“As the years have passed for me here, and particularly in fractious 2016, I fear that the age of multiple masks, and luminous, colorful ones, is yielding to that of the mono-mask.”—By Alexander…

“We started south from Chicago, flanking the Indiana border. When traveling across flat land without bold geographical markers, transitions are subtle but, somewhere in the lower half of Illinois, I felt I was…

“The truth of these ‘Brothers Macedonian’ is that they were products of a unified culture, Byzantine Orthodox but not specifically or exclusively Greek or Slavic. Herein lies the not-so-secret complication of the Macedonian…

“To be honest, the shopkeeper’s story was as interesting to me as his wares. Between jackets, I inquired as to his origins. He was an ethnic Turk from Yugoslavia, most specifically the Kosovo…

“Reading Leigh Fermor’s exquisite prose, about a variety of subjects that I loved, stirred my own lesser and corporate repressed creative juices. This was a man who, when writing about the ‘long eclipsed’…

“We had one more stop before leaving for Belgrade. I had to find some tangible connection with the Treaty of Karlowitz. I spoke briefly to the local tourist office, whose guide handed me…

“In the chaotic aftermath of my father’s death from Alzheimer’s, many family heirlooms were lost to my eldest sister and me. Among the items my father intended for me included several folders and…

“Turning his sparkling Corfiot eyes my way, he said, ‘Alekaki, row me to the shore,’ grinning as he stripped down to his Fruit-of-the-Loom tank top and same-brand tighty-whities: ‘We’re off to steal figs!’”—Alexander…

“It was an elderly Serbian who said that, in the Sombor of the Hapsburg era, a Becksi Skolovan person spoke German, Hungarian, and Serbian, the better to communicate with his fellow citizens in…

“He has that sense of history that is common among those of us who are graduates of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. What is uncommon, and heroic, is how he has transmuted that…