Mimoza Paçuku: Can you tell us about your childhood?
Vjosa Dobruna: I think that my childhood was happy, like any other childhood. The little I can remember, I believe I can remember a lot. I spent my childhood in Gjakova, where I was born, and it was the happiest [time] because I grew up with both my parents who were very busy working, my grandfather, four of my uncles and my aunt, so it was a very happy childhood and I always felt much loved and pampered. Then my sisters were born, and my life became even better. Three sisters were born after me, we were four children. Then in the end my youngest sister was born when I was in high school, that’s why I see her more as my child than as my sister. It was a happy childhood, I was the first child in a family where generation after generation – they say, I don’t know whether it is a myth – in eleven generations there were one or two girls. I know that in the last three generations there was only one girl and in my generation I was the first girl born in the Dobruna family. So in a way I was privileged, because I demanded a lot of love from the time I was born. Four of my uncles, my aunt, my grandfather, my grandfather’s wife, she wasn’t my grandmother but she was my grandfather’s wife, all of them were around me, also because both my parents worked, at that time even my mother worked.
At that time there were two working shifts, my mother told us she had to teach first and second grade in the morning, third and fourth grade in the afternoon. Therefore, most of the time she was not there, and my father neither, therefore I grew up with my grandfather. Even when my sisters were born I would still stay with my grandfather, and I think that my grandfather and my uncles had more impact on me than my parents. So this is how I spent my childhood until I was six years old, six and a half…when I went…
What I can remember from my childhood at that time, which also describes Kosovo a lot, is…when my grandfather, it was sometime around April ‘69 and…he had always a picture in the room…it was a man, it was a big picture and I didn’t know who was in that picture. And everyone said, “This is your uncle, this is your uncle.” I looked at him, “Is this my uncle, my uncle?” He [grandfather] said, “You were very little, when he went to jail…but when you were born he named you Vjosa.” Ok. One day my grandfather came and said, “Tomorrow we will go somewhere, and we will hop on, we will hop on a horse carriage. We will go from Gjakova to Peja with the carriage. In Peja we will take a train to Pristina, and we will sleep one night in Pristina and the next day we will head to Niš.”[1] I said, “What is there in Niš?” “You will see this man, your uncle!”
Then we went to Pristina, we took a bus, and we went first, first, before we entered Niš, there is a place called Deligrad,[2] and on the right side there was, there was a place like a bus station, it was covered. On the other side there was, there was a building with high walls and we entered, we entered inside escorted by police, they searched us and we entered inside where I saw him…stop! {asks to stop the filming because overcome by emotion}.
He was there, we entered, they searched us and sent us inside there, and there was a man behind bars. My grandfather had prepared a cream, he always prepared it from geese fat and I always asked, “Why?” He said, “They work in the prison foundry, and his hands get bruised.” I could touch his hands through the bars and this was the first time I saw him. From that day I always remember the conversation with my grandfather, that same day I saw him, and then we returned with…When we returned, there were all Albanians on the bus, because all the people who went for visits to the prison were Albanians, the whole bus. The driver was the only one speaking Serbian. And I remember asking my grandfather the whole time, “Why is he in prison?” He said, “He worked against the state.” I asked, “What did he do? He stole? He kill someone?” He said, “No, no. He was a math teacher and he wanted the children to speak Albanian in school and he taught Albanian. Together with some friends he made the request.” “But why was it forbidden to speak Albanian? We speak Albanian!” “Yes, we speak Albanian at home, but in school they were not allowed to.”
This was the first time I went to a prison, the one in Niš. Afterwards I continued to go time after time, starting from that year, from the ‘60s. The last time that I went to see my uncles in prison, because they were in prison one after another, was on 16 December 1996. The last time I went was when my third uncle, Sokol, Sokol Dobruna, was released from prison. So, starting from Hydajet, Skender, Sokol and Muslim, I visited the prisons every third Saturday, starting from the ‘60s until 16 December 1996, approximately 30 years. But I didn’t visit only my uncles. Sometime later, when I grew up, I visited also… I mean, I accompanied or drove family members of other political prisoners. I used to go and from those years I have many anecdotes, many things.
Once, once in the ‘80s, we went, we went to Leskovac,[3] and the prison was on Czar Dušan street, No. 1. And all the prisoners were… they refused to speak Serbian with family members, because when we went to visit them in prison we were supposed to speak Serbian, not Albanian. They had put cassette players on both sides of the bars so that we would speak Albanian and they had… they did not want, they refused to speak Serbian. And I was with…I was near Karaqeva[4] to pick up an old man whose son was in prison, the father of someone named Emin Krasniqi. He had broken his leg. I would always go from Pristina to pick up this old man from his house, and take him to the prison. And when we went there, they didn’t allow us to enter because they asked them [the inmates], “Do you agree to speak Serbian?” They said no. They asked us, “Do you agree to speak Serbian?” We said “No!” And when we got out we had some yogurt and fresh onions, since it was May, we had bought them, when we got out I said, “Bac[5] Hazir, I am very mad.” He said, “Well, what can you do?” I asked him, “Can we throw these yogurts at the prison window?” He said, “Here you go, throw the fresh onions as well.” He gave them to me, we had brought two yogurts for each of the prisoners , both yogurts in our hands, and the old man, we had parked the car outside the prison entrance, he gave me two yogurts and two batches of fresh onions and I threw them with all my anger at the window, the fresh onions and the yogurts. I was relieved. I got in the car and we continued driving to get back and return bac Hazir to the vicinity of Karaqeva. And the old man was very nice to me, any time I went to pick up something, I said, “What do we do now?” “We must release our anger, Vjosa, we will do something else.” Therefore…I have many, many, many stories, anecdotes from those prison years, thirty years of visiting prisons.
I went once when I had become a doctor. They beat them up a lot, before and after being investigated. They beat them up even later, all the prisoners. So I decided this, because I did not know what to do: I started to collect sedatives and put them in sugar. I would grind them and mix them with sugar. And each prisoner had the right to have four kilograms of goods per month, so I put one kilogram of sugar and I put enough sedatives, I grinded them or I took capsules and put them in sugar. With it, they would receive underwear, one hundred packets of cigarette and a bit of food that would last, gurabija [traditional cookie], smoked meat and other things and a kilogram of sugar. I mixed the sugar with sedatives so they would share it with each other every time they called them to the… “special rooms” where… they tortured them. They ate one spoon, two spoons of sugar.
Once they [the guards] returned the food to us since they were all on strike, and we returned to Pristina. When we returned to Pristina, we were together with the wife of another political prisoner and we prepared a cake that did not need to be baked and without noticing…we used that sugar to make the filling for the cake. We prepared everything, I put it in the fridge. We had some guests, I served the cake by cutting it in small pieces and gave it to them. Everyone started, started to get up, we did not know what was happening. Later, they said, “Vjosa, we are all sleepy, what is this, what is happening? You gave us something.” “What do you mean, I gave you something?!” “You gave us something!” I said to Teuta, “Teuta!” “What?” “Where is the sugar from the package that we brought back from Niš?” She said, “It is there!” “But where there?” Because we had to put the goods in cardboard boxes. She said she took it from the cardboard box! I said, “Kuku,[6] I used that sugar” …everyone was feeling sleepy.
I did different things. For example, they did not allow them to read Albanian newspapers. At that time Zëri was being published, the weekly Zëri, so I separated one hundred packets of cigarettes and wrapped each of them in one page of Zëri. So, they received three weeks of published Zëri, now, two weeks… three weeks exactly, because we went once a month. It was exactly three editions of Zëri, one hundred packets and they went to Niš, to Deligrad. Then, the guards would unwrap the newspaper, remove everything, give the packets of tobacco to the prisoners and throw out all the newspapers. One of the Albanian prisoners would go and collect the pages, rearrange them into a newspaper, and they would disseminate it among the political prisoners, everyone read the newspaper. I have many, many stories, going once a month for thirty years to visit them in prison. I have, I have…That was the first time I went. After that, the [visits] happened continuously. I saw it not only as part of my childhood, but also as part of growing up and also as part of my political education, because I was like a messenger. I would take information from one group to another in different prisons, even though they would not let me in, I got in there only with a special permission to visit my uncle, and the others through their family members whom I drove, because usually I would fill up the car with five people. We would be two, three different families in the car, because we made room [for them] to visit the prisoners.
Practically I visited prisons continuously all my life and that in a way shaped my political opinion…the human rights issue, the rights of Albanians in former Yugoslavia. After some years…when I returned from the United States after I finished high school, I learned about the existence of organizations that report on human rights and I learned what advocacy for human rights is, especially citizens’ rights. Then I started to collect data and testimonies and to communicate with different organizations such as Amnesty International, and later Human Right Watch, the International Red Cross in Geneva. And I reported during the years …the ‘80s, and the ‘90s and after that, the population of Kosovo in general and the educated strata started to understand the importance of advocacy for the rights of Albanians in Yugoslavia and [the importance] of communication to the outside world about it. But in the ‘70s and ‘80s really almost nobody in Kosovo knew about the existence of organizations we could report to. I reported what was happening to rights in Kosovo…not only in Kosovo but in the entire Yugoslavia.
My grandfather from my father’s side practically did not work during all his life, he was the son of a rich family, so he did not work. My father tells me that for some periods, for some periods they moved to Mitrovica and he worked there but after a short time they returned [to Gjakova]. My grandmother was a young woman, she got married at the age of 15 and she had my father. She gave birth to my father when she was 16 and she was a very rich woman, so neither of them worked at that time, they lived off the wealth they had until the Second World War. During the Second World War my grandfather stayed at home and my grandmother went to war. She was a fighter in the Second World War, in the national-liberation war, and there are a lot of anecdotes about it. She was a very pretty woman and she was very strong, very much. And they say that after the war they celebrated…Shefkije, and until recently a street in Gjakova was named after her, Shefkije Dobruna. And they asked her, after the war they wanted to give her a post in Gjakova. “No, I do not want to, I do not want to cooperate with you!” “How come?! You fought together with us!” “Yes, but I am antifascist, I am not communist. And you communists have taken over. I will not support you.” So she was very strong. They say, they say that even when her mother died, she prepared her mother and left her in one room, since it was her sister’s wedding. She did not tell anyone. She left, she got ready, she put on a good dress for the wedding and she went to the wedding. She locked her dead mother in a room. They say, there were many, many, many, many stories about how strong she was. She was very strong and she was very beautiful and very proud, very proud.
So after the Second World War, when they nationalized everything her family had, everything, even the land and all things, they [the family] had nothing left. They didn’t even have anything to eat. They say that she filled a basket, a basket, where they usually left the bread, and she covered it with a white cloth, so if their cousins came, it would look full, even if you touched it, it would feel full, so nobody would notice it was empty. Because after the war, after the Second World War, Kosovo was under martial law … repression. The majority of Albanians, even those who participated in the national liberation war, but who were not members of the Communist Party, were very discriminated. So different families, even though they were members of the National Liberation Movement, were tortured and persecuted as if they were against the national liberation war. Our family was one of those, even though [they were members of the National Liberation Movement]: my grandmother and my father and my uncle, who died in the last day of the war and the elementary school in Junik and the high school until this war had his name, but because he was not a member of the Communist Party, there was a repression that was exercised especially against Albanians in former Yugoslavia, especially in Kosovo, because Kosovo was seen as the center of a stronger national identity movement, and because of the higher concentration of the [Albanian] population. Therefore, some families that were identified as such have lived under [repression], practically all my childhood and youth have been like that, I mean, I have experienced it as such, because I always experienced police surveillance, when they would come to our house and they would wake us up… and I remember as a child when they came near the bed. We were four sisters and we had two rooms but in the two rooms we had beds… not bunk beds, but beds next to each other. And I remember when the police came, they crushed the beds, they pulled out the all the planks and once my aunt was there and there was… it was called qumlek, it was a part of the house, it was a sort of fireplace for heating. They searched even the papers with which we used to light up the fire of the stove, which was made of ceramic tiles, so they searched even that and my aunt got irritated. We were little, we were very scared of the police, she took a big clock and said, “Look, you might find something in here also, some propaganda material.”
For me it was, in a way, there are some … later on, as I grew up it became harder. Once I saw it as part of normal life, for the police to come at three or four in the morning, and wake us up because our uncles were in prison. I was not in my uncle’s house. Or in the year ‘86 for example all the Dobruna children were expelled from university, all of them. Gurakuq was in the first year of his studies in architecture, Elbasan was in the second year, Shpend in the third, Ilirjana had started to study medicine, Valbona was studying civil engineering, and they were all expelled. We are talking about the year of ‘86, 1986. I was the first one to sue the state, the University of Kosovo at that time, for denying me the right to education.
Nine of these children who were expelled had their fathers imprisoned, [they had] their uncles. But they were all expelled from school, from university. They were not in their first year of studies, they were more advanced. The professors were all Albanians, the university was not closed yet. But they were scared and the system was like that. Now I get a little sick when I see the same university professors who sell patriotism, some of them are even in parliament. When they went out…..I went and talked to them, “Why did you expel the kids? Why did you expel the kids from school? But why did you expel Shpend, Valbona and Ilirjana when their mother is not Albanian but Croat! Why did you expel them?” I am telling you, I grew up with these things, so later on I gathered information about everyone, and I sued the University for expelling [my cousins]. And when I went to court, when I saw those judges, when I saw and talked to them in a normal manner they smiled, “Eh, Vjosa”.
1986 was the end … when in the beginning of October I filed a lawsuit for expelling the children, all my uncle’s children, they emigrated, they went to different parts of the world to get an education. And the problem was not only their expulsion, at that time every municipality sent a list of the enemies’ children, they would sent it to the university, and the university expelled them. I am talking about 1986 and not about ‘56. And the deputy rector of the university back then was Albanian, because the rector was a Serb. And he told me, “But Vjosa, this is the system. They are the children of irredentists, of nationalist families.” “Have the children done something?” “No.” “But why then?” “This is the list that we received from Gjakova, we need to expel these children.” “But you are expelling people from the third year, the fourth year, before they graduate!?” This is how it happened, these were the times. And I am saying again, with all these things, sometimes I think I have lived more than one life. This was part of the lives of Albanians in Yugoslavia. Of course, they did not attack all families. Some families were demanding their rights louder and resisting the system – the system was like that – and some less, but we, as the Dobruna family, we suffered, we suffered a lot.
I do not have [many memories] about my mother’s family, I have very few memories because my mother was an only child. They were born, I think…both of them died young, so my mother was raised by her grandmother and her aunts and uncles. And what was good and uncommon at that time for an orphan, my mother was educated. It was not common at that time to send a woman to school, but they sent her since her uncle also went to school. But in some way they were politically discriminated because during the Italian occupation my mother’s uncle, Qamil Benxhija, worked for the Ministry of Education. He graduated in philosophy in Padua and medicine at the Sorbonne. So there weren’t many people who went to school. When Italians occupied Albania, and then when they came to Kosovo, those students who studied in Italy worked for them, and my uncle Qamil was a student in Padua.
Then, he made it possible for my mother to go to school. Together with his mother, he raised my mother so he sent her to school … So my mother graduated on time and she was one of the first Albanian teachers in Kosovo, she started working as a teacher in Rahovec since she was 16 and a half years old, 17 years old, I have her picture as well. After that, in Gjilan, together with her uncle Qamil Benxhija, they founded the High School of Gjilan, so I have good memories.
I feel proud about both sides of my family, my mother’s side and my father’s side. My mother worked as a teacher, my father studied as a sculptor until 1954. It was 1954 when they imprisoned his brother for the first time and they expelled him from the University of Belgrade. It was before graduation that he returned to Gjakova. Later, when he had three children, when Pranvera, Aida and I were born, my father went again to Belgrade to study to become a social worker. With three children at that time, my mother took care of us, while our father was studying. We traveled very often. We would go from Gjakova, they were excellent trips, we would take buses, trains bla bla to go to Belgrade to see our father every two- three months. So, we had good memories, they used to buy toys at that time, all things for children, to compensate for the absence of our parents. When we went to Belgrade to [visit] our father, we would find many toys waiting for us, many clothes, many things. I was compensated in another way as well, because they would sent me to communicate with the political prisoners, to visit my uncles in prisons.
I was also compensated by my grandfather, because he would feel guilty, since I started to go [to prisons] very young so he would always make everything possible for me. When I started, I was in my puberty and I started to grow. When we returned from Niš or Požarevac, from the prisons in Serbia, he would say, “You have behaved very well this month, what do you want this month?” I said, “I want Italian jeans.” “All right, you will buy Italian jeans.” Or he would say, “Next month…” He always tried to compensate me since they thought they were ruining my childhood. But not only my grandfather, my mother and father had a soft spot for me, because at that time even the one uncle who was out of prison, if they visited him, they would lose their job, so nobody could visit them in prison, only my grandfather who was old, or I, since I was a child. All others… for example one of them was in prison for ten years, the other brother did not see him for ten years. The other one was [in prison] 14 years, and they did not see each other for 14 years. I was the only one who visited them with my grandfather. And they always tried to somehow… do something for me, to make me feel like a child, and not to feel so mature. And… they were scared of the pain, until I practically started to understand. Even in school, children would tease me…
Ok, I remember a beautiful moment of my childhood. I told you earlier that I was the first girl in the family and there were not many boys, so I enjoyed a privileged status with everyone, especially my grandfather. My grandfather, his house was an old house and the floor, which was like a basement, was made of half stones and then it was stones, then there were some stairs made of stones, then there was the floor, and the courtyard was, I believe, it was very rare to find such [courtyard]. There were about fifty, one hundred kinds of roses and they were all around the courtyard, which was three hundred meters long and it had roses. At the house there was a garden with smaller flowers and above there was a pergola and a plum tree. When I started to go to school, my grandfather knew that I would go to his place after school, and not to my parents’, to my house. I went to my grandfather’s, he made like a desk for me under the plum tree, and the plum tree was near the pergola.
My grandfather would sit there at the table and drink. My grandfather drank a lot of alcohol. He lived his life, Teki Dervishi[7] wrote a book, Teki Dervishi the writer, and said, “I dedicate this to the first bohemian that I have met in my life, Qazim Dobruna.” He was a bohemian, he drank, he wanted to have many friends, he read a lot, he was Bektashi,[8] and I would always tease him, “Grandpa, you are Bektashi not because you believe in any religion, but because you are in the reading club.” The Bektashi read a lot and they also drink a lot. So my grandfather’s house was a sort of Bektashi club and my father would always come there to check whether I was doing my homework, [at the desk] my grandfather had made near the plum tree, it was called plum bardhake. It would grow big plums and the trunk was thick. He made a desk for me, and my grandfather would drink down there with his friends with meze[9] on the table near the vine.
I was there and he would say, “Do you have any questions related to your homework?” I would say, “No, no there is no need, when I have a question I will ask.” And I would do my homework there, during the summer of course, I did my homework. During wintertime I was again at my grandfather’s place, as I remember I had a corner, and at the time when my grandfather was sick, he was most of the time in his bed. At the end of the living room, the big room, there were many built-in old cabinets, and you would not distinguish them from the the bathroom’s door, in Gjakova it was called cellar, built on the same wall at the end of the room, because all doors were beautiful doors and handmade like the ceiling of the house. I asked them to make me a desk in the room, because my grandfather did not want me to sit on the sofa and do my homework there. They made me a desk from the door, which was part of the cellar and you could see it from the outside. They hand-made me a table, like a desk, from the door of the cellar, which was carved and they had to put a cardboard on top of it, so I could do my homework. They made me a desk with a shkom.[10] And when my grandfather’s wife, my father’s stepmother [saw that], she revolted because they did that. She said, “I am teaching the girl how to have a sense of aesthetics, how to love beautiful things.” And… they made me the desk. I have these two memories connected with my grandfather.
Something else about my grandfather, when I was 12-13 years old, my mother and father were enough, I would not say rigorous, but they tried to establish some rules, so if you made a mistake, “Your younger sisters will be held accountable for that mistake. Therefore you have the responsibility not only for yourself, but also for your sisters because you are the oldest of all the children.” Then Shpend, Ilirjana, Valbona, Nderim, were born, the children of my other uncles were born. “But you are the oldest one, so if you make a mistake, everyone has made a mistake,” and she tried … I had many limitations, many limitations. I did not have those limitations at my grandfather’s. When I went to his place, I had a lot of freedom. My grandfather … once my grandfather said to me, “You know what? We will go out.” Near the Çarshia e Vogël[11] there were some café where my grandfather used to go, and he said, “We are going out, I will teach you something.” “What?” “I have seen it, on Sundays they do not give wine to children.” And he said, “I will take you now to a café to teach you how to drink wine, and another thing, how to smoke.”
He took me with him and we went to a café in the Çarshia e Vogël. My grandfather’s friends gathered, and my grandfather ordered a glass of red wine for me. The first time he ordered shirë,[12] and the second time also wine and cigarettes. He lit a cigarette for me. I was about 13 years old, 12-13 years old. I went home for the weekend, I did not go to my grandfather’s place and I told my parents. “Now my grandfather has taught me how to drink wine and now when we have lunch on Sundays, you will give me wine.” My father said, “Wine? Do you know how old are you?” I said, “Yes” He said, “Who taught you? I said, “Grandpa, we went to the café and he taught me how to drink wine.” I know that I felt there would be a strong argument between my father and my grandfather. My father took me by the hand and we went to my grandfather’s house, and I heard the screaming. My grandfather said, “I am educating her, she needs to learn how to drink wine, I need to teach her how to smoke tobacco, to become independent, to argue with you because you are not always right. She also needs to be like her grandmother. And I will teach her all this.”
Until my grandfather died, I was 16 years old when he died, there was always a conflict between my parents who wanted to educate me differently and they would make … and my grandfather who read everything, well not everything, but everything! And what did he do? He received the pension of veteran from ’41. They gave it to him later, after my grandmother died, they gave it to my grandfather. That pension was greater than my father’s and mother’s salaries together. My grandfather shared it with me. He said, “We split it in half.” I usually spent it on food and clothes that we sent to prison, and not for anything else. But he wanted, he always wanted to give me the opportunity of being more independent and proud, of always having a lot. And when he died, when they opened the will that he left, everything that he had, he left it to us girls, [the girls] of others uncles, only to the girls. He always said, “Girls need to have a lot, we need to create a bigger security for the girls. We need to pamper the girls, and we should not allow them to work too much.” Always the girls, he was always a big supporter and he would always say, “You walk with your head up high, you never look down.”
When we got back from prison or something, I, a bit… I was teased by the children from school, especially the children of communist leaders, saying that she is a nationalist, her uncles are in prison, we should not hang out with her, or some other things. Or, for example, when there were festivities, when Tito came to Kosovo, or on 25 May, all children got out with a baton[13]… we the Dobruna children did not go because the school would now allow us to go. Not even to wait [for the relay race], not even to celebrate 25 May, because “You are nationalists.” Later on I understood this and I was not upset about it, but as a child, in elementary school, I felt very bad when all the children went out to the street. I mean, we were the only ones who were not allowed to go out to the street, they sent us away.
And… after that, I started to make, I mean, my dose of trouble. When I was in eighth grade, they did not allow the [Albanian] flag. And… I organized the whole class, because with… they would put out all flags, so we would not put out the Albanian flag on the 28,[14] on the 27 [November], they would raise the flags of Yugoslavia and Serbia. And… I can mention even the names, some of them are alive and some dead, my friends from the elementary school Mustafa Bakija in Gjakova. And we organized. I asked my grandfather where I could find Albanian flags. He told me about his friend in Prizren, a person from Gjakova living in Prizren who had returned to live again in Gjakova, who sewed flags secretly, Albanian flags. And I asked my grandfather where we could get money to pay. “Why do you need them?” I said, “I need one hundred flags.” He said, “You go to him and tell him that I will pay. And I am not asking you why you need them.” “Alright.”
I went with a classmate. We shared a desk in class. We went and told him. And he asked, “When do you need them?” “We need to have them by the night of 27 November.” He said, “Alright.” We went on 27 November, after 11:00 o’clock at night, we went out, raised the flags on [telephone] poles, we were thirty people from our class, all of us. We climbed, took out the flags, and raised our Albanian flags. And the next day, on 28 November, the entire Gjakova had raised Albanian flags from the cemetery on the Prizren side to the Çarshia e Vogël. We stayed home because we knew that now the police would come. And they came… the police detained [the students] but nobody came to take me, since I was an exemplary student, very well behaved. They knew I went to visit my uncles in prison because they followed me, but I did not do anything extraordinary, extreme. My mother worked at the same school as a teacher. Therefore…
Okay, it was this way … we changed all flags, and the next day the police went and detained the ones that were suspected. But I was a very, very good child and really, I was excellent in school, I never made trouble, I never missed class, I did my homework on time a lot, to the point that other children looked at me with a bit of suspicion, I was very, very good. Because I am telling you, they educated me in that way, that if I made a mistake [it would count as] all other children had made a mistake. So, if I weren’t a good student and behaved badly, I would shame my family. So I was really like that. So they did not come to my house. But then I understood that this was not the only reason. The professor advisor of the class, who was considered to be a spy, was forced [to become a spy]. He did not report me. He had said, they all went … none of them said anything, none of them said anything about me. After some time, after we finished high school, with the same professor advisor of the class, we gathered in Deçan where one of my friends told to our professor advisor, he said, “Vjosa was the one who organized us, Vjosa was the one that brought us one hundred flags from one taylor from Gjakova who sewed those flags, Vjosa did it.” “I always suspected this,” he said, “but if they called Vjosa, not that they would detain her, but there would be more problems. Since you were not the ones who organized it, it would will be easy for you to be questioned.” So the ones who informed the police protected the children in a way.
And… in school… I see what kind of “trouble” I caused. But it was mostly the influence of prison even then when… a year earlier they had imprisoned many people for raising the flags. This was the last year that the Albanian flag was banned in Kosovo. Then the next year the flag was allowed, since constitutional changes were made in 1971, the amendments to the Constitution, then on ‘74 there was the new Constitution, so with the new changes to the Constitution in 1971 the use of the Albanian flag was allowed in Kosovo. This was the 28 November before the changes, the last one when I was in elementary school, when we changed the flags, and we threw the Yugoslav flags to the ground, and we put up the Albanian flags. This happened then… it was, it was fantastic because my father went out to the street on the 28 because he needed to go to work. But my father got out to the street even faster, because if you did not go out, if you were not seen in public, UDBA[15] and the police always came and arrested [you] in case you were preparing a plot, especially my father, whose brothers were in prison.
They had this habit of staying in café, so people would see they were out in public. And he tells that they went the next day to the street and he saw all the flags, and now the police with Qabrati – it was an organization for cleaning, climbed the poles. We were children, so it was easy for us to climb the poles. They were old people climbing the poles and my dad would ask, laughing, “Who did this?” He said, “I thought it might have been you but … no, I do not believe it.” When he came home he said, “This happened.” “Aha…it happened, good.” “Do you know anything about this issue?” “No!” “Very good.” I remember he told me, “I always trust you.” I said, “Me too.” And this issue was closed. He did not doubt me. After a long, long time, when they found out who organized them, who brought the flags, who had them, because we all climbed on the poles, not just the boys, the girls as well, they understood.
Changing the flags had no consequences, but it became very famous. Even the newspaper Rilindja[16] at that time, and the television, reported that in Gjakova the nationalists and irredentists and counter-revolutionaries and all the different names they called us, changed them: they threw the Yugoslav flags and replaced them with Albanian flags. The job was done. We made, we would make, these kind of troubles.
We read books secretly when we had them. We would take a book and read it. Usually I would get the books from my uncles, or someone from the group of political prisoners would give me a book. I would be the first to read the book and then give it to others, not the book Dimri i madh [Dimri i vetmisë së madhe, Winter of great loneliness] by Ismail Kadare, but Gjarpërinjët e gjakut [Snakes of Blood] by Adem Demaçi. And there were some, some books, some books about Čubrilović,[17] and at that time they had … We were in elementary school, the beginning of the high school when we read them. It was very dangerous to read them. But one would take them, usually I was the one who found them, then would give them to others, but it never happened that my friends betrayed me, that they said, “It is Vjosa.” Even when they were caught with books they never said that Vjosa was the one that gave them the book. Never! They always threw the books away, ripped them, did something, not … “I found it in the street,” they did something. So they would get slapped because they were under the age of 17-18 and in the end they would let them go, but they never betrayed me. They always have… I have provided them with books, with all books, and with all the other actions that we needed to do at that time to show some resistance.
And for me this was a type of a safety valve from everything I experienced in daily life, daily because … for example, nobody in my family worked, only my mom worked. Then, because my uncles were in prison, they would fire them from work, they also fired my dad and anyone who was outside [prison]. So the only safety valve that I had was to do such things and read, because often also my friends and I… I remember in ‘85, I was working as a doctor in the children’s dispensary, when on 5 October, on 5 March they imprisoned four of my uncles, do you understand? I heard it on television, since I was at work, I worked as a doctor and, on 5 March in the evening, actually on 6 March we understood from the television, the news, what happened.
It happened on 8 March, at that time they celebrated 8 March,[18] the entire children’s dispensary gathered to celebrate 8 March, they did not invite me, half of the people who worked there are now parliamentarians, patriots. At that time they would invite, they gathered to celebrate 8 March, but they did not call me, because this was … “We do not dare to call her because she might bring trouble, they might arrest us or questions us as well. We do not dare to invite her even to solemn events.” They did not invite me anywhere because I had my uncles in prison. Even in ’85, ’86, they left one guard who was standing in front of my office, the entire shift, from 7:00 until 2:00, he was supposed to stay there. He scared my patients, he scared them. But nobody from the dispensary would come and talk to me. I am talking about ’85, ’86, before going to specialization, working as a doctor in the children’s dispensary, nobody dared to speak to me because my uncles were in prison, all of them. For months we did not know where they were, so together with my four sisters we would get in the car, we would dress beautifully, with Italian shoes, Jugoexport dresses since they were the best, or Italian jeans and we would dress fashionably and we would go to Gjakova’s prison. “Do you have our uncles here?” No. In Prizren’s prison no, Gjilan’s prison no, Pristina’s prison no, Podujevo’s prison no, Mitrovica’s no.
For three months we did not know whether they were alive or not. They did not tell us where they were in any of those prisons. They had been the whole time in Prizren’s prison. They never told us, for three months. But we made it a routine for three months, five of us, we waited to go on Friday afternoon. They assigned me to work on purpose on Friday afternoon. Then I would go Friday before noon to two police stations, I came by car with my sisters and returned to work by 1 o’clock, since the working shift started at 1. They did this to me on purpose because they learned that I took my sisters to prisons to visit [our uncles]. My father was scared that … they would rape us when we went to the police station, and he always said, “It is better the five of you go, men cannot go.” My dad was the only one left of all the males [in the family] because all others were imprisoned, when he went, as the children of the others were all little, they could not go and look for them in prisons, in police stations.
Just the five of us. My younger sister Donika was very little, and… but we, especially the three of us, Pranvera, Aida and I, the oldest ones, the three of us in the car, the five of us would go to the police station, to a police station. And in Peja’s police station we became so familiar to them, that we could go to Peja court to get permission to visit the prisoners. So, we went to get permissions without knowing where they were, we just needed to get the permission. We went… first to Peja and we went to the police stations for three months. After three months we found out that they were in Prizren. Then it was easier because there were specific days to visit them. And, yes, they started to send them to different places. Then they were sentenced. The youngest one was sentenced 14 years in prison, the others ones less. This was not the first time. And yes… at work it was very hard, at home it was very hard, because nobody knocked on our door. Never!
Nobody dared. Only a friend of mine, a girlfriend, doctor Klara. She was the only one who dared to come to our house. Because no one dared. They expelled all of us children from university. They fired everyone from work, but not me as a doctor, and Pranvera. All the others were fired from work.
All my uncles were in jail and I said, “Thank God our grandfather and grandmother are dead.” Because my grandmother would say, “I don’t have anything to fight for!” At that time Pranvera and I were practically providing for all of my uncles’ families. One had four children, another three children, one had four children, only the youngest was not married and we provided for the entire family, and we did it well.
To show them that we were unbreakable, we took all the children and spent two weeks of vacation in Greece, because they kept them [the uncles] in prison for a few days, or we went to buy a new wardrobe, we bought new footballs, and stuff like this that kids want, or new bikes, just something to show them that we were resisting, and we selected people who could see them [in prison], because a lot of informants came just to provoke us, or they left something at the house and after two hours the police would come pretending to check the house, and they would find some kind of propaganda material.
Or I remember once we painted our grandfather’s house and there was some paint left and we kept it, just in case the walls got dirty so we could repaint them. When the police came, one said, “You made Molotov cocktails, you kept Molotov.” “What Molotov?” He said, “You kept Molotov under the stairs”. “Ok” I said, “Take it, it is paint.” He said, “No, it is Molotov…” “Take the Molotov.” He said, “Come to the police station.” I said “Okay, I will come to the police station.” I said, “But first, this is not my house”… They took the Molotov. I laugh at that person a lot, believe me, a lot, because now I see him as a member of the Serbian State Security, when they questioned me, and not only me, but also Gurakuq, Saranda and Leka who were nine, ten, and eleven years old. And they kept interrogating us until 11:00 p.m. about a bottle of paint that was left after painting the house. “There, you made Molotov cocktails.” Come on.
They took all of us kids and sent us to the police station and they kept us there for hours and they were Albanians, not Serbs… and all of them are still alive. Thank God they are still alive, and thank God that they are great patriots… now I can’t even look at them in the eyes when I see them in different events or when they write patriotic books, those who questioned me in the police station for so long, who questioned me every time I visited my uncles in prison when they were on strike, and took me to the police station when I returned from the visits and interrogated me for hours. My mom and dad stayed in front of the police station for hours, always afraid that something might happen to me. And these members of the Serbian State Security were always Albanians and what my uncle said to me was, about the families of the other I met before Deligrad prison, “What did they say?” “What did you say?”
Those weren’t easy times, it seems now, and even then it seemed hard, believe me! My family supported me, I was loved in my family, I didn’t lack the warmth of my large family. Now I see that I was hurt but I kept it inside, I turned it off. Now sometimes when I see these people I remember them, and now I blame them more than then. Then it seemed more normal to me, he was part of the system, he was doing his job, I should be careful because he was a member of the Serbian State Security, he was an informant, he was this, he was that, I didn’t think a lot about that, I saw it as normal, and now when I see those people, it hurts more, I have some anger… I’m not revengeful, I don’t want revenge but that fact that there wasn’t some lustration in Kosovo disturbs me. It disturbs me that people give them nonexistent recognitions, and I know everything, I know those people, I know who was a spy for whom, who spied on political prisoners, I know who interrogated me. I recognize better the Albanians than the Serbian police who interrogated me more than eleven times during the apartheid[19] and the war in Kosovo, the Serbian police. I don’t remember those Serbs’ faces, I don’t remember their faces, only the consequences of when they broke my spine. But the Albanians who interrogated me especially in the ‘80s, when my uncles were imprisoned, I remember each one of them. Even though I am old now, I still feel something when I see them in the street or anywhere else and I recognize them immediately. It is unbelievable how well I recognize them, not the Serbs, because it was apartheid and we were in a big conflict, and I knew I was doing something against them, but those before the war who used to be UDBA, when the Albanians interrogated you. I can never get over that, I could never justify them. I justify the Serbs, but not the Albanians, who left me with the consequences [the broken spine from the beating] that I explain when I communicate with these people for different reasons, and I know I am a little harsh… I always try to make them understand that I know, that I have not forgotten, I know what you did even if you didn’t do it to me, I know whom you did it to. I know cases when prisoners were raped, I know and when I see those people I just can’t be polite to them, I can’t do what society expects me to do, I say something to let them know, to not let them feel safe. I keep this to myself, but it shines like a light when I see them, and I just can’t hold it in even though I try, I can’t hold it in, because I know how much this population has been through, I know, I have lived it.
There were some people who knew nothing about education, there were only a few people who were surrounded by more educated people than I was, from both sides. I told you my mom’s uncle studied at the Sorbonne and in Padua and the previous generations in my family were educated. It’s about education, but they created a layer of society that enjoyed wellbeing for various reasons and was quite judgmental of others, especially those called nationalists or irredentists or had someone in prison. Then you were more discriminated, and I know when I finished medical school, I was not the best, but one of the bests in my generation. And they said to me, “Don’t even try to compete for the position of assistant professor. All your uncles are imprisoned, what are you thinking?” My professors, who loved and respected me, said, “Don’t apply, don’t put us in a bad position.” And I said, “What about the others?” “They are not involved in politics, you are from the Dobruna family, be a doctor.” “But I want to get involved in education.” “You can’t get involved in education.” It was normal, now we are forgetting how things were because now is a different time, we are forgetting how much some families have gone through, especially village families, they suffered more.
Our family in Gjakova, not only ours but also other families in Gjakova, we had a “special status” {makes air quotes}. All the children went through that, but I was the oldest, so I had more obligations. But trust me, all the children went to the police stations, all of them… even though they were only children. Leka was eight or nine years old when they first questioned him in the police station for a few hours. All our children have been through that… children, it is different when they are older, all of them then went to the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army]. Nine… all of them joined the KLA, it was a continuous family education, and all of them are unemployed now (laughs). Because none of them joined political parties, and here if you don’t support any of the “leaders” {makes air quotes} you won’t find a job. All of them are unemployed, all, all, all of them… (smiles).
[1] The largest city in Southern Serbia, where one of three major prisons is located. The others are in Požarevac and Sremska Mitrovica.
[2] Small village in the municipality of Aleksinac.
[3] City in Southern Serbia.
[4] Village in the municipality of Kamenica.
[5] Bac, literally uncle, is an endearing and respectful Albanian term for an older person.
[6] Colloquial, expresses disbelief, distress, or wonder, depending on the context.
[7] Teki Dervishi (1943-2011) born in Gjakova, was a writer, a publicist and a playwright. He was the editor- in-chief of the newspaper Bota Sot.
[8] Islamic Sufi order founded in the thirteenth century, mainly found in Anatolia and the Balkans. More diffused in Southern Albania, it has a presence in Kosovo as well, in particular in Gjakova.
[9] Small plates of food.
[10] Low wooden chair without arms.
[11] Literally, small market, old part of Gjakova.
[12] Non-alcoholic beverage that tastes like wine.
[13] The baton was carried in a relay of youth that crossed all of Yugoslavia on May 25, Communist leader Tito’s birthday.
[14] Albanian national Flag Day.
[15] Uprava državne bezbednosti (State Security Administration), with the additional “a” for armije, Yugoslav army.
[16] Rilindja, the first newspaper in Albanian language in Yugoslavia, initially printed in 1945 as a weekly newspaper.
[17] Vaso Čubrilović (1897-1990) was a Bosnian Serb political activist and academic, a member of the conspiratorial group Young Bosnia, which executed the assassination of the Hapsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. He advocated the ethnic cleansing of minorities from Serbia, notably the Albanians of Kosovo, in a memorandum published in 1937 and entitled Iseljavanje Arnauta (The Expulsion of the Albanians).
[18] 8th of March is celebrated as International Women’s Day.
[19] Apartheid refers to the parallel Kosovo Albanian society, living side by side the Serbian state, during the 1990s.
