Jovan Jovicevic is trying to pretend that life is normal. What is poignant is that he does such a convincing job of it. A tall man with a shock of grey hair and a neatly-trimmed beard, Jovan looks and sounds exactly like what he is: a science professor. He is meticulous in expressing thoughts in impeccable English, careful that his listener should understand his exact meaning. He has, meanwhile, the charisma and carriage of a man accustomed to addressing large groups of people, and competing, successfully, for their attention.
In the centre of Pristina, in an area of cracked sidewalks, stray dogs searching for food, and graffiti on the walls of shattered buildings, Jovan Jovicevic is trying to run a small Internet cafe on the second floor of a run-down two-storey office complex. Except today, as is becoming increasingly common, there is no electricity.
"That is today. But if we have electricity here, they don't have power in Belgrade, which is where our server is. So . . . we sit and we wait," says Jovan, enunciating each word as though explaining a scientific phenomenon.
This enterprise was never aimed at profitability really. Jovan teaches physical chemistry and chemical engineering at Pristina University, the site of some of the most violent clashes between the Serb government and Albanian students during the last 15 years. Before returning to Pristina in 1992, Jovan taught in Italy at the Joint Research Centre of the European Community, and before that at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. He was educated at Oxford.
"I am from Montenegro, so I don't really consider myself a Serb. But . . . if someone suggest I am not a Serb . . . then, I am a Serb!" he says with exaggerated fervour and a smile.
"We started this Internet business in September. It was for the students, for organisations and faculty and people who needed to use e-mail," he says. "Since the war, it is free. We don't charge anyone, because people have no money. But now, with NATO bombing everything, we may not even have this."
Despite his friendliness to English-speaking people, a quality that contrasts Jovan with many Serbs now, he is as adamant as anyone on the question of independence for Kosovo, and on the sacred status of the province for Serbs.
"NATO should not be here. Whenever someone from outside your family tries to settle a quarrel, it doesn't work. This will not. They have pushed us so far we have nothing to do but fight. The Albanians have a country to go to. Serbs do not. This is our country. And they do not seem to understand that we will fight for it."
Like others residents of Pristina, Jovan is sitting in a city decimated by Serb soldiers and police in the early days of the bombing. He is sitting less than a block away from streets of Albanian shops burned and looted and destroyed. Even one of his young students, needing to run to a pharmacy one day, complains that since most of the stores in Pristina were owned by Albanians, and have now been destroyed, it is more difficult to find places to shop. You have to at least walk further.
But that destruction does not seem to faze Jovan. The military men in black masks who drove the Albanians from their homes and shops in the days after the bombing began seem invisible to him. Rather than blaming the Serbs, he blames the Albanians for pushing for more rights, and NATO for triggering the furies.
"This is now a civil war, but it is an ignited civil war, and it was ignited by NATO," he says. "The Albanians owned everything. They had all the economic power. There was no oppression of them before the KLA started in 1997."
Non-Serbs would disagree with Jovan, and would point to the elimination of Albanian newspapers and university courses in the early 1990s. And while the allegation of Albanian economic power may be true, it is eerily reminiscent of the charges against Jewish shop-owners in Germany before the second World War.
Nonetheless, the consequences of this war are now are felt by all, especially by those for whom the second World War or the miseries of the Warsaw Ghetto might as well be ancient history. Vuk Vujovic, a dark-haired 25-year-old, is one of Jovan's students, and works during the day keeping the cafe open. He tries to leave at 3 p.m. each day to study for his coming exams, but now he has learned that the university final exams have been postponed until July. Life here is on hold.
"It was very hard to study anyway. I have no power or water in my apartment. My plan was to go to Europe or America, to continue postgraduate studies in computing, but now . . . " his voice trails off. Vuk is likely to be called into the Yugoslav army if the war continues. He has a difficult time imagining what life will be like.
As the five computer terminals sit idle, the war rages just outside the window. It is a midday air strike in Pristina. It is a sunny warm day, and the city is, if not filled, less empty than usual. On the street below, a woman pushes a baby carriage. Kiosks selling soda pop and ham and mayonnaise sandwiches are doing a brisk business. A truck filled with strawberries is attracting buyers. With the bright sunlight, it is easy to forget there is no electricity. Kaboom-kaboom reverberates, the windows shake, and Jovan calmly rolls tobacco into home-made cigarettes without so much as a blink or a pause.
Trying to be stern, he gently scolds Vuk for growing lax on studies. "War is the excuse for everything now," he says. "Not faithful to your wife? It's war! Run through red traffic lights? It's war. I worry what will happen if this goes on. A society that has no rules, where war is the reason for everything, will change, and I don't know that you can just turn it back."