To the missing Serbian friend

National identity is accidental. We just happened to have it, we didn't look for it. The more cultured a person is, the less national they become and the more they serve the nation. But they serve the nation that adds color to a mosaic, not the other nation that destroys that mosaic.

Dear missing friend,

I am addressing you as someone who is absent today and may (and must) appear tomorrow. We have been neighbors for more than thirteen centuries, but we have not been friends for a century, a year, or a day. Those moments of peace that we have had between us have been like those breaks in a boxing match, just to catch our breath and bandage our wounds, to start the fight again. Even that period of “brotherhood-union”, far from being brotherhood, could not even be called friendship. You cannot have as a brother or friend someone who considers you lower than yourself. And, in Yugoslavia, that is how we were considered, “second-class citizens”.

I don't want to get into who is older and who is younger, because it doesn't matter. Our heads must adapt to our time, not the time of ancient invasions. As everywhere else in the world, peoples have moved throughout history. Some came earlier, some later. When we call a people indigenous, we simply don't remember when and where they came from. So, in the Balkans, we may be a little more indigenous than you, but that doesn't make us believe we are superior to you. There is sunshine for everyone on this earth.  

In my neighborhood in Prishtina, in the building where I live, I feel like I'm the youngest, so I'm the "Serb" of the neighborhood. I found everyone else there. Unlike peoples, we individuals or families don't occupy land, but buy it. So, everyone has their own house and we don't tear down each other's walls to push the boundaries. Even though I'm the youngest, no one interferes with me. We agree with our neighbors about housing "policies" (heating installations, payments for cleaning the apartment complex, and any common work related to the building or its yard), but we don't hold each other accountable for "internal policies." No one goes out on the balcony in the morning to beat their chest just because they bought the apartment before me. So, this idea of ​​"I'm the first" is so outdated that nowadays it's a shame to even mention it in marital relations.  

Neighbors can maintain two types of relationships: neutral and friendly. Neutral is maintained when they are not known, friendly when they are known. A hostile relationship is dangerous at the neighborly level, because it is a relationship with invasive, territorial, cleansing ambitions, therefore criminal. Thus, logic wants us, Albanians and Serbs, to move from that criminal relationship to a neutral relationship, and then to a friendly relationship. The criminal relationship has gone so far that instead of trying to reconcile as neighbors that we are, we dress, we take off our clothes, we close the doors back to back, we go out through the same corridor, from the same building, and we board the plane and go to Brussels to discuss with each other. This is how absurd our neighborhood is! This is how absurd we are! This is how stupid we are!

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I understand that politicians, for various and understandable reasons, all they can achieve is neutral neighborliness, which they call "normalization of mutual relations". The power of a politician lies within their own state, while people freed from the ambition of power want to move in any state. Therefore, if all politicians can do is turn the neighborliness from a hostile relationship into a neutral relationship, the rest of us must and can turn it into a friendly relationship, because we know that politics has divided us and that politics cannot stop us. While neither we nor you have any hope that a Willy Brandt will come to the head of your state to kneel before the victims in Prekaz, Mejë, or anywhere else where massacres against Albanians have been committed, I think that we should leave no stone unturned for a friendly future between us. But first, let's drop the stones with which we aim at each other's heads. Let's make a bridge with those stones!  

I said above: we have been neighbors for more than thirteen centuries. Here too we disagree. We say: when you came, you found us. You say: when we came, you were not here, or you were only shepherds. Then we rely on antiquity, and you say that we and they have no connection whatsoever. You say of us, just as we say of the modern Greeks, that we deny their connection with the ancient Greeks.

In a word, when a person wants to quarrel, he finds as many reasons as he wants. Unfortunately, neither one nor the other has ever taken a step towards reconciliation. (In fact, we Albanians, for a while, barely managed to reconcile among ourselves). We must understand that those were different times, only the law of force worked. When we were strong, we stretched our legs as far as Niš. When you were stronger, we were inferior to Mat. You had a cruel 'zhupan', Stefan Nemanja, who left nothing undone on the Albanians, who would gouge out their eyes and cut off their noses. Then, we had an equally cruel vizier, Koxha Sinan Pasha, who, in revenge, tortured you wherever he caught you in Kosovo, and came to your country and burned the remains of your saint, Saint Sava, who was the son of Stefan Nemanja. In fact, our entire history throughout the centuries has been like a kind of roller coaster, where sometimes Stefan would rise, and woe to us, sometimes Sinan would rise, and woe to you.

This story of Kolovaj can be repeated ad infinitum, it is being repeated in Brussels, where, being all politicians, they understand the solution to the problem only from a political prism, and they see politics only from an economic perspective. They don't seem to understand that the conflict between us is not about economics, but about pride (superiority). You are able to buy us all an apartment in any other country, on condition that we leave Kosovo. If we had the chance, we would do the same to you, removing you to another continent. We don't differentiate at all. And the economy doesn't come into play here at all. Those who think differently, don't recognize our ego at all, an ego that 'will kill us all'.

In the eyes of strangers, sometimes you are better, sometimes we are. But between us, we know that we are not better than you, nor you better than us. We only differ in the possibilities we have to hurt each other. Last time, you hurt us more. Now it is our turn. That is precisely why I am writing this letter, from the ranks of the injured, to extend my hand to you. Since antiquity, extending my hand has meant reconciliation. When the first man with a weapon extended his hand to another, he guaranteed that he would not kill him.

We are arming ourselves, we are buying drones from the other former occupier. I am ashamed of my country that boasts of buying weapons from Turkey, which, de jure, recognizes our state, but, de facto, considers it a country under its protectorate, because it has ruled it cruelly for five centuries and is now deceiving it by ruling it “brotherly”. So, it is trying to create some kind of mask, or a new Sinan Pasha, to hit you and go further.

Our relationship with the Turks has been like our relationship with you: hostile. Can it now turn into friendship? Of course it can, just like with you. By showing you that we will never start conflicts with our neighbors, and by making it clear to Turkey that we have no desire or interest in keeping it as a big brother. If we need a big brother, we have America, which has liberated us and to which we are indebted for our survival as a people and for the realization of the state of Kosovo, this state that can be considered the only American state in Europe.

Currently, the relationship between us and you is one of "who is stronger". You try to enter illegally, we arrest you. For reinforcements you have Russia, for protection we have America. You will never defeat us, we will never be able to defeat you, because we are just two quarrelsome children, whose occasional quarrels are ended by two super-powerful adults, who prick up our ears.

While I am not a politician, I speak on my own behalf and from my own experience. I have been to many European countries, but I have never been to Serbia. My childhood was traumatic precisely because of the monstrous Serbian regime. I do not want to personalize the letter, because all Kosovo Albanians have had traumatic experiences under that regime and because of that regime, some more and some less, but I want to say that I have a thousand reasons to hate Serbs, and only one to love them. And I have decided to cling to this single reason. What is it? The future. We have no future without making friends.

One of our poets has said that “n'mni t'sho-shojit kemi le”. This mni (mni, grudge, anger) is the origin of our enmity. We now know that hatred for each other has its own origin, history and balance. Let's leave the first two, let's look only at the third: the balance! It is full of oppression, beatings, murders, wars, rapes, massacres, wounds and trauma. Our countries are being cursed and armed, it doesn't matter who is sharpening their teeth and who is getting ready to break them. Writers, artists, scientists, intellectuals and journalists must stand up, because the stupidity of those in power is always paid for by ordinary citizens, unfortunately.  

Until 1999 we were consumed by amok, we hated each other to death; you hated us because you were the victim of a long historical propaganda, while we hated you because we were the victim of a tyrannical policy. You can continue to consider Kosovo your cradle, we will defend it as our cradle, but the cradle is for babies. By using figures like “Jerusalem” and “cradle”, we only quarrel. It is time to show the world that we have grown up. We dare not look only at yesterday and today. Our past and present are filled with quarrels and insults, with beatings and blood. I have often heard Serbs (even some who call themselves writers) say that Kosovo is sacred to them, that it is the Jerusalem of Serbia. But the truth is that Kosovo is neither sacred, nor Jerusalem, nor Serbia's.

I understand that our state, which has been named in your language for centuries, creates a mixed feeling in both you and us. Everywhere. But this is the smallest and easiest problem to solve, especially when we know what it was called before the Slavic tribes arrived. Serious problems are normal interaction and appreciation for each other. You are Serbs, we are Albanians, but both sides are human, or, at least, that's how we want to be from now on.

I have written a novel that should be read by you first. That novel is my “Guernica”. I wrote that pain, but you caused it. Even though we are neighbors, the path of my novel to Serbia is the longest. Initially, after it was published in Albanian, no one in Serbia agreed to translate it, because they were afraid that the least that could happen to them was to be fired from their jobs. After the translator, who lives in Kosovo, was found, efforts were made to find a publisher in Serbia. No publisher was found. A publisher from another neighboring country even told us that we were crazy for believing that this novel would be allowed to be published in Serbia. I have never felt hatred towards the Serbian people, but I began to feel pity. It pains me that now, when we have been enjoying freedom for more than a quarter of a century, you still live in a regime that survives thanks to propaganda, taking care at all costs that the truth does not reach its citizens.  

Serbia committed genocide (also) against us. Several centuries ago, Albanians (Muslims) also committed crimes against the Serbs of Kosovo, including ethnic cleansing. In the last war, as in every war, crimes were committed on both sides, but the crimes committed against us are incomparably greater. You boast that you fought the Ottoman invader, when in the joint Battle of Kosovo Plain in 1389, together with us (led by you) you fought against the Ottoman Empire, but you forget, or pretend to forget, the next battle, about sixty years later, when Hunyadi, also in Kosovo Plain, lost the battle against the Ottomans, after your Branković prevented our Skanderbeg from coming to his aid. However, the Albanians resisted for a quarter of a century under the leadership of Skanderbeg, but after him, they surrendered, were subjugated and converted.

As a human being, neither religious nor national, I sometimes imagine: what if the Ottoman (Turkish) wedges, which are Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia (half Albanian) and Bosnia facing Europe, were to return to their previous religion? Thus, Europe would be completely Christian, while the destabilizing factor for the continent would be the Orthodox area, or Eastern Christianity. So, Muslims are out of the game, and the war remains within Christianity (Catholicism versus Orthodoxy), where the main destabilizing factor for Europe would remain Serbia, as a pawn of the Russian superpower. That is, it seems to me that if the Albanians were to return to Christianity, Europe would be more integrative towards them, and the areas of potential danger would remain the Orthodox states. Of course, we can only dream of this, because Kosovo, which officially has 91 percent Albanians, now officially has 93 percent Muslims, and, currently, can be called not only the most Muslim republic on the European continent, but also a kind of Islamic Vatican of Europe.

Although European intellectuals think that Europe should be secular, political reality shows a determination to preserve its identity with a Christian background. Therefore, it is assumed that on the European continent, Kosovo will always be a trampled place. I, being neutral towards religions, cannot say whether Islam is good or bad, but in the eyes of Europe it seems dangerous, threatening and destabilizing, because it threatens its compactness. Europe, whether Christian or secular, will always reject Islam, because this is a danger to both its Christian identity and its secular identity. Understanding towards it can sometimes be, acceptance of it - never. In recent years, we have been firmly positioned in this part of the never, just as you have been firmly positioned in your Byzantine identity that has lost the battle since the Middle Ages and will never be resurrected. So, you too are part of a hopeless, never-ending cause.

Because of your religious affiliation, Europe sees you as little Russians in the southeast of its continent, just as it sees us as little Turks (and Arabs). The truth is that both sides, you and we, have to convince Europe that we are neither Russians nor Turks (nor Arabs), but that we are European neighbors who can, should and want to be friends. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being Russian, or Turkish, or whatever, but when you are not, it becomes ridiculous to pretend to be.

Europe is trying to unite. It will be a United States of Europe (USEE), and then it will no longer matter whether Albanians live in Kosovo, Serbia, or elsewhere. The same will apply to Serbs. Our homeland will be our continent. And this continental identity will be realized as soon as European politicians understand that this identity cannot be built on religious grounds, but on secular grounds. If Europe insists on its Christian identity, it will never succeed in uniting. The nation itself is a combination of identities united around a goal, let alone a collection of nations. And for the sake of truth it must be said that European identity, European democracy, is proto-Christian. Europe had a Christian identity only in the Middle Ages when the main authority was the Pope, while the main institution was the Church. Then came the Renaissance, the period that reborn proto-Christian concepts, classical teachings, and knowledge (rationalism). Thus began Modernity. So, we must know that today's Europe is not medieval (Christian), but modern (secular). Therefore, it makes no sense to talk about the danger that Europe may face from Muslims. No. Europe faces a danger from religion, not from Muslims. So, the danger comes from insisting on its religious identity, which is a medieval identity, and which cannot be a current identity, but can be one of the elements of identity. Of course, if we look at the current state of the Islamic religion, since there is no Reform in its history (as Christianity had), it seems more backward, which is why it is seen as a destabilizing factor. But if it is reformed, will it be accepted in Europe? No. If Europe insists on religious identity, it will never accept the expansion of another religion. According to European logic, one religion unites, two religions divide.

It has been said more than once that Kosovo, like Bosnia, is a Muslim country, and as such has no support from European states. If European states are religious, we secular people should look for another continent, or perhaps another planet. Europe will not survive with arrogance, but with tolerance. A tolerance that guarantees the faith of others, but without giving the reins to religion. What we know today as mythology, was once religion. What we know today as religion, will be mythology tomorrow.  

The European identity is a humanist identity. (Humanism has also been abused, but etymology is stronger than ideology, so let's grab hold of the roots). Humanism is a non-theistic (non-religious) worldview that has put man at the center, and guarantees freedom of speech, human rights, progressive policies, the development of science and democracy. More or less, humanism guarantees everything that the philosophers of ethical rationalism proclaimed. Europe should accept everyone: Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and, of course, the secularists, who brought it into modernity. It should, but it won't.

Dear absent friend, I am sorry that we are who we are. National identity is accidental. We have hit it that way, we have not sought it. The more cultured a person is, the less national he becomes and the more he serves the nation. But he serves that nation that adds color to a mosaic, not that other nation that destroys that mosaic.

I don't like to get involved in politics, but from time to time I can't avoid a 'metapolitical' reflection, as Peter Bien calls it, a reflection that I haven't turned into involvement, but which is inevitable and has higher goals than political ones. Culture must emancipate politics, and the state is too serious a matter to be entrusted to politicians, who, with the exception of a few historical figures, not only rise through a party, but also elevate that party above the state. According to them, the state is only worth it if it is governed by them.

This short-sighted perspective does not serve the state and, unfortunately, our countries are not freeing themselves from such perspectives. If I say that no people should obey their politicians, this should not be seen as a call for anarchy, but as a call for vigilance. Unfortunately, in Kosovo and Serbia, there are no critical voters enough to make a difference. Voters in both countries are fans. And, you can't even argue with fans. They simply shout, support and defend their team, even when that team only brings defeat.

We must be critical of conflicting policies. Our countries need peace. The moment we see our states competing to see who is the strongest, we must know that we, the weak, the powerless citizens, will weigh it. Politics manipulates both pessimism and optimism, while culture insists on keeping hope alive, even when the light of the lamp flickers in the storm. Literature teaches us that the strongest is not the one who defeats the other, but the one who loves the other the most. Let us embark on this race that, although it has no goal, will have a result, an incredible result: it forgives the past, pacifies the present, and makes the future more beautiful.

Even though we have a bloody history behind us, I would like that thanks to the history of friendship that we can have in the future, we can start taking care of each other together. Of course, this takes time and work, but that is why we must start as soon as possible, so that tomorrow Serbian and Albanian children are not born "in each other's arms".  

The sooner we understand that humanism is more important than religion and nationalism, the sooner we will be good neighbors, good friends, good people.

Dear absent friend, show up today, for your own good tomorrow! Let's show our politicians who argue like children that we adults will not do them any favors by watching them on television and staying silent at home. No matter what we do, we will laugh and make fun of them. Because even making fun shows a distancing relationship from the bullies who want to eliminate the other. The other is not necessarily an enemy. He must be seen as a potential friend. To turn the other into a friend, it takes effort, understanding and time. But, while our politicians rush to scare each other, let us extend our hand to remove each other's fear, in a greeting like that of ancient times. And, since we are not a divine people to anyone, let us understand that time is as precious as friendship.