Professional Life
[Part of the interview is cut out from the video: the interviewer asks the speaker to talk about his professional life.]
Kujtim Paçaku: I headed to Paris where I also finished Romani studies at the Sorbonne. Till today I have been an adjunct assistant at the department of Romani studies, where in this academic year the 14th generation works towards a bachelor degree, and the third generation works towards the Master’s degree in Romani studies. We had students from all over Europe, it’s worth mentioning Masako, a student from Japan who spoke Romani perfectly. We had students from France, we had them from Albania, Kosovo and other countries, where they learned Romani together with another language, the same as I when I was there in 2002, I finished the course of French Civilization, Cours de Civilizations, in order to have a chance to work and study. If you didn’t have this course you couldn’t work because to live in Paris, France, in other states, first you had to follow French procedures, through which you had to know French culture, language and traditions very well.
After the six-month-course we then could focus on our studies or work. So this enabled me to stay there for two years, to work regularly. Even before the period before and after the war, I was a correspondent for many European newspapers and media of almost all countries, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Paris, Albania. Then, I began to publish the poetry that I had written in my notebook. My main preoccupation was always how to avoid color. Many community members…When I conducted research for some projects, for example in Prizren and 18 villages, 12 villages of Prizren, focusing on children in 18 focus groups – “Why don’t you go to school?” “What is problem in school?” “A Roma child in the street.” “A Roma child in the police station.” “A Roma child in the hospital.” “A Roma child at the doctor’s office.” – 18 focus groups, from which I gathered a lot of material, first we acknowledged that we had self-prejudices that created a big problem, then the prejudices about us that they had without knowing any of us.
The first publications started, [and have continued] until today. If we talk about poetry, I have works where I am also a co-author of books, whether the preschool texts for Roma children, or school texts and individual books as a poet. I am a co-author of texts, for example Klyshi i vogël shkon në shkollë. Ku është klyshi ynë? [Little Puppy Goes to School. Where is Our Little Puppy?] There was a group of authors and so on for preschool children, whose texts are bilingual, in French, or English and Romani. Later, I worked on Përrallat rome [Romani Tales], with Mina Çiriçi from Albania, where I was his translator from Albanian to Romani. There are other texts where I did the Romani dialect-methodology part through poems that were published in an anthology, today I am concentrated on working on students’ works. Eh, when I taught my first class to my students in Paris… something interesting always happens to me (laughs). Believe me, it was uncanny that day the theme of the lesson was, “Kujtim Paçaku, writer.” None of the students recognized me in the classroom where I held my first class.
I explained the show, I introduced the show…”As professor Kortia Dechia told you, I too today…yesterday we learned about Papusza, she is a writer from Poland, today about a writer from Kosovo…” I didn’t even tell them where I was from, I left this as a surprise, had I added that I was from Kosovo, they would have known. So what happened a bit later? I wrote Kujtim Paçakuborn in Duhel, then a question mark, who knows when this man would die (smiles). And I told them about my works and so on, and so on, and so on…After the class ended, one of the students asked me, “But you didn’t tell us who you are, where are you from” (laughs). “I am the one about whose work we learned today for two full hours.” He said, “When I will take your test, I would like very much to get a question about you, because you gave a detailed explanation, there were no such details for Papusza, or the Dudarova Sisters or Ali Krasniqi, or Orhan Galushi, or Santino Spinelli, or other writers who write.” I gave details because it wasn’t difficult at all for me to tell them whose son Kujtim was, what did he do in elementary school, when he wrote…I mean, these details were much easier for me. That was a very interesting first class.
Afterwards, the awakening of my poetry began in Paris, to contact a Roma poet, to talk to him, to look him straight in the eyes…the poetry of that poet will pose some elements, freedom, fire, water, sun, and failed love, these are what a poet knows to mourn, a failed love. A good Roma poet knows how to exhume failed love from the grave and restore it to life. He knows how to sing to the sun, knows how to sing to the stars, he knows how to sing to his identity, these are elements that we can rarely or maybe never find…. very rarely does a Roma poet sing for his country, for his war, for his flag that is placed somewhere in the Himalaya, and says, “Up to here, it is mine!” A poet is always generous, because we don’t have a place where we could say, “Aha! This is my place, it is my country now…slow down a little.” We adjust very fast to the environment we live in.
To go back to Paris, there I published a book in French-Romani. There was an expansion, a great expansion,, a book in the publishing house L’Harmattan , where through the Slovenian Embassy we held the French-Romani poetry evenings, visiting embassies. We started at the Polish Embassy and finished in the Chilean or the Brazilian Embassy. We had poetry evenings anywhere, whether in closed spaces like here, or outdoors, or, when we ran out of money, together with my friend Jean Philipe Raymond, a good actor of the Châtelet Theater, we sang in front of the cathedral…the cathedrals of Paris and we earned money. He recited poetry in Romani, better saying he sang in Romani…I sang in Romani, he did it in French, but we both performed. After our twenty minutes ended, he would pull out, for example {shows with his hands how they collected money with their hat} everyone gave money. This is what we did for ten-fifteen poetry evenings in different cultural centers.
During my stay in Paris, documentary films started, I hosted a show in Romani for the Macedonian Radio Shutka. I worked in Radio Protestant where weekly shows….
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Which years were these?
Kujtim Paçaku: These are the years after the war, at the Radio Protestante, when the director asked that we have exclusively poetry in Romani and French. I mean, I was a part of Radio Protestant, of Roma Radio…Then different Biennales started in Paris. I returned to Kosovo, I went to the South of France, to a Poetry Festival, returned to Kosovo, went to Paris, went to Italy. In 1994-1997, I forgot to tell you, I was a champion… (Laughs) I won first place, to say it better, I won first place for poetry. This was the Roma International festival in Lanciano in Chieti, Italy, close to Pescara, 18 categories of film, music and so on.
Twice I won first place for poetry. Among them, the poem “Ngjyra” [Color] was unavoidable. Let me tell you that my poems were translated in twelve-thirteen world languages, even in Chinese. But “Ngjyra”…nobody has avoided “Ngjyra”. “Ngjyra” was liked because we thought…I thought that through the poem “Ngjyra” I would talk a little about prejudice. Black color, or?…that characterizes us (laughs). I will tell you, the prejudices and self-prejudices that I am black and I don’t dare meet with Jeta {refers to the interviewer), Jeta is whiter than I. Why not, when Jeta accepts me as a very good friend? And I could also try to return twice more perhaps what I take from Jeta, thus creating the human relations that we lack. Not only in the relationship between Jeta and me, it could be Jean Philipe Raymond and I, who is as dark as I am… He is colored. Yes, they don’t have the prejudice we have in the Balkans.
From the postwar period, I was an adviser to the former President of Kosovo, Professor Fatmir Sejdiu, during his two mandates. Whether you like dealing with politics or not, it will deal with you. We do politics even when we didn’t know that we were doing politics, even a child sometimes does politics with his father or vice versa. Believe me, this is politics too. But to be involved in the politics of a community, then it is an open political game, where you demand rights, integration, the implementation of laws that are proposed, of current laws, you demand the revival of your community like other communities, which have all their rights given to them through the law, nothing less, but also even if more is given, you say, “Thank you! I return this,” but not less.
Politics is when the Roma community is given the right to education in Romani, like other communities, and no one denies this to us. We may have the elementary school system, where I did the curriculum for the students of the Roma community as member of the curriculum team in the Ministry of Education. But we have few teachers who would commit…a small staff, who would get involved in teaching Romani to children so they would not get assimilated. This was a politics [I pursued] during [my time] as an adviser to professor Sejdiu. We established a quota for students to be admitted in the university, that was a very good thing. We couldn’t even fill those quotas because we didn’t have ten Roma community students every year to send to study medicine, or other fields, but as many as needed to, enough so the student would feel comfortable. During my Advisory position to President Sejdiu, we managed to negotiate with the Roma Education Fund in Bulgaria, where we established scholarships for candidates of the Roma community.
It is politics when you, as Roma, as an actor, do politics and so you say to Jeton Neziraj, “Yes!” Now you have to write something current about how Roma people are forcibly deported from Western countries, where Jeton Neziraj with the pen in his hand, and in collaboration with me, creates this tragic-comic play that made a fuss in Europe, “Yue Madeleine Yue.” It tells the reality of Roma people, how they are discriminated in Western countries, discriminated like that, they bring them here to Kosovo, and here Roma people are discriminated twelve or fifteen times more, and it shows another reality. Lunacek, a politician of the European Council, meets with me in Vienna at the Volkstheater after the play and says…I say, “Did you like the play?” She says, “No, not all!” I said, “What?” She said, “I didn’t know that you were suffering so much,” and said, “I don’t know how could you stay one hour and ten-fifteen minutes on stage and endure all the turmoil that was going on,” the play’s turmoil, how could a father, because they blackmail your daughter, your son…Jeton Neziraj made a masterpiece to show others how this community is manipulated and discriminated.
My position as an adviser to Professor Sejdiu made me get involved in political elections. I didn’t like this profession, I don’t know how much others like it, but I thought culture was the main tool to hit the wrong politics on its head. I believe I have this material from [my] culture, I am known in every neighborhood of Kosovo. Every [Roma] neighborhood knows me as Kujtim Pacaku, let me say I am known even in the Balkans. I am known even in Bratislava, in the Roma Street, and in Tirana, for example in the neighborhood Nikua Avrami. It is a big neighborhood where in 2003 I worked on the first dictionary in six languages, while incorporating the Albanian language for the first time in the dictionary. I am known in the [Roma] neighborhood in Bulgaria, in Sofia all the children know me, they run after me, play music, I hang out with them, or in Paris, in the Roma neighborhood, or in Toulouse, Istanbul and so on.
I created a good reputation, I used culture every time as a weapon to hit the wrong politics on Roma or for Roma people. Now I am a member of the Parliament of Kosovo, I represent the Roma community, two years ago I got my Master’s in pedagogy of music. I am almost the first graduated Master. Sadly, I am waiting for my colleagues of my team to graduate, I am the only one for the moment who has graduated with ten, the highest grade. I worked seriously on my diploma, I hope to continue for a doctorate, I am negotiating with the Bulgarian University of Saints Cyril and Methodius, where I would like to obtain my doctorate in a very specific field of ethnomusicology, old Roma city music, along this I forgot to tell you that I have formed the first octet in Europe, an octet that performs acapella under my direction. We sing old Roma city songs that were sung in Kosovo three or four hundred years ago, because I forgot to tell you when the question was asked, “What did you work on in the shows from 1986?”
Now I remember, I always talked about rituals, traditions, Roma weddings, I always asked the elderly, “All right, did you sing any song ever?” It was for a good day, even though, for example, we talked about burial ceremonies. I say, “Come old lady, sing us one more song…” She sang the song, “Oh, oh, I will die. Oh, my mother, how am I going to go into the black soil?” I say, “Where did this song come from?” “Mother” [Old] Besa sang it for me, a woman who lived over one hundred years. She would say, “Ah, my grandmother taught me this song, my son.” “Is that so? And your grandmother, where did she learn it?” “From her grandmother.” When you had the hundred years old “mother” Besa in front of you in conversation, and her grandmother lived another hundred years, and her grandmother over two hundreds, it comes down that the song is about three-four hundred years old, that tells us that Roma people were in the Balkans for seven centuries, seven hundred years, since their migration from the Northern part of Upper India…now we are entering into history (laughs).
We brought much from India. When they become brides, our girls have the henna night. When they tie the strings… I know how to read some symbols that come out as figures through henna. These are symbols that the Roma brought from India, there are 19 hieroglyphs brought here from India. We find those hieroglyphs in henna. There are hieroglyphs, for example, there is a zero with a dot in the middle of the circle, that says, “Don’t drink water here!” or another hieroglyph, “Here there is no aid!” in order that the second group that comes to the village understands what is the situation in that village. They have engraved it into the stone, in the soil, in the wood, so that the other group who has come to that village, would know, would see the symbol, and say, “Ah, here they give aid. We are going to rest here.” Or, “Here they don’t help, they killed someone and it is not offered. I mean, there are 19 hieroglyphs. This is the local contribution of Roma from group to group.
When we speak about contribution, then we must definitely mention that culture has the biggest power to hit politics on its head, the wrong politics on its head! It is the Roma contribution to music and small businesses, especially in Prizren. Here an orchestra existed, called Çergagjite e Prizrenit [Wanderers of Prizren], formed by Roma, all Roma. In 1945, when the first radio station of Kosovo was established, it was Radio Prizren, and the general house of the television aired Çergagjite e Prizrenit. You have to understand that the opening of the program of an institution was done by Roma people every day. Furthermore, there are documents where the great Fan Noli explains Roma culture and music in a decisive manner. This is encountered very little in other writers.
“Zotëri a doni qymyr?”[Sir, do you want coal?] or “Luli i vocërr” [Little Luli], we all know, no one asked who is this Luli, how did he want to swallow the teacher with all his shoes, could he be Roma? Migjen didn’t explain this. Or the contribution of Roma musicians, where their entire opus of musical subjects was the same, it contained approximately from twenty or thirty musical themes, Roma also made music. They shared that musical opus or performed it with Roma, the same with Albanians, the same with Serbs, the same with Turks (laughs). Look, the same music was performed by Roma musicians, but to many groups of other communities. Do you know what happened here? It happened that the folk dance Shota , was performed by Roma for Serbs, and Serbs danced Shota, do you know this? Look what an indirect, invisible contribution!
Roma were the main carriers of music, and through the music they connected communities, at the Turks, they danced Bulgarian dances that the Turkish community danced too. Do you know what is more interesting? Women also danced this. Roma also danced the same dances after. The same Roma danced also Shota. Look, Roma as orchestra, what wonderful carriers have they been of musical culture, where none of the communities said, “No, no, I don’t want Shota!” no way. I mean, Roma were the main carriers.
The second example, maybe your generation doesn’t know that when men went to serve in the army, in the young people, the National Yugoslav Army at that time, not a single soldier went to the bus or train without music. It would have been astonishing for a soldier to go to the army without Roma music. Especially here in Prizren, usually it was very fashionable to go to the army accompanied by music…while heading towards the train station. There is another, another example that the Kosovo cultural institutions, whether before or after the war, not a single orchestra, nor any music association could exist without Roma, whether Shota, where two or three musicians were Roma, and also five professional musicians, whether the orchestra of Radio Pristina, or the association Agimi…