No one ever thought it would be easy but the Kosovan Albanians never envisaged liberation quite like this.
Yesterday, we accompanied Maliq Sadiku to his home town of Vucitrn, some 25km north of Pristina. We came upon him on the Skopje-Pristina road where he had already covered 35km on foot. He was frantic to see his two young sons, who had become separated from the family during the exodus three months ago.
As we travelled further away from the comforting presence of NATO, the sight that greeted Maliq was swarms of Serb military: on the roadside, congregated outside burnt-out Albanian homes, in trucks from which they gave the by now traditional Serb salute.
All across the countryside, thick smoke rose from burning homes. The few civilians to be seen were in convoys of Serb refugees.
In the Albanian sector of Vucitrn, rubble of shattered shops and houses, broken tiles and glass littered the eerily silent streets.
As we slowed to negotiate a crater-like pothole, a group of children ran to the car and whispered that we should leave, that Serb military were in the area. Maliq got out and hammered on a steel street door. A cautious head came out, a friend, followed by others. Then a welter of tight embraces.
They shook our hands and warned us again: this was no place to be out in the open. A few minutes later, Maliq banged on another door, shouting names. Within seconds, he was being embraced by his two sons. The weeping was quiet and the talking reduced to a whisper, even behind the steel door, in their own backyard.
We set out again for Pristina, gunfire echoing somewhere in the distance. Two or three kilometres out, the body of a man lay across the road alongside his tractor, killed either by a gunshot to the head or a beating.
Though Serb police and assorted uniformed companions tried to flag us down, we did as we had been advised: put the accelerator down and raced back to the relative comfort of Pristina.