A day with Arzana in the first week of Kosovo liberation

Arzana has changed her life unexpectedly in Kosovo. Grace, her sister, had no power to explain what happened. Arzana was raised in front of me at school in Tirana, while Mehmet Krajes' family had moved there in 1993. And in 1999 we became together in the first week of liberation by exploring war-burning Kosovo. This is the description of a trip with Arzana, in an effort to verify the possibility of burning 300 Albanians in Zvecan.

June 16, 1999

Arzana invited me to join the group of English journalists she translated. He was a reporter at Channel Four and a BBC guy. We had to find first a policeman in Hyvali, who had spoken that he knew some Albanian bodies had been burned in Zvecan's Trepce smelter. The American newspaper “New York Times” had written the day before they could have disappeared by burning in the Zvecan smelter, opposite the first “Tunel”.

We went to Heivali. We found the policeman at the garden in front of the house, fixing a haystack with fresh grass. We recognized him, he was in a tank and down there were blue Serbian police pants. There was an Albanian policeman who had worked at the airport.

After we were introduced to who sent us, he agreed to come with us. According to our acquaintance, this policeman had heard from his uncle in Stari Trg that the 300 Albanians taken from the Smerkonica prison had been burned in Zvecan.

We headed to the Smerkonica prison. Passing into Nedakovc, the policeman, who was busy next to me, showed me a place where there was a Serbian checkpoint after it was.

He was terrible during the war, he said. They stopped the girls from dancing over the car. They were raped. What have they done?

Where have you been? I asked him instinctively.

I was at the airport, he said. We were just guard workers. What kind of cops were we? Who approached us here?

We talked a piece of road. He showed us the column houses in Vushtrri. We were getting closer to Smerconica. My vision of the Smerkonica prison was terrible. I had interviewed the prisoners who had left her in April, Kukes, and I had a full record of them. I had the idea that he looked like our terrible prisons, such as Spachi, Burrell, Bar White... in fact, I was disappointed. It was a low - fenced place on the side of the road, with a garden filled with trees, grass, and roses that had blossomed those days. On the left were two large palistra-like bascules, where the ban was kept. Down, below, prison command offices.

Astrit Thaci had been the prison commander. The first question was what Hashim Thaci had.

He's my cousin, he said.

He thought a little bit and added: We both are, something like that. Keena worked with the KLA, said, all over and during the war. No problem. After them.

We went to our aunt's. We asked him about the prisoners we were missing.

The opening records and ten minutes later he told us with great conviction that there were no charges of prisoners unknown to them.

Everything has gone to Serbia, he said, to Tito Mitrovica. Maybe that's where they disappeared, but this is where they know who's gone. That's all they've run off to Albania, that's all they've got in Serbia. We got all the cards.

I was disappointed we found nothing.

) Where are the cells where you tortured people? I told him.

She told me. They've lived here normal.

I've got evidence that people have been tortured, I told them. I have them recorded by their mouths.

Give me a name, he said, they told you.

Cherkin Ibishi, I told him. Míu remembered “Renaissance journalist” in Mitrovica who regularly beat the police and who had been in this prison. He was in Kukes and he was with her.

I know Cherkin, he said. S'e touched anyone here. But they may have been beaten in Mitrovica when they were taken. This is where the guy beat up. This isn't prison. This was a reform site. No cell, no personnel. It's just here that they've gathered them.

Although not very convincing, it seemed some explanation that both sides enjoyed but overturned my image of that prison. The cop we had with us, it was bad we found nothing.

We're on our way to Stari Targ, the police said.

Here we go. About 45 minutes later, we were on a mountain road near a mill. The cop went down and was calling uncle. Nobody was coming out in five minutes.

We were getting ready to leave when an old man showed up on the other side of the road. He had seen our car and was hiding for fear of being Serbs. He was the guy we were looking for. We repeated questions about the possibility of the disappearance of 300 Albanians and had seen a car drive through that road to Zvecan.

No, he said. I have no room. The mine worked. There has been a murder in the village in mid-April. Right there, over the village. There are still those killed. They're fathers and sons. It's Phil's brother.

He named a village resident the policeman who accompanied us.

I let them talk, and I joined Arzana in the village. We met two people. We wanted to know who was killed in the village.

They told us the same story.

My brother was killed, he said, with the boy. Up there, in the sports field.

Why did you bury him? I told him.

Cana, after she's scared, said we're shot by snipers.

I went upstairs with Arzan. In the sports field near the gate I found the head of the 16-year-old boy. A little further, hand. Near the edge of the field was his half decomposing body with two turtles above him.

It was a macabre scene. I tried to take pictures and my hand shook. I'd never seen him die. I went a little further and I sat down. Arzan, who was too young to watch such scenes, had turned yellow and sat a little farther and was on the move. It was ice.

I told him not to move. I didn't want him to fight other corpses.

I started looking a little further and found his father. It was more decomposing and more rotten. The limbs were scattered.

I tied up with the radio in Prague and told them to record me a live story for “It was a shocking description of the corpses and what had happened that I was doing live describing the horror scene in front of me. My studio colleague was stunned by the confession and asked if I was okay when I finished.

I told him. I feel sick. I don't know why they left them without burial.

I went back to the village. The man whose grandson was one and the other brother was there. He asked us, we found them. I wanted to offend him, but it seemed like a miserable being to offend him.

How did they die and you didn't? I told him.

It was one day, when the departures came in here, he said, "There was fighting nearby and pulled us out of the village." We just left upstairs, but they were behind and shot. They shot the boy and Dad came back to get him. They shot him, too. We turned around. The boy's mother may be in a hospital in Mitrovica, while a sister is out in Albanian. I don't know what to do.

It was all a serious story. The yellow Arzan tried not to fall, as we came down the village to climb up the road in front of us, where the policeman and his uncle who were still able to find the missing Albanians awaited us. Chris said he went to the mine well, but there was nothing there. I told him about the scene up in the field. Síi was very impressed. He had seen the Great Krusha and the victims there, and there was no record to pass.

Shit.

The last hope was the first “Tunel, a mining town from which the route to Zvecan came.

Osman Musa was a disabled man who had stayed alone with his wife in the entire mining town called “Tunel”, near Trepca. My meeting with him actually changed my vision of what had happened. It seemed that nothing was black and white. Nothing was just hate and war. There were vital combinations of coexistence. There were colors that made Kosovo's drama stronger.

Osman had his son killed in KLA, in the Nerodima area. He was killed on the first week of May, and he was 19. He himself had been terrorized by his standing among the paramilitaries for three months and was already barely able to tell his story.

We went to his house, while we were looking for the story of the possible disappearance of 300 Albanians who figured they were out of the Smerkonica prison, but they didn't make it anywhere.

This was the city's only Albanian witness and we had no other crash. The French officer had warned us of his son's loss.

I kept close to Arzana, the daughter of Mehmet Kraja, who knew Albanian, English and a little Serbian and served English journalists as translators, but I as guides. I told him not to tell them that we wanted to have an interview with them, but we just wanted to comfort them.

He knocked first and explained that we had gone that way and wanted to comfort our son.

We were invited in. The first victory seemed to have been achieved.

Osman sat at the top of the room on a broad couch and had thrown a blanket at his knees. He didn't move, but he extended his hand. Soon we got into conversation.

We told him that we were looking to know what had happened and what he had seen from his window in the town's central square.

The first day is mourning, he said. All men are gone. They gathered in the main square and boarded cars. And the Serbs were given the trucks of the mine to escape. A little help, too. They're all gone. Merem saw them all leave the window. They went to Albanian, because they said the Albanian television: “come to us, that we hold all of you”. That Pandeli Majko had said.

What about trucks with prisoners? I told him. - Caminos that could have taken people to Zvecan, opposite?

I was a little confused, maybe even my toaster got a good understanding.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're all black the first day. We shut the door hard inside and we're standing right here. They're everywhere. I was thinking more than I could.

Then, on the second day, it was quieter, but they were gone again. On the third day, they were still running away. Then it was quiet. If we were afraid, we were afraid of the boy. We had a first time here, with these paramilitaries. He knew the boy's job, but S'ena drove S'dee what made him a genius, but we're out.

The fourth day at noon, the door fell hard. Merem ran up and ran to the boy's ark. He fucked up all the cards that were there and blew them off. I approached him and I crawled in and started to shut them both off. We shut them off and threw them in the bathroom.

The door was coming down hard, and we were in the bathroom. The door kept falling harder and faster. We used to, but the door kept ringing. I said, Mereme, open it up, let us die now that we cut off the boy's letters. We didn't know what those letters were. They're gonna be poems, 'cause my son's back in Medrese and he's been writing. Merem did not open the door, and once they ripped it apart. They came in unless two elders saw us.

Are you okay? One of them spoke Serbian.

I told him.

Don't be scared, he said. We are the Greek Red Cross. We brought some help. We say you're dead, we're told there's two old men alone, so I tear the door apart.

We were afraid to open, I told him, you didn't say who you were.

No problem, he said, fix it.

They left us for package and left.

And then there came a cocktail we have on the fifth floor. There's a Serb, medical sister. With us the walk is good. M'e found medicine for diabetes, I'm done. And he told me about other needs.

His confession continued in terrible detail of panic, uncertainty and co-existence with Serbs. Tell him every detail. He wanted to give up. Then his beard began to tremble. He told her how the news had come about that his son was killed in Radomir's Bees. They couldn't find the body and the grave. Who buried him. Meremje sé could hide and told the Serbian neighbor on the fifth floor, who was a nurse. She was shocked and told him to go together. And he drove her close to where the tomb was and brought her home. It was unthinkable.

Merena listened and wept more Sorely.

He said, "I shut the boy's letters off." At least we had a memory now. We shut them off that day of fear.

Why do you scilics? I told him. Why did you stay?

Where am I going? Osman said he took off the blanket.

It was a painful scene. There were no legs. He had cut them in the mine and had then worked in the mine administration all his life. The only hero I resisted, there was actually no more to go.

I was disturbed by his appearance, but by the human reasons for his resistance at home. He had no legs left. The boy's story was a very heroic background, prior to a physical reason he had. And above all, there was very little to tell about us who wanted strong things and crime detection.

I asked him where the Serb neighbor who had helped him today was.

He's gone, he said, since yesterday. I don't know why he left, but we didn't. Maybe he's done bad somewhere else. I don't know what to say.

We left Osman and wondered how difficult it was to describe the colors of the drama just passed. Nothing was like your prejudice. Nothing resembled classical love and hatred. Places of colors mixed up and it was a shame to pretend to see.

Our English colleague insisted that we should come back tomorrow for this story. Arzana told me he recorded your entire Albanian conversation with Osman, that you'll understand what you've been saying. She left her hand camera in the window focused on you.

- No problem with translating it. I can better understand the war from this episode.

(Boted in Theme Journal)