Part One
Marijana Toma: Good, for starters can you introduce yourself, tell us the basics of your biography, where were you born, name, surname and start the conversation?
Stefan Surlić: Good afternoon, my name is Stefan Surlic, I was born in Pristina, on January 30, 1989. Now I am a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Sciences and assistant professor of Comparative Politics.
Marijana Toma: Stefan, can you tell me something about your childhood, about your family, your parents, about Pristina at the time when you lived there?
Stefan Surlić: It was an interesting period then, growing up during the ‘90s and unlike all those dark stories and all that happened through the ‘90s, my childhood mostly has good memories, and growing up in Pristina was really special for me. I come from an intellectual family, which means my mother graduated from law school, my father is a mechanical engineer. So, that city, Pristina, is something for me, it has ideal proportions for the functioning of a four-member family, I have a sister who is older, and looked at from one perspective it isn’t so small to be just a parochial city, but then again looked at from another it represented at that time a capital of the Autonomous Province. It had some infrastructural capacities that enabled the formation of yourself and [raising] your kids. I don’t know, I often talk with my parents, if the war had not happened, if those disagreements had not happened, would we have still lived in Pristina, and would I have studied in Belgrade or Novi Sad like my parents or would I decide to stay there, but…
What maybe would be interesting for someone to hear, during the ‘90s we were aware that something was not right and I as a child noticed… but I remember very well every time we came to Belgrade for summer or winter vacation, because here we have most of our immediate and extended family outside of the country etcetera, I remember people’s reactions, they had a more negative view of what was happening in Kosovo than us, who lived “down” there, since everyday life included positive and negative sides. Mainly, the media carry only the worst, the darkest of what was happening in Kosovo. Pristina was the city that had a substantial Serbian population and naturally the majority was represented by the Albanian population and since childhood I remember it as a multicultural community, because firstly in the building where we lived the Albanian population really dominated, Albanian families and some apartments were inhabited by Serbian families. So, I socialized in the yard with… there was no difference between Serbian and Albanian kids. Of course, the language was an obstacle, but there are a lot of games where language is not necessary (incomp.) We did not communicate directly, it was not necessary. So, I remember that period from three to six or seven years old as a positive period.
Only later as a political scientist, as a person who lectures on Serbian-Albanian relations, what happened in Kosovo, I am researching the social and political dimension of everything that happened throughout the ‘90s and I am reading a huge number of researchers who speak of a divided society, let’s say an apartheid of the Albanian community, how they did not have the right to education, how they were fired from their jobs etcetera. On the other side, we, the people who lived there, see another dimension and I think that it was not exactly black and white. It is true that the arrival of Milosevic came with numerous changes to the political situation, because the autonomy was greatly reduced, but even this the Serbs considered as… according to the story from my childhood etcetera, it is not a normal situation that Serbia as a republic in Yugoslavia which has two autonomous provinces, and those two autonomous provinces can vote in the assembly on something that belonged to central Serbia, because the deputies from central Serbia cannot be asked what is happening in Vojvodina and in Kosovo. Whoever looks at this, this was really a weird situation.
But this got the reaction that was expected, which means, when you enable a degree of autonomy, then it is very hard when all the possible rights are taken away and of course that led to a kind of rebellion by the Albanian representatives. And this as a kid, I will return, I experienced this through the eyes of some of the kid’s parents I socialized with, “He is a Serb, be careful!” Etcetera. Then, and again looked from the other side I encountered a lot of positive people who did not see the difference at all on the side of Serbians or on the side of Albanians, so it is not all black and white, yes.
Marijana Toma: Tell us, in which part of Pristina did you grow up?
Stefan Surlić: That part is very big, it is called Dardania, which means I was near the commercial center Kičma [The Spine], in fact I grew up at the beginning of my childhood on one side, then we moved to another part, which was near Electro Economy or how people called it, Lepa Brena,[1] and it is called like that to this day. This part is now near the Catholic cathedral which is dedicated to Mother Teresa.
Marijana Toma: Is this the center of Pristina?
Stefan Surlić: Yes.
Marijana Toma: Which school did you go to ?
Stefan Surlić: My school is now called Dardania, it is near the heating plants in Pristina and near the commercial center Kičma, earlier it was called differently, first Lenin and then later Miloš Crnjanski, which means, when I registered in school, at the time when its name was changed, which means it was not Lenin anymore, but the school was called Miloš Crnjanski.
Marijana Toma: Does that school remind you of anything, were you in a school where there were mixed classes or at that time children were taught in two languages?
Stefan Surlić: No, then it was only, what I actually remember, the [Dardania] school was divided, exactly that, there was a Serbian and an Albanian part so to speak, they had different entrances. And that was the case until the beginning of war. We had this central courtyard actually, and I will never forget that image during, actually it was at the beginning, actually in ‘99, when we still didn’t know whether it would come down to bombings or not, and the situation and the atmosphere were so very tense and as children we felt it, because it was really… the OSCE mission, the agreements and everything else, what it means, the frequent attacks by the KLA[2] in all parts of Kosovo. Pristina was left like an almost isolated part in the middle, it was only it. We saw on the news, I remember as a kid with my parents, on prime time news, “the KLA entered Rahovec,” a place which was a few dozen kilometers from Pristina.
I mean, a situation which was not normal, there were very frequent bombings in Pristina and this happened on the ground floor of our building. I returned to this image from school, it was sometime in February ‘99, we could see one another from the window, we were on one side, they were on the other, and I know that all we kids raised three fingers and they two. We just looked at one another and it was a still [image], there were no threats nor anything else, stillness, through that glass. And that is one of the images that will stay with me forever, that stillness, no emotional response, just raised fingers and a line which seemed at the time, and it seems, as time passes, insurmountable, and was passed down to the younger generations.
Marijana Toma: How old were you then?
Stefan Surlić: In ‘99, I was ten years old, I remember exactly, yes. I remember, this bothered me a lot even today when I go to Pristina and I talk to them about why they had the parallel system of education, where they studied in some improvised schools, in houses, in basements. I do not oppose this because it was like this, but we should keep in mind that a huge part of Kosovo’s population lived in rural areas, so even earlier the schools were in houses etcetera, [were] in cultural centers.
I remember this period, the year ‘99 included, because the school was clearly divided, so the kids of Serbian nationality and Albanian nationality went to official institutions, which means there was no improvisation of sorts, and until ‘98, since the director and the school administration did not organize for us to have a school bakery though the long break, we went to the Albanian side because they had the better bakeries and we went there…
We were allowed, there was a door through which you could freely pass, and there we bought something for the long break in the bakery, you know, in the Albanian bakery and there was no problem. Which means there were the Serb and Albanian children, all together. Until ‘99, when it came down to the physical fight between the grown-ups, the seventh and eighth graders. Albanians and Serbs met at the door, it was understood that there will be problems, fighting, the directors of both sides of the school decided to close the door and the kids to be no longer in contact.
Marijana Toma: Actually, when you remember the first years of your school, in principle, kids did not have contact with each other, I mean except in that case, eventually in the house, in the courtyard, the building etc?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, we did not have that sort of a direct contact, say, the language was a big obstacle and not only the language. When you look at some of the much more developed European nations, which live side by side, also under the same monarchies etcetera, [even] they ask for some special rights. In the Balkans there are so many differences, I mean, Serbs and Albanians are two different worlds, in terms of religious views, ethnicity and cultural views, and again there are so many positive examples of mutual friendships and mixed marriages and there is little talk about this. It turns out that Albanians and Serbs absolutely had no communication, as if they were always at war, divided, and here there is no positive story of interethnic relations.
Marijana Toma: Do you remember any of those positive stories, you know something from your own environment, right?
Stefan Surlić: I remember, of course, from my own family’s example. I mean, my father after his work at the state-run firm, opened his own private firm, it was the only multinational firm, which means Serbs and Albanians worked there, then a lot of people would say to my dad, “But, why?” and things like this, but I remember his reaction was like, “I need good workers, good handymen, if someone is good at their job, it doesn’t matter absolutely at any moment whether they’re Serbs or Albanians.” But these were rare examples of someone being ready to organize something like that, but I remember, I went to the field often with my dad, how they cooperated very well, worked together on common chores, Serbs had even more problems among each other, and Albanians among each other, rather than between different nationalities. I also find positive examples in that during the day in our building the Serbian and Albanian elite gathered and looked rationally at this sea of unreasonableness in which they were and this situation wasn’t convenient for either one of them.
Marijana Toma: What did your parents do?
Stefan Surlić: My mother worked in the Executive Council, she was a member of the Executive Council in the Autonomous Province, whereas my father worked in a few work places, the last place before going to the private firm Robotika, he worked in the shock absorbers factory, which was located between Pristina and Kosovo Polje.[3] I think the shock absorber factory was popular in the time of former Yugoslavia, I think they produced shock absorbers for Peugeot etcetera, yes, yes, that. Even today someone says, “Aha! I know. Near Pristina there was that huge factory, which hired several thousands of people.”
Marijana Toma: Are your parents of Kosovo origin, are they born in Kosovo or did they come here?
Stefan Surlić: No. No, it’s a very specific situation. Actually my parents are colonists from Lika,[4] they came to Kosovo, whereas my mother comes from a mixed marriage, my grandmother was Austrian, whereas my grandfather was from Belgrade. And here is a long story, we would need one or two more hours to explain how it was…
Marijana Toma: Can you briefly [tell us]?
Stefan Surlić: Shortly, yes, my grandfather was in the war and was captured as a prisoner after the Second World War. My parents are quite an older generation, so the years ‘46 and ‘50, their family I mean, my grandmother and my grandfather were somewhere along the years ‘14, ‘17 to ‘26, ‘27 of the 20th century, so they remember the Second World War quite well and there in Salzburg my grandfather met my Austrian grandmother, so he stayed there.
Then, they were a pro-monarchist family, and old Belgrade families all lived in Dedinje. One brother was a communist, but what happened then in ‘45, was that brother did not want to participate in the events that were happening here in Belgrade, even though he was a sworn communist of the Second World War, then the party punished him by appointing him commissar in Pristina. So, around the ‘50s, before his death, he asked to see his brother, and according to my mother, you know, my grandfather with my Austrian grandmother came from Salzburg to Belgrade. Since then he was advised to not live in Belgrade, because the UDB[5] had followed him to the border, and it almost led to his liquidation etcetera, etcetera. However, thanks to this second brother he took the advice and went to live in Pristina, where his brother also lived. His brother died after a short period of time, whereas they stayed there and so on.
So, I only remember the stories that my Austrian grandmother told me. I asked her, “What was it like through the ‘50s, ‘60s, you were from a place like Salzburg, which is so beautiful, and you came to Pristina?” She said that the demographics changed significantly, and that Pristina was actually a Turkish town, in fact there were mostly Turkish people and old beyleri[6] families which later according to a program in the ‘60s massively went to Turkey and a small number of Serbian and Albanian residents were left. She went out wearing an extraordinary dress in the street of Pristina and went to the market and at that time all the women wore dimia,[7] head scarfs and that she looked very strange among them so they started touching her and if it was not for the city police to save her, she would say, “I was really surprised, there was really a clash of civilizations.”
Whereas from my father’s side, they’re from Lika, they came from Lika in many waves, which means, it was in the ‘20s and ‘30s, immediately after the First World War and then the land was distributed, I mean especially to those who participated in the First World War. So here was a moment of “holy land,”[8] when everyone remembered that they were from Kosovo and hundreds of years ago they came from Lika and now in reality it was some sort of return to where they came from, whether they were supported by Montenegrins or Kosovars, but it was like this. Mainly those places, like Kosovo Polje, in the vicinity of Lipjan, there are many villages and places where people from Lika, Herzegovina, Montenegro lived.
Marijana Toma: Interesting. But your parents both studied in Pristina and that’s where they met?
Stefan Surlić: No. No, I mean, my mother studied in Belgrade and Pristina, while my father studied in Novi Sad. So, again they decided to come back, and live in… in Pristina.
Marijana Toma: What is, did you ever talk with your parents, what is to them, I think, now simply, I am starting from another position, what made them come back after their studies in Belgrade and Novi Sad, and decide to come back to Pristina?
Stefan Surlić: I think that the family factor was crucial, because their parents were already down here, and I mean, and I think regarding my dad he had a lot of work opportunities because he actually started working, even though he is the generation of ‘46, now I don’t know for sure with factography to show it to you, but the ‘60s, but he was a person that finished technical high school, he started to work in a factory, after receiving a scholarship from the factory he went to study Mechanical Engineering. So, in a way he was always set to live in Kosovo.
My mother was in fact always against it and she always repeated her father’s words that from that city and from Kosovo you have to run away miles away because there is no normal life and that there will always be wars and disagreements, and this is how she talked about it all the time throughout my childhood, I remember her words and my father used to say…. Well, only my Austrian grandmother for example was on that other side, every time my mother used to emphasize this wish, “Let’s go to Belgrade, to Novi Sad,” let’s go throughout the ‘90s, “because there’s no life here.” My grandmother always said there, “I moved once here and don’t you move these old bones [… ] from Pristina.” So…
Marijana Toma: And what does that period remind you of, meaning when you say the ‘90s, and when your mother recalled your grandfather’s words, it was, I do not know, I know at one moment in ‘95 when a group of people arrived that had left after Oluja[9] and they came, came to Kosovo, was there some kind of echo of those clashes down there, which you may remember as a child, even though maybe you were quite young then?
Stefan Surlić: I remember. It affected us largely especially the population that arrived from those areas, together with my father and a few relatives in contact with others, and at that time the phone lines were not as advanced, it was the middle of war, no internet, nothing, so I remember after Operation Storm, in ‘95, the matter was who survived, who had arrived to Serbia, and very quickly they were organized. A big number of families settled in Kosovo during the ‘90s, you know, the years ‘95 and ‘96. My father formed a sort of informal organization to help those people to find employment, so they could stay there and lead a normal life.
They were settled in the sports hall and I remember I went there with him and I think that it was one of the saddest scenes, where all the families lived together on some poor looking mattresses, lying, with no means whatsoever, without financial means, they had been given only the sport’s hall, and winter was near, an unbelievable situation. And a normal accommodation had to be found as soon as possible. Eh, for a long time some old people lived in barracks in some improvised places.
Then a lot of them went, there were some migration programs to the USA and Australia and those people even today call, they call my father and so on… I remember a woman came and said to my father, like, “Excuse me, I do not have money for bread, can you help me, give me something?” I think there were about 50 dinars, you know, on the blue bill there was the portrait of Miloš Obrenović, I do not know if it was a 50 or something similar, but I know my father took it and gave it to her, this was a bill and she thanked him, to, to, to the sky, this is… I remember this as a child, I have these images and scenes, maybe now they sound vulgar and my father brought a bottle of liquor, he had a depressing episode from this scene, and a few kilograms of sausage and when he entered that hall he said, “Where are you people, how are you?” When they saw him they all came near him at once, they surrounded him, they all wanted to take a glass and a piece of sausage, they had a type of cheese and the sausage and for a moment a positive atmosphere returned because they noticed they are not neglected.
But a great resistance existed among the Albanians, I remember that it was interpreted as a sort of new colonization, that they are bringing a language that they do not know, so the sellers refusing, for example, to sell, when they said, kruh [bread in Croatian] or something similar, because they did not understand what it meant. So it was, I remember these things. But I know that soon those families left, or they found shelter in Serbia, or somewhere around Belgrade, those who were organized or in those programs, the majority are in Australia, America, even today.
Marijana Toma: Tell us now, you went to school in ‘86, ‘96 right?
Stefan Surlić: ‘96.
Marijana Toma: ‘96?
Stefan Surlić: Actually earlier, ’95. I started going to school when I was only six years old.
Marijana Toma: And in fact you, when the war began in Kosovo, in which grade were you?
Stefan Surlić: Yes good, when the conflicts started, they were more intense in ‘97. I remember the fear of having to leave Pristina, even if we were talking about another place or about the house that we had in the village, which is in the Lipjan district and I always asked my father, “Did the terrorists arrive?” Meaning, are we safe? My father would say, “Do not worry son, there are policemen too, the military are keeping the order, nothing will happen.” “How is it that nothing will happen, look they are reporting this, reporting that?” The stories then of those people who were young reservists who were in Koshare and in general along the border, and in Drenica.
Then, one time my father was obliged to go to Peć,[10] we were also very scared for him until the late night hours, because the roads were completely blocked. The KLA units would take people out of the car, kill them and I remember one and many cases like this, when I thought my father would come home or my mother would tell, “Do you know whom they killed, do you know?” And someone like this, someone like that, mostly…. Man is a strange creature, accepts some things as normal, adapts fast to abnormal situations. Now, when I tell this to someone, they say, “When you heard someone was killed, why did you not pack your things and go?” No, back then the mere fact that we lived there affected us, I notice that even now, when I follow events in the world, I ask myself how can these people live there, I don’t know, like in Syria, in Palestine, even though every day they have bomb attacks, a lot of shootings, simply people accept this as a normal life occurrence so they are in denial until the end, until they face the worst moment and until then they do not take any action.
Until the last moment my parents were convinced there will be nothing from bombings, because no one in Europe or America will think to bombard in this way a whole country and cause many victims, and months later again Milosević was taken down by the people themselves and not by NATO bombings. Good, now I will include a moment from politics, but I really remember a moment on March 27 [1999] and that night, we did not have any stockpiles in the house, the power went out, then the water stopped running, when the explosions were heard. Then, since my mother speaks a couple of foreign languages well, especially RTL, German and other channels, when she watched [the news] in German, there they announced that NATO aircrafts were launched from Aviano [Italy], troops from Albania and Macedonia were coming into Kosovo and that in no way the option of ground offensive was excluded. And finally my parents understood that it was the end, and they only needed a few hours to get from the Kumanova district, Tetovo and see in Pristina and there the general war to start and nobody will make it out uninjured. My father said, “If somebody said in that moment, that night, after I was completely ready, and if he offered and said, ‘All of your riches, the most valuable, give to me all that you have, and we will take your kids to a safe place, they will get to Belgrade,’ I would have signed and said, ‘Go.’” Because actually this is a moment, in that eruption panic and fear that only the worst can be expected in the coming hours.
If I go back earlier, the period of the ‘90s, I am saying you could feel that kind of atmosphere, but there were always some positive examples. But I remember those provisions in protests and only in ‘97-‘98 we were not very sure that we would come back from school to the house alone, and always either our teacher would gather us or the parents in an organized manner to escort the kids, especially if they would walk. Even different groups of kids would wait for each other, Serbs and Albanians, it was known exactly who would come back from school and now someone could interfere, so we were always ready, that a fight between the kids could happen, but again, there were talks of how politics reflects in all aspects of society, including children.
The other thing that at the same time was weird and now can sound racist and chauvinist, but today if you are Serbian or Albanian, they will tell you they can recognize from their face who is Serb and who is Albanian. True, this happened, I remember my friend who lived in an edge and who was completely Albanian, ethnically, he asked me to escort him, to go together, because they will recognize that he is not Serbian, by physiognomy. Even today I do not know, but Serbs and Albanians both recognized one another with, with no words. And this was the situation before the war, then there was the fear that they will recognize us, that we are Serbian. Or yes, I remember how some of my friends who saw some people who were Albanian and wanted to trick them, they would know they were Albanians, let’s trick them, but…
Marijana Toma: These actually, I mean, in all society, even the kinds seem to be involved, not in physical fights, but it was reflected on them.
Stefan Surlić: Yes, yes.
Marijana Toma: So tell me now, when you started the story, you said you were with your parents when the bombing started? During the whole time you were in Pristina while the bombing was happening, right?
Stefan Surlić: No. I mean, the day after, my mother, since she worked in the Executive Council, came and said, “I found out that the military is coming through Mitrovica, and that road is clear.” And then it was the option of ground intervention, then it happened that my father, since he was born in ‘46 and he was not at all due to military service, he was called trećepozivac as they were called then, even in the fifth and sixth decade of his life, to get out, so we could get at least to Mitrovica, so we could leave Kosovo, because we decided to not stay in Kosovo because the general war will start, while my mother who worked in state institutions said, “I will stay here, since I can speak the languages.” Hence, my mom had nicknames like “Pravda,” [Justice] since she worked in the justice department and after her Austrian mother, “Nemica,” [the German] “Švabica,” [the cockroach, another name for Germans] and what not. She thought that being like that she would not be harassed or hurt even by her Albanian neighbors, while with the foreigners she could speak German, French and English, this is what she would say, “I will stay here to keep the wealth,” because all we had was our apartment, and the things in the apartment, this is this.
So, we left Kosovo with the essentials, some small luggage, bags, as I remember I had an atlas, at that time I really liked looking at the atlas so I took it with me and my sister a few books and these, we really left Kosovo with these things and we did not come until that informal visit, I think it was the year 2004. Five years later.
Marijana Toma: So, can you tell me something about leaving, how did it look, simply when you see these things from a child’s point of view, how did that journey look, the military?
Stefan Surlić: It was one of the most scandalous scenes from what I remember, inadequate even today. My father said, “I grew five years older through this ride from Pristina to Mitrovica.” Because there was not, the military had passed, there were no cars on this street, in either direction. Serbian and Albanian villages, if there was a camera to record, just like in the most horrible movies, when something really bad happens and there is no living person.
So, that ride to Mitrovica, was absolutely desolate and empty, since we had an old car, my father was afraid that something would happen and we would be left in that wilderness, him alone with two teenagers and it was like that. Only when we arrived, you know, when we passed the southern part of Mitrovica and the factories, my father said, “It is all good, we arrived.” And then it was easier, from Mitrovica to Raska, and we stopped there.
Here is a small place, Brvenik in Raska, which after the bombings, we got out of the destruction, because during the bombings it was not safe for us to travel further, so we left Kosovo but let’s stay here somewhere to see and now so, like everybody is watching, the political elites thought that the bombing would last a few days in general, they would not last that long. As these bombings ended, it would calm down. We left Kosovo to see, maybe it would come down to the conflict, to the conflict somewhere in the field, if it does not happen, we should go back. But we were in Brvenik and in difficulty, in the morning of April 6, the bombing started, respectively the missiles on the Brvenik bridge, a bridge that not only goes down to the village but also to the rails, which as the bird flies was only 20 meters from the hotel, here we were in half ruins and we left those rooms and now I think the time was exactly 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning.
I remember this, this was a huge trauma, because for a moment the walls started to break, we woke up in the middle of the night, and pieces of plaster were falling onto us. I remember that our father hugged us and then talked, he said, “In that moment I thought that if something falls and smashes over us, at least I protected you so in a way so you could live in these ruined places.” Thankfully the wall broke only on two sides, the windows and the doors fell with an incredible speed, and we did not have even a scratch from all that happened, a weird miracle… I mean, then we saw, we were part of, it was a collective action, like never before the solidarity between Serbs during the bombings, because people from Raska, came to help from everywhere, to clean etcetera. Every room had their window on their beds, this was the only room where the window was on the side of the bed, so when the windows flew, they did not fall on the bed but on the side of the table and that saved us.
Otherwise, if we were in one of them, in the storm of those explosions, directly would… Then thousands of shells which were in every side, in the room where we were we knew they were mostly with rocks, if they had hit us, surely we would immediately die. This was surely God’s wish that we live and get out of this ruin, because the roof of the house was ruined, the stairs, and we left like we were leaving catacombs, we went through to leave this motel, it was called “Markov konak”. I remember it well…
Marijana Toma: On which date did this happen?
Stefan Surlić: On April 6. April 6. There are, I think that there was a TV team, it was the RTS[11] team who filmed, they filmed all over Serbia, namely in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia when the bombs fell on… like this… but I remember those women who worked in that motel, when they came crying because they saw from afar that the motel was not there anymore, that there were only ruins there, and they knew we were the only guests, the only guests in that motel. They came to the ruins crying and sobbing and when they saw my sister and me, they had a wave of emotions, and they started hugging us for hours, and so we were saved.
Marijana Toma: This was… ah, in this time was your mother in Kosovo?
Stefan Surlić: Yes. But now, this happened too, this case was a shock for my people because they had the number of that hotel that was bombed and here all the communication connections stopped, the motel disengaged and they, namely my mother and my grandmother, who were left there, saw that Brvenik was bombed on television, a place near the motel, the film of the ruins showed that, “It is still not known whether there were any victims.” And our family members were in shock, they thought the worst had happened. My mom said, beside feeling hurt and being shocked, my grandmother lost herself, she started crying and fainted, she said, “I was next to this torment, then I had to take care of grandmother too.” And in this moment they did not know what to do and how to find out if we were alive, whether anything happened to us, or we were only injured.
But in the evening we barely got to a phone thanks to some people we got to Balevc, I think in that place, there a person gave us the opportunity to call from that place, I got the connection, I was the first to call, I remember my mother’s voice, “Where are you, are you alive, what is happening, how’s the…” I said, “We are fine, everything is fine.” Then they came by bus to see and became convinced that everything was fine with us, they thought we were hiding something and staying silent, or something happened to our father, and again they decided go back, they said… My father also thought that it was better to go back to Pristina, because Serbia was being bombarded, it was the same as being in Pristina or any other city, even though Pristina was bombarded to a great extent. Then my mother asked my father to go to Montenegro, because there were less. We had an apartment in Tivat, and went there.
But, I will say it again, you know what was the reason we did not continue from there from Raska, it was that we thought that we would come back, during the time of the bombings every bridge, every tunnel, every road could be targeted and there was the risk at any moment of being left in the middle of the street and dying from NATO’s bombings. Even my father was skeptical, in fact because of the bridges he knew in Montenegro he was afraid that until we get to Tivat and that it was a long way, but we decided, we left and finally got to Montenegro.
Marijana Toma: When did you go to Montenegro?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, we went after the sixth, so it was sometime around April 10, 11. After four or five days luckily, because there was a parallel bridge and a road which is bombarded by NATO three times in a row. And I remember that the owner of that motel offered us, “Listen, the warehouse is full of food, drinks, you do not need to pay for anything, everything is going to get damaged anyway, the motel is empty what guests, stay, near here is Kosovo, Pristina, whatever happens,” etcetera. Then my father said, only, “Whatever will be, will be. Not to listen to my wife and mother, but if something happens to you and I will be held guilty so, we, luckily left that place that then was bombarded three more times.
Marijana Toma: So like this you went to Tivat in April and there now, (incomprehensible) I did not ask this, your sister, how old is she?
Stefan Surlić: She is ‘84.
Marijana Toma: She is older than you?
Stefan Surlić: Yes.
Marijana Toma: There you continued your education, namely you registered at school and how was it? You stayed in your apartment, if you can only explain this to me?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, yes, actually that apartment was not paid until the end so there we started paying rent, we were with the owner for a short period of time, then we moved etcetera, in the end we went there and we decided to stay there. My mother came to Tivat after the bombings, after KFOR came to Kosovo and after the withdrawal of the army [Serbian].
Marijana Toma: She went back to Kosovo?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, she stayed there. So my mother and my grandmother went back to Kosovo again to save our property and did not leave, did not leave the apartment, so they were there until the end, until the worst phase when with KFOR’s entrance not only a big group of Albanians, and not only those who lived in Pristina, but also those people who never lived in Pristina, who started with handspikes to break the doors of all the Serb houses, they stole and looted. And my mother says, for the time she stayed, so July-August, she experienced the worst scenes with constant yelling, rifles in the middle of the night, bangs on the doors, and she stayed with locked doors, she was completely locked in, she put the closet to the front door, she never went out of the apartment’s door, like in movies she took the sheets and tied them to the balcony and like this she would have the chance to jump in case of attack. And…
She had decided to stay there until the end, and my father invited her a couple of times, “Let the property to the hands of God, we will create another life, it is not the first time we started our lives from zero. You are a lawyer, I am an engineer, if we do not find a job so what, even if we lose our apartment, health, it is important to be alive and healthy, what would we need those things for if our children are left without a mother, that would be very heavy.” When we last heard her on the phone, neither me, my sister nor my father recognized my mother’s voice, which means she was stressed, agony from the things she experienced during the time she was there and in the end my father literally said to her, “Leave the apartment as soon as possible.” Then on one of the last buses that left from Pristina to Serbia she came first to Raska, then from Rasta to Tivat?
Marijana Toma: Everything was left there?
Stefan Surlić: Everything was left there. We called a few friends, namely my mother and a few Albanian family friends, if they could get in [the apartment] and if they can save anything. She took with her the photo albums, something for memories, whereas she did not know how to take the other things, so it was.
So, thanks to some good Albanian people that apartment was left to us, we took a few things later, some not, but simply in war times a person only thinks about saving their life, to be all well, you do not even think about the other things, what was left from the property and what you would have used. We thought, this dimension is very important, to move to Belgrade and my mother had opportunities as the other state employees to get an apartment in the other cities in Serbia, a job, but all the friends who were in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Nis notified us, they told us that their children could not integrate and adapt, because in classes they were being called Shiptar,[12] they were being teased, bullied, tricked, as if they are to blame for everything.
For example, at birthday parties, “Everybody is invited, those Shiptar from Kosovo are not invited, and so on. And this in Belgrade schools, they are not exactly small environments, so… This made me think even today that we as a nation love territories, but we do not love people, this phenomenon had been proved in Croatia too, in Bosnia, and in Kosovo. We are talking about “holy land” and fighting until the end. Then when those people because of this kind of politics suffer and come to these centers from where these politics came and these politics have created, and then these people are the ones to blame for why all these things happened, then they sold everything there, came with a lot of money and occupied everything that could be occupied here, so in this sense we are really a nation who always appreciated the territory more than our own population, that is why in the Balkans there is less territory compared to populations who have endured, but they protect their population regardless of anything.
Marijana Toma: Then you really… I want to go back to Tivat because we have ten minutes before the break and then I have to change the card… Tell me, until when did you live in Tivat.
Stefan Surlić: In the end me and my father decided to live in Tivat, because my sister stayed for a while and went to study, actually she finished high school in Kotor and then we went to study, so…
Marijana Toma: In Belgrade?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, in Belgrade. So, we separated as a family only because we had, my mother and sister were in Belgrade, my mother worked, my sister studied, whereas I decided to stay there, I like the sea (smiles). So, Tivat was a very good environment to grow up in, a place with a lot of different populations where people from Croatia and Belgrade were placed a long time ago. Croatia residents, Montenegrin, Serbian a mixed environment about whom I am not able to say anything negative and with whom I did not even experience anything negative. And secondly, the politics of Montenegro’s government then was welcoming to immigrants, they organised help and…
Marijana Toma: You went to high school in Tivat right?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, in Tivat.
Marijana Toma: And how is your life now, I mean, taking into consideration that it is a huge difference, taking into consideration how Pristina looks, how Tivat looks, coastal city, sea?
Stefan Surlić: I think they really are the places where I grew up, namely where I was born, where I spent my childhood and the place where somehow I formed a personality, after I grew up I started thinking about registering in political science, to explain to myself how all of this happened and who influenced my way of life to be just like this. The conflicts in Kosovo, on the other side I can say it was a situation of a not stable politics in between refined relationships of Serbia and Montenegro, referendum campaigns, and really until the independence of Montenegro, I lived in Tivat and then I mean in 2007 I registered at the Department of Political Science in Belgrade.
The different, Pristina as a big city, over 150,000 residents before the war, Tivat a small city between 10,000 and 15,000 residents, but it is a very organised city, which had offered me some school and outside of school activities, I played sports and other extra activities, I went to music school, to radio etcetera. Really an environment that enables especially in this period of growing up to live a beautiful, calm life and to have everything five minutes away.
But again that feeling of origin means a lot, I discuss it a lot with people, especially when they want to go live in the outside world. Regardless of how here in Belgrade a lot of things can make you angry, what are the people, what are the institutions, a mess in the city, there are things like this in big cities in all over the world, this is one, the second is the feeling that you belong to someone, to not be alone, here I have the friends of my friends, that here I have my childhood friends, here we have our immediate and extended family, you have someone here.
However, Montenegro was the place where I did not have not even one cousin, even my father and both of my parents had no friendships, work colleagues, it was a completely new world. It was easier for me to integrate in that world compared to my father who first worked as an engineer in the “Bokeljka” factory, then as a teacher in school, there he taught Technical Education and Mathematics, but again he had that feeling of loneliness, because this is not it – me and my father all alone in that place where we had no one of our origin. Even in terms of identity in the sense of strengthening integrity, it is quite difficult, now the moment you go to another place you experience this and notice that you are a fragile creature and a creature who cannot do without community.
Marijana Toma: In that period, I would stop here a little, maybe a short question, I mean, high school, how does it look now, I mean you came in the fifth grade, it interests me how was that kind of transition, did you clash with these situations as are…?
Stefan Surlić: No, No.
Marijana Toma: There? What my friends told me was that kids experienced things here [thinking about the people who moved that are in Serbia from this period]?
Stefan Surlić: No, not at any moment, it was the opposite, they were more sensitive towards me in the sense that immediately next to me were the director and the teacher. I was lucky enough that this was the transition, now I do know how the situation is in the schools in Serbia, but earlier it was so from the fourth grade new classes so always two or three people knew each-other but a huge number of students in our class did not know each other. Eh, it was easy then to not create any contact.
Second, there were a lot of kids of seasonal workers, people from Serbia, say, people who live and speak the same dialect, and who were in different classes and I completely had it[the dialect], I was very welcome and completely accepted. I think I even was in the fifth grade when I was chosen as a class leader, actually parallels, I was chosen, I personally do not know this kind of not being accepted in society, I did not experience it in Montenegro, I am very sure about this when I say that I was very well accepted in Montenegro, I was treated well and well integrated.
Marijana Toma: Super. Should we take a break now? It has been 54 minutes.
[1] Lepa Brena, a well known turbo-folk singer in former Yugoslavia. Her name literally means, Beautiful Brena.
[2] The acronym stands for Kosovo Liberation Army. In Albanian Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosoves, the UÇK first came out in an open conflict against Serbian security forces in March 1998, in the rural region of Drenica, 35 kilometers north of the capital city of Kosovo, Pristina.
[3] Fushë Kosovë in Albanian.
[4] Lika village.
[5] Uprava državne bezbednosti – State Security Administration.
[6] Bey, an Ottoman title; Beyleri was a family surname and marked the family as having close ties to the Ottoman Empire.
[7] Billowing white satin pantaloons that narrow at the ankles, Turkish style. They are made with about twelve meters of fabric.
[8] Reference to the official Serbian national narrative that considers Kosovo a holy land, the cradle of the Serbian nation, since the 1389 Battle against the Ottomans.
[9] Oluja, literally the Storm, was a Serb paramilitary group which committed most atrocious crimes during Kosovo war.
[10] Peja in Albanian.
[11] Radio-televizija Srbija – Serbian Radio television
[12] This is a derogatory term for Albanians from Kosovo, to distinguish them from Albanians from Albania proper.
Part One
Marijana Toma: Good, for starters can you introduce yourself, tell us the basics of your biography, where were you born, name, surname and start the conversation?
Stefan Surlić: Good afternoon, my name is Stefan Surlic, I was born in Pristina, on January 30, 1989. Now I am a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Sciences and assistant professor of Comparative Politics.
Marijana Toma: Stefan, can you tell me something about your childhood, about your family, your parents, about Pristina at the time when you lived there?
Stefan Surlić: It was an interesting period then, growing up during the ‘90s and unlike all those dark stories and all that happened through the ‘90s, my childhood mostly has good memories, and growing up in Pristina was really special for me. I come from an intellectual family, which means my mother graduated from law school, my father is a mechanical engineer. So, that city, Pristina, is something for me, it has ideal proportions for the functioning of a four-member family, I have a sister who is older, and looked at from one perspective it isn’t so small to be just a parochial city, but then again looked at from another it represented at that time a capital of the Autonomous Province. It had some infrastructural capacities that enabled the formation of yourself and [raising] your kids. I don’t know, I often talk with my parents, if the war had not happened, if those disagreements had not happened, would we have still lived in Pristina, and would I have studied in Belgrade or Novi Sad like my parents or would I decide to stay there, but…
What maybe would be interesting for someone to hear, during the ‘90s we were aware that something was not right and I as a child noticed… but I remember very well every time we came to Belgrade for summer or winter vacation, because here we have most of our immediate and extended family outside of the country etcetera, I remember people’s reactions, they had a more negative view of what was happening in Kosovo than us, who lived “down” there, since everyday life included positive and negative sides. Mainly, the media carry only the worst, the darkest of what was happening in Kosovo. Pristina was the city that had a substantial Serbian population and naturally the majority was represented by the Albanian population and since childhood I remember it as a multicultural community, because firstly in the building where we lived the Albanian population really dominated, Albanian families and some apartments were inhabited by Serbian families. So, I socialized in the yard with… there was no difference between Serbian and Albanian kids. Of course, the language was an obstacle, but there are a lot of games where language is not necessary (incomp.) We did not communicate directly, it was not necessary. So, I remember that period from three to six or seven years old as a positive period.
Only later as a political scientist, as a person who lectures on Serbian-Albanian relations, what happened in Kosovo, I am researching the social and political dimension of everything that happened throughout the ‘90s and I am reading a huge number of researchers who speak of a divided society, let’s say an apartheid of the Albanian community, how they did not have the right to education, how they were fired from their jobs etcetera. On the other side, we, the people who lived there, see another dimension and I think that it was not exactly black and white. It is true that the arrival of Milosevic came with numerous changes to the political situation, because the autonomy was greatly reduced, but even this the Serbs considered as… according to the story from my childhood etcetera, it is not a normal situation that Serbia as a republic in Yugoslavia which has two autonomous provinces, and those two autonomous provinces can vote in the assembly on something that belonged to central Serbia, because the deputies from central Serbia cannot be asked what is happening in Vojvodina and in Kosovo. Whoever looks at this, this was really a weird situation.
But this got the reaction that was expected, which means, when you enable a degree of autonomy, then it is very hard when all the possible rights are taken away and of course that led to a kind of rebellion by the Albanian representatives. And this as a kid, I will return, I experienced this through the eyes of some of the kid’s parents I socialized with, “He is a Serb, be careful!” Etcetera. Then, and again looked from the other side I encountered a lot of positive people who did not see the difference at all on the side of Serbians or on the side of Albanians, so it is not all black and white, yes.
Marijana Toma: Tell us, in which part of Pristina did you grow up?
Stefan Surlić: That part is very big, it is called Dardania, which means I was near the commercial center Kičma [The Spine], in fact I grew up at the beginning of my childhood on one side, then we moved to another part, which was near Electro Economy or how people called it, Lepa Brena,[1] and it is called like that to this day. This part is now near the Catholic cathedral which is dedicated to Mother Teresa.
Marijana Toma: Is this the center of Pristina?
Stefan Surlić: Yes.
Marijana Toma: Which school did you go to ?
Stefan Surlić: My school is now called Dardania, it is near the heating plants in Pristina and near the commercial center Kičma, earlier it was called differently, first Lenin and then later Miloš Crnjanski, which means, when I registered in school, at the time when its name was changed, which means it was not Lenin anymore, but the school was called Miloš Crnjanski.
Marijana Toma: Does that school remind you of anything, were you in a school where there were mixed classes or at that time children were taught in two languages?
Stefan Surlić: No, then it was only, what I actually remember, the [Dardania] school was divided, exactly that, there was a Serbian and an Albanian part so to speak, they had different entrances. And that was the case until the beginning of war. We had this central courtyard actually, and I will never forget that image during, actually it was at the beginning, actually in ‘99, when we still didn’t know whether it would come down to bombings or not, and the situation and the atmosphere were so very tense and as children we felt it, because it was really… the OSCE mission, the agreements and everything else, what it means, the frequent attacks by the KLA[2] in all parts of Kosovo. Pristina was left like an almost isolated part in the middle, it was only it. We saw on the news, I remember as a kid with my parents, on prime time news, “the KLA entered Rahovec,” a place which was a few dozen kilometers from Pristina.
I mean, a situation which was not normal, there were very frequent bombings in Pristina and this happened on the ground floor of our building. I returned to this image from school, it was sometime in February ‘99, we could see one another from the window, we were on one side, they were on the other, and I know that all we kids raised three fingers and they two. We just looked at one another and it was a still [image], there were no threats nor anything else, stillness, through that glass. And that is one of the images that will stay with me forever, that stillness, no emotional response, just raised fingers and a line which seemed at the time, and it seems, as time passes, insurmountable, and was passed down to the younger generations.
Marijana Toma: How old were you then?
Stefan Surlić: In ‘99, I was ten years old, I remember exactly, yes. I remember, this bothered me a lot even today when I go to Pristina and I talk to them about why they had the parallel system of education, where they studied in some improvised schools, in houses, in basements. I do not oppose this because it was like this, but we should keep in mind that a huge part of Kosovo’s population lived in rural areas, so even earlier the schools were in houses etcetera, [were] in cultural centers.
I remember this period, the year ‘99 included, because the school was clearly divided, so the kids of Serbian nationality and Albanian nationality went to official institutions, which means there was no improvisation of sorts, and until ‘98, since the director and the school administration did not organize for us to have a school bakery though the long break, we went to the Albanian side because they had the better bakeries and we went there…
We were allowed, there was a door through which you could freely pass, and there we bought something for the long break in the bakery, you know, in the Albanian bakery and there was no problem. Which means there were the Serb and Albanian children, all together. Until ‘99, when it came down to the physical fight between the grown-ups, the seventh and eighth graders. Albanians and Serbs met at the door, it was understood that there will be problems, fighting, the directors of both sides of the school decided to close the door and the kids to be no longer in contact.
Marijana Toma: Actually, when you remember the first years of your school, in principle, kids did not have contact with each other, I mean except in that case, eventually in the house, in the courtyard, the building etc?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, we did not have that sort of a direct contact, say, the language was a big obstacle and not only the language. When you look at some of the much more developed European nations, which live side by side, also under the same monarchies etcetera, [even] they ask for some special rights. In the Balkans there are so many differences, I mean, Serbs and Albanians are two different worlds, in terms of religious views, ethnicity and cultural views, and again there are so many positive examples of mutual friendships and mixed marriages and there is little talk about this. It turns out that Albanians and Serbs absolutely had no communication, as if they were always at war, divided, and here there is no positive story of interethnic relations.
Marijana Toma: Do you remember any of those positive stories, you know something from your own environment, right?
Stefan Surlić: I remember, of course, from my own family’s example. I mean, my father after his work at the state-run firm, opened his own private firm, it was the only multinational firm, which means Serbs and Albanians worked there, then a lot of people would say to my dad, “But, why?” and things like this, but I remember his reaction was like, “I need good workers, good handymen, if someone is good at their job, it doesn’t matter absolutely at any moment whether they’re Serbs or Albanians.” But these were rare examples of someone being ready to organize something like that, but I remember, I went to the field often with my dad, how they cooperated very well, worked together on common chores, Serbs had even more problems among each other, and Albanians among each other, rather than between different nationalities. I also find positive examples in that during the day in our building the Serbian and Albanian elite gathered and looked rationally at this sea of unreasonableness in which they were and this situation wasn’t convenient for either one of them.
Marijana Toma: What did your parents do?
Stefan Surlić: My mother worked in the Executive Council, she was a member of the Executive Council in the Autonomous Province, whereas my father worked in a few work places, the last place before going to the private firm Robotika, he worked in the shock absorbers factory, which was located between Pristina and Kosovo Polje.[3] I think the shock absorber factory was popular in the time of former Yugoslavia, I think they produced shock absorbers for Peugeot etcetera, yes, yes, that. Even today someone says, “Aha! I know. Near Pristina there was that huge factory, which hired several thousands of people.”
Marijana Toma: Are your parents of Kosovo origin, are they born in Kosovo or did they come here?
Stefan Surlić: No. No, it’s a very specific situation. Actually my parents are colonists from Lika,[4] they came to Kosovo, whereas my mother comes from a mixed marriage, my grandmother was Austrian, whereas my grandfather was from Belgrade. And here is a long story, we would need one or two more hours to explain how it was…
Marijana Toma: Can you briefly [tell us]?
Stefan Surlić: Shortly, yes, my grandfather was in the war and was captured as a prisoner after the Second World War. My parents are quite an older generation, so the years ‘46 and ‘50, their family I mean, my grandmother and my grandfather were somewhere along the years ‘14, ‘17 to ‘26, ‘27 of the 20th century, so they remember the Second World War quite well and there in Salzburg my grandfather met my Austrian grandmother, so he stayed there.
Then, they were a pro-monarchist family, and old Belgrade families all lived in Dedinje. One brother was a communist, but what happened then in ‘45, was that brother did not want to participate in the events that were happening here in Belgrade, even though he was a sworn communist of the Second World War, then the party punished him by appointing him commissar in Pristina. So, around the ‘50s, before his death, he asked to see his brother, and according to my mother, you know, my grandfather with my Austrian grandmother came from Salzburg to Belgrade. Since then he was advised to not live in Belgrade, because the UDB[5] had followed him to the border, and it almost led to his liquidation etcetera, etcetera. However, thanks to this second brother he took the advice and went to live in Pristina, where his brother also lived. His brother died after a short period of time, whereas they stayed there and so on.
So, I only remember the stories that my Austrian grandmother told me. I asked her, “What was it like through the ‘50s, ‘60s, you were from a place like Salzburg, which is so beautiful, and you came to Pristina?” She said that the demographics changed significantly, and that Pristina was actually a Turkish town, in fact there were mostly Turkish people and old beyleri[6] families which later according to a program in the ‘60s massively went to Turkey and a small number of Serbian and Albanian residents were left. She went out wearing an extraordinary dress in the street of Pristina and went to the market and at that time all the women wore dimia,[7] head scarfs and that she looked very strange among them so they started touching her and if it was not for the city police to save her, she would say, “I was really surprised, there was really a clash of civilizations.”
Whereas from my father’s side, they’re from Lika, they came from Lika in many waves, which means, it was in the ‘20s and ‘30s, immediately after the First World War and then the land was distributed, I mean especially to those who participated in the First World War. So here was a moment of “holy land,”[8] when everyone remembered that they were from Kosovo and hundreds of years ago they came from Lika and now in reality it was some sort of return to where they came from, whether they were supported by Montenegrins or Kosovars, but it was like this. Mainly those places, like Kosovo Polje, in the vicinity of Lipjan, there are many villages and places where people from Lika, Herzegovina, Montenegro lived.
Marijana Toma: Interesting. But your parents both studied in Pristina and that’s where they met?
Stefan Surlić: No. No, I mean, my mother studied in Belgrade and Pristina, while my father studied in Novi Sad. So, again they decided to come back, and live in… in Pristina.
Marijana Toma: What is, did you ever talk with your parents, what is to them, I think, now simply, I am starting from another position, what made them come back after their studies in Belgrade and Novi Sad, and decide to come back to Pristina?
Stefan Surlić: I think that the family factor was crucial, because their parents were already down here, and I mean, and I think regarding my dad he had a lot of work opportunities because he actually started working, even though he is the generation of ‘46, now I don’t know for sure with factography to show it to you, but the ‘60s, but he was a person that finished technical high school, he started to work in a factory, after receiving a scholarship from the factory he went to study Mechanical Engineering. So, in a way he was always set to live in Kosovo.
My mother was in fact always against it and she always repeated her father’s words that from that city and from Kosovo you have to run away miles away because there is no normal life and that there will always be wars and disagreements, and this is how she talked about it all the time throughout my childhood, I remember her words and my father used to say…. Well, only my Austrian grandmother for example was on that other side, every time my mother used to emphasize this wish, “Let’s go to Belgrade, to Novi Sad,” let’s go throughout the ‘90s, “because there’s no life here.” My grandmother always said there, “I moved once here and don’t you move these old bones [… ] from Pristina.” So…
Marijana Toma: And what does that period remind you of, meaning when you say the ‘90s, and when your mother recalled your grandfather’s words, it was, I do not know, I know at one moment in ‘95 when a group of people arrived that had left after Oluja[9] and they came, came to Kosovo, was there some kind of echo of those clashes down there, which you may remember as a child, even though maybe you were quite young then?
Stefan Surlić: I remember. It affected us largely especially the population that arrived from those areas, together with my father and a few relatives in contact with others, and at that time the phone lines were not as advanced, it was the middle of war, no internet, nothing, so I remember after Operation Storm, in ‘95, the matter was who survived, who had arrived to Serbia, and very quickly they were organized. A big number of families settled in Kosovo during the ‘90s, you know, the years ‘95 and ‘96. My father formed a sort of informal organization to help those people to find employment, so they could stay there and lead a normal life.
They were settled in the sports hall and I remember I went there with him and I think that it was one of the saddest scenes, where all the families lived together on some poor looking mattresses, lying, with no means whatsoever, without financial means, they had been given only the sport’s hall, and winter was near, an unbelievable situation. And a normal accommodation had to be found as soon as possible. Eh, for a long time some old people lived in barracks in some improvised places.
Then a lot of them went, there were some migration programs to the USA and Australia and those people even today call, they call my father and so on… I remember a woman came and said to my father, like, “Excuse me, I do not have money for bread, can you help me, give me something?” I think there were about 50 dinars, you know, on the blue bill there was the portrait of Miloš Obrenović, I do not know if it was a 50 or something similar, but I know my father took it and gave it to her, this was a bill and she thanked him, to, to, to the sky, this is… I remember this as a child, I have these images and scenes, maybe now they sound vulgar and my father brought a bottle of liquor, he had a depressing episode from this scene, and a few kilograms of sausage and when he entered that hall he said, “Where are you people, how are you?” When they saw him they all came near him at once, they surrounded him, they all wanted to take a glass and a piece of sausage, they had a type of cheese and the sausage and for a moment a positive atmosphere returned because they noticed they are not neglected.
But a great resistance existed among the Albanians, I remember that it was interpreted as a sort of new colonization, that they are bringing a language that they do not know, so the sellers refusing, for example, to sell, when they said, kruh [bread in Croatian] or something similar, because they did not understand what it meant. So it was, I remember these things. But I know that soon those families left, or they found shelter in Serbia, or somewhere around Belgrade, those who were organized or in those programs, the majority are in Australia, America, even today.
Marijana Toma: Tell us now, you went to school in ‘86, ‘96 right?
Stefan Surlić: ‘96.
Marijana Toma: ‘96?
Stefan Surlić: Actually earlier, ’95. I started going to school when I was only six years old.
Marijana Toma: And in fact you, when the war began in Kosovo, in which grade were you?
Stefan Surlić: Yes good, when the conflicts started, they were more intense in ‘97. I remember the fear of having to leave Pristina, even if we were talking about another place or about the house that we had in the village, which is in the Lipjan district and I always asked my father, “Did the terrorists arrive?” Meaning, are we safe? My father would say, “Do not worry son, there are policemen too, the military are keeping the order, nothing will happen.” “How is it that nothing will happen, look they are reporting this, reporting that?” The stories then of those people who were young reservists who were in Koshare and in general along the border, and in Drenica.
Then, one time my father was obliged to go to Peć,[10] we were also very scared for him until the late night hours, because the roads were completely blocked. The KLA units would take people out of the car, kill them and I remember one and many cases like this, when I thought my father would come home or my mother would tell, “Do you know whom they killed, do you know?” And someone like this, someone like that, mostly…. Man is a strange creature, accepts some things as normal, adapts fast to abnormal situations. Now, when I tell this to someone, they say, “When you heard someone was killed, why did you not pack your things and go?” No, back then the mere fact that we lived there affected us, I notice that even now, when I follow events in the world, I ask myself how can these people live there, I don’t know, like in Syria, in Palestine, even though every day they have bomb attacks, a lot of shootings, simply people accept this as a normal life occurrence so they are in denial until the end, until they face the worst moment and until then they do not take any action.
Until the last moment my parents were convinced there will be nothing from bombings, because no one in Europe or America will think to bombard in this way a whole country and cause many victims, and months later again Milosević was taken down by the people themselves and not by NATO bombings. Good, now I will include a moment from politics, but I really remember a moment on March 27 [1999] and that night, we did not have any stockpiles in the house, the power went out, then the water stopped running, when the explosions were heard. Then, since my mother speaks a couple of foreign languages well, especially RTL, German and other channels, when she watched [the news] in German, there they announced that NATO aircrafts were launched from Aviano [Italy], troops from Albania and Macedonia were coming into Kosovo and that in no way the option of ground offensive was excluded. And finally my parents understood that it was the end, and they only needed a few hours to get from the Kumanova district, Tetovo and see in Pristina and there the general war to start and nobody will make it out uninjured. My father said, “If somebody said in that moment, that night, after I was completely ready, and if he offered and said, ‘All of your riches, the most valuable, give to me all that you have, and we will take your kids to a safe place, they will get to Belgrade,’ I would have signed and said, ‘Go.’” Because actually this is a moment, in that eruption panic and fear that only the worst can be expected in the coming hours.
If I go back earlier, the period of the ‘90s, I am saying you could feel that kind of atmosphere, but there were always some positive examples. But I remember those provisions in protests and only in ‘97-‘98 we were not very sure that we would come back from school to the house alone, and always either our teacher would gather us or the parents in an organized manner to escort the kids, especially if they would walk. Even different groups of kids would wait for each other, Serbs and Albanians, it was known exactly who would come back from school and now someone could interfere, so we were always ready, that a fight between the kids could happen, but again, there were talks of how politics reflects in all aspects of society, including children.
The other thing that at the same time was weird and now can sound racist and chauvinist, but today if you are Serbian or Albanian, they will tell you they can recognize from their face who is Serb and who is Albanian. True, this happened, I remember my friend who lived in an edge and who was completely Albanian, ethnically, he asked me to escort him, to go together, because they will recognize that he is not Serbian, by physiognomy. Even today I do not know, but Serbs and Albanians both recognized one another with, with no words. And this was the situation before the war, then there was the fear that they will recognize us, that we are Serbian. Or yes, I remember how some of my friends who saw some people who were Albanian and wanted to trick them, they would know they were Albanians, let’s trick them, but…
Marijana Toma: These actually, I mean, in all society, even the kinds seem to be involved, not in physical fights, but it was reflected on them.
Stefan Surlić: Yes, yes.
Marijana Toma: So tell me now, when you started the story, you said you were with your parents when the bombing started? During the whole time you were in Pristina while the bombing was happening, right?
Stefan Surlić: No. I mean, the day after, my mother, since she worked in the Executive Council, came and said, “I found out that the military is coming through Mitrovica, and that road is clear.” And then it was the option of ground intervention, then it happened that my father, since he was born in ‘46 and he was not at all due to military service, he was called trećepozivac as they were called then, even in the fifth and sixth decade of his life, to get out, so we could get at least to Mitrovica, so we could leave Kosovo, because we decided to not stay in Kosovo because the general war will start, while my mother who worked in state institutions said, “I will stay here, since I can speak the languages.” Hence, my mom had nicknames like “Pravda,” [Justice] since she worked in the justice department and after her Austrian mother, “Nemica,” [the German] “Švabica,” [the cockroach, another name for Germans] and what not. She thought that being like that she would not be harassed or hurt even by her Albanian neighbors, while with the foreigners she could speak German, French and English, this is what she would say, “I will stay here to keep the wealth,” because all we had was our apartment, and the things in the apartment, this is this.
So, we left Kosovo with the essentials, some small luggage, bags, as I remember I had an atlas, at that time I really liked looking at the atlas so I took it with me and my sister a few books and these, we really left Kosovo with these things and we did not come until that informal visit, I think it was the year 2004. Five years later.
Marijana Toma: So, can you tell me something about leaving, how did it look, simply when you see these things from a child’s point of view, how did that journey look, the military?
Stefan Surlić: It was one of the most scandalous scenes from what I remember, inadequate even today. My father said, “I grew five years older through this ride from Pristina to Mitrovica.” Because there was not, the military had passed, there were no cars on this street, in either direction. Serbian and Albanian villages, if there was a camera to record, just like in the most horrible movies, when something really bad happens and there is no living person.
So, that ride to Mitrovica, was absolutely desolate and empty, since we had an old car, my father was afraid that something would happen and we would be left in that wilderness, him alone with two teenagers and it was like that. Only when we arrived, you know, when we passed the southern part of Mitrovica and the factories, my father said, “It is all good, we arrived.” And then it was easier, from Mitrovica to Raska, and we stopped there.
Here is a small place, Brvenik in Raska, which after the bombings, we got out of the destruction, because during the bombings it was not safe for us to travel further, so we left Kosovo but let’s stay here somewhere to see and now so, like everybody is watching, the political elites thought that the bombing would last a few days in general, they would not last that long. As these bombings ended, it would calm down. We left Kosovo to see, maybe it would come down to the conflict, to the conflict somewhere in the field, if it does not happen, we should go back. But we were in Brvenik and in difficulty, in the morning of April 6, the bombing started, respectively the missiles on the Brvenik bridge, a bridge that not only goes down to the village but also to the rails, which as the bird flies was only 20 meters from the hotel, here we were in half ruins and we left those rooms and now I think the time was exactly 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning.
I remember this, this was a huge trauma, because for a moment the walls started to break, we woke up in the middle of the night, and pieces of plaster were falling onto us. I remember that our father hugged us and then talked, he said, “In that moment I thought that if something falls and smashes over us, at least I protected you so in a way so you could live in these ruined places.” Thankfully the wall broke only on two sides, the windows and the doors fell with an incredible speed, and we did not have even a scratch from all that happened, a weird miracle… I mean, then we saw, we were part of, it was a collective action, like never before the solidarity between Serbs during the bombings, because people from Raska, came to help from everywhere, to clean etcetera. Every room had their window on their beds, this was the only room where the window was on the side of the bed, so when the windows flew, they did not fall on the bed but on the side of the table and that saved us.
Otherwise, if we were in one of them, in the storm of those explosions, directly would… Then thousands of shells which were in every side, in the room where we were we knew they were mostly with rocks, if they had hit us, surely we would immediately die. This was surely God’s wish that we live and get out of this ruin, because the roof of the house was ruined, the stairs, and we left like we were leaving catacombs, we went through to leave this motel, it was called “Markov konak”. I remember it well…
Marijana Toma: On which date did this happen?
Stefan Surlić: On April 6. April 6. There are, I think that there was a TV team, it was the RTS[11] team who filmed, they filmed all over Serbia, namely in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia when the bombs fell on… like this… but I remember those women who worked in that motel, when they came crying because they saw from afar that the motel was not there anymore, that there were only ruins there, and they knew we were the only guests, the only guests in that motel. They came to the ruins crying and sobbing and when they saw my sister and me, they had a wave of emotions, and they started hugging us for hours, and so we were saved.
Marijana Toma: This was… ah, in this time was your mother in Kosovo?
Stefan Surlić: Yes. But now, this happened too, this case was a shock for my people because they had the number of that hotel that was bombed and here all the communication connections stopped, the motel disengaged and they, namely my mother and my grandmother, who were left there, saw that Brvenik was bombed on television, a place near the motel, the film of the ruins showed that, “It is still not known whether there were any victims.” And our family members were in shock, they thought the worst had happened. My mom said, beside feeling hurt and being shocked, my grandmother lost herself, she started crying and fainted, she said, “I was next to this torment, then I had to take care of grandmother too.” And in this moment they did not know what to do and how to find out if we were alive, whether anything happened to us, or we were only injured.
But in the evening we barely got to a phone thanks to some people we got to Balevc, I think in that place, there a person gave us the opportunity to call from that place, I got the connection, I was the first to call, I remember my mother’s voice, “Where are you, are you alive, what is happening, how’s the…” I said, “We are fine, everything is fine.” Then they came by bus to see and became convinced that everything was fine with us, they thought we were hiding something and staying silent, or something happened to our father, and again they decided go back, they said… My father also thought that it was better to go back to Pristina, because Serbia was being bombarded, it was the same as being in Pristina or any other city, even though Pristina was bombarded to a great extent. Then my mother asked my father to go to Montenegro, because there were less. We had an apartment in Tivat, and went there.
But, I will say it again, you know what was the reason we did not continue from there from Raska, it was that we thought that we would come back, during the time of the bombings every bridge, every tunnel, every road could be targeted and there was the risk at any moment of being left in the middle of the street and dying from NATO’s bombings. Even my father was skeptical, in fact because of the bridges he knew in Montenegro he was afraid that until we get to Tivat and that it was a long way, but we decided, we left and finally got to Montenegro.
Marijana Toma: When did you go to Montenegro?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, we went after the sixth, so it was sometime around April 10, 11. After four or five days luckily, because there was a parallel bridge and a road which is bombarded by NATO three times in a row. And I remember that the owner of that motel offered us, “Listen, the warehouse is full of food, drinks, you do not need to pay for anything, everything is going to get damaged anyway, the motel is empty what guests, stay, near here is Kosovo, Pristina, whatever happens,” etcetera. Then my father said, only, “Whatever will be, will be. Not to listen to my wife and mother, but if something happens to you and I will be held guilty so, we, luckily left that place that then was bombarded three more times.
Marijana Toma: So like this you went to Tivat in April and there now, (incomprehensible) I did not ask this, your sister, how old is she?
Stefan Surlić: She is ‘84.
Marijana Toma: She is older than you?
Stefan Surlić: Yes.
Marijana Toma: There you continued your education, namely you registered at school and how was it? You stayed in your apartment, if you can only explain this to me?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, yes, actually that apartment was not paid until the end so there we started paying rent, we were with the owner for a short period of time, then we moved etcetera, in the end we went there and we decided to stay there. My mother came to Tivat after the bombings, after KFOR came to Kosovo and after the withdrawal of the army [Serbian].
Marijana Toma: She went back to Kosovo?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, she stayed there. So my mother and my grandmother went back to Kosovo again to save our property and did not leave, did not leave the apartment, so they were there until the end, until the worst phase when with KFOR’s entrance not only a big group of Albanians, and not only those who lived in Pristina, but also those people who never lived in Pristina, who started with handspikes to break the doors of all the Serb houses, they stole and looted. And my mother says, for the time she stayed, so July-August, she experienced the worst scenes with constant yelling, rifles in the middle of the night, bangs on the doors, and she stayed with locked doors, she was completely locked in, she put the closet to the front door, she never went out of the apartment’s door, like in movies she took the sheets and tied them to the balcony and like this she would have the chance to jump in case of attack. And…
She had decided to stay there until the end, and my father invited her a couple of times, “Let the property to the hands of God, we will create another life, it is not the first time we started our lives from zero. You are a lawyer, I am an engineer, if we do not find a job so what, even if we lose our apartment, health, it is important to be alive and healthy, what would we need those things for if our children are left without a mother, that would be very heavy.” When we last heard her on the phone, neither me, my sister nor my father recognized my mother’s voice, which means she was stressed, agony from the things she experienced during the time she was there and in the end my father literally said to her, “Leave the apartment as soon as possible.” Then on one of the last buses that left from Pristina to Serbia she came first to Raska, then from Rasta to Tivat?
Marijana Toma: Everything was left there?
Stefan Surlić: Everything was left there. We called a few friends, namely my mother and a few Albanian family friends, if they could get in [the apartment] and if they can save anything. She took with her the photo albums, something for memories, whereas she did not know how to take the other things, so it was.
So, thanks to some good Albanian people that apartment was left to us, we took a few things later, some not, but simply in war times a person only thinks about saving their life, to be all well, you do not even think about the other things, what was left from the property and what you would have used. We thought, this dimension is very important, to move to Belgrade and my mother had opportunities as the other state employees to get an apartment in the other cities in Serbia, a job, but all the friends who were in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Nis notified us, they told us that their children could not integrate and adapt, because in classes they were being called Shiptar,[12] they were being teased, bullied, tricked, as if they are to blame for everything.
For example, at birthday parties, “Everybody is invited, those Shiptar from Kosovo are not invited, and so on. And this in Belgrade schools, they are not exactly small environments, so… This made me think even today that we as a nation love territories, but we do not love people, this phenomenon had been proved in Croatia too, in Bosnia, and in Kosovo. We are talking about “holy land” and fighting until the end. Then when those people because of this kind of politics suffer and come to these centers from where these politics came and these politics have created, and then these people are the ones to blame for why all these things happened, then they sold everything there, came with a lot of money and occupied everything that could be occupied here, so in this sense we are really a nation who always appreciated the territory more than our own population, that is why in the Balkans there is less territory compared to populations who have endured, but they protect their population regardless of anything.
Marijana Toma: Then you really… I want to go back to Tivat because we have ten minutes before the break and then I have to change the card… Tell me, until when did you live in Tivat.
Stefan Surlić: In the end me and my father decided to live in Tivat, because my sister stayed for a while and went to study, actually she finished high school in Kotor and then we went to study, so…
Marijana Toma: In Belgrade?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, in Belgrade. So, we separated as a family only because we had, my mother and sister were in Belgrade, my mother worked, my sister studied, whereas I decided to stay there, I like the sea (smiles). So, Tivat was a very good environment to grow up in, a place with a lot of different populations where people from Croatia and Belgrade were placed a long time ago. Croatia residents, Montenegrin, Serbian a mixed environment about whom I am not able to say anything negative and with whom I did not even experience anything negative. And secondly, the politics of Montenegro’s government then was welcoming to immigrants, they organised help and…
Marijana Toma: You went to high school in Tivat right?
Stefan Surlić: Yes, in Tivat.
Marijana Toma: And how is your life now, I mean, taking into consideration that it is a huge difference, taking into consideration how Pristina looks, how Tivat looks, coastal city, sea?
Stefan Surlić: I think they really are the places where I grew up, namely where I was born, where I spent my childhood and the place where somehow I formed a personality, after I grew up I started thinking about registering in political science, to explain to myself how all of this happened and who influenced my way of life to be just like this. The conflicts in Kosovo, on the other side I can say it was a situation of a not stable politics in between refined relationships of Serbia and Montenegro, referendum campaigns, and really until the independence of Montenegro, I lived in Tivat and then I mean in 2007 I registered at the Department of Political Science in Belgrade.
The different, Pristina as a big city, over 150,000 residents before the war, Tivat a small city between 10,000 and 15,000 residents, but it is a very organised city, which had offered me some school and outside of school activities, I played sports and other extra activities, I went to music school, to radio etcetera. Really an environment that enables especially in this period of growing up to live a beautiful, calm life and to have everything five minutes away.
But again that feeling of origin means a lot, I discuss it a lot with people, especially when they want to go live in the outside world. Regardless of how here in Belgrade a lot of things can make you angry, what are the people, what are the institutions, a mess in the city, there are things like this in big cities in all over the world, this is one, the second is the feeling that you belong to someone, to not be alone, here I have the friends of my friends, that here I have my childhood friends, here we have our immediate and extended family, you have someone here.
However, Montenegro was the place where I did not have not even one cousin, even my father and both of my parents had no friendships, work colleagues, it was a completely new world. It was easier for me to integrate in that world compared to my father who first worked as an engineer in the “Bokeljka” factory, then as a teacher in school, there he taught Technical Education and Mathematics, but again he had that feeling of loneliness, because this is not it – me and my father all alone in that place where we had no one of our origin. Even in terms of identity in the sense of strengthening integrity, it is quite difficult, now the moment you go to another place you experience this and notice that you are a fragile creature and a creature who cannot do without community.
Marijana Toma: In that period, I would stop here a little, maybe a short question, I mean, high school, how does it look now, I mean you came in the fifth grade, it interests me how was that kind of transition, did you clash with these situations as are…?
Stefan Surlić: No, No.
Marijana Toma: There? What my friends told me was that kids experienced things here [thinking about the people who moved that are in Serbia from this period]?
Stefan Surlić: No, not at any moment, it was the opposite, they were more sensitive towards me in the sense that immediately next to me were the director and the teacher. I was lucky enough that this was the transition, now I do know how the situation is in the schools in Serbia, but earlier it was so from the fourth grade new classes so always two or three people knew each-other but a huge number of students in our class did not know each other. Eh, it was easy then to not create any contact.
Second, there were a lot of kids of seasonal workers, people from Serbia, say, people who live and speak the same dialect, and who were in different classes and I completely had it[the dialect], I was very welcome and completely accepted. I think I even was in the fifth grade when I was chosen as a class leader, actually parallels, I was chosen, I personally do not know this kind of not being accepted in society, I did not experience it in Montenegro, I am very sure about this when I say that I was very well accepted in Montenegro, I was treated well and well integrated.
Marijana Toma: Super. Should we take a break now? It has been 54 minutes.
[1] Lepa Brena, a well known turbo-folk singer in former Yugoslavia. Her name literally means, Beautiful Brena.
[2] The acronym stands for Kosovo Liberation Army. In Albanian Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosoves, the UÇK first came out in an open conflict against Serbian security forces in March 1998, in the rural region of Drenica, 35 kilometers north of the capital city of Kosovo, Pristina.
[3] Fushë Kosovë in Albanian.
[4] Lika village.
[5] Uprava državne bezbednosti – State Security Administration.
[6] Bey, an Ottoman title; Beyleri was a family surname and marked the family as having close ties to the Ottoman Empire.
[7] Billowing white satin pantaloons that narrow at the ankles, Turkish style. They are made with about twelve meters of fabric.
[8] Reference to the official Serbian national narrative that considers Kosovo a holy land, the cradle of the Serbian nation, since the 1389 Battle against the Ottomans.
[9] Oluja, literally the Storm, was a Serb paramilitary group which committed most atrocious crimes during Kosovo war.
[10] Peja in Albanian.
[11] Radio-televizija Srbija – Serbian Radio television
[12] This is a derogatory term for Albanians from Kosovo, to distinguish them from Albanians from Albania proper.
