the worse atrocities magnified of the mad caliph. Urban attached a grave urgency to this holy campaign, as churches were being desecrated and pilgrims tortured and executed—a pilgrimage being a popular way to atone for one’s sins, though Canossa was not arduous enough to impress Pope Gregory. The pope hoped to let his convocation germinate and give the feudal lords the chance to assemble men and supplies, but perhaps his speech was a little too persuasive, as instead of under the leadership warrior-bishops or the knights of those newly created recruiting orders (the Hospitallers, the Templars, the Teutons or the Maltese) the peasants marched off at their own accord, infused with righteous indignation. Some forty thousand massed in Köln and headed towards Constantinople. Along the way, I supposehe is refraining judgment on a whole people and culture while excusing the xenophobia one harbours for the neighbours.

Of course, hope and perception fosters the rarefied notions of ethnicity plus the attendant traffickers that promise to facilitate the transfer. Taking a stance that somewhat inverts the surge of, as reported, of South American immigrants on the southern border of the US, lured, some cry, by the guarantees of amnesty and a better life, the interior minister of Kosovo is demanding that western Europe repatriate the thousands of asylum-seekers, among the country’s most destitute, as quickly as possible. I am only cognisant really of this story, stuck in a traffic-snarl behind a tour bus whose advertised route shuttled between Pristina, the capital, and Düsseldorf, and I suspect the rush