Commonplace, th. 1

What follows is a smattering from my notebook, among the most consistent of natural things in my life. I have yearned to tell these stories — even more so in remembering them — and have not the space to tell the minute of each moment. 

Glory to the Lord, for having done all of these things at one time, He continues to do them in my heart as I tell of them.

Christ be praised!

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Skenderaj.

Mitrovica, Kosovo. 04 November. 11:12:27. 

To clear one’s throat amongst the ash of the Jeshari residence is murder. Gripping the stock of the Kalishnikov as he had, the patriarch walks as by animus now in the lank of American eyes, and remembers.
The impact holes of both latent and live shells, of perforations made by heavy rounds

that look rather like they have simply always been…

dust off the shelf of memory. Dust encircles in remembrance the finger of the man who knows.
And his throat is closed.

More dust falls from the shelf… it recalls the roof that split the skull of the nephew, beams aflame caving in the skull.
The rounds that caved the knees and shredded the flesh of the brother, running back to bid the child — beg — to go, the chimney, and close yourself in…

His head would mount the top step with little left of him but the cry for his child.

The relation who took shell to the chest, one dead and impotent to fire, but no less impotent to make cavity of man.

Limp, the ragged flesh of the evacuated skull: the son who’d stepped outside into scope. His souless body hangs in the air a moment, propped of powerless legs, and hangs in the mind, a lifetime.

Shock and betrayal in the eyes of those hit in cover through walls. The groan and protest of the stomach does not a thing to recall the ricocheted bullet for its injustice.
Grasp for the hand of your child and pray. The burning men come.

Around the house, dug in inches, a trench for running the rain away. Encompassing jackboots run through it — hear, hear! — they are very close now.

Serbian strides and whispers… Serbian muzzles. They are very close now.

One will be shot when the door is kicked in. His misfortune was in surviving until now, for his screams in the nonlethal shot compound their suffering for the second… and third.
A child will be hit, stepping out from behind the woodburning stove, and at least all that which is left for him is quick.
There is a mortar shot, and collapsing in is the wall on the top floor of the house across the walk. Fire now alighting the boards where the last few children had gathered against the brick fireplace, the only place left without flame is in the ash of the chimney.
All light will soon be put out by the rifles climbing the stairs.

This and that family member will be scraped up out of corners and furniture. They wail foolishly when their children catch a chance shot through tipped and repurposed cover of many kinds. How stupid to give yourself away! They are quickly executed for their folly.

Over the rubble, a jackboot walks in victory over conquered family of three-score. Not but for his miscounting, it was unknown, there is but one more.

Numb. Her and her ceramic serving plate count the shots and keep quiet… her ten years being a Jashari have taught her that.
She sits beneath her cover in no heartache. She cannot make sense of it. The worst kind of violence sometimes does nothing discernable to a child in the immediate. We are to regard this as more terrifying than the alternative.

She would be found. In the kitchen, covered, feigning death; the satisfaction and spoil of some hearty, heavily-bearded rifle. They would lead her around to identify all of the bodies of her family… those fifty-nine in total. They wanted to know whom they had killed, and Besarta could tell them.

Led by gloved hand on the way out to a bright-shining sun, she would see they had fired a few rounds into the latrine. Just in case.

The patriarch walks as by animus and remembers. Kosovar walks by the mind of American bloat… his throat is closed.
And a rage builds in the man.

 

Adem Jashari, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, withstood for three days (and intermittently for the seven years prior) the brunt of the Serbian military police. His family and he were surrounded early on the Fifth of March in 1998, and refused to surrender. He would be found with a bullet in the throat, killed during the subsequent attack on his family’s property, extensive to the point of involving tanks, mortar, and sniper fire. Later reports would show that the operation intended not on apprehending members of the armed Albanian resistance, but annihilating them and their families.

 

Besarta Jashari was the only survivor of the attack. Hiding beneath a bread box, the young girl of ten/eleven years old would be taken by Serbian police, threatened at the point of a knife, and psychologically tortured.

She lives now in Pristina with a husband and two children, occasionally returning to visit her childhood home, since become a museum and a monument to Albanian Kosovar independence.

(The above photo shows the grounds of the Jashari residence. Pictured is an outhouse and the yard between heavily shelled and collapsed family homes.)

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I ♥ Uzhhorod.

Uzhhorod, Ukraine. 24 November. 18:07:09. 

As we strode from Lviv Chocolatier, we met a man who apologized for his proceeding. ‘Please, let me make my introduction.’ His skull is caved in on the left side. Scars run under the short hair, where clearly he’s tried to be made whole.
He asks for a bus ticket… or, rather, money for a bus ticket. He names the exact amount required for a fare — there and back again — and at that, less than a full dollar.
He tells the story of being bashed-in at the harbor bar where the bottle fell. Mad with the drink of someone else, the big woman’s glass had swung down on his head, collapsing his knees and consciousness.
He needed surgery to repair. A man to fix him. He apologizes for his introduction again, and we talk him away into the wind.

This gracious host asks our help in prayer. Simon looks to the women as to mothers. They piece together great bits of the Gospel before him like a feast of comfort.
Great, grateful bitter tears… it seemed his eyes could not shed them.
He was honest. Honest about the drink, and how he wanted off of it. How, but only today had he had well enough, and wanted to be left well enough alone by that creeping thing — that murderous viper.
He had a child. Honest about that. She was off, and he was irresponsible. He wanted to be a father to her. He wanted to be put right.

There was naught else that could be brought to bear. He had suffered, there was no debate… could nothing be lost in the small chance to ameliorate it.
We prayed again. Then proceeded from my mouth what must:
‘The Lord has trusted you with much. You have much suffering… much responsibility to it.’

To remember it precisely is to believe that I could replicate the response of the listener in my reader. The essence of speech will, here, do.

“Can I trust you with this?” Twenty hryvnia bill.
“The Lord has entrusted you with much… can He trust you with more?”

He strides off, and two of us agree, his demeanor had changed on sight of goal.
In front of him, every shop opposite any known bus stop. Behind, the spot he had stopped, whereby the Lord met him with kindness.

Ye who failed in the past, and might yet again… ah, you are not unalike with the three who stopped to listen.

I looked a long while to the spot on which we stood while our coffee had grown cold on the pavement. Afore, the cobbled street. Behind, our titular sign:

 

I do so love Uzhhorod.

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The joyous. Dinner with the absents.

Shkodër, Albania. 23 October. 18:11:29. 

Led by Freddi, the children could do anything. His gracious arms lifted, and they swung high with, from him, a modest smile. His firm tone shut-up the mouths of even the most orphaned. They could trust his word was true.

The disabled house was the first for all of my discomfort. Them… abandoned for their mental shortcomings, they had a terrible grip at my eyes. Never had they before.

We walked from room to room, picking up guides as we went. Each wanted to show his favorite place, unaware that his twenty-some, thirty-odd years should have afforded him much more… unaware that by another measure he should have license to be incensed. His existence was pitiful. And yet he was grateful. And yet he was smiley.
He would sing a song for us in the hallway. That is, along with the PA system blaring the actual record.

Pity is an horrid thing. Who am I to pity that person for whom life is a joy? Put it away quickly and learn.

The final stop here is the room of the most joyful.
The room of those most provably miserable.
Sat all in a line, they are the least amongst us. Chair-bound. We’re told they smile when someone speaks to them, laugh when someone sits near, giggle when someone smiles back, and hug aggressively, those who can. The room tastes strongly of disinfectant.

Here we show our manner of cleaving. Some of us, a clean break of firm, but downtrodden countenance. Some of us have the colour and lustre of our faces distorted in sad and joyful sympathy. Some of us chortle along.
By whatever manner of fracture is each of ours, we are all undeniably split.

Short minutes are again mine. I reclaim time for myself with these most joyful ones. The whole time, I am sat with a girl who had been sat entirely by herself on the opposite side of the room. She was new. Afraid of herself and others.
But she let me in. I sat for a moment, and her anxious eyes settled. She gave me peripheral adoration, with no words, obliging my gaze and prayers. Eventually, she would let me hold her hand. Eventually, she would look at me… One quick second while I looked to the others, but she would look.

Entirely too short was this time. When we needed to leave, I did not. When we stood to leave, I did not. When we were asked to leave, I halted.
I kissed her forehead… this young girl of misery-already. She had been bashful and silly with her eyes after that, and quietly waved full seconds after I had.
Minutes felt like minutes here. How is it I that I should leave, as others perpetually do? — I would not have the chance to leave here again.

Hard, the way up and down another man’s stairs… salt, the taste of another man’s bread.

Another evening accompanying Freddi’s work would come. We would walk with birthday kids to pick new outfits on this running minister’s bill. We’d then dine with their parents — a pizza party for the kids at a local restaurant. The running minister’s bill.

Dinner with the absents. The entire evening I would clench my fist.
They were hollowed out. In no kind of desperation did they reach for their kids. Their hearts clearly broke when the youngest of them reached for the girls’ hands instead to walk down a cobbled way. Their kids clearly loved them dearly. In no way special, this love — these adults were their parents, so their hearts knew it must be this way. The oldest of them clearly knew of their abandonment, and guarded the younger two with her eyes when they joyed to sit next to their dad.

Pity returned to me. Addiction walked it in. I began to feel truly miserable, and wondered how Freddi could do this most often, and not grow weary of his own awful pity and rage.
Seeing the kind eyes of this, the Lord’s running minister, I would be calmer. He balanced the whole of it on his nose, and often looked down it at the calamitous orphan life with pondering. He was truly happy, truly sad. And he let the Lord decide it for him.

Vengeance is mine, declares the Lord.

Still, hard is the way up and down this man’s stair… salt is the taste of his bread. Great is our Father’s work in Him.

2 Timothy 2:10

 

(Shkodër, Albania)

 

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Why ascribe to yourself some shame of learning? It matters not — allow all men your subjugation, thereby attaining something by which you might learn.

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On the importance of walking.

Uzhhorod, Ukraine. 02 December. 17:30:00. (~)

Set out and set your feet. We depart behind our group.
At the corner, the deafening cool of the air calls for quiet on the hands of an pleasant wind.
Snowflakes fall large and few and never reach speed;
the face of many of these could be seen on their quieting descent, and admired before ever met with the ground.
You walk with measured stride and a pace; alike am I.
The sweeter the air, the clearer the passing of the breath, the better for the heart, this silence. Home-from air beckons out the mind of man.
We walk along this way for awhile. You pass afore at widths of one-wide, your pace slowing afterword to allow my foot to reach you.
You ask in normal tone, the way. ‘Left here,’ and we leave off our speech again.
Under the quiet walk of another’s step and mine, I fall to waking sleep. Whatever mention of the outside by more than the sharp ale of inhale seems to be processed somewhere behind where I’m being sifted.
Lilting thought fills the air, an overture of this silent dusk.
From time to time, I hear a breath out. The warmth of it finds your face, as this sigh of mine seems to hang in the dimlight and convince the brain, but short track from the nose.
Peace.

This kind which comes only along in the meditative sets ideas to dance. Standing, the Spirit recalls the Word. Setting the feet, He can make It to be heard. Walking, set forth is the Measure, making kind the Truth to the hearer in so-seeing.

I have no small adoration for quiet walks beside another thinking, also, on His name.

I can close this update with that for which there is no statement truer for my physical self, or for this small fanfare written of silent company:
“I am walking a lot, through the forest, and having tremendous conversations with myself.”

 

(Uzhhorod, Ukraine — photo taken by Madison Goodmanson)

 

 

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