The Wine Cradle of the Andes

Mendoza was sepia for the winter but the mountains were still there, as was the wine. There’s something disarming about the flatlands below a mountain range, as if nothing can fall on you....We arrived on a Thursday morning, as did El Gripe in the newspapers: 300,000 exposed, 40% of schools shuttered. Added to this premonition of malaise was the detectable filth on the city’s streets – storefronts looked blanketed by a dust storm and cadaverous dogs hobbled up after you as you passed. While the winter may sully the city, the outlying vineyards retain their unspoiled beauty and the Andes are eternal. We hired a guide and toured three vineyards in addition to the five-course tasting menu we enjoyed at another estate. This cost $150 a head.

Our area of focus was Lujan de Cuyo, a lush valley minutes south of Mendoza. Our tour guide painted a not-so-rosy picture of how El Gripe was squeezing his ski business. This jeremiad influenced our tip at the end of the day.

Since we hadn’t had a fluid conversation with a stranger in several days, we got on well with the guide. In my own head, I couldn’t conjure the circumstances that had plucked this laid back outdoorsman from the pines of Washington state and placed him in Argentina. He mentioned a girlfriend and a job as a ski photographer, but I was unable to connect the dots because it all seemed a whimsical, if enviable, undertaking.

To our virgin nostrils, the wine was ambrosial. Naturally, we concentrated on the Malbec grape, a cast-off from France that was born again on the Argentine hillsides. Its vibrant violet color took on a fantastic glitter as I held it up to the sun. I think being onsite boosted the taste, as a satisfactory sampling is the only acceptable follow-up to all of the swirling and sniffing and smacking of the lips.

Our first bodega was Alta Vista, a rustic compound built by Spanish immigrants at the turn of the century. The charming hostess led us through cavernous basements where the wine mingles with flavored oak in enormous barrels until its ready for drinking. We glimpsed estate workers busy calibrating the wine to its proper temperature for fermentation. For red wine, Alta Vista uses century-old concrete vats that require a delicate finessing of the temperature. A fire is lit under the concrete and the heat disperses throughout. White wine isn’t as sensitive to temperature variations and can be fermented in larger steel vats.

The first provocative wine we sampled at Alta Vista was Torrontes, a signature white wine of Argentina. To avoid the taint of charlatanism, I won’t broach the oenologist’s phrasebook. Words like “oaky” and “earthy” mean nothing to me. One of my few criteria for wine is that it startle rather than bore me. White wines rarely do the former to my stubborn palate. Torrontes, with its robust, lingering flavor, was a welcome exception.

We next visited Club Tapiz to take in a larger scale bodega. The American label Kendall-Jackson had owned the estate a few years back but an Argentine family proudly returned it to local hands and whitewashed the Jackson name from all of its branding. Why? “We didn’t want the stigma.” So much of the appeal of these vineyards is in them being a generational labor of love.

On arriving at Tapiz, we were ushered into a horse-drawn carriage for a drive through the vineyards themselves. Dust flew up and settled to reveal the supernatural silhouette of the Andes. The driver pulled up next to some idling llamas that looked a bit like men in llama costumes. We were bemused to see each other. I wondered aloud if the clumsy creatures trampled the vines, but no one seemed too concerned.

The wine flowed from this picturesque welcome and against such a backdrop, how could any aroma cause offense? Tapiz showcased its impressive arsenal of vintages beneath a stately chandelier in a barn house. A 2006 Malbec classic struck me with vim so I bought a bottle. We also had the luxury of tasting the wine directly from the vat and attempting to discern these inchoate flavors from their fully matured and bottled cousins.


We needed some nourishment to sponge up the wine and it came in the form of a five-course tasting menu at the lovely Bodega Ruca Malen. The seating chart was such: my four companions to my left and right, and myself opposite the Andes. The young servers blushed before announcing each course in lilting accents that heightened my expectations for an epic repast. The meal was such:

1) Yauquen Sauvignon Blanc 2008 – “refreshing, light and citric”
Goat Cheese Bruschetta

Objective of pairing: “To highlight the citric flavors and fresh fruit of the Sauvignon Blanc”

2) Ruca Malen Malbec 2006 – “Deep, elegant nose”
Slices of Filet Mignon cured with olive oil from Lunlunta

Objective of pairing: “To highlight the fresh red fruit and sweetness of the Malbec”

3) Ruca Malen Merlot 2006 – “Brilliant and intense red…Hints of both
vanilla and chocolate”
Wheat Croquets with Wild Mushroom Ragout
and caramelized onions

Objective of the pairing: “To highlight the black pepper as the aromatic descriptor”

4) Ruca Malen Carbernet Sauvignon 2006 – “An intense ruby red with
hints of toasted oak”

Kinien Malbec 2007 – “On the nose red fruits and some floral violet
notes"

Roasted Beef Tenderloin with squash, sweet corn and mashed potatoes

Objective of pairing: “To show the structure of these two varietals, highlighting the spicy side of Cabernet Sauvignon and flower notes and sweet tannins of Malbec”

5) Granite made of Chardonnay, yerba mate, and honey

White chocolate and season fruit


The menu had every reason to boast. The flavors were all there, even the indescribable ones that the menu so enticingly described. We stayed two hours and were content to stay two more. It was a meal that you impulsively label your best ever because it is so vivid and anything but fleeting.

We wrapped the day at the homey Bodega Sottano, which produces just a few thousands bottles a year. By this stage the wine was evoking some heady conversation. Our affable hostess may have another job as a grade school teacher as she often interjected with a palate quiz: “Where on your tongue do you taste this wine?” “What varietals are striking you?” “What colors do you see in this Cabernet Sauvignon?” As in grade school, I tried to guess the answer by the tone of the teacher’s voice. By the fourth red wine I was running out of colors and labeled one fuchsia. She saw that I was using words that she might not recognize in order to improve my quiz score. I apologized for my inept Spanish and fell silent.

Next she bestowed famous look-alikes on our group of four. One was told he resembled Roger Federer (not the first time), another the singular Waldo, as in “Donde esta Waldo?”, and my third friend an elusive Latin pop star (probably the first time). The hostess decided my beard reminded her of Joseph Fiennes and for the rest of our tour I was known as Shakespeare. We thought it only polite to offer her a celebrity of her own. Despite our assurances that her twin is “an attractive American comedienne”, she was dissatisfied with what Google Images returned for Sarah Silverman. We had evidently exhausted all conversation on wine. It was time to hand in our connoisseur badges and step out of the surreal.

The sun ducked behind the Andes as we parted ways with the vineyards and returned to Mendoza city. We muttered impressions to each other through teeth stained purple from a day’s work. “A good place for a honeymoon.” “How good an investment is a vineyard?” Our guide was grinning at our ravings about the day, his Van Gogh beard holding a couple of droplets of Malbec. This was the bliss I had come for and all the trifles of travel – delays, flu, foreign tongues, and general disarray – wilted in the dying embers of the day.

Calling it like It Is

In the foreword to Life is What It is, Patrick French refers to his biography of V.S. Naipaul as perhaps the last of its genre compiled entirely from paper documents (biographies will henceforth be gleaned from Facebook, emails, and other electronic paper trails). He goes on to write an unsparing account of an ingenious writer shadowed by a callous man. French's patchwork is painstaking. Perhaps in realizing that, in his own words, "there can be no doctored truth", Naipaul allowed his biographer unhindered access to his archives and the diaries of his deceased wife. It was a remarkable opening up for a man who, at an obscenely young age, declared friendship superfluous and treated relationships as grist for his ego.

French is right to subtitle his book “the authorized biography of VSN”; Naipaul has garnered a lifetime of snubbed protégés, many of whom have spilt vindictive ink in Sir Vidia’s direction. It pained me to read of Naipaul's dismissal of Paul Theroux, an author whom I greatly admire, as a fatuous travel writer. When Theroux finally realized the extent to which Naipaul had accessorized him, the former wrote an impassioned memoir, Sir Vidia’s Shadow. While Mr. French draws on Theroux’s outtakes from a friendship gone sour, it is the biographer's dispassionate narrative that allows the reader to hand a more damning verdict to Naipaul than Theroux could have hoped for.

The irony of Naipaul's outbursts provides bits of levity in the story. Naipaul had long disavowed the role of his alma mater, Oxford, in his literary achievements; when an editor has the audacity to critique his punctuation, Sir Vidia pistol-whips him with his degree. Another scene that allows the reader to chortle at an otherwise frightening man: upon returning to Buenos Aires, Naipaul runs madly through the airport and hops a fence out of fear of a confrontation with his mistress's husband. The man's idiosyncracies take a slight edge off the most abrasive of personalities.

After pages of ghastly revelations on the private life of the Nobel laureate, I was surprised to read A.N. Wilson’s judgment that Tolstoy was more of a “monster” than Naipaul. Wilson is more qualified than anyone to judge a character contest between the two curmudgeons, but I beg to differ. I can only recall a few of the lurid equivalents to Naipaul’s “monstrosities” in Wilson’s biography of Tolstoy. Yes, both men were unraveled by sexual guilt and both were gallingly ungrateful for their wives’ help in the literary process. Both men drove their spouses to insanity and left them to rot in the mad house. But Naipaul’s narcissism inflicted more damage. He is, by his own admission, guilty of negligent homicide in carrying on a twenty-five year affair and frequenting prostitutes while his wife toiled for his dreams. Pat Naipaul seemed to stomach her husband’s affair until she found out via the newspapers that Vidia was "a great prostitute man". The revelation may have triggered a psychosomatic break and a precipitous descent for her health. Naipaul’s ex post facto remorse is too laden with self-pity to gain any moral capita with the reader. It is a great relief that we can keep the man in one corner and the writer in another, for despite making himself a caricature of insensitivity and prejudice, Naipaul wrote profound and evocative accounts of post-colonial struggle. His societal insight is, according to French, unrivaled.

Perhaps A.N. Wilson’s impartiality should be questioned. When Naipaul was caught driving drunk in 1993, Wilson groveled that the famous writer should be tucked into bed rather than brought to court. And in Wilson’s review of Life is What it Is, he avoids moral accountability for Naipaul. Titling your review “Master and Monster" obliges you to be as brutally honest as French was in writing the biography. And what if Tolstoy were alive? Might Wilson’s verdict read differently?

If there was a point to this post I've strayed from it. Naipaul forged his literary persona by freeing himself from the inconveniences of reciprocal relationships and camping out as a displaced observer among the displaced peoples of the 20th century. The collateral damage from the molding of an artist was a necessary sacrifice in Naipaul's eyes, one dutifully accepted by his first wife. It is fascinating to learn of the creative destruction that infuses a writer's work, even if the reader is among the urchins swallowed by the tide of the writer's gaze.

"Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go"

With a certain Dane's words as guidance, I sat down to remember a fallen relative. Elegies have thankfully been few and far between for me and I was keen on ensuring that mine did not dissolve into a generic tribute applicable to any kind-hearted man. This man was a giant in the family and no scribblings could recreate the way a room would sway when he entered. My only lyrical consolation was to address him directly, as he had done every time he spoke to me:

"Uncle Harm, your hospitality springs eternal. Whenever I arrived States-side after months overseas, you were the first to welcome me back to America's heartland. Yes, I do fancy a game of ping pong and lunch with your sprightly bride. How humbling it was to observe a man in the element of his own making, the spoils of years of hard work and unabated love.

Your focus was always your companion, never yourself; your curiosity for what others have seen insatiable; your capacity for merriment undiminished through the years. Has the world known a more genuine or reassuring handshake?

I can only end by giving you a title I hope you'll wear proudly in Heaven: the grandfather I never had.

Amen, my buddy, Amen"

I'm Not There

There was plenty of appropriate symbolism in the musical guests both on Inauguration Day and at Sunday's concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Crooners from Aretha Franklin to Stevie Wonder embodied the significance of the moment. But one musician might have rounded out the line-up more than any other: a certain Robert Zimmerman. Dylan is, of course, a devoted recluse and it might have taken some luring to get him down to Washington. And he might not have warmed to such a staged appearance. There are a slew of reasons why it wouldn't work, but they would all be trumped by the realization that the times really are a-changin'. Some 45 years earlier, Dylan cut a scrawny figure as he sang "Only a Pawn in Their Game" through his nose in a civil rights demonstration on the Mall. His lyrical potence has made casual observers of injustice uncomfortably familiar with their consciences. So for all of the poetry that rang out this week, we could have used one more refrain. It would have been a perfect replacement for the unrelenting narcisissm of Bono.

The new president is a fan, referring to "Maggie's Farm" as a song that "speaks to me as I listen to the political rhetoric". Dylan and "post-partisanship" might go well together.

A Pitch for Peace

I came to believe in the cathartic power of the world’s game after taking in an impromptu soccer match between monks in a Burmese backwater. There, in an unheralded village between Yangon and Mandalay, lay a gem of earthly spontaneity. The pitch was a humble tract of sun-baked mud, but its unlikely surroundings brought a sense of eminence to the proceedings – a shallow lake became one sideline and two adjacent embankments provided elevated viewing for spectators. After a week of listening to my guide boast of how every landscape we observed was uniquely Burmese, I was attentive to a scene that proved him both right and wrong. Under the “uniquely Burmese” category might fall the holy men who checkered the pitch with their luminous maroon robes and jocular soundtrack to the match. In so much as my a priori ignorance of Burmese culture would allow, I also designated the rhythmic cheers emanating from the village crowd as “uniquely Burmese”. But if you were to zoom the viewing lens on the tattered ball that bounced from one spry foot to another, you could easily emerge in another part of the world, amongst another set of bare feet. Here, Kurdish children clad in European jerseys clamor for a shot on goal.

This is where my story dissolves and Ian Klaus’ fades into view. Where the touchline had been a lake in Myanmar, here it is a foreboding border with a hostile country. But these footballers are heedless of international fault lines and perhaps even of the wars endured by their forefathers: a boy casually hops the stone wall marking the Iraq-Iran border to retrieve an errant attempt at goal. For these young Kurds, their own touchlines trump those drawn by statesmen. The dusty pitch provides a stage for self-expression, much the way a dinner table provides a poor family confirmation of its self-sustenance. There is something primordial and natural in the rivalry between the Kurdish towns of Tawela and Biara and the molting of inhibitions on the pitch. There is nothing natural in the border post that stands within earshot of the match. Just as in Myanmar, where Orwellian edicts hover over the citizenry from billboards, Iranian theocracy is a ludicrous sideshow to the freedom provided by the pitch.

Some grassroots organizations are trying to expand the pitch’s touchlines, to claim more fertile land for the artistic minds of young footballers. The younger they start, the better. As Franklin Foer chronicles in How Soccer Explains the World, it does not take long for soccer to mirror sectarianism. Rival hooligans pivot effortlessly from stadium brawls in peacetime to shelling each other’s neighborhoods in guerilla war. The “beautiful game” carries the seeds of a beautiful but tragic life. The liberating bliss with which young players take to the pitch is menaced by the “realities” of war and staid conflict. It is all too often a cruel choice between staying at home and joining the thugs who practice ethnic sport. Either way, the primordial innocence of ball, feet, and dust is lost.

A few years after my trip to Myanmar, the world got wind of a tragedy unfolding in Yangon, the former capital. Thousands of monks were descending on the city in spartan defiance of the ruling junta. Soaring fuel prices had sparked the protests, but there was also a palpable purge of grievances held for decades against the government. The junta responded with the Tiananmen playbook, mowing down the revered monks and jailing thousands of sympathizers. Macabre, awful, and sorrowful though the 2007 crackdown was, it cannot disrupt the tranquil image in my head of monks as the sentries of Burmese society. They had found refuge in the village soccer pitch that day, a rare haven unfettered by tyranny. When it came time to leave the pitch, whether hours, days, or years later, the monks left in resolute columns and carried the dignity of a supportive people with them.

The Iraqi Diaspora

Nick Kristof aptly referred to refugees of the Iraq War as “the new Palestinians, the 21st-century Arab diaspora that threatens the region’s stability.” America’s inadequate response to the 2 million refugees (and the additional 2 million internally displaced persons) created by its 2003 invasion of Iraq is inconsistent with both our founding ideals and martial precedent.

As Morton Abramowitz detailed several months ago in an LA Times op-ed, the contrast between America’s handling of refugees of the Vietnam War and those fleeing today’s violence in Iraq could not be starker. In the 1970’s and ‘80’s, some 2 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians fled Southeast Asia due to war and economic strife. Impelled by guilt and pressure to regain some of its moral footing, the U.S. welcomed 1.2 million of these Indochinese refugees and sent aide to countries affected by the human efflux. Collective guilt was a powerful impetus then, but is in short supply now. You can add a “deficit of remorse” to the list of deficits accrued by the Bush Administration. Given a final chance in exit interviews to reflect on what he has bequeathed the Middle East, President Bush hasn’t changed his tune, whistling Je ne regrette rien all the way back to Dallas.

But outside the self-deception and legacy burnishing going on in the White House, countless Iraqi refugees languish in the dilapidated neighborhoods of Amman and Damascus. These Iraqis embody the “unwanted” stigma of the refugee: Jordan and Syria don’t want to provide aide out of fear of becoming permanent asylums; Iraq’s Shi'a leaders have shown little concern for the plight of the mostly Sunni refugees; and the United States is reluctant to acknowledge unintended collateral damage in its role as “liberator”. But international watchdogs and relief agencies consider the Iraqi diaspora among the world’s most daunting humanitarian challenges. Washington needs to recognize its moral obligation and, just as we did during the First Gulf War with the resettlement of Iraqi Kurds, ensure safe repatriation for refugees who wish to return to Iraq. Furthermore, post-9/11 immigration restrictions need to be amended so that the U.S. is welcoming more Iraqi refugees every year than Sweden. This falls on Congress as much as the Administration. In May of 2007, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) introduced the “Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act” (H.R. 2265), a commendable bill that would have increased the number of Iraqi refugees eligible for resettlement in the United States in 2007-08 by 20,000. Republicans were deplorably unsupportive of the bill, however, and it is now collecting dust in a subcommittee. If we really are to reap what we sowed in Iraq, it is up to the next administration and Congress to work in concert to ensure a safe haven for Iraq’s refugees.

28 hours of Semi-Autonomy: My Jaunt into Kosovo

Note: The names in this story (aside from those of public figures) have been altered out of respect for privacy.

June 2007

As Frommers had prophesied, there really isn’t a whole lot for the ‘tourist’ to do in Pristina. In the end, however, I wouldn’t have to look far for inspiration or hospitality. I cut across Mother Theresa Boulevard to the parallel street where both the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) hold their offices. Only a couple hundred meters from UNMIK headquarters and above the Youth Center looms a giant photograph of the late Adem Jashari, co-founder of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). I entered the security shed outside of UNMIK with little idea of how I would present myself other than as a curious citizen of the United Nations, a rare breed.

The head of the UNMIK Press Office was kind enough to take me to his office for a chat. I entered the facility giddy that I was able to walk among armored KFOR trucks and satellites gathering worldwide intel. (KFOR, short for “Kosovo Force”, is a NATO-led peacekeeping force that has been under UN administration since 1999.) Roger Talbot is an editor of FOCUS, a UNMIK publication that details the latest political, economic, and social developments from around Kosovo. Above all, Mr. Talbot conveyed the lingering uncertainty that governs Kosovo: the yawning gap between Kosovars’ strong desire for independence and their apathetic political participation; the imminent but imprecise date when UNMIK will bequeath the mission to the European Union; the intense skepticism that Kosovar Serbs have about living a life unhindered by prejudice and harassment. For many Kosovars, every effort of imagining a better future is clouded by unrelenting memories of the carnage of 1999. If Kosovars are not convinced that their future paths can converge peacefully instead of eroding each other, then the fledgling state will be left to crumble.

I couldn’t think of an excuse to prolong my stay in the UNMIK compound and reluctantly handed in my visitor’s clearance tag. After asking a security guard for input on my itinerary, I thanked him and crossed the street to mull my options over lunch. I looked up from my menu to see the same man grabbing the seat across from me with a grin, “I’ve got time for a break.”

Andon needed little prompting. In my twenty minutes sipping Fanta with him, he told of the rupture the war caused both personally and nationally. Andon had been working in a hotel in Switzerland when the KLA and Yugoslav Amy began fighting. He rushed home to fill a male figurehead role that many households sorely missed during the war. I listened as Andon recounted in impressive English the incessant terror felt by residents of his town as the Yugoslav Army raided home after home. It could have only been a hearty dose of luck that kept Andon and his family alive. All of this was expressed with a stoicism that belied what he must have felt at the time.

The seeds of the past respectfully sown, Andon turned his attention to his prospects. Working security is among the most profitable trades in Pristina, and my companion had the added bonus of social mobility. In just a few days time, he would be leaving his UNMIK post for a more lucrative security job at the U.S. consulate. “My friends are all jealous,” he chuckled. Indeed. Some 40% of Kosovo’s youth are jobless and the government has tried to stem the growing pessimism with the 11 million-euro Kosovo Youth Action Plan for employment. “Do young people believe the Prime Minister can deliver?” I asked Andon. “They like him a lot; he is a war hero”. Hero for some, wartime nemesis for others. Andon had to get back to work but told me to come find him if I needed anything. I went inside to pay after we had parted ways, only to find that Andon had picked up the tab when I wasn’t looking.

Mitrovica: Bridging the Gap


The latter half of the day took me an hour and a half north to Mitrovicë, or Kosovska Mitrovica, as the Serbs call it. No more poignant a symbol of the conflict exists than the bridge that cuts the Serbian and Albanian halves of the town from each other. The southern bank of the Ibar River is home to some 50,000 Albanians, while 10,000 Serbs are just a stone’s throw to the north. In March 2004, the bridge was the fulcrum of the worst outbreak of violence since the war when two Albanian children drowned in the Ibar. Twenty-eight Kosovars died in the ensuing riots, most of them Albanian. I had used images of the bridge and its daunting sign that reads, “Malicious or provocative behavior shall be repressed immediately” in my documentary and decided to head directly there upon arrival. The bus ride was a spectacle in itself: Albanian-Turkish music blared; schoolchildren were dropped off in empty pastures as part of their commute home; one passenger lit a cigarette with a toddler perched on his knee. I jumped off the bus at Mitrovica and strode towards the bridge in the gathering rain.

My walk to the bridge took me through the Albanian side of town, cutting past the main mosque and a couple of grimy street markets. The rain coated everything with a drab hue. Where Pristina is arbitrary in its reflection of a war torn people, Mitrovicë is a blueprint of division. On one side a mosque, the other a church. On one side the writing in Albanian, the other Cyrillic. On one side a steadier pulse, on the other hypertension underscored by more KFOR troops. KFOR sprawls into all four corners of Kosovo. The Italians operate in the west, the British in the region’s center, including Pristina, the Americans are in the southeast, and the French are in charge of the north, where Mitrovicë lies. Although I was apprehensive walking past the KFOR troops with submachine guns on the bridge, the real tension was on the other side. KFOR trucks can be found at nearly every block; overhead a sign pleaded in English and Cyrillic “In the name of God and justice, do not make our holy land a present to the Albanians!” I entered a military shop where the Serbian owner was speaking French to some KFOR troops. He was trying to persuade them to buy army gear venerating French KFOR’s protection of Kosovo’s Serbs. I wanted to ask residents about life on this side of the Ibar River but the rain ensured that I had little company but the military.


Irked by the lack of a “story”, I trudged back across the river and entered a shop at the bus station to whittle away the minutes before my departure. In a move I had repeated throughout the trip, I was paying for my bottled water with too big of a bill. In a tagline he would repeat throughout our two-hour conversation together, Behar Mataj belted out, “Nix problem!” I offered to get change from somewhere else, but Behar was adamant, “No money? Nix problem! Sit down!”
“American?”
“Yes,” Behar slapped the table with approval and a few others in the coffee shop smiled or cheered. Behar spoke little English but I soon learned by the way others deferred to him that he carried some weight in the neighborhood. He brought his teenage son, Iljaz, over from behind the counter to roughly translate. Why was I here? Is America as prosperous as it sounds? I pulled out a copy of my documentary to answer the first question. Appreciating that I’d made the journey, Bajram tried fervently to use English to get his point across.

“Serbia…mafia…politic…no good…” He went into a tirade without words, his eyes glinting as he turned to his son in frustration. Mr. Mataj had a story to tell, but he couldn’t get it out. ‘Come to my home; I show you”. We ducked the railing at the station and twenty paces later stopped at a plot of weeds next to his home. “My restaurant,” was all he said. According to Mr. Mataj, his restaurant had been razed to the ground by the Serbian police. With it he lost his means of living as well as the roots of his social life. Unable to shake the memory, Behar put on a videotape of one of those lost nights at the restaurant. A band played traditional Albanian music and there was a young Behar, bursting into the foreground with an array of dance moves. I couldn’t suppress a laugh and suddenly we were all laughing at the young Behar losing himself in the music. But Behar knew when to stop laughing. The camera panned away from the band to a group of sinister-looking men sitting in the corner of the restaurant. They all had started out as friends, Behar explained. He singled a couple of them out with disgust. “This man…” Behar paused to make a whispering sound and a meddling gesture, “with Serbia”. These were evidently Albanians who had betrayed him to the Serbian police. Behar then asked his wife to bring him a cache of photographs and documents. One by one he pointed out friends and eventual foes that had served with him in the KLA. The wall was adorned with pictures of Behar proudly wearing his uniform, along with Behar tearfully burying his colleagues. Seeing that he was popular with Mitrovicë Albanians, local and national politicians had all met with Behar. Then, we got to the crux of his angst, the reason the man’s outgoing demeanor had been coated with cynicism since the war. Behar handed me an official UNMIK document that read:

“Mr. Mataj reported an attempt on his life on 07 December 00 at 03:05 am and named two of the suspects in the shooting. This was an attempted Murder case and as such was taken over by the Regional Investigations unit.”

- Signed: Will Stephens, Station Commander of Mitrovica South Station

I looked up at Behar. His eyes cursed the mistrust that had entered his life that harrowing day. I asked him who the suspects were, but he wanted to move on. He showed me an OSCE document certifying him as a Municipal Election Observer. If there was one thing that I gleaned from Mr. Mataj's words it was his disdain for the corruption that plagued his people (“mafia…politic…problem...you…me…nix problem…friends!”). I told him I was happy that he could fight for his community with ballots instead of bullets. I wrote my gratitude down on paper for his son to translate later, thanked his wife for the tasty Turkish tea, and jogged to the station to flag down the bus that was already rolling out to Pristina.

……………………………………………………………...........................

After three hours of dining at one of the best restaurants in Pristina, I had only spent 15 Euros. I looked up from my book to see a familiar face on the other side of the terrace. Prime Minister Agim Çeku had his head cocked as he exhaled on his cigar and listened to the animated restaurant owner tell a story. Just a few hours earlier at the Kosovo History Museum, I was looking at a picture of Çeku planning a guerilla offensive. I asked the waiter to initiate the process of requesting a photo with the prime minister: the waiter asked Çeku’s bodyguard, who shrugged and gestured for the owner. I watched it all unfold and realized how rude it could potentially be. The owner didn’t trouble the PM but instead came over to me and offered: “Americans and Albanians are friends, but for the prime minister this is family time."

As I left the restaurant, I smiled at what could have been my best interview in Kosovo. But what would have I said to him? If not America, if not UNMIK, then surely you, Mr. Prime Minister, must have some indication of where your province is heading. But the ineluctable truth, as it rings out across the minarets of Pristina and along the banks of the Ibar, is that even the skipper doesn’t know what course his ship will sail. What remains refreshingly clear, however, is that it will have to be its own course. No timetable for international recognition will make Kosovo a nation – it will be a nation when Serbs and Albanians can meet each other halfway at the Mitrovicë Bridge and not feel unwelcome when they step foot on the other side. Who knows how far off that is, but for now, it’s hardly a consideration.

“Do you ever go across the bridge?” I asked Iljaz Mataj. He shook his head grimly. Even the open-minded Iljaz could not shake the symbolic power of the bridge.