Malls bring us together

The large shopping centers, the Malls, have been transformed into free spaces of extraterritoriality, where Albanians and Serbs circulate, meet and unite around a common interest: buying and selling. Malls are that utopia of interethnic coexistence that external reality tries to create, but which has never managed to make a reality. As if they were religious temples, Malls have become “commongrounds” that unite Albanians and Serbs, stripping them of hatred, intolerance and ethnic contempt. And above all, they are spaces where people do not feel threatened by the presence of the other.

The history of Albanian-Serbian coexistence in post-war Kosovo is naturally full of nuances, pitfalls and unknowns. Political efforts and the forced urgency (mainly by internationals) to improve interethnic relations and create a climate of normality have hardly worked and the results are relatively small. This is because Albanians and Serbs have not had the same political goals, have not trusted each other and have dreamed and projected different futures. And of course, they have had a traumatic past, which has stood as a dividing wall, stoic, ready to withstand any kind of rapprochement and any kind of sense of normality. 

Serbs in Kosovo have continued to live in their ghettos, uninterested in what is happening around them, and in a constant effort to resist integration and engagement in the social and political life beyond Serbia, that dominated by the Albanian majority. They have continued to live on the fragile belief that Serbia will return to Kosovo (with an army and militia, of course), to restore their former power, dignity and authority over the majority. Albanians, while not needing the local Serbs, would have gladly expelled them from Kosovo, as they did with a large part of them after the war. However, since expulsion was not and is not an option now, Serbs are still treated as "quotas", as political quotas to fulfill certain constitutional obligations and certain demands of internationals. 

This history of impatience and difficult, almost violent, coexistence continues more or less today. Although, things have begun to improve in many ways. And, if not more examples, there is at least one, where coexistence that is impossible in reality, is tangible, functional. 

Large shopping centers, Goods, have been transformed into free spaces of extraterritoriality, where Albanians and Serbs circulate, meet and unite around a common interest: buying and selling. Malls are that utopia of interethnic coexistence that external reality tries to create, but which has never managed to make a reality. As if they were religious temples, Goods have been made "common ground"- that unite Albanians and Serbs, stripping them of hatred, intolerance and ethnic contempt. And above all, they are spaces where people do not feel threatened by the presence of the other. 

Ironically, what progressive forces, lovers of interethnic reconciliation and the creators of a multiethnic Kosovo have dreamed of doing, for all these over 20 years since the war, capitalism is doing, under the condition of a common commercial goal! But what could that common Albanian-Serbian goal be, in the beyond-commercial reality of Malls that can bring normality to Albanian-Serbian relations? The answer is probably not to be found in the violent attempt to convince Serbs to integrate into the institutions of the Republic of Kosovo, but also, not in the refusal of Serbs to recognize and accept the new reality of the republic. The present does not unite them, much less the past, but perhaps the future can connect them, the hope for a Kosovo that has embraced some rules, such as those offered Goods today: creating a safe environment, where ethnicity, language and any other differences become irrelevant and where people need each other and can rely on each other.