[ALBSA-Info] Another unspeakable tragedy - Newsday

[Agron Alibali]

Newsday (New York, NY) 
February 3, 2002 Sunday ALL EDITIONS 
 FANFARE, Pg. D27 

Life During Wartime; 
Matthew McAllester tracks a family's ordeal among the ruins of Kosovo 

By Scott McLemee; Scott McLemee writes about politics and culture for a variety of publications 
BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS OF THE DAMNED: The War Inside Kosovo, by Matthew McAllester. New York University Press, 227 pp., $24.95. 



IN THE SPRING of 1999, Matthew McAllester, a reporter for Newsday, traveled to the Yugoslavian province of Kosovo during a period when the conflict there had reached an especially tense phase. Earlier, the world's television screens had been filled with images of refugees. The mass exodus of ethnic Albanians was, for Slobodan Milosovic and company, a lucky byproduct of the crackdown by the (Serbian) military against the (Albanian) Kosovo Liberation Army. But that flood had become a trickle. Before, emigration was encouraged. Suddenly it was forbidden. Nobody seemed to know what was going on inside Kosovo anymore. That was, of course, exactly how the authorities in Belgrade preferred it. (Responding to media coverage makes it hard to concentrate on committing fresh atrocities.) 

Along with another reporter and a photographer, McAllester made his way to the Kosovar town of Pec. By the time they got there, NATO bombing had driven out the Serbian paramilitary squads. Survivors were in a daze. A few doctors worked to stitch together bodies torn open by bullets during the final efforts (quick, dirty, hence sometimes unsuccessful) at "ethnic cleansing." Whatever buildings remained stood amid ruins. "Each side wanted to wipe out all traces of the other," writes McAllester, "to make sure they had no homes to come back to." 

"Beyond the Mountains of the Damned" is a gripping, if depressing, account of what McAllester found among the ruins. He listened to Kosovar Albanians who had been in Pec throughout the ordeal; then, a few months later, he interviewed members of the Serbian units that had, in effect, held the town hostage. Combined with the story of the author's trek into "the mountains of the damned" (a folkloric nickname for the region in which Pec is located), this reporting yields an intimate chronicle of events that have already faded from most Americans' recollection of the period. "At the time, the war genuinely fascinated many people" in the West, as McAllester puts it - adding, "for about two weeks." 

In a manner somewhat reminiscent of what used to be called "the New Journalism," McAllester narrates much of the story from the vantage point of Isa Bala, an ethnic Albanian who, like his father and grandfather before him, ran a neighborhood butcher shop. For reasons that never quite become clear, he and his family remained in Pec as friends and neighbors fled. From McAllester's account, Isa is an apolitical man, someone for whom the KLA's call for regional autonomy would not have been much of an inspiration to stay behind. Perhaps it was as simple as an inability to imagine the unimaginable. 

During the final stages of the siege - as Serbs were spraypainting crude caricatures of Monica Lewinsky in public places, to be seen by the NATO troops whose arrival they knew to be a matter of time - a paramilitary squad occupied Isa's home. Four of his children, his niece and his sister-in-law were executed. The bodies were dug up later by pathologists for the International Criminal Tribunal from The Hague. 

Even some of the Serbian fighters later found the violence inexplicable. "A guy I knew in the war killed a kid," one of them tells the author. "I asked him how he could do that. His answer was, 'You just aim your gun a little lower.' It's no use talking to someone like that. Maybe you appear strange to him, as he appears strange to you." 

There are conspicuous gaps in the reporting. While the book provides a bibliography of readings on the history of Yugoslavia, McAllester spends far more time describing the landscape and culture than sketching political context. He offers vivid thumbnail sketches of Kosovar warriors in the field: "With pistols stuck down the back of their black knock-off Calvin Klein and Versace pants and chickens running around their feet, the special forces men looked like Mussolini's blackshirts lost on the set of 'The Sound of Music.'" But the lack of any substantial account of the KLA's history and activity is an inexplicable oversight. 

Very much to his credit, though, the reporter treats his expedition into the battle zone with a wholly creditable modesty. There is no bravado. His traipse across the landscape involves getting lost a certain number of times. The danger of violating the Yugoslavian government's ban on journalists proves almost a minor factor, given the more intractable problem of dealing with Kosovar Albanian guerrillas - who aren't expecting journalists, sympathetic or otherwise, and never remember to use their walkie-talkies to inform one another that visitors are coming. 

Chronic low-grade befuddlement, then, is the rule and not the exception. The slightly comic absurdities faced while reporting the events find a more horrific parallel within the story itself. 

Not knowing what else to do during the prolonged conflict, Isa tries to carry on everyday tasks amid a situation that grows ever less capable of supporting normal life. Even when the paramilitaries take over his house, he tries to observe the traditional Balkan rules of hospitality - as though the men were "guests," who might be placated, even honored, by offerings of sweet tea and cheese pie. He could not imagine - even when it was too late - just how completely the world had fallen apart. 

In the final pages, we learn that the man in charge of the unit that killed Isa's children is now a wealthy businessman. He owns a Mercedes and an Audi. McAllester, being a good reporter, knows better than to seek "closure." The story ends; it does not make sense. But maybe that is for the best. We should never believe a war story we fully understand. 

GRAPHIC: Photo by Enver Doda - Matthew McAllester in Pec 


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