From my limited travels, I might say that the flower of Islam in the Balkans is Sarajevo, Mostar, Blagaj. The carvan-sarai, and the Sufi mountain retreats. The stem is the commerce of Skoder, and the earth is Albania. I found the flower very compelling and spiritually powerful. But the month and a fortnight amid the fecund earth of its roots was harrowing. Almost enough to convince me to leave the strange plants in the garden alone. But that's arguably not a wise way of gardening.
Perhaps: the Balkans are like a glass poured in the 19th century, in which certain colors reached in from the edges -- yellow from the north and west, white and red from the east, and green from the south. At the time, these were contingent, moving patterns. But in the interval, the glass has acquired its temper, and the only way of changing the colored patterns is to fracture the object -- an entity which doesn't at first reveal its own existence.