Kosovo: Love across the ethnic and political divide

Just a stone's throw from the University of Pristina, Suzana M. from Novi Sad in Serbia and Gent S. from Ferizaj in Kosovo have set up home together in a tiny, lovingly furnished flat. The two 25-year-olds have been a couple for just under two years.

Theirs is the story of a love that even today seems almost unthinkable in their native countries. It began on the other side of the Balkans in the Croatian port city of Rijeka on the Adriatic coast in May 2021.

It was the holiday season, and Suzana had a job as a waitress. Gent was working on a construction site. One day, Suzana and her colleagues were spending a few happy hours relaxing on the beach in Rijeka.

Gent was sitting just a few feet away. He caught Suzana's eye. With his brown hair and brown eyes, she found him somehow different, special.

Suzana — tall and slim with long, dark blond hair — immediately attracted Gent's attention. He thought she was special, too. When their eyes met, Gent plucked up his courage and asked Suzana if he could buy her an ice-cream.

Different ethnicities not an issue

"Normally, I would never accept an invitation like that," recalls Suzana, "because that's the way my parents brought me up, but my colleagues pressed me to accept." The two got talking. The first thing they found they had in common was that neither of them was remotely interested in discussions or prejudices relating to ethnicity.

That first conversation over an ice-cream was followed by many more dates. "I liked him right from the word go," says Suzana. "He is an honest, kind-hearted person."

A Balkan romance

Suzana, the only child of a Serbian couple, was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the wars that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the family moved to Novi Sad in the Serbian province of Vojvodina, where ethnic Hungarians and Romanians live alongside Serbs. Suzana's parents wanted to live in a multiethnic, multicultural environment. "It's no coincidence that I'm called Suzana. My parents didn't want to give me a typically Serbian first name," she says.

Gent was born the second son of an ethnic Albanian family in Ferizaj in southern Kosovo. He encountered other nationalities and religions from an early age because his family had friends from Bulgaria and several distant relations who were not of the Muslim faith.

Reservations gave way to fondness

Nevertheless, recalls Gent, his father was not at all happy when his son first told him about Suzana. Non-Albanian spouses are frowned upon in traditional ethnic Albanian families. What's more, as the head of the family, it is the father who has the last word. Gent risked being cast out by his family.

"My father asked why I had a girlfriend from Serbia, when there were thousands of Albanian girls in Ferizaj," says Gent. Undeterred, he decided to introduce Suzana to his parents. When they met her, their reservations melted away and they grew fond of her.

Kosovar men on the hunt for a "sweetheart"

Getting to know a girl in Kosovo is usually a very different affair. During the summer and winter holidays, many young Kosovar men who live abroad come "home" driving powerful — in many cases German — cars in the hope of impressing the girls, getting to know them and maybe even finding a wife.

So widespread is the practice that the locals even have a German term for it: "Schatzi-Zeit" (sweetheart time). For a while, the practice got so out of hand in Pristina that a famous promenade lined with cafes and restaurants was closed to traffic in one direction because there were just too many cars with German and Swiss license plates driving up and down.

Gent has a very different outlook. He's not in the least bit interested in horsepower. In fact, he doesn't even own a car. "I've learned to tell whether a person is good or bad, what kind of character they have. That's the only thing that matters to me," he says. He was drawn to Suzana from the word go as well. "I liked her because she was very honest, and you could talk to her about anything," he says.

The rot caused by nationalism

While Kosovo Albanian–Serbian marriages were not an everyday occurrence in Yugoslavia, they were certainly not out of the ordinary. After all, religious and ethnic boundaries were largely done away with in the Socialist multiethnic state of Yugoslavia. But all that has changed. Right now, Kosovo and Serbia don't even recognize official documents issued by the other.

The rot began to set in in the mid-1980s when Slobodan Milosevic rose to power and eventually became president of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, one of the six constituent republics of Yugoslavia.

He pursued an increasingly nationalist, anti-Albanian course, curtailed the rights of the Albanian minority and finally removed the autonomous status of the Province of Kosovo and Metohija, which was at the time part of Serbia.

The ongoing impact of the Kosovo War

In the 1990s, the increasingly serious human rights violations perpetrated by the Serbian state against Kosovo Albanians led to the Kosovo War of 1998/99. Milosevic later faced charges of war crimes in Kosovo at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, but died before being sentenced.

Although the war ended 23 years ago, there is still no peace between Serbia and Kosovo. Unresolved issues such as the mutual recognition of car license plates immediately lead to a rise in tension and escalation, sometimes involving military saber rattling.

Friends did not turn away

Suzana and Gent have no time for such political hostilities and social prejudices. "We've never been interested in the past," says Gent calmly, "we just look to the future." Suzana agrees, adding, "We don't even have a television because we can't tell the difference between propaganda and news here."

Suzana had started studying law in Serbia, but after meeting Gent, she realized that it would tie her down more than she wanted. So, the two decided to move to Pristina. Gent still works in construction, and Suzana is now reading Balkan Studies at university. She says that it's a very broad subject that will allow her to work as an advisor, lecturer or translator when she graduates.

In their life together, Gent and Suzana still have a lot of friends from their past. Very few turned away from them when they learned of their love. Many of them come from different countries and had no objections to this kind of relationship to begin with.

'They should see themselves as people'

Nevertheless, Suzana is careful — or "considerate" as she puts it. She cannot yet speak Albanian, and generally uses English in her everyday life, for example when she goes shopping. This is not a problem in Pristina, where there are a lot of foreigners, and the shopkeepers are used to speaking English. "I haven't had any problems so far," says Suzana. "But I am very prudent. For example, I avoid areas where people really suffered during the war."

While Gent is confident that Suzana won't have any problems in Pristina, he is afraid of negative attitudes towards his family if it becomes known that he is in a relationship with a Serb. This is why they don't openly speak about being a Serbian–Kosovo Albanian couple and don't want their surnames to be published.

Gent and Suzana laugh a lot. They dream of one day having many children. It is very important to them that their children will grow up speaking three languages — Albanian, Serbian and English. "We don't want our children to see themselves as belonging to any one nation or ethnicity," they say. "We want them to see themselves as people."

This article was originally published in German.