Story 8

Story 8 a short story inspired by true events

by Wanchain

Preface This novella was completed after my Story 9, although I started it before that. I have written and rewritten, plotted and replotted it. I struggled to write my story in Kosovo, because I could not write what I could not comprehend.

After two lovely guinea pigs, a Dutch one and an Egyptian one, patiently reviewed my earlier version, I had decided to revamp my story, an attempt I procrastinated until one day, a character in the story came to me, and drastically improved the arc of this story.

By keeping the events in Kosovo substantially accurate (98% true), I hope to give you a glimpse of the complexities of Kosovar society.

Wanchain January 2016

Story 8

“Hey Zoleikha, I have found a contact for your Kosovo article,” Pierre cheerfully left a voice message for the temporary journalist who was hired to substitute for a journalist currently on medical leave. Hans, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Vancouver-based publishing company that produced two magazines, had been travelling to his homeland Switzerland more and more lately, after his recent divorce with his Canadian wife. As such, Hans had relegated much of his duties to Pierre who had demonstrated himself to be a fitting executive assistant.

A few minutes later, Zoleikha phoned back from a coffee shop where she had just finished interviewing a Japanese photographer whose passion was in reviving film cameras.

“Thanks Pierre, I will be back in the office in half an hour.” Zoleikha said over the phone as she sashayed through the parking lot.

Back at the office, Zoleikha settled down into a desk next to Pierre’s. She was a freelance magazine journalist who occasionally took on temporary assignments at different organizations, as a means to expose herself to different talents in the industry. She had started this assignment a week ago. But no sooner had she started working in the office did she feel a need to stay away from it as much as possible, not that she had trouble confining herself to an office environment, but more so because she had trouble sitting next to Pierre.

In his late twenties, Pierre was a well-groomed and well-mannered fellow. He had slender and delicate fingers. He enjoyed moving his fingers in an exaggeratingly feminine way when he talked, and he talked a lot. He was always bubbly, and was especially well-liked among the female colleagues in the office, except Zoleikha. Sometimes he would paint his nails while he was talking on the phone. Sometimes he would complain that his nails chipped and peeled so easily and it irked her to find him always spreading his ten fingers in front of him and checking his nails, and filing and shaping them at the slightest sign of damage. She couldn’t stand the sight of him flaunting his exceedingly well-manicured fingers. One day, he painted his nails bright pink, because the color gave him joy. Upon seeing the color, she banged Zoleikha forehead on her desk. She also couldn’t stand the scent of the hand lotion that he applied onto his hands so frequently and in such disproportionately large amount.

Zoleikha was a plain girl in her late thirties. She liked everything simple and natural. Due to her indolence, her concern was not on the superficial appearance of life, but instead, to stay alive. Hence, she tended to devote the minimal amount of time and effort on caring about herself. As a result, her nails often looked like they belonged to an overworked dishwasher in a busy restaurant. On the first day when she came into the office, he had a strong impulse to hold both of her hands. Although it was clear to him that she made no effort to groom herself, he was both enchanted and surprised by a certain confidence and ease that she carried on her, the kind of confidence that was untainted by cosmetics and accessories. She was prettier than she realized. However, it pained him to see the blatant neglect she showed on herself. He took her hands and noted that there was no ring on any of her fingers. He

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inspected her nails, and said, “Wow, you have such beautiful fingers! I am so jealous! But what happened to your nails? Tsk, tsk, tsk! Well, you are lucky that you have me. I have got something that you will absolutely love!” He reached into his drawer to retrieve a bottle of colorless nail polish. Ten minutes later, she found her nails polished and glistening. Since then, she tried to maintain some distance from him, which was not easy to do.

“So you got the contact information of the person who had travelled to Kosovo?” She asked.

“Yes. I had just emailed you her contact information just now, but I wanted to give you a little heads-up about this contact.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“On her Facebook profile, she introduced herself as Joy. The alias she used on Facebook was Jane. The local part of her email address had the name June in it. And on the email I received from her, she signed off with the name Margaret.”

“So Joy-Jane-June-Margaret prefers to identify herself as Margaret?”

“Yeah, you can say that.”

“Okay, sure no problem.” She paid no attention to details irrelevant to the results. For the article that she was going to write, it was not essential to know the legal identity of the person she was interviewing, as the focus of the article was about the place, not the person.

Zoleikha soon found out that Joy-Jane-June-Margaret was a 20-year-old university dropout, much to her conservative father’s dismay. She had recently returned from a six-month trip to Europe. Her mother, a Singaporean-born Chinese, was very forward-thinking and fully supported her daughter in her life decisions. Her mother believed that every individual should take full ownership of his life, and hence a child’s direction in life should be determined by the child, not anyone else. Zoleikha was eager and curious to see the product of a family where two opposing forces--tradition and modernity--reigned.

They arranged to meet. Being relatively unencumbered, Joy-Jane-June-Margaret was flexible to meet Zoleikha any time. An hour later, Zoleikha found herself in a coffee shop on Robson Street in downtown Vancouver. A short and chubby Asian girl with purple hair and multiple earrings in one ear approached her.

“Thanks for meeting with me Margaret,” Zoleikha said after a brief and formal introduction.

“No problem. I thought it was neat to do this.” Joy-Jane-June-Margaret blew a bubble with her blue bubble gum as she spoke. A silver barbell revealed itself on her tongue as she was chewing with her mouth open.

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Rather than asking what she did and where she went, Zoleikha placed her sound recorder on the table, and started the interview asking Joy-Jane-June-Margaret about her impression of Kosovo. It was a technique she usually used to immediately bring the interviewee mentally to the most important point of the subject.

“To be honest, I really don’t know how to describe this country, and I don’t want to judge it from my perspective. I think that would only give a biased opinion. I spent a lot of time thinking and understanding the people there. Everything about it is weird. It’s very different from Western Europe, or North America.” Joy-Jane-June-Margaret paused as she searched for words to continue. “I was constantly surprised. Nothing was as expected. It made me realize that we as individuals carry a lot of assumptions and presumptions with us. We are so comfortable in our own little circle, and we think that the rest of the world is the same as us.

When they are not, we either criticize them or try to change them, thinking that we are the best.”

Zoleikha jotted down a key point on her notebook: Mental programs separate.

“For example, when I was travelling in the Balkans, I would take the intercity bus to go from one city to the next. So I roughly had an idea of how things worked. Then when I went into Kosovo from Macedonia, I noticed a very different group dynamics on the bus. For example, the bus driver would pull over to the side of the road, right in the middle of a road, not at a bus stop or any designated idea, quite randomly. So I looked to see what he was doing.

Then I saw that he was either picking up stuffs from or dropping off stuffs for the person standing on the side of the road waiting for him. Maybe the bus driver was a part time courier or something, and the various individuals along the route knew him personally.

Actually, more than that, they also knew his route and his schedule. There was a middle-aged man standing in the middle of the road who gave the driver a bag of bakeries, and the whole bus smelled like a bakery shop.”

Zoleikha noted down: In the absence of an established infrastructure and system, people depend more on their social and personal networks.

“When I was idling in a small town, on the way into Prizren, Kosovo, I saw something quite amusing. The school kids were waiting at the bus terminal for their bus to come. When the bus came, I watched them got on the bus. The girls would take out their bus pass or card, and showed it to the bus driver. The boys would extend their right hand and shook hands with the bus driver. Every one of them was like that.”

Zoleikha noted down: Social customs. Patriarchal society?

“Then when I was crossing the border, I found something strange as well. You know how the border control officer of the country that you are exiting would come check your travel document and how the border control officer of the country you are entering would also come check your travel document? Well, when the Kosovar officer came on board, I gave

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him my passport. He stared at it a couple seconds longer, but he didn’t say anything. He went on to monotonously collect travel documents from the other passengers behind me.

Then when he got to a foreigner, he asked, in English, ‘Where are you going? What are you doing there? How long are you staying?’ and all kinds of questions. I turned around to look.

That passenger was a young man in his early twenties with an American accent. I watched them talk. The Kosovar officer scrutinized this passenger a bit more than the rest of the passengers who were all from the neighboring area, except me. It seemed odd to me. I am also not from the Balkans, but the officer did not say anything to me. Why did he question that guy and not me? That guy was blond and well-shaven. He looked relatively harmless. I mean, I had purple hair when I was crossing the border, and yet the officer didn’t bother me.

So I had wondered about that scenario.”

Zoleikha frowned and twirled her pen. She wasn’t quite sure what comment to make on that scenario. She put down: Strange border control at Kosovo.

“Oh, there’s one funny thing I’ve got to tell you!” Joy-Jane-June-Margaret thought of another scenario and laughed. “I met an American artist when I was in Skopje. If you are there, you will come to appreciate seeing someone who speaks English. It was such a rare opportunity to meet another English-speaking fellow that when we met on the street, in front of an abandoned post office building, we talked for nearly half an hour. He was travelling from the east, from Bulgaria or somewhere, and moving west. I was going from west to east. So we met each other in the middle. Anyway, he was telling me that it would take about four and a half or five hours to go from Skopje to Prizren. I initially thought it would take only two and a half or three hours. He told me to go on to a website to doublecheck. So I did, and he was right. Okay, so when I was on the bus going to Prizren, I calculated that I should arrive at 4pm or so, because I boarded the bus at 11.30am. So I was going to nap on the bus. I set my alarm to wake me up around 3.45pm. Do you know what happened?”

“Umm … your alarm didn’t go off?” Zoleikha asked.

“No. At about 2pm, I looked out the window. The bus just arrived at another town and it was driving through the town to get to the bus terminal. Along the way, I saw a hotel name that was exactly the same as the one I had booked for my stay in Prizren. I thought, how odd! This hotel had the same name as the one that I was going to. At first I thought it might be a franchise or chain hotel. Then I looked at the route that the bus driver took to get to the bus terminal from that hotel. It was the same path as the one that I was going to take in Prizren.”

“You did not check the street names?”

“There were no street signs, and whatever signs I saw were in a foreign language. Judging by the distance from the hotel to the bus terminal, I was almost sure that this town was Prizren. When the bus driver stopped at the bus terminal, he announced something in a Story 8

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foreign language. I did not hear the name Prizren being announced. But I got off the bus anyway, because I was 99.5% sure that was my destination. I just didn’t expect myself to get there so early. Then I saw that the American passenger who said that he was going to Prizren also got off the bus. So then I was 100% sure. But what surprised me was that I would look out the window at the right time and saw my hotel. Had I not done that, I would definitely have missed my stop. And it is not easy to get help in that area if you are in trouble, because not a lot of people speak English. So I was really lucky.”

Zoleikha thought that that detail was irrelevant to her article. Instead, she briefly jotted down: Bus information is not always reliable.

“At the hotel, I was greeted by a young gentleman. He introduced himself as a proud Albanian named Taulant. I was a little bit surprised, because up until then, I had never met an Albanian before. So when I first saw him, I thought he looked just like everybody else. I mean, regardless of his identity and ethnicity, I felt that he was just another human being. I think that is really cool about meeting different people, because regardless of who we think we are, or how different we think we are, we are ultimately the same, and that’s how we connect, as individuals. But when he gave me a brief introduction about Kosovo, I felt something quite uncanny.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, at one point when he was busy doing something on his computer, I was staring at the mini flags behind him. I was trying to look to see if there was a Canadian flag among them, and he said, ‘No, there’s no Canadian flag.’ Then I looked closer at each flag and I recognized most of them except two. So I wondered what those two flags were. He pointed to one of them and said, ‘I will tell you. The blue one is our Kosovar flag.’ So then I wondered, what did the six white stars on the flag represent? He said, ‘You see, we have six major ethnic groups in Kosovo. The six stars represent the six ethnic groups.’ I was going to ask which six, but he already started to answer my question. He said, ‘We have Albanians, which is about 90% of the population. We have Serbians, Romanis, Bosniaks, Turks, and I forgot what the last one is.’ So I thought that was a bit uncanny how he could read my thoughts.”

“Hmm … okay. Go on.” Zoleikha was indifferent to the strangeness that her interviewee was describing. As a journalist, she tried to maintain a certain level of impartiality when she approached a topic. It was in the spirit of openness and acceptance that she connected best with different personalities.

“Taulant printed me a travel guide that he found on the internet, because I asked for directions around the city. Then he started telling me a little bit about the city, like some of the historical sites. He showed me a church that he said was where Christianity first started in Europe. He said the religion started in Prizren, in Europe. I didn’t quite believe him. I thought Christianity would start from somewhere like Greece, or somewhere closer to Jerusalem. Anyway, he then pointed to a building in a picture of Prizren, and said that was Story 8

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where Mother Teresa was born. I said she was born in Skopje, and he said she was first born in Prizren and then moved to Skopje. I didn’t quite believe that either. Then he said he knew of a place in Prizren that made the best macchiato in the world, and that he could bring me to it. I didn’t think that the best Italian coffee would be found in Prizren, of all places. By then I was starting to see a pattern. He seemed to have a tendency to say that everything was first and the best in Prizren. Then he offered to be my tour guide. I was a bit hesitant to accept the offer.”

“You thought he sounded like a sales person?”

“Yeah.”

“Could that be your own bias about Kosovo? I mean, could it be that Kosovo was really a gem in disguise that he was trying to show you?”

“Hmm … Possibly. Maybe I was not open-minded enough.” She shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. She wore a few gemstone bracelets on her left wrist. Zoleikha inspected her nails. No polish. She wondered what Pierre would think of this girl.

Zoleikha came to realize that this Joy-Jane-June-Margaret sounded pretty normal, compared to some of the personalities she had to interview. Her job necessitated meetings with unusual people, the outliers of society. Normal people would not make good writing subjects.

“Oh yeah, Taulant asked me, ‘Are you Chinese?’ I hated that question! But I said yes, just to be polite. Then he said 你好 in Mandarin. Quite excitedly so. I was surprised that he knew Mandarin. Then he explained, as if he had read my thought again, that he had met a lot of Chinese tourists.”

Zoleikha hesitated to ask why she didn’t like to be asked that question, but decided against it, because it was not relevant to the topic that she was researching on, and also because she roughly had an inkling of why. She herself also did not like to be known to have an Iranian root, mainly because of the stereotypes that came with Iranian politics. She also knew of a Russian gentleman who had habitually used a different name to disguise his Russian origin, simply because he did not like to be associated with Russia.

“Anyway, after talking to Taulant, I went to a post office near the bus terminal. It was Friday afternoon. I wanted to mail a postcard. I wasn’t sure if the post office would be open over the weekend, so I wanted to get that out of the way first. When I got to the post office, the three middle-aged ladies sitting behind the counter didn’t know what I wanted. They didn’t understand English. So we were talking and talking, in our own languages, and finally they figured out what I wanted. But they said they didn’t sell stamps there. So I thought, what kind of a post office would not sell stamps? Anyway, one of the ladies was kind enough to give me directions to the central post office, where stamps were sold. She walked me out of

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the building, and started pointing left and right. Then she walked toward a garbage can, peered into it, and stirred the content with her hands. I gathered that she was looking for a piece of paper, so I told her that I got pen and paper. She took them and started sketching.

At that moment I struggled a bit with the thought that she had just touched the garbage in the garbage can before she held my pen and notebook. One of the things that I had to get use to was the different understandings of hygiene. Anyway, she said that I should turn left at the fork. She was trying to tell me that the right goes to Albania. I said okay. I bought a postcard along the way. Inside the post office, I gave my postcard to a lady behind the counter. She looked at my postcard and asked, in an impatiently disapproving tone, ‘Why you write in red?’ I was quite shocked. I have a habit of sending postcards wherever I go. I never had anyone questioned me about the color of the ink I used, nor had I ever encountered a post office that didn’t sell stamps. So I wasn’t sure how to respond to this strangeness, because first of all, the color was orange, not red. She told me to wait while she showed my postcard to her supervisor. You see, my personal mail had to be approved by a third party. The first thing I wanted to say to her was, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ But of course I kept my mouth shut. Instead, I watched them discuss about my postcard. I know that it’s a really minor issue and I am not concerned about that, but underlying that minor issue is a very messed-up mentality. And that’s the part that really shocked me. In a way, I am curious to know what the underlying concern is but at the same time, I don’t think I will ever find out.” Joy-Jane-June-Margaret started to be a bit contemplative.

“Hmm … that is a really interesting incident. I think they have a very different mindset. They focus on the collective and we focus on the individual.”

“Whatever. After the post office, I went into a hotel to ask for direction to get to the tourist information center. I wanted a brief orientation of the city, so that I could have a basic sense of direction to get around. When I was inside, I saw three men sitting in the hallway, doing nothing. I asked one of them for direction. He pointed me to the receptionist. I approached the receptionist. He kept shaking his hands. Another guy came and talked to me. I repeated my question. He then left and then another guy came and gave me a phone. I looked at the phone, and thought, was this a gift for me? He didn’t say anything. He just handed me the phone. Okay, so I said hi into the phone. A person on the other end of phone spoke to me, in pretty good English. He said he would come over. He asked me to wait for him. My first thought was, ‘How long would you need to get ready?’ I have some guy friends who would take an hour to get ready. So when he asked me to wait for him, I was a bit hesitant. I actually wanted to say no. I felt that I was troubling a lot of people. But then I thought that would be impolite, if someone wanted to come and help me and I turned him down. So I said okay. I thought it was kind of weird that out of four people in the hotel, none spoke English.

It was like turning on the television in a hotel room, to find out that none of the channels was in English. The first question that came into my mind was, what kind of people stayed in this hotel. In the meantime, one of the men gave me a glass of orange juice. So I sat down and waited. When the guy on the phone came, I repeated my question. He said that there was

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no tourist information center but what he could do instead was to give me the phone number of the director of tourism. I was quite shocked at the direction that he was going.

He said that whatever I needed, I could just talk to the director instead.”

“Different travelers have different travelling styles. I think it is hard to anticipate and to understand the needs of different travelers, especially if they have no travelling experience to begin with. They clearly do not understand how you operate, but it sounds like they make every effort to help you regardless. Did you ask if they would have a map for you?”

“No I didn’t. Usually maps would be displayed in the hallway or at the reception of a hotel. If it’s not there, then usually that means they don’t have it. Instead of asking for a map, I asked them for directions on how to get back to my hotel from there. The guy from the phone said that it’s best to take the taxi because it was quite far. I told him that it’s not far because I came by foot. Still, he insisted that it was a bit far for me. So then I decided not to rely on him for directions. Instead, I just walked and walked and found my way back. I am sure they had every intention to help, but they wanted me to do things their way but I preferred to do things my way. So in the end, they were of no help. I think we are coming back to the same theme again—collective mindset instead of individual mindset. They thought that the way they chose was the best for me and they imposed it on me.”

“I understand. That happens when we don’t see the other person’s perspective.”

“Agreed.” She nodded.

“So what happened next?”

“Breakfast. The restaurant of the hotel I stayed at was a bit strange. They served breakfast buffet. But all the foods were cold. Even the hot water from the dispenser was just lukewarm. Well, one day it was hot, but on other days it wasn’t that hot.”

“They didn’t serve hot foods?”

“They served the hot foods cold.”

“Huh?” “Well, they have eggs, sausages, crepes, and so on. But they just put them on a plate at the buffet table. They don’t keep the foods warm. And the room temperature at the hotel restaurant was a bit low. It was December. So the foods turned cold pretty quickly. They had a buffet warmer. But they didn’t use it. It just sat at the buffet table, like an ornament.”

Zoleikha tilted her head to one side and thought for a moment. “Maybe the warmer was broken.”

“Well, then either fix it or throw it away. Why use it as an ornament when it doesn’t even have esthetic value?”

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Zoleikha smiled but said nothing.

“Then there’s the housekeeping. After breakfast, I went back into my room, to get more sleep. I put the ‘do not disturb’ sign on my door. But as I was about to fall asleep, the phone in my room rang. It was the receptionist. Not Taulant. A different guy. He asked me if I would like to have my room cleaned. I almost wanted to ask him, what exactly was the purpose of the ‘do not disturb’ sign? If I had the sign up, why did he still try to disturb me?

But instead, I just told him later. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t.”

“Actually, that is quite a common problem. Some hotels would see that as a prompt to phone their guests if they see that sign. In some countries, there is a law requiring the hotel to check on the guests regularly, maybe as a preventative measure for illegal activities or something. So if you really don’t want to be disturbed, you need to put your own sign on the door, saying something like, ‘I don’t need housekeeping’, or you can tell the receptionist when you want housekeeping. That should work.”

“Oh, okay.”

“What else did you find surprising about Kosovo?”

“Hmm … On the second day, I was walking around the old town. I walked along the river.

Then the road got smaller and smaller. Then it led me to a trail in a forested area, near the foot of a mountain. There was a young couple in front of me. I had no idea where the trail would lead to. I just walked. I was curious about what lay ahead. So I kept on following the young couple. Then suddenly, the guy turned around and looked at me. I think he was wondering if I needed help or something. I don’t remember what I said. He didn’t actually say anything. He just looked at me questioningly. I think I shook my head or something.

Then he turned around and they continued walking. I followed them. This time I tried to keep a distance from them, maybe 50 meters. Then the trail started to go uphill, wrapping itself around mountain. The young couple slowed down their pace. At one point, they sat on a bench next to the trail. When I was about to walk pass them, the girl asked me, ‘Where are you going exactly?’ It was like she finally could not suppress her curiosity. I told her that I was going to follow the trail. She repeated her question. I thought it was really weird. Why would someone want to ask me where I was going when I was on a trail and there was only one trail in sight? I almost wanted to ask her why she was asking. Then she asked me if I needed help. I said no, not right now. I just wanted to find out for myself what lay ahead.

She was still looking at me, puzzled. I really don’t know why. I think she was trying to help me. But I didn’t think I needed help. I just wanted to walk, and she seemed like she didn’t want me to walk on that trail, so I asked her, ‘Can I walk on this trail?’ Then she said yes. So I left them and continued walking.”

“Maybe she thought that it was unusual for a tourist to be there. Maybe she thought that there was nothing to see there. I don’t know.”

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“I wouldn’t say that there was nothing to see. The scenery was not bad. It looked like an average hiking trail in our parks. It looked like Canada actually. I saw mountain peaks nearby. I was surprised to see that Kosovo was so mountainous. The air was fresher. Some parts of the trails were covered with frost. It was kind of pretty.”

“Were you worried that you might get lost? I wonder if that’s what the young couple was wondering about.” Zoleikha asked.

“No, I wasn’t worried about that. I was just really curious about what lay ahead. So I kept walking and walking. And it was quite a walk. A hike actually. The trail was a gravel road. I think I hiked over an hour. I didn’t worry about getting lost, but I worried about the usual hiking things, like not having any water and food, not having any washroom facilities, not having wifi in the mountains, and so on.”

“Okay. So did the trail take you to the top of the mountain?”

“Yes. On top of the mountain was a restored fortress. The restoration was completed in September 2014, and was funded by the American embassy in Pristina.”

“Okay. So it led you to a tourist attraction site.”

“Yes. You know what I was afraid of?”

“What?”

“I was afraid that I would have to go back down the same trail to get back to my hotel. It was such a long walk that I was hoping that there would be a shorter way back. So when I was at the top of the mountain, the first thing that I looked for was another route to get back. There were a lot of people there. So I figured that there must be another way to get to the fortress. I watched how they got there, and I found the route. I went down that route. It took only about ten minutes to reach the foot of the mountain. So I was quite relieved.”

“Okay, you didn’t get lost without a map and without asking anyone for directions. That’s good. What else did you find surprising about Kosovo?”

“Oh, I remember. I went to buy a bus ticket after coming down the mountain. Someone at the bus terminal directed me to a travel agent. So I went into a travel agent office. The travel agent did not speak English. There was no one else other than her. I said I wanted a bus ticket to Tirana two days later. It took me at least half an hour to buy the ticket. There was no other customer in her office other than me. She said the trip would take about three hours. I paid her in cash. She gave me back the change. But do you know where she took the change from? From her own purse. I was so surprised. Anyway, she wrote me a receipt.

But she didn’t have a pen. There was not a single pen in her entire office. I was surprised that Kosovo had advanced so much in the digital era. She fumbled through her big purse

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searching for a pen. I gave her my orange pen, the same pen that I used to write my postcard. She had no problem with the ink color. But she had problem writing the receipt. It was a very small piece of paper, about the size of an iPhone. It took her ten minutes to write it. While I was watching her, I almost wondered if she had ever learned to write. She got the date wrong. She got my name wrong. She got the destination wrong. The only part that she didn’t get wrong was her signature. So that receipt was really messed up, but she gave it to me anyway. I looked at that work of art. I wondered if it would still be valid. But I took it anyway.”

Zoleikha laughed.

“Then I went back to my hotel. Taulant was at the reception. So he asked me about my day.

I was actually quite thirsty from the hike. I told him about my hike. He asked me if I would like some water. I said yes. Then he gave me two bottles of water. I felt embarrassed to be so greedy to take two, so I thanked him and took only one. Then I showed him the bus ticket. He didn’t comment about the ink color. I was concerned about the validity of the messed-up ticket, but he immediately understood my concern even before I verbalized it. He began checking. He checked everything for me. The first thing he checked was the price. He wanted to make sure that I was not overcharged. At that moment, I sensed that he was really trying to take care of me in a strange land with strange practice. I felt a bit eerie, not because of his eagerness to help, but because I had that thought just before I entered Kosovo. I had the thought that someone would be dying to care for me. I never had that thought before, nor did I have that thought again after.”

“A premonition?”

“Maybe. Anyway, he looked at the time and everything else on the ticket. He checked online to see if there was really a bus going to my destination at the scheduled time. He phoned the travel agent to double-check if there was another departure time. I thought he really did read my mind, because I was concerned about the departure time. So he checked that that was the best time for me. Then I said the trip would be three hours, according to the travel agent. Then Taulant blurted out ‘no’. He looked at me with his eyes wide open. I looked at him looking at me. I was like, ‘What do you mean no?’ He said it should be about four hours.

He checked online and it did say four hours. I said okay. It was nice that I could verify every bit of information with him, and make sure that nothing is wrong with the ticket. I think it would be really hilarious if the travel agent spent half an hour with me and still got the ticket wrong.” She laughed.

Zoleikha laughed. “What happened next?”

“Hmm … my contact lens case. After Taulant verified my bus ticket for me, I went back to my hotel room. I wanted to take off my contact lenses. I went to the bathroom sink. That’s where I usually place my contact lens case after I wash it. But that day, I saw the case but not the lids. I searched all over the bathroom. I knelt on the floor and peeked under the sink.

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Nothing. I looked inside the trash can. Nothing. I looked outside the bathroom. Nothing. So I took my contact lens case, without the lids, and went downstairs to look for Taulant. He wasn’t there. But I know that he should be there, because that was his shift. I stood at the reception. I rang the bell. I heard him calling out from somewhere. I waited. I think I waited for a minute or two. Then he came out. Guess where did he come out of?”

“Hmm … Washroom?”

“Okay, there was a men’s washroom and a women’s washroom. Guess which one he came out of?”

“Eh? What kind of a question is that?” Zoleikha lifted her brow and stared at Joy-Jane-JuneMargaret. Zoleikha was puzzled why she would ask her which washroom an adult male would come out of. “Unless he’s a janitor, he should come out of the men’s washroom.”

“Well, he came out of the women’s washroom, holding a half-smoked cigarette.”

Zoleikha covered her face with both hands. She tried to suppress her laughter. After she finished laughing, she asked, “Did you ask him why he came out of the women’s washroom?”

“No. But I went into the women’s washroom to see if there was a urinal in there.”

Zoleikha burst out laughing. She thought she should dispatch Pierre to go stay in Kosovo for a week, and then they could perhaps make a film out of his stories. “So what did you see in the women’s washroom?”

“It was very standard. Very clean. There was a toilet and a wash basin. That was it. Nothing that would be particularly attractive to a man.” “ Was the men’s washroom out of order?”

“Well, first of all, how could it be out of order for smoking? He did not flush the toilet before he came out of the women’s washroom. But no, I checked the outside of the men’s washroom. There was no out-of-order sign on the door.”

“Hmm … okay. Was there something unusual about Taulant?”

“In terms of physical appearance, no. He’s in his mid twenties. His was about five eleven; very lean. Short hair. Dark ash blond. He wore dress shirt and dress pants. Normal business attire. Neat and clean.”

“Not effeminate?” Zoleikha asked, thinking about Pierre.

“No.” “Hmm … Go on with your contact lens case.” Zoleikha jotted something down on her notebook.

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“I placed my contact lens case on the counter for him to see. He looked at it. Perplexed. He had no clue what I was trying to tell him. So this time there was no telepathic communication. I explained the situation to him. I didn’t explicitly say that the housecleaner threw my lids into the garbage, but judging by how the people there operated, I would not be surprised that the housecleaner had never seen a contact lens case before and had thought that the lids were garbage. He said he also wore contact lenses, so he understood that the case would be useless if it had no lids. He took a key and went to the janitorial storeroom. I followed him. In there, there were cleaning supplies. He tried to search for my contact lens lids. I didn’t expect them to be there. So naturally, we didn’t find them. He then said he would call one of the cleaners. He told me that he would come talk to me later.

I went back into my room. A few minutes later, he stood outside of my room, holding two water bottles, one in each hand. As well, there was a scotch tape in one of his hands. The first thing that he said was, ‘I didn’t find your lids. So we will have to improvise.’ I said okay.

He demonstrated to me what his improvisation was. I thought, ‘Okay, but I can’t pack my contact lenses like that when I am travelling.’ Then he said, ‘Tomorrow I will bring you a new contact lens case from my home.’ I said okay.” She paused while sinking into her thoughts.

Moments later, she resumed, “It’s funny now that I think about it. Before he came into my room to give me his improvised solution, I actually had a vague thought of the water bottle lid resembling my contact lens lid, and therefore substituting the latter. I think I was standing next to him when I had that thought. I think it was around the time when we were both in the janitorial storeroom. Now that I think about it, I wonder if I was picking up his thought at that time. Or vice versa. But I was only thinking about it, whereas he actually verbalized it.” She posed that question, seemingly not to Zoleikha, but to herself.

“I guess this could be a premonition, if you sensed something that would come into being in the future.”

“Actually, I also had the feeling of having or needing a lot of water. That was before I discovered that my lids were missing. Then it turned out that I did get a lot of water. I took one from him at the reception, to drink. Then he brought me two new bottles, for the improvisation. So that night I drank a lot of water.” She laughed.

“Sounds like a foresight or a premonition. So did you get a new contact lens case from him?”

“Oh, the next morning, I went to the reception and asked for Taulant. The receptionist said he was not working that day. Then I told her about the incident. She didn’t fully understand what I meant so I had to use Google Translator and showed her pictures of a contact lens case to explain to her what happened. Then she took a picture of the contact lens case on my phone.”

“Oh okay. So he didn’t come to see you the next day?”

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“Well, this is what happened. I went to another city during the day. I came back in the late afternoon. When I got back to the hotel, a different receptionist, the one who phoned my room when I had the ‘do not disturb’ sign on, said his colleague left me a contact lens case.” “ Oh, Taulant dropped by when you were gone?”

“Well, that’s what I thought. So I took the case from that receptionist. Do you know what he said to me?”

“No. What?”

“He said that it was not the hotel’s responsibility for my lost belongings. He told me that I should be more careful next time. This time, his colleague was just being nice to replace my contact lens case for free, but that’s not the hotel policy. So the replacement was not from the hotel, but from the hotel staff.”

“Wow. This guy really knew how to work in the hospitality industry.” Zoleikha shook her head.

“I looked at the contact lens case. It was uglier than my B&L one. But it was better than nothing. So I took it and went back into my room. At that moment I realized that I was a bit attached to my contact lens case. And I wished that Taulant would have given me the one from B&L. Then I started to wonder, would they even have that brand in Kosovo? I had thought of going to a pharmacy store myself. But my concern was, what if the pharmacists there could not speak English. I wasn’t too eager to spend half an hour at a pharmacy to just buy a contact lens case, like how I bought the bus ticket. So that’s why I wished someone else could replace the case for me instead, to save me the hassle. Then later that evening, something happened. Guess what happened?”

“Hmm … Someone delivered you a B&L contact lens case?”

“Bingo!” Joy-Jane-June-Margaret snapped her finger. “Guess who delivered it?”

“Eh … surely it would not be the guy with the excellent customer service.” Zoleikha taunted.

“Oh wait, you said you wished that Taulant could give you a B&L case? So was it him?”

“Bingo again!” She beamed.

“Wow! He really did hear your wish?”

“I don’t know about that. But I discovered that the first case was not from him. I think it was from the lady I talked to using the Google Translator. So I told Taulant that I already got a replacement. But you know what he said?”

“He heard your complaint?” Zoleikha asked jokingly.

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“No. I wish he could tell me if he had that kind of premonition or telepathic ability or not.

But anyway, he said, he knew that I got a replacement. He still wanted to give me a replacement because he had promised me that.” Joy-Jane-June-Margaret paused. “That was the one quality about him that left the strongest impression on me. I kind of sensed that if there was anything that he wanted to leave me, it would be the thought that he could keep his promise.”

“Hmm … It would be easy for him to not leave you anything, but then you would walk away thinking that he couldn’t keep his promise, and that would not be what he wanted you to remember about him.”

“Yeah.”

“I am curious. Did you have any premonition that you would get two new contact lens cases?”

“Umm … No. For sure no. I only remember that I was very desperate for a contact lens case that morning. Perhaps so desperate that the universe decided to deliver two to me.” She laughed.

Zoleikha laughed.

“Anyway, there was another thing that happened earlier that day that I found a bit unusual.”

“What was it?”

“I told you that I went to another city right? It was Gjakova. After breakfast, I asked the receptionist who didn’t speak English about how to get there. She checked online and then she made a phone call. Then she told me that there would be a bus going there at noon. But it was only 10.30am at the time. I didn’t know what I could do in between. So I walked to the bus terminal anyway, and expected to find a bus waiting to take me to Gjakova right away.

Guess what?”

“There was a bus waiting to take you to Gjakova right away?” Zoleikha was starting to notice a pattern. It seemed that unusual things tended to happen to this unusual Joy-Jane-JuneMargaret.

“Bingo! So I got on the bus, and the bus departed from the bus terminal before 11am, and I arrived at Gjakova before noon.”

“Uh, just a second. Does this happen to you a lot? I mean the way things happened to you at the right time at the right place and so on?”

“Once in a while, yes.”

“So this didn’t just happen in Kosovo?”

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“Correct. But the frequency is much higher in Kosovo, from the moment that I entered Kosovo. Remember I told you about the opportune moment when I looked out of the window as the bus was about to pass by my hotel?”

“Right. Otherwise you would not have realized that you had arrived at your destination, then you would not have gotten off the bus.”

“Yes.” “So you were really lucky then?”

“Yes, I think so. And now that I think about it, I also have similar luck when I was in Jerusalem. It is also a very difficult place to travel to.” She thought further, and said, “Oh, and in Jordan too.”

“I see.” Zoleikha thought of a clairvoyant she had interviewed. “So what happened after Gjakova?”

“The next day, I was supposed to take the bus to Tirana. So I had a few hours left to spend in Prizren. I wasn’t sure what to do during those few hours. I had already seen most of Prizren.

After staying there for a couple of days, I kind of got a sense of the place, the rhythm of the city, the way people operated, and so on. Unless I tried to go deeper to see more of the daily lives of the people there, in that case, I would have to use their infrastructure, like the bank, the post office, the phone, and such. But then I would need an occasion for that. I mean, I wouldn’t walk into a bank, if I didn’t need anything from a bank. Right?”

“Right.”

“Having nothing to do, I thought of paying my credit card balance online. Guess what happened?”

“You couldn’t log in to pay online?”

“No. Worse than that.”

“Umm … You didn’t have enough money to pay your credit card?”

“Hahaha … No. There were a lot of fraudulent charges on my credit card. I panicked. Really panicked. I thought, what kind of bastard would dare to take money from someone who didn’t even have enough money for herself? I read that I was supposed to phone my bank to report the fraud. That would be a long distance call. I wasn’t sure how to make a call to Canada from Kosovo. I went to the reception to ask. She didn’t know what I was talking about. We spent half an hour or so, using Google Translator to talk to each other. But there’s a problem with that translator. It didn’t translate. At one point the translator kept cursing me, like ‘… God damn you …’ I switched to Chinese. It cursed me in Chinese. I almost wanted to tell the receptionist to type properly. But I didn’t. Amidst the broken

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translation and the cursing, I roughly figured out that the phone in my hotel room was only good for calling the reception, and vice versa. Then I told my cousin in Melbourne about my situation and he started Googling online for solutions. He helped me search for the number that I had to dial before I dialed the Canadian number. I couldn’t do that on my phone because it was set to a Canadian location, so it kept giving me instruction on how to make a call from Canada to Kosovo, when I kept searching for how to make a call from Kosovo to Canada. Anyway, the receptionist’s mobile phone didn’t work. She said, to make a long distance call, I had to go to a post office. I asked her again and again if she was sure that the post office was able to help me with a long distance call. To me, it’s really weird that a post office would provide telecommunication services. I mean, think about it, what kind of post office doesn’t sell stamp but help you make long distance calls? It doesn’t even sound like a post office. They should call it a phone office, or a phony office instead. And they should sell stamps at the telecommunication office. It’s like going to the fish market to buy vegetables, and going to the vegetable market to buy fish. You know, I was so crazy that after that incident, I actually researched on the products and services that Canada Post provided. I wanted to know what a normal post office would offer. I thought perhaps Kosovar post office was normal and my expectation was abnormal. But no, I was normal. Canada Post provided delivery products and services, and only that. I think if I were a film producer, I would make a movie about a post office selling shoes and underwear.” She did a swatting motion to wave her imagination away. “Anyway …”

“Maybe it wasn’t a fish market selling vegetables and a vegetable market selling fish. I mean, maybe they didn’t have a vegetable market, and what you saw was a supermarket selling both fish and vegetables.”

“Well, in that case, they should call it a super office, instead of a post office. But no, they do have phone companies. A few actually.”

“Oh ..” Zoleikha was speechless.

“Anyway, so I went to the post office, since that was the only solution she suggested. At the post office, a fat lady behind the counter told me to use the public phone in the post office.

She pointed to a phone booth next to the entrance. Then I asked her what number I should dial first. First she said, ‘Zero zero,’ then she said ‘Nine nine.’ So I wrote down 00 on a piece of paper and showed her. She said ‘Yes, nine nine.’ Then I corrected her, saying ‘zero zero’.

Then she said, ‘oh yes, zero zero nine.’ Then I wrote 009 and showed her. She shook her head and showed me with her fingers. She showed me two zeros and a one. So I wrote 001 and showed her, and she said yes. It reminded me of myself always saying left when I point to the right, and vice versa, and people always have to correct me. Anyway, I went to the phone booth and started put my other credit card in. She then came into the booth and said no. She meant to say no credit card. I took out some Euro coins from my pocket and started to feed the phone. She helped me dial my number. No ring tone. She said, no, we did it wrong. We tried again. She took more coins from me and fed the hungry phone. Still no ring

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tone. I ran out of coins. The phone must have been starving for months. She walked out of the booth to her desk, took out some coins from her drawer, and put them into the phone.

It still didn’t work. But it showed signs of indigestion and had diarrhea. So she took the coins from the phone and put some of them into my hands. It’s really odd there. People did not seem to separate personal funds from business funds. Frankly, I don’t know how much I fed the phone and how much I got back from the fat lady. I think the way they think is that everything belongs to everybody. There’s no concept of me, my, and mine.”

“Yeah, it is that idea of collective mentality again.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I left the post office after that, because there were other customers coming in and the fat lady had to help them. I then went into a Western Union outlet. I just wanted to ask someone who could speak English if they had another suggestion on how to make a long distance call. There was a young lady at the Western Union outlet. She could speak a little bit more English, but still not as good as Taulant. From her, I roughly gathered that I could not make a long distance call from a land line. I had to do it either from a mobile phone or from the post office. Oh by the way, there were a lot of Western Union outlets in Kosovo.

At first I thought it was strange that there would be so many people exchanging foreign currencies there, considering the fact that there weren’t that many tourists. Initially I associated Western Union with foreign exchange bureau. But later, when I Googled it up, I realized that it transferred funds internationally. Then I remember reading somewhere else that Kosovar economy relied quite heavily on fund repatriation. Roughly a quarter of Kosovo’s GDP came from outside the country, in the form of remittances and gifts.”

“I am not surprised. There are a few underdeveloped places in the world who also rely quite heavily on fund repatriation.”

“I see. Anyway, later, I walked to the central post office to ask for help. The lady sold a phone card to me. You know, while I was battling with language barrier and other form of obstacles to make a long distance call, I vaguely sensed that I would be fine even if I waited for a bit. There was no urgency. At the back of my mind, I kind of had the thought that it would be easier for me to deal with it when I got to Tirana. But I wanted to try my best anyway. So I bought the phone card and used the public phone outside of the central post office. I stuck the card into the phone, but it did not do anything other than ate my money at five cents per five seconds. After feeding the hungry phone, I went back into the post office to ask the lady. She said I should not use that phone. I had to use a different one. I don’t know why nobody bothered to stick a sign on that hungry phone. Something like, ‘Sorry, I am sick today.’ And I don’t know why nobody bothered to repair the phone. Maybe not enough doctors. Anyway, I went to a different one. I was finally able to call Canada. But then there were other problems.”

“What problems?”

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“One number was transferring me to another number. Another number gave me a recorded message saying that the office was closed. Oh and the toll free number and the call-collect number were not free. Honestly, I don’t know why the public phones there were so hungry.

Anyway, I fed them but still was not able to file a report.”

“Basically everything went wrong when you were in Kosovo.”

“Yeah. Weird eh? Later when I chatted with my cousin, he said that I should just send an email to my bank. I said I couldn’t find an email address. My bank only displayed phone numbers as contact information. Then he asked me to look for an HTML contact form. He maintains websites. So he knows everything about websites, from both a user perspective and a server perspective. I took out my laptop and logged in from there. Surprisingly, the layout of my bank website was different on my laptop than on my phone. I didn’t realize that. I found an HTML contact form embedded in my bank’s website after I logged in. I submitted the form. My cousin said that’s the next best alternative, because sending my email using PHPmailer would show my bank that I was a legitimate customer. If I were to send an email, there was no way for the bank to link my message to my bank account.”

“I see. That must be quite an experience to go through. Did you have any other weird experience in Kosovo?”

“Yes, one more. It was when I was trying to catch the bus to Tirana.”

“Don’t tell me that the bus ticket was not valid.”

“No. It was not that. The problem was that the bus never came. The travel agent chased the bus driver for me. She said to wait five minutes. I waited. And then she said to wait five more minutes. So I waited. Then she called someone to come. She told me, ‘Taxi. Autobus.’

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. It sounded as if I had to take a taxi to go somewhere to catch the bus. But where would I go? There was another lady with her. That lady said, ‘The bus a little minutes.’ I said, ‘Late?’ She repeated saying ‘a little minutes’. Anyway, a few big minutes went by, and the same guy who came in earlier came in again. The travel agent told me to follow that guy. I knew that he was not a bus driver, because there was no bus outside of the travel agent’s office. But I followed him anyway. Then we arrived at a taxi. Then I realized that he was a taxi driver. Then he took my luggage. Then I realized that he was going to take me somewhere. I had no idea where. But I got into the taxi anyway. Inside the taxi, he told me that he was going to Pristina. I almost got a heart attack. After all that fuss and we were going to somewhere other than my destination? I said Tirana. Then he nodded and said Tirana. I said okay. So he started driving. I was in the taxi for maybe 25 minutes, because of traffic congestion in downtown Prizren. I thought he was going to drive me all the way to Tirana, which I wouldn’t mind as long as I didn’t have to pay anything else, because I had already paid for my bus ticket. It would not be my fault if the bus transformed itself into a taxi. We arrived at the Morine-Vermice border crossing. He pulled over to the side, and waited. He said ‘Autobus’. I kind of guessed that we were waiting at the border to Story 8

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catch my bus to Tirana. After about five minutes, he got out of the taxi and waved at a coach bus. Then he told me to get out of the taxi. The bus pulled over behind us. He took my luggage and gave it to the bus driver. I looked at the bus driver and asked, ‘Tirana?’ He said yes. So it was at that point that I realized that I had to take a taxi to catch a bus. That was really an unusual experience for me, because I estimated that the taxi fare, if I had to pay for it, would be more than the bus fare. But the taxi driver didn’t charge me anything.”

“That’s interesting. Would you have anything more to add to your Kosovo experience?”

Zoleikha tried to refrain from making too many personal comments, because the purpose of the interview was to extract information, not to discuss information.

“Hmm … I want to say one thing. The air quality there is extremely poor. On my first day there, I was tempted to ask Taulant why the air constantly smelled of smoke and car fumes all over the city. But I quickly decided against it. I didn’t want to sound like I was complaining about the country whose future he was deeply enthusiastic about. Although in actuality, it was the one and only thing that I could not stand about that country. When I was strolling around in Prizren, there was this question or thought that persistently visited me: would I come back? It was an odd question. I didn’t know why it kept popping up in my head. But anyway, I was comfortable with the people and everything else; just not the air. At the end of each day, my hair and my clothes would collect so much air pollutant that when I blew them with the blow dryer, I could almost see a dark cloud coming out of them. I know it is hard for you to imagine, because we don’t have this problem in Canada. We honestly take the basic things in life for granted. My mother always tells me that the best things in life are free, like fresh air, sunshine, love, freedom, friendship, and so on. I never encountered this problem anywhere outside of the Balkans, not even in crowded cities like London, Tokyo, Istanbul, Beijing, and Cairo. Prizren and Gjakova were so much smaller, yet the air quality was a million times worse. I found myself holding my breaths when the air was really toxic. I felt like a fish in a polluted pond. It’s really sad. We know that marine life suffers because of human activities. I just never thought that we humans are also suffering from our own activities. But what I found even more surprising, and depressing, was that the people there could not care less. It almost made me think that their days during the war must be a million times more miserable than what they had to suffer today, such that they feel that their life now is paradise in comparison to those days. Can you imagine? During the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, a survey reported that most underdeveloped nations were too busy trying to put food on the table to worry about climate change. I almost think that before we could get them to help save the planet, we have to help them save themselves first.”

Although Zoleikha agreed, she hesitated to expand on this point because it would be a huge digression from her main topic. However, the undeniable fact remained that the world was becoming more global, and hence the theme of interconnectedness could not be overlooked when looking at any individual country.

“So would you say that this was a rewarding experience for you?” Zoleikha asked.

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“Yes. I am glad to have visited it. Looking back at all the strange episodes, I find that they are precisely what made Kosovo most memorable and what piqued my curiosity to further my understanding of the Kosovars. They expanded my horizon. There is a Chinese saying that goes, 读万卷书不如行万里路. The literal translation roughly goes like this: to walk a thousand miles is better than to read a thousand books. Although my dad still disapproves of my decision to quit university, I think this trip has a far more transformative effect on me than any university degree can have. Sir Kenneth Robinson has said that we are in an era of academic inflation. In the past, if you have a university degree, you are guaranteed a job.

Now, a bachelor’s degree is not enough. People go for a master’s degree. But that’s still not enough. So they go for the doctorate degree. I feel that the knowledge that university teaches us doesn’t take us beyond ourselves. There is Sufi saying that goes, ‘Knowledge that takes you not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance.’”

“That’s a really great summary. How would you summarize your experience with the people there?”

“I felt comfortable interacting with them. Maybe it was that sense of connectedness with everyone. Although I was a foreigner to them, I felt connected to them, not at the linguistic or cultural level, but at a deeper level. Regardless of whatever identity we choose to label ourselves or other people choose to label us as, we are ultimately humans. We are fundamentally the same. We all feel joy, love, grief. We all need respect, dignity, love. We could connect at that level--the level beyond words. I like that. I felt like home.”

After leaving the coffee shop, Zoleikha felt a need to discuss this interview with someone.

What Joy-Jane-June-Margaret revealed was too overwhelming for her to process alone.

There were too many odd and incomprehensible events. She immediately thought of Pierre.

Back at the office, she asked if Pierre was free to listen to the interview on her tape recorder.

Naturally cheerful, he happily obliged. After listening, he grew solemn and quiet. She was thankful that he clasped his hands together instead of fluttering them about in the air like butterflies.

“So what do you think about the interview? What was your first impression?” She prompted.

He was cognizant of what and how she had to write. One of Hans’ visions for the magazines was to raise awareness. Hans had always said that the media had the ability to influence the public, and that the media was not always unbiased. So the person holding the pen must be very prudent as to the quality of the ideas he put forward.

After a moment of silence, Pierre said, “Do you see the similarity among the three of us: me, you, and Margaret?”

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Her immediate reaction was that of rejection, mainly because she was irritated by the suggestion that there was something similar between him and her. She stared blankly at him.

“We are all from the West.” He said. “I know you want to get a different perspective from me, but I think the perspective you really need is not from me, nor anyone else you know.

Instead, I think you need a perspective from a Kosovar. Whatever perspective that you will get from the people around you, will still be an outsider’s perspective. To understand this group of people, you need an insider’s perspective.”

She agreed with him, but it was infeasible to do so. “What if I just present the facts without the opinions?”

“Even so, you are only presenting them from a Westerner’s perspective. The Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie once gave a speech about the danger of a single story. She said that the West expected an African novelist to write about Africans who were poor, who didn’t drive cars, and who didn’t know English. That’s the Westerner’s impression of Africa, but that’s not the whole picture. For your story, even if you only present the facts, you are painting a very skewed picture of a nation. Where are the rich Kosovars who drive Mercedes Benz? Where is the annual film festival? Where are all the good things about this country?”

“An incomplete picture creates stereotype.” Zoleikha said.

“Yes.” She looked toward the ceiling and frowned. “The reason that I was tempted to write about the weirdness of this country is that it has a selling point. People want to read about something different, something unusual.”

“I know. But we are not trying to sell what people want to read. That’s not our mission. We are trying to make a positive impact on our society.”

“Hmm …” That was very different from the other magazines that she had worked for.

“Well, you have two and a half weeks to work on this right? You can focus on the other articles in the mean time.”

It was the first time that Zoleikha was able to talk to Pierre without feeling repulsed by him.

Quite the contrary, she enjoyed their discussion.

Two weeks later, after Zoleikha had written three versions of the Kosovo article and had discussed each version extensively with Pierre, she was now writing her fourth version.

Suddenly, Joy-Jane-June-Margaret texted her.

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“Guess what?” Joy-Jane-June-Margaret asked.

“What?”

“Taulant found me on Facebook and we are now friends on Facebook.”

“Great!”

“He sounded so thrilled to have found me.”

“Wonderful!”

“He asked me a question.”

“What question?”

“He asked me if I would go to Kosovo again.”

“What did you say?”

“I said not sure. But don’t you see? When I was in Kosovo, there was one day when I kept getting the question ‘Would I come back again?’ Remember?”

“Hmm … oh yeah, I vaguely remember that.” Zoleikha took a while to recall a detail that was irrelevant to her article.

“Do you think that I had picked up his thought then? Maybe he kept thinking about it, so I kept sensing it?”

“Hmm … I don’t know.”

“Do you know what else he said to me?”

“Surely he did not say he hated you.”

“Hahaha … I love your sense of humour! He said he liked me.”

“Congratulations! So what did you say?”

“I asked him why.”

“That’s a weird question to ask.” Zoleikha had momentarily forgotten that everything about Joy-Jane-June-Margaret was weird.

“I mean, what was there to like about me, what did he see in me?”

“What did he say?” Zoleikha thought, poor Taulant, what did he see in her?

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“He said he loved Chinese. He said he loved my eyes. He said he could see another world in my eyes.”

“Hmm … What was your response to that?”

“I said okay.”

Zoleikha squinted and put her face over her eyes. That was not a reaction she would expect from a girl who was flattered by a guy, not unless he was the ugliest man on the planet but she doubted that he would be. She scratched her forehead and typed, “Okay.” She had no idea where this conversation was going. Was she going to turn her article into a love story?

A tale between Kosovo and Canada? Why was everything about Joy-Jane-June-Margaret so strange?

“Do you know what he said?”

“No. What?” Zoleikha realized that Joy-Jane-June-Margaret had a story to tell. But Zoleikha couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just blurt it all out all at once. Instead of giving the entire bowl of rice to Zoleikha, Joy-Jane-June-Margaret was feeding her one grain of rice at a time. This is going to be a long conversation, Zoleikha thought, can I just tell her that I am full already?

“He invited me to go to Kosovo again. He said, if I went, hotel and food would be free. He said he could even pick me up from the airport.”

“Wow! That was so sweet of him! What did you say?”

“I said thank you.”

“That’s it?” Zoleikha thought about the poor Taulant.

“Yeah.”

Just when Zoleikha began to show interest in her story, her story was over.

“He didn’t say anything else?”

“He kept asking the same question.”

“What question?”

“He asked, ‘When will I see you again?’”

“Oh … Do you want to see him again?”

“I don’t mind. I am more curious as to why I am sensing thoughts related to or from him. I want to know if there is something bigger between us. But I cannot go anywhere now.”

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“Why?” “My mom needs me to help her with her business. It is supposed to be temporary, but we don’t know how long is temporary.”

“Oh your trip sponsorer is demanding repayment from you now. I would think it would be until you have fully repaid her the cost of your trip.” Zoleikha was amused by the dynamics within this traditional and liberal family. “Did you tell him that?”

“No.” “Why?” “He didn’t ask why.”

“Oh …”

The text conversation started abruptly and ended abruptly.

She turned to Pierre and asked, “What do you think if I present this Kosovo story as a tale between two individuals, instead of a tale between a Kosovar and a Canadian?”

“You mean instead of focusing on the differences in mentality, focus on the connecting elements that bring the two individuals together?”

“Yes.” They sat at the round table in the coffee room and began to stitch together the bits and pieces of information. At that moment, Hans walked in, unannounced. Pierre immediately slipped into French, and Zoleikha watched the two men exchanged quick greetings in a foreign tongue. After, Pierre engaged him in their attempt at reengineering the article. Hans used to be a very passionate editor-in-chief who held his team members to a very high standard. Through learning about his philosophy of journalism, Pierre came to enjoy working with him.

Hans listened to the tape recorder. He scratched his beard, a gesture that Pierre recognized to be a sign of hesitation and uneasiness. He did not say a word, but remained silent, almost as if he was lost in his own thoughts. After a long silence, he spoke.

“I was thinking of a few possibilities of how to approach this Kosovo story. If we were to deliver it as a love story, then I would like to change the arc of the story, but that is where I got stumped, as we cannot alter the truth. We are to report on true events. However, what I also considered is that we could park this story aside for now, and replace it with a different and hopefully more easily researchable story for our upcoming issue. Then in the background, continue to research and incorporate updates from the university dropout, if there is any. So I asked myself, what story could we use to replace this one? I thought of

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reporting the 25,000 Syrian refugees that Canada had promised to absorb. But I hesitated on that because there is already so much coverage on that topic, and one of the missions of my magazines is to give voice to the silent minorities, which is why I am still leaning toward publishing this Kosovo story. The most appealing element of this story is that it has an individualistic component to it. Society is the sum total of individuals. We cannot talk about a society without talking about the unique individuals that make up the society. If anything has the power to change, it is the individual, not the society in which he is a member of. A bottom-up approach, not a top-down approach.”

“I understand. We could write about the perspective of one of the 7,300 governmentassisted refugees from Syria. It would be much easier for us to research this high-profile event. I’ve heard of a couple of single men who are a part of the GARs who have arrived recently in Vancouver. I can immediately put Zoleikha in contact with them.” Pierre suggested.

“I thought the government only assisted young families, because the children were the biggest victims of war.” Zoleikha asked.

“These single men are LGBT.” “Oh …” Zoleikha’s mouth remained wide opened for a few seconds. She had previously written about LGBT refugees who continued to suffer from marginalization after resettling into their new homes because they could not blend in with their own ethnic groups which held very conservative views. “Well Hans, there you go. Single men fearing threats of castration, rape, and murder and receiving no support from their own family because of their sexuality is a minority group that we can give voice to. And their stories before and after coming to Canada would probably be more appealing as they are more relevant to our Canadian readers than a story that happens on the other side of the planet.”

Hans nodded, and said, “Okay. Let’s do that for this issue. But I still want the Kosovo story to on our next month’s issue, or whenever we have new development. Zoleikha, can you please continue to follow up with the university dropout?”

“Of course.” She said.

A week later, LGBT GARs appeared on their magazine. At around the same time, Hans announced that the journalist who was on medical leave would be returning in a week. In light of the news, Zoleikha prepared to transition back her work, including her Kosovo story, to the returning journalist.

On Friday, Zoleikha’s last day, Hans organized a little farewell gathering. There were beverages, snacks, and cakes, as well as a couple of gifts and a farewell card, all of which were carefully selected by Pierre. Toward the end of the gathering, as Zoleikha had all her Story 8

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belongings packed and ready to step out of the office for the one last time, she looked for Pierre, whom she had had many discussions with in the last couple of weeks. Pierre was nowhere to be found. Disappointed, she said goodbye to everyone else and stepped out of the office.

A week later, Zoleikha received a small bouquet of flowers at her house. Along with the bouquet was a little card. Inside the card was a ticket to Vancouver International Film Festival. The card read: I hope the roses find you well. I remember you had mentioned that you wanted to watch this French Iranian film. I have just gotten the tickets for it.

I hope you can make it. I look forward to seeing you there.

There was no greeting and no signing off on the card. But she immediately knew who the sender was. She was quite touched by his thoughtfulness and his sharp memory. She had only mentioned the film once, and only very casually, yet he made it his mission to acquire the tickets for her. But that would hardly be a surprise. From day one, she had already noticed that he was a very caring man. With the movie ticket still in her hand, she thought of his meticulous attentiveness, and it brought a heartwarming smile to her face.

Just as she was about to put down the card, she received a text message from Joy-JaneJune-Margaret. Surprisingly, there had been some exciting new development between her and Taulant. Talking on the phone with her for about half an hour, Zoleikha managed to download all the latest news. They had been talking to each other almost every day. The university dropout made the unbelievable announcement of going back to university, a decision that was perhaps influenced by Taulant, an intelligent young man with high aspirations in life.

After the phone conversation, Zoleikha immediately phoned the journalist who had taken over her Kosovo story. The journalist had no intention of submitting the Kosovo story for printing in the upcoming issue, as she had other articles to work on.

Zoleikha phoned Hans to inform him about the new development. She advised him to postpone the printing for a month, as she wanted to watch the story unfold. He agreed. She also requested his permission to pen this Kosovo story herself. He agreed. Thrilled at the impending fruition, she began to recraft the story.

Standing at the entrance of Vancity Theatre, Pierre held a copy of the latest issue of the magazine that was fresh off the printer the day before. Within that issue was an article titled A Tale Between Kosovo and Canada.

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While waiting, Pierre flipped to the page of that article. The article opened with a Chinese Canadian standing outside of the arrival hall of Gatwick Airport, waiting for a passenger to arrive from Pristina, Kosovo. The Kosovar passenger was one of the many lucky recipients of Chevening, a scholarship scheme whose aim was to grow leaders from developing nations around the world.

Fully engrossed in the exciting development of the true story, Pierre became impervious to his surroundings. Suddenly, a pair of beautiful hands extended over the article he was reading. He instantly recognized the hands, despite noticing something oddly unusual about them. For the first time, they were immaculately manicured. He was delighted at the sight of the well pampered hands. He quickly held the hands gently, just like how he had held them the first time he laid eyes on them. He looked up from the hands and smiled.

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Postface Chevening is a special sign to me. It appeared at the beginning of my three-month journey when I helped my Egyptian friend with his application, and it appeared again at the end of my three-month journey when I found myself helping a Kosovar friend with his application.

I believe in life cycles. Full moon, half moon, new moon, half moon and full moon again.

Leaves fall, leaves grow, and fall again. These are universal cycles. Then there are personal cycles, such as Chevening at the beginning and Chevening at the end. Each cycle is a transformation period.

There are cycles at every level: celestial and terrestrial, personal and international.

Everything and everyone is transforming. It is my hope that in every transformation, only the purest and highest thoughts are circulated, the thoughts that contain joy and love.

Wanchain January 2016