There, the couple pours forth a stream of angry grievances against the young woman. Their story is not uncommon. Serbs burned down their house in central Kosovo last spring and killed one of their sons, a fighter for the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian rebel force that opposed Serbian rule. But they insist on keeping the child. What sounds unreasonable to Western ears is no more than tradition here allows.
Albanian custom frees a widow to remarry, but gives any children to the father's family.
The young woman refuses to go, however. She has all but barricaded herself in her room. It is a wrenching predicament, not only for the family but also for Rogova, a women's-rights activist who spent much of the 1990s helping rural women in a mountain district of southern Kosovo. Today, she confronts a whole new set of problems. Every time, I say to people, 'This is temporary.