Kosova: A Note from the Wreckage of Anti-Imperialism

I was born in Peja, Kosova, as an ethnically Albanian Muslim under Serbian occupation. I came into consciousness knowing my neighbors wanted me dead. My childhood was a constant exercise in caution. I slept with my clothes on, ready to flee, my parents’ eyes glued to the window, always expecting the enemy to burst through the door. I recall my mother rushing to turn down the TV volume when my sisters and I would play Albanian music (we could not provoke our Serbian neighbours); my sister returning home with her hair down, after my mother had painstakingly braided it for school (her hair had again been pulled by Serbian kids patrolling our streets); the depressed faces of my teachers as they neglected the lesson of the day, anxiously reading the news; and teachers being arrested and removed from class by Serbian police.