Part Three
Marijana Toma: What did it look like at that time? What does that March and the bombings look like now?
Slavica Jovanović: Ah, what it looks like. I don’t know. I remember that I looked at the bombings from my kitchen windows. Pristina was bombed and one could see the reflection of something. This was at around 10:00, 09:00, 10:00 In the evening, and now it was clear for everyone that bombings were taking place and we were strong, we had to protect ourselves…there was everything here, I don’t know, but it made sense, everything was destroyed, everything was wrong. And the robbings of the houses of Albanians started in the first days, the moving started on the first day, then fires were set on houses so people…
At some moment, while I was looking at the NATO bombing, they had taken some positions somewhere in the mountains where the NATO airplanes were flying from, and the Albanian village Radivojac was on fire and it was two kilometers from here, while Serbs from that village, from Kllokot were robbing the houses, they were taking stuff and setting them on fire, I don’t know who was doing it. While Albanians had just abandoned the car queue that had left just two hours before this, it left for the border through Vitia, Ferizaj, Gërlica and so on. This was so ugly.
I said that this was the seventh circle of hell. I don’t really know this, I have no explanation. So, I couldn’t, people are eager, and I was surprised by this, by how people try to find explanations and justifications for every ugly gesture. They were saying, “We have heard that the airport will be exactly in Radivojac which they are robbing and putting on fire. This whole village will be destroyed and then the airport will be built there, and there is no other reason, everything will be destroyed and so let them use it somehow.”
And so, I remember the war by that robbing, by that fire and by the movement of Albanians and by the livestock, I mean, we are speaking about a rural setting where most of the people had livestock and before leaving, as my parents did later, they set the livestock free so that they wouldn’t suffer here. And they were walking around, it as springtime, a time when cows are not allowed to eat a kind of green grass, they can die if they eat it before it dries, and the livestock were dying on the street, on the field and at some point, those animals, the Serbian army collected those cows, as many of them as they could, and locked them in the stadium in Kllokot, and they stayed there hungry and thirsty for three-four nights or more.
And I mean, I remember this as the most difficult scene, they were screaming the whole night and this was fifty meters from the house where I was living with my children. It was terrible. They collected them with trucks, I guess, and sent them to a slaughterhouse, this was…I felt bad, of course, for the people as well as for the animals who were suffering there. I remember one scene when I went to Pristina for some work, I went to Pristina and in front of the street here there were animals from the surrounding villages, from the surroundings of Ferizaj, I remember one scene, there was a cow giving birth near the street, but I felt so bad to look at it. Yes.
Marijana Toma: What, were you afraid back then?
Slavica Jovanović: I don’t even know. I thought that it was useless to be afraid. It doesn’t make sense to be afraid. But, I believed that we had to survive in that situation the way we could and organize. But when I saw the queues of Albanians going towards Macedonia, I spoke to all of them, told them that it was a matter of days until we would also have to go towards the same direction. So, “When will our queues leave in this direction?” “No, this is over, we will make them move, we will cleanse Kosovo.” And such things, these are the stupid things that I remember, they thought they would cleanse Kosovo.
This was the story among Serbs during the war time in Kosovo, that they would cleanse Kosovo of Albanians. And this was the goal, for Kosovo to be cleansed, that it would be amazing for us when there were no longer Albanians in Kosovo. This was like when Radivojci was cleansed, now another village is being cleansed, Tërpeza, Novosella, I don’t know. We knew what village was being cleansed every day. And what did it mean? It meant that people were packing, ordered to leave and go towards the border, this was it.
Marijana Toma: Now we are already speaking about ‘99 and this is two years after your husband got sick. Considering that he was suffering a difficult illness, what did your life with your children and the war look like. Your children were little at that time, they were nine and how old?
Slavica Jovanović: Yes, yes, one of them was eight and the other was six years old in ’99. His illness started kicking in very harmlessly. Once he told me, since he ran and worked with trading, he had exercised something and one day he told me, “You know what? I have noticed that my left is thinner than the right one and when I run, I cannot lean on my left side, my leg fails me.” And he told me about this once or twice but I didn’t trust him, I thought he was imagining stuff and that it just seemed to him like that. And the third time when he mentioned it, I still remember that scene, he was sitting on the sofa and I told him, “I will prove to you that what you say is not true.” And I take, since I liked to tailor, this was a kind of hobby of mine at that time and I took the meter to do the measurements of two of his arms and I said, I was measuring his hands and one of his arms was four centimeters thinner.
Now we realized that something was wrong. Then he came here to Belgrade, to the Institute of Neurology and he spent ten days on examinations and when they excluded all the illnesses, I mean all of them, then what are the symptoms, they told him that it was a death sentence. At that time they told him that he could live for maybe five years, then he lived for six years after that. And when he came back from the hospital, he said, “I will commit suicide, I don’t want to allow my children to see what I will become the way I have seen people in the hospital.”
I spoke to him a lot and tried to convince him, you know how things happen, and back then there was a big discussion about DNA, I don’t know, there was a moment in medicine, something was invented, I don’t know, there was medicine for that illness and I spoke to him and thank God, I guess he wasn’t that serious about that, but yes, he gave up that idea and he started taking medicine and the only medicine that slowed that process that was happening within him was produced in France and it cost 700-800 Deutsche Marks in France at that time, while here it cost 1200 Deutsche Marks. And we managed to stock up somehow, he used four-five boxes of that medicine, until the doctors said, “Now it is useless to take them, they no longer have their effect.”
This is a slow but unstoppable illness, and for me, there is something that I still feel bad about is that I am afraid of the fact that it is a genetic disease. But a doctor once explained to me that it is inherited when the gene has a meeting point, from the father’s side as well as from the mother’s side, the atrofico-lateral sclerosis is hidden and it can be that it shows, it can be that it doesn’t. So, just after his death, for some years I had a situation with my son when I was very afraid. He was little at that time, in the seventh or eighth grade, I had a panic attack that lasted for a week and I got out of it after a week. Then it lasted longer.
So, he had difficulties walking in ’99. In the first years you could barely notice while he could hardly move in ‘99, but fortunately that was the best from the worst, that he didn’t need to move and so on, so he wasn’t even part of that story. At his time, they offered him to become a spy for the State Security and he categorically turned it down. He was never part of politics, which is something I liked.
We agreed in a great way in this regard, not even on SPS or other things. So to say, the next year, in 2000 he was in a wheelchair. So, for one year, two that we lived “down” there he was paralyzed. For two years we had no electricity or water at home, it happened very often, so it was a torture, really, because he needed care and our children were little and that was it. Later I moved to a village, to a so-called neighborhood, thirty kilometers from Belgrade, which was great for me. Everybody was saying that it is so far from the city, that it is not good here, for me it was great, I have electricity, water, telephone, canalization…it was good for me. Yes, but I am saying, it was a terrible time, it was terrible.
Marijana Toma: When the war was over, you remained there and you…?
Slavica Jovanović: Eh, I will tell you about it now, this is where the interesting story begins, this is a different story from the others. The director who was here, he was a kind of a second political person in the Municipality, Vesko Pirić was the first one, he was the mayor, so he was the alpha and omega of that place at that time, he was the second. And he often spoke, my director Ilija Tasić often said, “While Slobodan Milošević is in Belgrade and Vesko Pirić in Vitia, I will be here,” and it was exactly like that…
But it didn’t last forever, the way he thought. And when he realized that…when the Kumanova Agreement was signed and when the army and police troops started withdrawing, first the distinguished citizens from Vitia left. And from the village, policemen and others who were I don’t know what, I mean who did all the bad things, and it was like, I remember a speech by Vesko, I don’t remember where it was, but I remember him speaking and saying, “You haven’t done anything, KFOR will come now and you can stay here freely. Nothing will happen to you, the fact that you have stolen and so on, that somebody has taken something, it doesn’t matter, this is a war, this and that…It doesn’t matter, this will pass.
And just as humans are, the policemen were the first ones who left with their families, those who were smart knew that this wasn’t good, they left. My people abandoned the village, they were in the village from June 10 to June 15-16, they were in the village when the neighbors had told them, “You know what, we wouldn’t like you to leave, but we have heard that it is better if you leave.” Then they packed their stuff and first went from the village to Vitia, and then from Vitia they left in the direction towards which everybody was leaving.
I would also like to tell you about another situation that seems interesting to me, I mean, it will seem interesting to other people. When all the Serbs left the village, only a cousin of mine remained, my father’s paternal aunt, a far grandmother, she remained alone while her son had left earlier to send some stuff to someone and she remained home. Otherwise, that woman had been married in that village in ’61 and didn’t leave it until ’99, she hadn’t gotten out of the village. She lived in her yard, her garden, her fields, she didn’t go anywhere.
Her husband died soon after that, they had five-six years of marriage, maybe seven-eight, she stayed there with two children. Now her son and her daughter were grown up, her daughter was married and her son was older but however, he lived with her, but wasn’t at home at that particular moment. I was in Kllokot at my workplace when a neighbor called me, “Slavica you…” I was in touch with people from KFOR, KFOR troops were at the company and she was like, “You know people from KFOR, you have to go to Ilinka and take her in the village.” And I said, “How will I be able to do that, it is dangerous, where am I supposed to leave my children?” And she said, “Ask them, beg them, go and if you manage to take her out, you will bring a lot of luck to your children.”
And I really had no solution, I asked the man from KFOR who was there, he was a kind of a commander for this region and we gathered from Kllokot to Gushica where my village is which is thirteen, fifteen kilometers from there, when we were passing by, the Serbian houses were burning in Gromova on both sides, all the houses were in flames and we were going through.
And when I went there, my people weren’t there as I told you, we went there, I was looking for her around the house and I didn’t know where she was, I thought that she would be in the garden, there was no other place where she could be. One night earlier, Albanians had burned the stables where there were animals, they had set the cows free but the pigs and chicken had remained inside. I think that a pig had been burned, and I saw her feeding another half-burned pig in that garden. I told her, “Grandmother Ilinka, you have to come with me, you cannot stay here.” “I can’t,” she said, “Look, I cannot abandon this pig.” I said, “You don’t have to abandon it, just leave it here, you see there is grass, there is the water, it will feed itself. You have to come with me and you will return two-three days later after everything gets better.”
And I finally managed to convince her, imagine a woman who hasn’t left her village for thirty-forty years, and has to leave now. I convinced her because I told her we would return after two days and I told the man from KFOR, “She wants to return after two days.” He said, “It is okay, we will bring her back the day after tomorrow.” And she came, it was very difficult to accommodate her at my place. She didn’t know how to use the tap and so on, however, she learned, it doesn’t matter…and we came after two years and found her house had been robbed.
The first time when I went there and wanted to go inside, I wanted to take a vase from my house which I had bought during my studies and which I was attached to, but which I didn’t want to take without buying another one for my mother, which means it was something important to me. It was also important for me not to take anything from the house without replacing it and so the time moved, and I never bought another vase so that I could take mine and at that moment I said, “Now it’s the time to take it.”
When I went to my house, my people had left the key with my neighbor, I had to look for my neighbor whom I found and he opened the door and I went inside the house and found it empty, they had taken everything. Everything. For me it was not clear, not that the vase wasn’t there, but nothing was there. My family were ordinary people, they had the simplest furniture, I don’t know who needed that, but it looks like somebody did. There was nothing at home, I went inside and went out and I have to admit that it was very difficult for me when my neighbor opened the door for me. I don’t know whether there was a need for my neighbor to allow me to enter my house or not, but I mean, it was a very difficult moment.
But it doesn’t matter, people have suffered even worse things, but what I want to say is that such things hurt. And if somebody in the future wants to take the key to somebody else’s house and thinks about allowing or not allowing them to enter their house, they have to think carefully about what they are doing, is it a good or a bad thing. However, we went back two days later, her house was robbed, destroyed, they had taken everything they could, and mind you, it was the house of a poor family, I mean, what did someone need her stuff for? Nothing. She collected her stuff and came back to my place, she realized that it didn’t make sense anymore. After one week, her relatives, my husband and I drove her to Leskovac to her relatives and they picked her up. She died two years ago at her daughter’s in Smederevo. Otherwise, I mean, the whole anger against politics and the way things were happening escalated at the moment this happened, the police troops and the others were leaving. Now that it is over, I will speak and tell everyone what I think about it.
The director called me to his office in order to ask me, to his office, and I told him, “What kind of a director are you? You cannot…” I said all that came to my mind, but I also spoke before that. And he pretended to be thinking all the time, we met, discussed and what we will be doing next. Some said, “Let’s allow Albanians to return, those who have continued working and we will not allow those that we have expelled to return,” and I said, “People, who is asking you what is allowed and what not. But let’s think about what we can do to stay here because they are going to return. They have returned, this is what you are forgetting, but let’s think of a way for us to stay here.”
They didn’t even understand it, “We cannot set conditions now.” And I said, I invited my colleagues who had worked, the director of the company, the commercial director and I don’t know who else, those who were holding the main positions, I invited them to the company and said, “You know what? It has been like this for us. My idea is for us to stay here, to stay here with dignity and continue living here until the conditions are good for us to live as humans, not to escape, not to leave our stuff behind.”
I told them, “Do you know what would be best? For us to change the director and appoint another director.” These were the three-four days when Serbs were leaving and Albanians had returned, I mean KFOR wasn’t there yet. It was an empty middle space, and I told them, “I am the President of the board,” and I really was the president of the board of directors, “I will sign the declaration that says that the director has changed and he no longer has access to the company. He can do something else, it doesn’t matter. But tell me, which one of you wants to become the director. I would like to become the director, but I can’t, I am the president of the board of directors and I cannot assign myself.”
And there was a man who always wanted to become the director, but didn’t want to at that particular moment. And for obvious reasons, my idea didn’t move forward at all… They all left with time, nobody remained to become the director. And it happened that way that after three days we were like, “What are we going to do, whom are we going to contact?” And we realized that the time was to contact Albanians and see what we could do. Could we continue working and living and so on.
And I said, “Let’s call Idriz first,” my jurist colleague, “And I know that through him, it will be the easiest to approach people who would like to be among us, or the most important people, I don’t know, and we will talk to them.” And we sat in my office and talked, I saw Idriz and Berat Ahmeti who was later a director from my window. Berat was a director of the mineral water company until ’90-’91 when Albanians were expelled from the workplace. When I saw them, the chair turned around, I turned around too, we were just talking about them and trying to find ways to call them and now they were coming on their own.
And they came to the office, and God knows how, “Hello! How are you? What’s up? This and that…” It was summer, they were wearing T-shirts and I was just thinking about how armed they could be but they were dressed very normally, they walked slowly and came in. I noticed that they had no arms, their concern was just the same as ours, so they decided to come and ask what was happening. They came, God knows how we were talking, we made coffee, “What happened? How are you? Did anybody die?” And such things, and they were like, “You know what, it was what it was. We need to continue working.” “Of course we will continue working, Let’s see what we will do.”
Slowly solving that, we started talking and people went home, the next day they came to the company the way they could, Albanians started working. But they didn’t accept our people who were still there. KFOR came and there was a very good person working for them, I think he did a good job. And they started organizing meetings between Albanians and Serbs, which are…
And these meetings would be attended by our director, a woman who was the financial director and the commercial director, and four-five people from their side, from Albanians, there was Berat Ahmeti and later he became a director and a man from Mira, everybody was surprised when they saw him, who was he, I guess he was a representative from the KLA and another one from the KLA. And we organized meetings in which we tried to find a solution, who will work and who will not work. I mean, there were eight-nine of us, and there were just as many KFOR soldiers, who kept each of us under watch. I mean, the meeting was such, we were sitting at the table and they were staying around us, and I had the arm towards me like this {shows the distance with hands} time after time.
When I remember those scenes, it was really…we had to survive and experience that too. And we were pretending to talk, when this happened for the first time, the first meeting, my director had a big photograph of Slobodan Milošević in the office and when I went out, I noticed that the photograph was no longer there, and there was something else, a kind of memorial or something and he was told, “From today, there will be no nationalist symbols here or photographs of distinct people in that regard,” and he had to accept that. It was his favorite photograph, and the spot remained empty on the wall.
And this lasted for like three-four meetings, and the Serbs were taking their time to think whether they wanted that system or not, up and down, while those from KFOR didn’t move and they came to one of the meetings and said, “You know what? Those who want to work will continue working here, be it Serbs or Albanians, but the Serb will no longer be a director, the representative of Albanians as a nation will be a director.” And then it was over. I remember that my director stood up in that meeting and said, “I am leaving!” “The financial director was sitting near me and she asked me, “Are we leaving?” I said, “I am not leaving, you can leave if you want.” And she stayed. And then I didn’t care about how many Serbs remained there, I mean, whoever wanted to work… I knew those who didn’t want to work would go somewhere where they would be unemployed, without food, without anything. Some days passed, and I was the only Serb going to work.
I remember a case, so in the middle of my building and that, and the station where the director’s office was, where I usually went to meetings and other things, and once I, so there was a park, it really is a beautiful park, and now, it has only grown, I was in the middle of the park and I stopped and I was thinking, “My God, Slavica are you crazy? So you’re the only Serb in Kosovo that is going to work, even though you’re agreeing, you’re negotiating with Albanians, like is that you?” And then I said, “No, nobody told me that I wasn’t allowed to go to work. I am in my workplace and I will stay here because of my children, because of the salary.” Because at that moment I could not earn money at any other place, whereas I needed the money. So, for my kids, for the sick person and for myself. No, so I went back to the office.
So, I experienced persecution by people, by the Serbians of that village. So, I sent my kids holding their hands, I walked the streets, I tried to behave as normally as I could. If I had to go to the store, I went to the store, nobody limited me in this way, I did not allow myself to be limited. But, walking the street while I was sending my kids holding their hands and I hear them yell behind me, “What are you doing šiptarska bitch?” And things like this.
However, this time came and went, and then we were reduced to around ten-fifteen continued working at the banja [water spring] with Albanians who came. They were very good when Albanians came to this company. Simply there was potential to work here and to earn money and for the employees to get a decent salary. It is just that the Serbians did not know until that moment.
I remember that my last salary while the Serbians were in power, to say, it was the salary of May, which was 150 marks at the time. My July salary, so the one I got in August when the Albanians were there, when they started working, it was 540 marks. These people simply produced, and immediately that summer, the station was packed. So if the war hadn’t happened, I really don’t know, some suffered, died, some apparently lived a normal life. So, they produced water and they sold it for cash [English], while ours sold it no matter whether it was expired or not, and would go to courts, to trails, and different things. They simply didn’t know how to earn money from something that was clean money, you understand?
Marijana Toma: When did you leave Kosovo?
Slavica Jovanović: In 2001.
Marijana Toma: What were the reasons that you left since you had a good life?
Slavica Jovanović: What happened is, yes, yes, for a long time, I thought that I had to leave Kosovo, because I would have to for my job, for my career, for something, to have something better somewhere else. without talking about my children’s future, education and such. Although I talked about this to my husband also, this is one of the basic things we fought about, that we should leave, that we should not keep our children here where they do not have the basics, I mean the conditions for a normal life, education and such. And that this is not taking us anywhere. I mean, the fact that we are staying here. Although, we remained here and like this, it happened.
So in that month of June all my relatives were gone. My parents, my sister and the whole family, and we remained here, of twenty Serbian families who lived in that building, there were four families left. We were mainly, one [of the families] moved quickly because they had sold their apartment, while the other three families, we remained since we worked at the Klokot banja so us, from that department. While one person from that third family worked at the factory, he was a laboratory technician, the one who refined the water, the mineral water. And this lasted, we lived a normal life, so to say.
And I remember a party of ours, when we sat and we were talking, and Toma Kojić, he said to me, “Why should we leave here? Nobody came [to my door], or called me, or told me to leave, and here we are, working in normal conditions.” He says, “We are getting a much better salary than we used to.” And so, he says, ‘Why should we leave?” You know how those party stories are.
And it went on like this, so my kids went to school in the village, however in those two years I still didn’t work or anything. So, simply there wasn’t a place for me. At that time I had started to learn English, I knew I would need it one day. I got things together, I came to Belgrade and bought that with tapes, I don’t know, I would stay in the office as if I were listening to something, I would write. And that’s how I spent my time.
But, I have to admit that then it wasn’t the same, I knew that among Albanians, someone would be bothered by a Serb, who could easily take a gun and kill me, which was what happened in the end. And I moved on, but this was it, I have to admit, I was scared, but I overcame it.
Otherwise, I have to say that then me and my husband never traveled through that traffic, we had a Jugo and every time we needed in a week, or ten days, whenever during the day, we sat in the car and went to Bujanovc, we bought stuff for ourselves and we would come back, we didn’t notice what was happening around us. I did not allow this to affect how I organized my life. Can we pause, I think it’s Anxhelina? [addresses the interviewer].
[Short pause]
Marijana Toma: Nothing, let’s continue after the pause. You started talking about a period that convinced you to leave Kosovo.
Slavica Jovanović: Yes. It went on like that until the day when in my office, around 15:30 o’clock a person who cooked and cleaned in that department of the Klokot banja came and said, “Jao, Slavica, something horrible had happened. Come on, you have to go home.” He said, “Toma was killed.”
Marijana Toma: The neighbour?
Slavica Jovanović: Aha. While maybe a half an hour before that I was in the office with his wife and two other colleagues, hanging out and talking. And we saw him passing, he passed, we saw him from the window, since half an hour earlier he had come back from work. And I say, when he told me, “Toma was killed?” I imagine he was killed in his workplace at the factory. I had no idea where, I had already forgotten that we had seen him 15-20 minutes ago. And him, “Stupid people, what did they do? Why did they kill a person like that? This-that…” And he says, “Go home!” And I say, “Okay, I’ll go.” And it happened that they organized, celebrated something, decided, they let Serbs go earlier. And them, they couldn’t wait to go home earlier, of course. We left, and there wasn’t a single soul, and the building where we worked was near the building where we lived in, around 50 meters, maybe even a hundred. And I didn’t see anyone, anywhere, so we arrived at the building and we saw a dead person.
Marijana Toma: In front of the building?
Slavica Jovanović: In front of the building, yes. The head of finance who was with me earlier was pregnant, in the fourth-fifth of pregnancy. And she starts yelling, “Jao Slavica, That is my Pegja, he is Pegja.” “It isn’t.” I already know that it’s him [Toma], but I don’t dare tell them, not even Rada, his wife who was there, I didn’t have the strength to tell them, “Toma was killed.” And I knew ten minutes before this, before she found out, 15 minutes. And today I didn’t tell her, even though we met a few times. And his wife, since they live in the other building she goes on the other side, so she passed by him, he was laid on his stomach, and she passed by him. Apparently from the terror, stress, who knows, she didn’t look, she didn’t notice he was there. She went to the fourth floor, their children were in the apartment. She asked her children, “Where’s father?” And they said, “No, father is not back yet.” And she said, “In those moments I realized that what I saw down there was Toma’s dead body.”
And she rushed, we were already in the building, in front of the building, since the entrances were closed, we couldn’t go in our apartments, because it was closed. And here there was a coffee shop, improvised, the store also worked there and people passed by, neighbors. And I saw, it was April, I saw something red and cleaning brushes, some Albanian women were cleaning carpets. However, when it happened, they probably took the carpets, pipes and the cleaning brushes, what do I know, the buckets were still here, and the rest went to their homes.
So we are looking at him here dead, at that moment KFOR appeared, we were not allowed to go near, and a woman was wailing and we stood there for a while. Whereas my children went to school around half an hour, an hour before it happened. So on the same street where he walked by, where he was killed, they walked by. So, later I realized that my children walked by those people who killed Toma. And it happened, when the people from the village found out that he, they gathered, and they did not allow, there were fights and yelling, and I think a horrible situation, and then I said, “This is, this is the end. Simply, there is no life here.” I was simply scared that they could kill my son. Because they could simply think that he does not belong here.
My husband was sick. So, during that hour that we could not go inside the building I did not know if he was alive, if they went to him, and killed him too. So, I decided like that, my husband was in a wheelchair, for a year he was almost paralyzed and we had to move. We had a few savings and my brother from America gave that much money, and we bought an apartment, the cheapest apartment in Belgrade’s area. At the beginning when we moved from that apartment, we went to the village to, to an old family house, not where we lived, but to an old house where there was no water or anything. The requirements of medication of a sick person are big, people who have had experienced things like this understand this.
And we were here for two months and we saw that it would take us nowhere, and with that little money we had, and one morning I came to Belgrade, and I had that one day to buy an apartment. So I took those announcements, “Halo Oglas” and I searched by price, I went around 11, 12:00 to that place, the first [apartment] that I went to and from some young people, around ten kilometers from Belgrade, Padinska Skela, in the neighborhood, twelve kilometers from Panska Skela through Zrenjanin, the place is called Vrbovski. I bought a small, one-floor house there, so to say. But for us that was super.
So after a few, I was alone there for around a week until I fixed it and we moved things out, or what we already had, and all of those things from the apartment that we had, after ten days I brought my husband, who was in Niš with my family during that time, the children stayed there to finish the school year, so when we moved in April, they finished the school year, they finished the school year in Niš where my family was and after that they came. But, there for us was, we lived there for three and a half years, but it was great for the kids, we were well accepted in that village. I know that people had different experiences, my sister in Prokuplje, as I mentioned the relation of Serbs with Croatians, Croatians, towards refugees from Croatia, so that relation was with us, when we were refugees from Kosovo.
But, I did not experience that. Really, these people were wonderful, they were happy that a family moved to a small village. The children were well accepted, they had wonderful friends, my son had fun. I was scared of that, Danube was near, but he adored it, a canal, a mountain, they built cabins with wood all the time and they had it good. But, when they found out that they have to travel to school, after two-three years, they insisted on moving to the city, which thank God happened, so…
It was terribly hard. My husband died in September 2003. A few months before that he was in the hospital because he did not want to be at home in front of the children and immediately I allowed him to go, because we were scared of that situation and that trauma, he could die and I wouldn’t be there, only the children. So, I remember that time as a period of lots, lots of work. I often mention this, I simply did not have time to eat, from all the obligations that I had. I traveled, so for six months I was unemployed and we had no money. So at that time. At that time I earned money, so I had left 50 marks at that time, with which I went to Pančevo, and at that time it was called buvljak and I bought what I could, small things which were sold there and in that neighborhood that was near and I would earn as much as I did in Kosovo with the salary.
So as far as this was concerned, money wasn’t lacking, but it was quite hard. Later, so, during all that time I applied, I searched for work in Belgrade, anywhere, in any form that I heard of. Yet, I couldn’t, I was in a lot of lawyer’s offices to talk and I have to say that when they heard that I am from Kosovo, it was over. I would not work…
And so it happened that I found out about a job advertisement in HBT, Habitat, just the same they were dealing with real estate of Serbs from Kosovo. So somewhere around 4:00 in the afternoon, but the elections were the next day, I think this was in Niš, in Niš, yes, I sat on the train, and at 6:00 in the morning I was at Niš, and at 8:00 I waited for, what do I know, I applied for that job and after a few months they called me to work. In December I started to work in Kraljevo. For three months I was there alone, since my mother was with us, and she took care of the children and my husband, later she went to my brother in America. And I had to organize the move in four days, the non enrollment of kids from school, all for Kraljevo. And we spent three months in Kraljevo and my office was transferred to Belgrade and I worked here for HBT for a year and a half.
So this was it, I remember that time, I worked with young people, with smart people and I really had it good. The salary was good. But, after a year they cut down the staff and there wasn’t a place for me. I took that very hard, not very, but I had some savings, and I would make it to the next job. But I was lucky enough to get employed immediately, and while I was working there, I applied and searched for a job, and I was employed in the building of the city office of Belgrade. The salary wasn’t good, but the people were really good. And I think that I started working there because a woman decided, her name is Branka Kadijević, who is an amazing person, really. Who was a refugee from Croatia and understood my story.
Luckily, I’m glad it is like that, they were happy with my work and I was happy that I had that opportunity to enter the society of the jurists of Belgrade and go forward after that, since I was working. And it was a really good circle, yet this was a state organization, and for some reason near dissolution. Yes.
Marijana Toma: And from that year, what year was this?
Slavica Jovanović: 2001. May 18, when I came for the first time with my stuff in Belgrade.
Marijana Toma: When did you permanently come to Belgrade from Kraljeva, when was this?
Slavica Jovanović: So this was, so this was in May, the end of May, the end of May of 2002. Yes.
Marijana Toma: And after this your husband died, right?
Slavica Jovanović: Yes, he died in September 2003. Yes.
Marijana Toma: Since then you’re in Belgrade?
Slavica Jovanović: My children, yes, three years, so they would enroll in school in one place, the grade, they would start the school year in one place and finish it in another. They would start the school year in one place and finish it in another.
Marijana Toma: What do you work currently?
Slavica Jovanović: Now I am a public notary in Velika Gardište, near the Basic Court, and this is the second time that I am a public notary. I was named in 2014, in the first election of notaries, and I was a notary for more than a year in Mladenovac. But I had health problems, I don’t know how much of what happened influenced it, at some moment I felt that I could not do that job well. I simply couldn’t look at the documents, I couldn’t talk to people, it came to that point and I quit, to say simply.
I submitted the request to quit, and after a month I worked at the Fund again and so it happens that this job had value in Kosovo’s book and this story in which I went back to everything traumatic in my life and the fact that I went a couple of times in Kosovo and that I talked to people, I don’t know, maybe I need to come back to my [country]. And that was a horrible year for me. I believe, I never went to the doctor, I did not have the strength, but for a year, a year and a half I was depressed. So, all I could do was to go to work and work, so to come home and be in bed.
So it happened that I didn’t talk to my children for a whole week. I didn’t have the strength, I couldn’t talk. Almost during this time a colleague from the Fund, not almost, but when I went she said, “You’re wonderful and amazing” and after we co-operated greatly and we were friendly during the end, but she said, “You used to make me so angry in the beginning, very angry. You would come in the office and you wouldn’t even say ‘Good afternoon!’” But, I couldn’t say “Good afternoon!” that was all… But, when, after a year when I got better, when I went back, what I say to myself, I used to love this job and I still do, and this was, I always fantasized about having my job. So to work like that, and I would tell my colleagues, “Finally a job where only me and law can work.” So nobody tells me, “This is how you will interpret this law, this is how you’ll do this job.” But, me being the mediator in this process, the way that I can and know how.
And I really feel bad, I experienced it as a huge personal failure and as weakness, the fact that I had to close that office. But, that’s how it was and I couldn’t do it differently. And the people at the Chamber of Commerce, I thank them for being so understanding, and the Ministry of Justice, they named me again and now I give my best to work that job the way it deserves to.
Marijana Toma: What do the kids do now?
Slavica Jovanović: The kids are, my daughter is in the fifth year of studies, almost finishing the fifth year in dentistry, while my son finished his electro technical studies immediately, that year, in the fourth year he won a scholarship for his doctoral studies in Canada. If I know how to say it right, he is doing his doctoral studies in biomedicine, in biomedical technology, and biomedical engineer. The first year went very well for him, he was, he was here for three weeks ten days ago. It has been ten days since he went Nina [talks to her daughter]? Yes, it has been ten days.
I’m often asked how I handled it when he went, it wasn’t hard for me, really, I experienced it as a normal thing, because at some point he would leave the house. It doesn’t matter where and how. A block down the street, or somewhere there, so it really wasn’t hard for me, firstly because it is such a good place, with smart people, and he works something nice, so I’m delighted about that. I especially brag that he is not here [studying].
Marijana Toma: Slavica, I would end the interview here, if you don’t have anything to add, I would thank you for sharing your story with us. And congratulate you.
Slavica Jovanović: Thank you, Marijana, it was a pleasure for me, I don’t know how clear I was, but if somebody “down” there knows what I’m talking about, they will understand.
Marijana Toma: Thank you very much!
