Chapter 2: First Night in Prekaz
The barn air was thick enough to taste. Gun oil, kerosene, unwashed wool, and the sharp, animal smell of fear kept rigidly in check. The men around her were still as stones, their faces etched in the lamplight—young, old, all taut with a hunted intensity. Vanja kept her hands visible, her breathing even. She met Shqiponjë’s weary gaze.
“I am who my documents say I am,” she said, her Albanian clear and calm in the hush. “A journalist from Basel. My grandfather left Kosovo in 1967. I came back to see what was left.”
A snort came from the shadows. A younger man, cleaning a rifle barrel with a torn cloth, didn’t look up. “A tourist.”
“No,” Vanja said, shifting her eyes to him. “A witness.”
Shqiponjë studied her face, the passport in his hand. He thumbed the Swiss cross. “A witness,” he repeated, the word hanging there. “And what do you witness here, in this barn?”
“Men preparing for a war they don’t yet call a war.” The words were out before she could measure them. A risk. But playing dumb here would get her nowhere, or worse.
Silence.
Then, from a deeper shadow near the back wall, a movement. A man unfolded himself from a crate. He was tall, broad-shouldered, the kerosene light carving the planes of a bearded face and dark, watchful eyes. He moved with a quiet, physical certainty that parted the atmosphere in the room. The others subtly straightened, their attention pivoting to him. Shqiponjë took half a step back.
This was Adem Jashari.
He stopped a few feet from her. He didn’t take the passport Shqiponjë offered. He just looked at her. His gaze was a physical pressure, scanning her from her boots to the dark-blonde hair escaping her scarf. It wasn’t a leer. It was an assessment, like checking the firing pin of a weapon.
“You helped Hamza,” he said. His voice was lower than she’d imagined, a graveled rumble that seemed to come from deep in his chest. “Cleaned his wound. Used your own scarf.”
“It was a dirty cut. It needed cleaning.”
“A Samaritan.” He said the word without inflection. “With a Serbian name.”
“Vranić,” she confirmed, not flinching. “My family’s name. From a village near Peć. They left before I was born.”
“And yet you speak like someone from Prishtina. With a… Germanic flavor.” He took a single step closer. The scent of him was different—woodsmoke, strong coffee, and the damp wool of his sweater. “A Swiss passport, a Serbian name, and a Prishtina accent. You are a puzzle, Miss Vranic.”
“Life is messy,” Vanja said, and for the first time, a flicker of something that wasn’t fear sparked in her gut. Defiance, perhaps. The absurdity of explaining her existence to a legend who didn’t yet know he was one. “I didn’t choose the pieces. I’m just trying to understand the picture.”
One of the younger fighters let out a short, surprised laugh, quickly stifled.
Adem’s expression didn’t change. “The picture,” he echoed. He finally took the passport from Shqiponjë, glanced at it, handed it back to her. His fingers brushed hers. They were rough, calloused, and surprisingly warm. “The picture is simple. There is a boot on our neck. We intend to remove it. Your… Swiss journalism… will call us terrorists when it becomes convenient.”
“I’m not here to label you.” She held his gaze, feeling the dangerous current in the space between them. An attraction, yes, forbidden and stupid, but underneath it something harder: a recognition of mirrored resolve. “I’m here to listen. My press card gets me past police checkpoints. It might be of use.”
“Use.” He turned the word over. “And what do you want in return? A scoop? The first interview with the mountain bandits?”
“I want to know why my family really left in 1967,” she said, and that, at least, was the unadorned truth. It anchored her. “The official story is thin. I think the reason is here. In this… tension. I think they saw the boot coming down, years early.”
He studied her for a long moment. The barn creaked in a gust of wind. “You are either very clever, or very naive. Or both.” He nodded to Shqiponjë. “Give her some coffee. She looks cold.”
It wasn’t an invitation to stay, but it wasn’t an order to leave. A suspended judgment. Shqiponjë gestured her toward a small, dented pot simmering on a makeshift stove. She poured a tiny cup of the thick, black liquid. It was bitter and grainy, pure fuel.
Adem had returned to his crate, speaking in low tones to two of his men. She heard fragments: “Llaushë… reinforcements… the road near the bridge.” She sipped the coffee, feeling a dozen eyes still on her, and watched the life of the compound.
It was a meticulous, quiet chaos. Crates of supplies were inventoried—not just weapons, but beans, flour, medicine. A young boy, no more than ten, carried a box of rifle cartridges with solemn care. A woman in a headscarf moved between the men, handing out bread rolls without a word. This wasn’t just a hiding place. It was a hearth. A command post. A family home. The dissonance was staggering.
After twenty minutes, Adem stood again and walked over to her. He picked up a roll of bread from the table, broke it, and offered half to her. A simple, profound gesture in this culture. She took it.
“You can stay tonight,” he said, his voice quieter. “In the house. With the women. It is not safe for you to drive back now. The police have patrols looking for… unusual movement.”
“And am I unusual movement?”
“Yes.” A faint, almost invisible twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. A crack in the granite. “Tomorrow, you will go. Back to your sterile apartment in Srbica. You will write about… cultural festivals. Or whatever lie you have prepared.”
“And if I want to come back?”
He finished his bread, chewing slowly. “If you come back, it will not be as a journalist. It will be as a choice. And choices here have consequences. They are final.” He looked toward the barn door, where the night was now absolute. “Shqiponjë will show you to the house. Do not wander.”
The main house was solid stone, low and sprawling. The room she was given was small, with a narrow bed and a crucifix on the wall. It was spartan but clean. Through the thin wall, she could hear the muffled sounds of a family—a child’s question, a woman’s patient answer, the clatter of dishes.
Sleep was impossible. The weight of the day, the crushing knowledge of what this house would become—a tomb, a symbol—pressed on her chest. She got up and stood at the small window, looking out at the dark shape of the barn, a lone light still glowing.
A figure moved outside, crossing the yard. She recognized Adem’s tall, broad silhouette. He stopped, head tilted back, looking at the sky, utterly still. He seemed carved from the same stone as the mountains surrounding them. A man standing watch on the edge of everything.
Just before dawn, she heard the soft crunch of footsteps on gravel. A low, urgent conversation at the front door. A minute later, a quiet knock on her door.
It was Shqiponjë. He looked exhausted. “You must leave. Now. A police patrol was spotted on the main road from Srbica. They are stopping every vehicle. If they find you here…”
She was already pulling on her jacket. “My car?”
“It is on the road a kilometer east, hidden. We will take you.” He led her through a back kitchen, where a young woman was already wrapping bread and cheese in a cloth. She shoved it into Vanja’s hands without meeting her eyes.
They moved through the pre-dawn gloom, a gray world of dripping trees and cold mist. Two young fighters flanked her, moving with swift, silent precision. They found her car, leaves hastily brushed from the windscreen.
“Go straight. Do not stop until you are in the town,” one of them instructed. “If they flag you down, use your passport. You were lost. You are a stupid foreigner.”
She got in, the engine sounding obscenely loud. As she turned the car, her headlights swept across the track.
Adem was standing there, at the edge of the trees. He wasn’t waving. He was just watching her go, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression lost in shadow. He gave a single, sharp nod.
Then she was bumping down the track, the compound disappearing behind her, swallowed by the hills and the mist. The bread and cheese sat on the passenger seat. The taste of his coffee was still on her tongue.
The road to Srbica was empty, washed in pale, morning light. She passed the split oak. The barricade was gone. As she neared the town’s outskirts, she saw them: two police cars parked sideways across the road, creating a bottleneck. Blue lights flashing silently in the gray dawn.
Her hands tightened on the wheel. She slowed, rolling down her window, the crisp air biting her face. A policeman, the same thin-faced one from the cafe, leaned down. He recognized her immediately. A slow, smile spread across his features.
“Miss Swiss Journalist,” he said. “Up very early. Or out very late.”
He peered into the back seat, at the empty passenger footwell. “You find any good stories in our hills last night?”
“I got lost,” Vanja said, leaning out the window with a practiced, slightly embarrassed smile. She tapped her temple. “My sense of direction is Swiss. We only have straight lines.” She handed over her passport and press card. “I ended up on a farm track near Llaushë. A shepherd’s wife gave me bread and cheese when I asked for directions. Very kind.”
The policeman flipped through the passport, lingering on the Swiss cross. He glanced from her face to the photo and back. The authority of the document was a palpable force in the air. He wanted to find a thread to pull, but the facade was seamless. “You should be more careful. These are not Alps for hiking. Things happen.”
“Noted,” she said, her smile not wavering. “I’ll stick to cultural festivals from now on. I heard there’s one in Prishtina next week.”
He stared at her for three long seconds, then slapped the passport back into her outstretched hand. “Go.”
She drove through the gap they made between the cars, her heart a trapped bird against her ribs until she turned the next corner. The sun was fully up now, bleaching the concrete monoliths of Srbica into sharp relief. She parked behind her building, the silence of the sterile apartment swallowing her whole.
She locked the door, braced a chair under the handle, and stood in the center of the empty living room. The adrenaline bled away, leaving a hollow, trembling exhaustion. She peeled off her jacket, the scarf that had bound Hamza’s arm. It smelled of barn and blood and Adem Jashari’s coffee.
She slept for twenty hours.
It was a drowning, dreamless plunge. When she surfaced, it was dark again. She lay in the unfamiliar bed, staring at the ceiling. The memory of his figure at the tree line was etched behind her eyes. The weight of his final nod. The unspoken knowledge of what was coming for him, for his family, for every soul in that compound, was a stone on her chest.
She thought of the boy carrying the cartridges. The woman wrapping bread. The quiet, meticulous preparation for a martyrdom they all seemed to accept as inevitable. She thought of Adem’s hands, rough and warm, and the terrifying, magnetic certainty he wore like a second skin. History was a tsunami, and she was standing on the beach trying to warn a mountain.
Three days later, she drove to Prishtina.
The city buzzed with a fragile, desperate energy. Cafés were full of students debating over cloudy glasses of raki; kiosks displayed magazines with fraught political cartoons. It was a world away from the silent hills of Drenica, yet the tension was the same, just distilled into talk and smoke. She spent mornings in the National Library, its bizarre honeycomb architecture feeling like a hive for lost histories.
She requested emigration records from 1967, land registries from Peć. The clerks moved with bureaucratic lethargy. On her fourth day, struggling with a microfiche machine that projected blurry, scanned documents, she cursed softly in German.
“You have to jiggle the wheel, not force it,” a voice said beside her in Albanian. “Here.”
A young woman reached over, her fingers deft. The image on the screen snapped into sharp focus. She was maybe twenty-two, with intelligent dark eyes and a sleek fall of black hair. She wore jeans and a deep green sweater, a stack of philosophy books tucked under her arm.
“Thank you,” Vanja said, switching back to Albanian. “I’m technologically cursed.”
“It’s this machine. It’s cursed.” The girl smiled. “You’re not from here. Your accent is… perfect, but off. Like from a very old textbook.”
“I’m from Switzerland. My family left a long time ago. I’m trying to find out why.” Vanja gestured to the frustrating screen. “I’m Vanja.”
“Kosovare. Kosovare Ramadani.” She extended her hand. “I’m hiding from my law lectures. This is more interesting. What’s the name?”
“Vranić.”
Kosovare’s eyebrow lifted, just a fraction. A flicker of recognition, but not of threat. Curiosity. “Serbian name.”
“It is. The story, I’m told, is complicated.”
“All the best ones are.” Kosovare pulled up a chair. “Let me see. My cousin works in the archives in Peć. I might know which drawer they’ve shoved those files into.”
They worked together for two hours. Kosovare was quick, bright, and funny, complaining about her professors with a wry warmth that made Vanja laugh for the first time since waking in this century. The dread in Vanja’s stomach unfurled just a little. She knew this name. Kosovare Ramadani. Future wife of Bahri Nika. Cousin of Burim Ramadani, a UÇK commander whose fate Vanja also knew. This vibrant girl threading microfiche with chewed nails was a node in a future web of war and loss.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Vanja said as they packed up. “Can I buy you a coffee? A real one, not library sludge.”
“Only if you let me ask you twenty questions about Switzerland,” Kosovare said. “I want to study abroad next year. If my family doesn’t kill me for suggesting it.”
Over espresso in a cramped café near the university, they talked. Kosovare was fiercely political, but in an idealistic, theoretical way—all about principles and rights, not yet about trenches and mortars. Vanja listened, carefully navigating her own answers. A friendship, fragile and real, began to knit itself.
“It’s my birthday on Saturday,” Kosovare said suddenly, stirring her sugar. “Just a thing at my cousin’s place. Some food, too much music. You should come. It’ll be full of my loud, opinionated relatives. You can practice your textbook Albanian on them.”
Vanja hesitated for only a second. This was an in. A door. “I’d love to.”
The party was in a modest house in a neighborhood just west of the city center. The air was thick with the smell of grilled qebapa and cigarette smoke, the pulsating rhythm of tallava music spilling into the garden. It was crowded, warm, alive.
Kosovare hugged her at the door, introducing her quickly to a blur of aunts and uncles. Then she pulled her towards a group of younger people by the food table. “This is my friend Vanja, the Swiss scholar! Vanja, this is my cousin Burim, his friend Bahri…”
Bahri Nika was taller than the others, with a watchful, handsome face and an unsmiling mouth. He shook her hand, his grip firm, his eyes scanning her features. “Vanja. A Serbian name.”
“It is,” she said, meeting his gaze.
“Kosovare collects strays,” he said, his tone light but his eyes sharp as flint. “Even interesting ones.”
Burim, sharper-edged and quicker to laugh, elbowed him. “Be nice, Bahri. She’s a guest.” He offered Vanja a beer. “Ignore him. He thinks anyone who didn’t grow up on our street is a spy.”
The conversation flowed around her, a current of slang and jokes and heated debate about a recent football match. Vanja smiled, nodded, sipped her beer. She felt Bahri’s gaze periodically return to her, a cold spot in the room’s warmth.
Then, across the crowded kitchen, she saw him. Shqiponjë. He was leaning against the counter, speaking quietly with Burim’s older brother. He looked different in a clean shirt, less like a figure from a dark barn, but the weary intensity in his eyes was the same.
He caught her look. His expression didn’t change for a moment. Then, slowly, the ghost of a smile touched his lips. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, just as Adem had. Recognition. A shared secret.
She excused herself and made her way through the press of bodies to the kitchen for more water.
“A long way from shepherd’s bread,” Shqiponjë said quietly, coming to stand beside her at the sink.
“A different kind of field research,” she said, filling a glass. “She’s wonderful. Kosovare.”
“She is.” He watched the party, his voice low. “He asked after you. Adem. Wanted to know if the police gave you trouble.”
A flutter low in her stomach. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him you were probably filing a story about pastry chefs in Prishtina.” He finally looked at her. “He grunted. Which means he was pleased.” Shqiponjë took a long drink from his own bottle. “Be careful with Bahri. He has a long memory, and a longer list of grievances. Your name is on it just for existing.”
“I gathered.”
“But you are here anyway.”
“She invited me,” Vanja said. “And I said yes.”
Shqiponjë studied her face. “You keep walking into rooms where you are not wanted. It is either very brave or very stupid.”
“It’s just walking,” she said, and turned to lean back against the counter, watching Bahri’s dark, suspicious figure across the room, feeling the music thrum through the floor.
The music died mid-beat, replaced by the splintering crack of the front door giving way.
A bottle smashed.
The room froze for a single, crystalline second—a tableau of raised glasses and startled smiles. Then the space erupted into movement and panic. Heavy boots stamped in the hallway. A woman screamed. A uniformed policeman filled the kitchen doorway, his baton tapping against his thigh.
“Identity checks! Nobody move!”
Bahri was suddenly beside Kosovare, his hand locked around her wrist. His eyes, wide and sharp, found Vanja across the chaos. He jerked his head toward the back kitchen door.
She didn’t hesitate.
She shoved past Shqiponjë, who melted sideways into a shadowed alcove by the pantry, his face a mask of cold neutrality. Vanja followed Bahri and a terrified Kosovare out into the tiny, dank backyard, over a crumbling wall, and into the maze of narrow alleys behind the houses. The cold night air hit her like a slap. They ran, their footsteps echoing off the wet cobblestones, the shouts from the house growing muffled behind them.
Bahri never looked back. He moved with a grim, practiced certainty, turning left then right through passages Vanja would never have seen. Ten minutes of silent, frantic movement brought them to a derelict garage in a dimly lit street. He wrenched up a metal shutter just enough to slide under, pulling Kosovare and then Vanja inside before letting it fall closed with a soft, final clang.
The inside smelled of motor oil and damp concrete. A single bare bulb hung from a wire, illuminating a stained mattress, a crate of empty bottles, and a small, pot-bellied stove gone cold.
Kosovare sank onto the mattress, her breath coming in ragged gulps. “My family…”
“They will be fined. Maybe a night in the cells for the men. Nothing more,” Bahri said, his voice taut. He was staring at Vanja. “You. The police come, and you run like a professional. No panic. No questions.”
“I don’t like police batons,” Vanja said, leaning against the cold wall, working to steady her breathing.
“How do you know Shqiponjë?” he demanded.
Kosovare looked up, confusion cutting through her fear. “What?”
Bahri ignored her. “In the kitchen. You spoke. He knows you. How?”
The air in the garage tightened. Vanja held his piercing gaze. There was no safe lie here, only a dangerous truth. “He is Adem’s cousin,” is all Vanja said.
The name landed in the silence like a stone in mud.
Bahri blinked. A flicker of utter disbelief, then dawning, furious comprehension. “Adem Jashari? You know Adem Jashari?” He took a step toward her, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “Who are you? Really? A Swiss journalist who runs from police and is greeted by name by the Jasharis?”
“I told you. My family is from here. I went to the Drenica region to see our old village. I got lost. I met him. That’s all.” She kept her tone flat, factual, offering no purchase for his anger.
“That’s all?” he echoed, a bitter laugh escaping him. “You are a story that does not make sense.”
Kosovare watched them, her eyes huge. “Adem Jashari? The one they talk about in the hills? Vanja, what is this?”
Before Vanja could form an answer, a new sound cut through the tension—a soft, rhythmic scrape at the metal shutter. Three distinct taps. A pause. Two more.
Bahri’s anger vanished, replaced by instant, focused alertness. He moved to the shutter, lifted it a fraction, peered out, then raised it fully.
Adem Jashari ducked inside, straightening to his full height in the low space. The garage suddenly felt microscopic. He wore a simple dark jacket, beaded with rain, and his presence seemed to suck the oxygen from the room. He brought the scent of the night, of pine and damp earth, with him.
The two young men with him, who’d been dozing in a corner, snapped awake. They scrambled to their feet, excitement and naked confusion warring on their faces. “Adem! You are here? In the city?”
Adem gave them a brief, acknowledging glance before his eyes swept the room. They found Vanja, lingered for a heartbeat that stretched too long, then moved to Bahri. “Kosovare,” he said, nodding to the girl on the mattress. “You are not hurt.”
It wasn’t a question. His voice was calm, a deep bass note that vibrated in Vanja’s ribs.
“We’re fine, Uncle Adem,” Kosovare whispered, her face pale.
Adem’s attention returned to Vanja. “Vanja,” he said. “Go wait in my car.”
It was not a request. It was a quiet command, delivered with an absolute expectation of obedience. She saw the logic instantly—her presence was a spark in this tinderbox of questions. She nodded, avoiding looking at Bahri’s stunned face, and moved toward the shutter.
A Zastava was idling just outside. She slipped into the passenger seat. The interior was clean, smelling of tobacco and old leather. Through the garage opening, she watched the scene.
Adem turned to Bahri. He placed a firm hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Thank you for keeping her safe.”
Bahri looked utterly, completely lost. His suspicion, his anger, his entire framework for understanding the woman he’d just rescued, shattered with those words of thanks from this man. He just stared, his mouth slightly open, unable to form a reply.
From the mattress, Kosovare let out a soft, incredulous laugh. It was a release of pure, bewildered tension. The sound filtered out to the car, mingling with the idle of the engine.
Adem ducked back out of the garage, walked around the car, and slid into the driver’s seat. He pulled the door shut, sealing them in a sudden, intimate silence. The only light came from the dim bulb in the garage, painting the sharp lines of his profile in faint amber.
He didn’t start driving. He just looked straight ahead through the windshield, his large hands resting on the wheel. The confusion and excitement of the men behind them seemed to hover in the air between the seats, a third presence.
Vanja waited. The dashboard clock ticked off a full minute.
“You are a complication,” he said finally, his voice low, meant only for her in the close dark.