Eleven weeks after Serb forces began driving ethnic Albanians from their homes here, the capital of Kosovo waits for its day of reckoning in an eerie silence punctuated by the roar of NATO bombers and gunfire down the empty streets of the city.
Pristina is a place of fear, trapped between self-knowledge of atrocities committed and the imminent arrival of the Serbs' former victims. Two nights ago, Serbs set fire to houses in the northern, Albanian side of the city. The owners fled or were forced out long ago, but this departing gesture was revenge for Serbia's defeat in the war, and a way of ensuring that returning Albanians suffer further. As they did in Bosnia, some Serbs have burned their own houses before leaving, so that no one else may live in them. I saw several cars packed with civilians, their roofs loaded down with bedding and suitcases, heading north.
"People say they no longer trust the politicians or the police; they only trust the army. Most people will leave when we do," a Serb soldier told me. Pristina feels cut off from the rest of Serbia - let alone the rest of the world - and the wildest rumours take hold here. President Slobodan Milosevic survived an assassination attempt by Serbs on Monday, a young woman whispered conspiratorially. After aiding his rise to power, the Serbs of Kosovo now hate the man whom they believe betrayed them. Another rumour says the Belgrade government will stop Serb refugees at the northern border of Kosovo province because it does not want trouble and panic in the capital.
Cars carrying soldiers speed through the streets of Pristina and the roads outside the city as the army pursues its war with the guerrillas rather than organise its own withdrawal. There are more soldiers than civilians here, some clean and well-groomed, others unshaven and jeering. A province-wide ban on the sale of alcohol was intended to curb the exactions of Serb irregulars.
The officers who escorted our convoy of journalists from Belgrade wore civilian clothing. Before telling us that we were free to go where we like in Pristina - and suggesting we ask for updates on army-KLA fighting before venturing outside the city - an army major suggested we "use sensitivity and judgement when communicating with people". We are on our own now in the twilight zone between war and peace, and our press passes note that we are "following the realisation of the implementation of the peace plan".
The trees of the Corso, Pristina's main shopping street, are covered with black and white death notices. A few pedestrians hurry along, glancing furtively at strangers. I stopped a young married couple, mistakenly assuming they were Serbs. "We are Albanians," the man said. "We lived in hiding for three months, moving from flat to flat all during the bombing. We are very afraid at this moment because the military live near us and they are robbing everything." He had lost half a million deutschmarks when his sports clothing dealership was looted, but he was fortunate to have stashed away some money.
The Albanian man's pregnant wife watched the street anxiously while he talked to us. "I am from Djakovica," he continued. "They burned half of it. I don't think any of the Serbs will stay, because they did terrible things here. My brother is in prison; I have looked everywhere and I cannot find him." The pregnant wife in her bright orange dress looked more and more nervous. "Hurry, let's go," she kept saying in Albanian, and we parted company.
The Kosovo Liberation Army leader, Mr Hashim Thaci, promised yesterday that his group will not seek revenge for the "ethnic cleansing" of close to one million Albanians. But the KLA then attacked civilian vehicles on the road between Pristina and Prizren. An Israeli journalist, Ron Ben-Yishai, and his Serb driver, Ivan Cveljic, were wounded in the first shooting. Twenty bullets were fired at a passenger bus but injured no one in the second.
In Rruga Zejtaret, an old street in the central residential quarter that was bombed by NATO on April 7th, I found Zoran Brankovic, a paunchy, uniformed, 45-year-old Serb army reservist, standing in the doorway of his brother's key shop. We kept hearing gunshots nearby - KLA snipers, or Serb forces on the rampage? Mr Brankovic said he didn't know. "I was born in this house," he said nodding at the graceful 19th century structure next door. "My father was born in it. My grandfather was born down the street," and he pointed at the piles of splintered wood and rubble from the bombing.
Mr Brankovic's family owned a chain of key shops throughout Kosovo, he said, and they never had any problem with Albanians or Turks or Montenegrins. "The problem is the money; the money the KLA got from Germany." Was he afraid? I saw that now familiar, haunted look cross his face and he looked away. "Yes, I'm afraid," he admitted. "I have three sons. This is my mother's house. I have another house in Pristina. If I leave, I have nothing."
I saw a few people, at most half a dozen, walking rapidly clutching plastic bags with meagre groceries. Another gunshot. A middle-aged woman and her daughter shook their heads. They hadn't time to talk. "They're going to start bombing," the woman said, pointing heavenward towards the warplanes' rumble. The esplanade between the charred post office and other bombed-out central buildings is still carpeted with broken glass, as it was the last time I came to Pristina, two months ago.
A tall, handsome young couple walked into this desolation with their arms around one another, smiling. Miljana (20) carried an orange rose given to her by her fiance, Nikola (21), and as we talked, she pulled the thorns off its long stem. "We will stay," Miljana said tossing her long dark hair over her shoulder. "We were born here and we have nowhere else to go." Kosovo was still holy to them, Nikola added. There was the patriarchate in Pec, the monastery at Gracanica . . .
The past 11 weeks had been terrible, the couple said. He worked for Jugo Petrol, and was in the fuel depot complex when it was bombed. But despite everything, they would marry here and raise a family. And what did they think of the way their fellow Serbs had treated the Albanians? Miljana's face hardened. "They wanted that," she said. "We didn't want this war. They have a country; they have Albania. Let them go there."