On the trail of an Edwardian traveller in Kosovo - Elizabeth Gowing

 

Rob received a phone call offering him a new job, back in Prishtina.


We were going back to live in Kosovo! To walk a city haunted by stray cats and streets acrid with roasting coffee and brown coal, where people looked each other in the eye as they passed, expecting to see friends they recognised. Where the neighbourhoods throb with the muezzin’s wail every day, and all summer with endless distorted music over wedding loudspeakers, and old men might still sit against a wall at dusk while rooks wheel and shimmer in the sky above them. 

 

Back, to beyond Prishtina’s streets, to landscapes of blond streaked cornfields and egg-shaped haystacks, where hedgerows bloom and plums tinge a tree blue and above them, even into summertime, the cool mountains tower with patches of snow that bathe your eyes just to look at them, and where you know you can forage tiny mountain strawberries. Where markets bulge with tomatoes that still have the spice of the stalk on them, and driving home you see women setting tables under the trees for long, large family meals. 

And also, as we worked hard to remind ourselves – we were going forward. In a torrent like the white water of Rugova, you can’t step into the same river twice.


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