Home. The tanks have tinged the landscape olive green, there are holes the size of goalposts in the red-tiled roofs and the slogans on the walls are still filled with hatred.
Home. British squaddies patrol the roads like it was Belfast in the 1970s. A pile of broken luggage straps marks the return of thousands of other refugees to Pristina's bus station. Children play with shrapnel and bullet cases.
And yet . . . hayricks gleam in the evening sunshine. Impromptu markets fill the pavements. The first restaurants are reopening for business.
"Small happy, small cry," says 15-year-old Rexhep Baftijari as the plane touches down uncertainly in Kosovo. Rexhep and the other hundred Kosovars in his party are home, after three months in Ireland. The group includes Rexhep's 90-year-old grandmother and a baby born three weeks ago in Cork General Hospital.
"Bye bye Irish," shouts another man and the plane erupts in a polite round of good-humoured applause.
Having started from blustery, verdant Co Clare, where the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell, shed a tear on their departure from Shannon Airport, the group finds itself in a once-familiar land of scorched soil and military camouflage. When a hush falls over the bus bringing them into Pristina, the full impact of the war sinks in.
"Isn't that Amir's house?" someone says, pointing to a charred wreck of twisted masonry. The troops are everywhere. But the summer sunshine brightens up Pristina's drab city centre and the streets are filled with strollers.
But there is no place like home. For Zhevat Hummolli, the long and winding road leads eventually to a leafy suburb of Pristina. Last night he was in Killarney but this evening Zhevat and his extended family of 17 pour out of the back of a van and into the embrace of his waiting brother. A round of cola is served under a pear tree in the garden.
There are whispered words about missing brothers and burnt-out homes. Zhevat's own home is further out from town and has been badly damaged.
But all that can wait for tomorrow.
