BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A TIRE?

It was the end of a very long day and we were speeding down the black road, headed back to our home base in Peja/ Pec. Scarfing down cheese burek from our favorite fast-food take out place in Pristina and gulping down Schweppes Bitter Lemon, we were keeping each other awake by singing bad old songs from the 70s. Kesi, our translator, was regaling us up with a hammy version of Take Me Home Country Road when we all suddenly became aware of a strange sound accompanying his crooning.

We fell silent and listened. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. By now we were noticing that the ride seemed rougher than usual as well. I think I had better pull over, Michaela said, and eased our trusty Opel onto the narrow ridge of grass that lined the roadway.

We got out and examined the tires. Sure enough, the one on the front right was hopelessly deflated. A look in the trunk revealed that the spare was also completely flat. The three of us looked at each other dejectedly, suddenly feeling the cold night air of the mountains pressing in as we realized that the closest help was miles away. I tilted my head back and noticed that I could see the Milky Way quite clearly. All around us it was very very quiet. I checked my watch and saw that it was 11:45pm. We still had over 30 km to drive.

Kesi had just gotten on the phone with his younger brother when a pair of bright headlights came roaring over the horizon, headed our way. An ancient Honda Civic rattled loudly past us and pulled into the driveway of a partially-built brick house about twenty feet up the road. All of the car’s doors flew opened at once and four men spilled out, accompanied by a blast of techno music. The driver, wearing a tan Member’s Only bomber jacket and pulling deeply on the cigarette hanging from his lips, strode purposefully to the trunk of the car and yanked it open so the others could peer inside. The tallest, an older man wearing a suit, glanced in the trunk and nodded his approval. In low tones, the four of them had a short, heated discussion, slammed the trunk shut, and were headed back into the car when the driver saw us standing there staring dumbly. He stalked over and pointed at us. As Kesi explained our situation, the man abruptly turned back to his car, reached in the trunk, and came back with a spare tire. He tossed it on the grass in front of us, turned away without saying a word, got in his car, and sped off. The whole thing had taken about three minutes.

As nice as it was to have the spare, we were still without a jack or tire iron. Soon, however, another car sped into view: Kesi’s younger brother. With barely a hello, he jumped out of his car with tools in hand. Quickly, he replaced the tire - and merely nodding in the direction of our profuse expressions of gratitude, he jumped back in his car and peeled off in the direction from whence he came.

Back on the road again, we rode in silence, reflecting on our good fortune in having had our situation so handily resolved. It is interesting, I remarked, that in a country where it sometimes seems to so difficult to arrange a simple appointment or make plans for anything ahead of time that every significant problem that we’ve encountered seems to miraculously work out with so little effort. Kesi laughed. That’s the upside of our national culture of spontaneity, he said. In Kosovo, someone is always available to help.