Dozens of people extended hands filled with flowers, and one girl ran up to the car and threw them so hard they exploded, covering the back seat with pink rose petals. His bus never arrived. Consequently, he was in the back seat, heading at last toward his mother in Gnjilane, sitting on the flower petals and saying that it was Albanians who burned the restaurant he was standing in front of, and that it was Albanians who burned the houses he was looking at outside the car window, and that it was the Yugoslav army, not NATO, that was capable of making Kosovo safe. There are no bad days. All are good.
Every day is beautiful.
The last time he was here, a month before, the streets were deserted. And now look, he said. Sure enough, they were lining the streets, holding flowers. Out into their midst he stepped. One girl saw him and put her flowers behind her back.