez lived. Countless others might have been spared. But the bomb craters still scarred the land. The refugee columns were still miles long. Death had still come, just not here, not to this specific house. The guilt was a cold stone in her belly.
Weeks later, the shaky peace held. Bahri’s father arrived from Germany, bringing a bouncing, toddling Agron. The reunion was a storm of tears and laughter. The boy had grown, his hair lighter, his eyes exactly his father’s. He called Bahri “Babi” and clung to Vanja’s legs before being swept into a swarm of adoring cousins.
Bahri’s father had brought more than his grandson. He had brought builders, plans, money. On a plot of land overlooking the valley, a house began to rise. It was large, modern, a statement of permanence in a landscape still raw with uncertainty.
One evening, as they walked through the unfinished skeleton of it, the scent of fresh-cut pine and plaster in the air, Vanja looked at the maze of rooms taking shape. “Bahri,” she said, her voice echoing in the empty space. “Why do we need nine bedrooms?”
He stopped, turning to face her. He placed his hands on her hips, pulling her close. The setting sun streamed through the wooden framing, painting his face in gold. He looked at her, his gaze dropping to her stomach, then back to her eyes. A slow, deliberate smile touched his lips. “For all the children you’ll bear,” he said, his voice low and certain.
He kissed her then, deep and sweet, a promise built into the very bones of the house around them. Down in the valley, the new peace was fragile, complicated, and stained with the past. But here, on this hill, with the scent of their son on her skin and her husband’s hands on her body, a future, vast and uncharted, was being framed.
But here, on this hill, with the scent of their son on her skin and her husband’s hands on her body, a future, vast and uncharted, was being framed. The house was finished by early summer, its white stone glaring defiantly against the green hillside. They decided to combine Agron’s second birthday with what everyone simply called the celebration—a proper wedding feast they’d never had. “It’s been two years, zemra,” Bahri said, shrugging when she raised an eyebrow. “I want to see you in a white dress. I want everyone to see.”
The day dawned cloudless and hot. The compound and the new house’s gardens swarmed with people. Former UCK fighters, their faces now softer but their eyes still sharp, drank raki and smoked near the sheep turning on spits. The Jashari women had outdone themselves, long tables groaning with burek, grilled peppers, and towers of syrup-drenched baklava. Agron, in a tiny white shirt and dark trousers, raced between legs, shrieking with joy, pilfering sweets from indulgent aunties.
Vanja’s dress was not a traditional Albanian fustanella, but a simple, sleek ivory sheath that clung to her curves and fell to her ankles. She wore her mother’s emerald earrings, the only thing she had from Basel. Lumnije fastened a delicate gold necklace around her throat, her work-worn hands trembling. “You are a daughter to me,” she whispered, and Vanja had to blink back sudden, sharp tears.
Bahri watched her cross the lawn, his gaze a physical touch. He wore a new, dark suit, his hair still damp from a shower. He looked like a stranger and the boy from the riverbank all at once. Hashim Thaçi was there, offering polished congratulations. Albin Kurti debated politics fervently with a group of men in a shaded corner. Even Marko’s ghost felt distant today, just a faint, cool spot in the overwhelming heat of the living.
As dusk painted the sky in violet and orange, the music swelled. The wail of the lahuta gave way to the infectious, driving rhythm of valle circles. Bahri pulled her into the center, his hand hot on her waist. They danced until her feet ached and her hair escaped its pins, until the world narrowed to his laughing eyes and the solid beat of the drum matching her heart. He leaned in, his lips brushing her sweaty temple. “I’m going to fuck you in that dress later,” he murmured, his voice raw with promise. “I’m going to ruin it.”
Later meant when the last drunken uncle had been helped home and Agron was asleep in his new, cavernous bedroom upstairs, surrounded by toy cars and woolen blankets from Germany. Bahri backed her into their own unused bedroom, the one meant for them, still smelling of clean paint and new wood. He kissed her, his tongue tasting of honey and rakia, his hands already pushing the thin straps of her dress from her shoulders. The fabric pooled at her feet. She stood in only her earrings and heels.
“Look at you,” he breathed, his eyes devouring her. His knuckles brushed over her nipple, then down the plane of her stomach. He turned her roughly to face the full-length mirror they’d just hung. “Look at what’s mine.”
He unbuttoned his own shirt, let it fall. Then he kicked her legs apart with his foot, his hands gripping her hips. He was already hard, his cock jutting thick and impatient. He spat into his palm, smoothed it over himself, and without another second’s pause, drove into her from behind. The entry was a breathtaking, full stretch that made her cry out, her palms slapping flat against the cool glass of the mirror.
“Watch,” he commanded, his voice guttural. He fucked her with deep, measured strokes, his eyes locked on their reflection. Her head fell back against his shoulder, her breasts swaying with each impact. Sweat gleamed on his collarbone. “Watch me own you.” He slid one hand around to her front, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing rough, tight circles. Pleasure, sharp and electric, shot up her spine. “This perfect cunt takes me so good. Always so fucking wet and ready.”
“Yes,” she hissed, her vision blurring as she watched his hand move on her, watched the muscles in his arm cord with each thrust. The obscenity of it, the raw visual, pushed her higher. “Don’t stop.”
“Gonna come inside you,” he grunted, his pace becoming frantic, sloppy. “Gonna pump my come so deep into you.” His fingers worked her faster, his other hand a vice on her hip. “Come with me. Now.”
The orgasm tore through her, a silent, shattering convulsion that clamped around him. He shouted, a raw, broken sound, and pulsed into her, his hips stuttering as he emptied himself with a final, shuddering thrust. They slumped together against the mirror, fogging the glass with their panting breath.
In the damp, quiet aftermath, curled on the new sheets, she traced the old scar on his shoulder from a fragment in Glogovac. The party’s echoes felt like a dream. He nuzzled her hair, his arm heavy across her waist. “Best day of my life,” he mumbled, already half asleep.
She took a slow breath. “It can be better.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m pregnant.”
The words, soft as they were, landed in the silence like a stone in still water. He went utterly rigid behind her. For a long, terrifying moment, he said nothing. Then he slowly rolled her onto her back, looming over her, his face unreadable in the dark. “What?”
“I’m pregnant,” she repeated, her heart hammering. “Maybe two months. I’ve been… waiting. To be sure.”
His expression fractured. The shock melted into a dawning, staggering awe. He looked from her eyes to her stomach, his hand hovering above it, trembling. “Agin?” he whispered, the name for their son catching in his throat.
“Or Lumnije,” she said, a smile breaking through.
A sound escaped him, part laugh, part sob. He collapsed beside her, pulling her into his arms so tightly she could barely breathe, his face buried in her neck. She felt the hot spill of his tears against her skin. “Thank you,” he whispered, over and over, his voice thick. “Zemra, thank you.”
Outside their window, in the deep Kosovo night, cicadas sawed their relentless song. Up the hill, in the house with nine bedrooms, one room was now promised. The future was no longer just framed. It had taken root, and it was growing.