Melanie Friend

“I brought some family photographs with me, a little blue skirt my grandmother made for me when I was a year old with ‘Edita’ embroidered on it in red, and the first shirt my eldest brother wore when he was born. My grandmother died last year. This is her last cigarette – she only smoked half of it, and I keep that with me. Every night I look at these things, and I feel my grandmother protecting me.” Edita, Neprosteno camp, Macedonia, 13 June 1999.

“…We walked to the border, with police and paramilitaries constantly threatening to shoot us. Sometimes my brother carried my mother in a blanket; sometimes I supporter her on one arm while I carried a twenty-kologram bag with the other. I could hardly walk. My brother is sick, and my father died nineteen years ago. I have to do both the women’s work and the men’s work of the family. My mother is my closest friend…” Myrvete. “…My daughter Myrvete has always looked after me. On the journey here, she was crying all the time about me. I kept saying, “It’s nothing, I’m all right,” but she wouldn’t stop crying. I had no food for four days and I thought I would die, but I worried so much about my children, it kept me alive…”

Myrvete, age 35 and Pashije, age 75, Neprosteno camp, Macedonia, May 6 and June 16 1999.

. “I kept my hat from Kosova, and I will never let anyone take it from me. The Serbian police used to say, ‘what do you need this hat for?’ I didn’t let them take it. It’s our traditional Albanian hat and the Serbs don’t like it. They would order me, ‘Take off your hat.’ They wanted to throw it in the fields. I was hit by the Serbian police four or five times because of my hat. They can kill me, but I won’t take my hat off. I sit all day and long for my village. All I want is to go back to Kosova. It’s all I want. I want to be there.”

Ramadan, age 73 Neprosteno camp, Macedonia, June 10 1999

“Why did I buy this dress? Well, it was very hot, and I’d had several dresses like this, which I’d had to leave behind in Kosova. So when I went to Tetovë on my visit out of the camp, I bought it, I wanted to make myself feel better. I’m a classical singer, but I had to leave all my music behind. We had to leave the family violin, our books, all our family photos. I like choral music and sonatas – Bach, Schumann, Chopin, but Mozart’s my favourite. I would like to sing in the camp, but there’s no privacy.”

Mimoza, age 20 Neprosteno camp, Macedonia, 11 May 1999

“It’s been a shock adjusting to the conditions in the camp, but we feel lucky to be alive. I’m a homemaker; I tried to make the tent into our home but it’s impossible. I cook and clean all day, wash clothes as often as possible – it keeps me calm. Before we fled Kosova, our son Arben, who’s fifteen, was so scared of the Serbs he had to take tranquilizers. He doesn’t want to go back to Kosova because he’s afraid the paramilitaries and police are still there…”

Sofia, age 47 Neprosteno camp, Macedonia, June 17 1999.

Following Fahrije up the mountain to the wood where her son had been killed months before, October 2000. “…Six months after the massacre of our men, their fathers and brothers went up the mountain to pick up the bones. The internationals helped them. I came out of my house to see whatever was left of my son – but there was nothing to be seen but bags… We buried his bones in the village. My son Nexhat was only twenty-two years old.. he was our son, a son, and we will never see him again…Let’s go, we have to go up there, it’s pretty far, up by those tall tress. Thank you for coming to see where my son’s bones have lain…this is our sons’ road, our sons have fallen on this path, so this is our sons.’’

After the interview M.B., Bosniak, in a Prizren cafe, October 19 2000. ”Fear was our permanent escort from early 1998. The Albanians were the main focus of harassment, but we didn’t talk to them much; they didn’t trust us – each community had kept fairly separate for the last ten years. I had some Albanian acquaintances, but my closest friends were Bosniak. We met in both Serb and Albanian cafés,, but we weren’t trusted by either side. The last Bosniak café closed in April 2000 – we were worried that Albanian groups might throw grenades through the window. Before the war, it was the Serbs who broke the windows of the cafés; after the war, it was the Albanians. So for the last few months we’ve been to mostly Albanian cafés… We Bosniaks will always be in the minority. With each new regime, we face new hardships. We are like Sisyphus in the Greek myth, pushing the stone up the mountain in vain.”

“We’d last seen our home in the middle of the night on 29 March, when we fled terrified from the bunker. That night I thought I will never be able to come home again, I will never see my husband again, no one will survive this war. On 14 June we were back, and as we came through the front gate, everything smelled of ash and human shit… The Serbs had stolen our cutlery and crockery, even the teaspoons. They’d used knives on the furniture, shat and peed on our family photos and on our clothes … They’d scrawled Serbian crosses, crude sexual drawings, and graffiti on the walls: ‘Serbia to Tokyo’, ‘We will rape you’, ‘If you come back here we will eat you,’ ‘We will massacre you.’ I felt like dying. It’s unbelievable what human beings can do …”.

Miradije, Prishtina, 30 September 1999

Schoolroom, Prishtina, September 30, 1999. “Before the war, I was constantly looking out of the window, terrified that the police would come and kill my husband and my family because of the school. Now it is time to work and rebuild, Ishalla. We’ll live like independent people in a free Kosova, and the Serbs will not rule us.”

Ali, after the war, October 15, 2000. “Of course, we can live with the Serbs again. There have been many wars between us, and both before and after the wars, we would sit together and eat together. I would never turn away a hungry guest from my house, even a Serb…Albanians do not want to be in a confederation with Serbia, because it was so bad when the Serbs were in control here. I hope we can settle things with dialogue. I believe Kosova will be independent, but maybe not within my lifetime.”

“I met my fiancé here, in the enclave. It’s terrible here. We are eight hundred inhabitants, all Serbian, and we have only two shops and just one café. I am so bored seeing the same people every day – better to stay indoors and read. It’s too risky to go out of the enclave.”

“Gorazdevac is surrounded by Albanian villages. In summer 1999, the village was shelled and an old woman was killed; last summer, the village was bombarded with grenades ­– one person was wounded. I’m not afraid. I’m a good Christian and believe that God will protect me…”

Dragana, Serb, Gorazdevac, February 25, 2001.