We used to throw little gatherings in the middle of the day, for example. At 12:00 we would draw the curtains shut and then… afterwards we went home to have lunch with our parents. That was the reality. We always had the feeling that we needed to live some kind of normal life, to create a sense of normality, and in that normality, a form of resistance. At the same time, our reality was extremely degrading and oppressive in every aspect of our lives. It’s very interesting how people adapt to inequalities of that scale. For example, everything was segregated. You had to be very careful about where you went to shop, which store you entered, what you did… everything had to be calculated. For someone who was 14 or 15 years old, everything was calculated, and the decisions you made were very important for your own well-being.

The first-grade class was sitting on the floor, learning the alphabet, writing their first letters on the floor. In Fushë Kosovë, for example, the situation was catastrophic. Those rooms would heat up quickly and get cold quickly. Then it would happen that to get to the classroom, one had to pass through the kitchen or hallway. The idea for home-schools was given by Halim Hyseni. I remember a journalist once told him,  ‘What are you going to do there? They cook beans in that room,’  I’m simplifying here, ‘The meal is cooked there, students study there?’ Halim replied, ‘Then you tell me, where else should the students go to learn? Show me a place where food isn’t cooked and we’ll send them there.’

I thought that the civilian population should withdraw from the village, more precisely, I thought that the young people, who could be the target of  Serbian forces, should be the first to leave. ..I went to the population in the valley where about 700 people were gathered…I appealed for young people to come with me, leave; some of those who were present but unfortunately are no longer among the living, said, ‘But we are civilians, unarmed, we are with women, with children, with pregnant women, with young brides, with babies,  why would we be a target of Serbian forces, when we do not pose any risk to anyone?’ I answered, ‘Because you need to understand the fact that Serbs have traditionally attacked the civilian population, Serbs have traditionally attacked unarmed and defenseless people, so I think it is better if we leave.’  …After a couple of weeks, we heard the first news …through a small transistor radio… that over 100 Albanians had been killed in Krusha e Vogël.

There was constant pressure because, from time to time, for example, they would come to the schoolyard and ask, ‘What curriculum are you using? Who is the principal here?’ It was a form of patriotism, in a way, to say, ‘The principal isn’t here. We’re in class.’ But schools with only Albanian students had it a little easier than the schools in the city, where both communities were in the same building.

 

[…] When the schools were closed, the teachers started organizing classes in homes. Lower-grade teachers would take the students into their own homes, while teachers of higher grades, from sixth to ninth, as well as high schools, started organizing in home-schools, which was very difficult. This situation lasted for about six or seven months.

I was four years old when my mother passed away. And this is… I’ve written a book Rrënjët e familjes (The Roots of the Family), where my grandfather is the main character. I suspect that a Serbian activist killed my mother. My mother was killed. I only remember the blood {touches her stomach}, a pillow, because they would remove us from the room. My father quickly rode a horse to the city and brought a doctor. […] I suspect she was killed, they threw a bomb into the chimney, at the fireplace where they used to cook. […] And when they came to take our wheat and corn, this Serbian woman entered the granary, and they took the wheat, but also the granary and the corn. And my mother grabbed an axe and, standing at the granary door with the axe, said, ‘As long as I’m alive, you’ll never leave here alive, because you’ve already taken the flour and the wheat, and now you want the corn too, leaving my children without bread.’ She [the Serbian woman] got very scared and told my father, ‘Take your wife away from here, I give you my word that I won’t take a single grain of corn.’ And my father somehow signaled my mother, as he later told me, and said, ‘Go, go to the house because the children are crying, or the bread might be burning.’ As soon as she left, the Serbian woman came out and ran away. However, she knew the entire layout of our house. And I believe that… because in ‘50 my mother was killed. She [the Serbian woman] threw a bomb, as my mother and the stepmother were there. The stepmother was slightly injured, but my mother was severely injured and died because of it.

That shaping of ours, and especially since I might have been the kind of guy we call bold, more advanced, or however you want to put it. […] The idea came to me to establish the Association of Albanian Students in Belgrade.

 

This wasn’t simply a cultural-literary association. It was, in a legal sense, an organization through which we would then carry out our underground activities. But we needed this legal aspect of the organization as a shield, not the underground one. You might say that I thought it through well. At first, I discussed it with the most loyal and devoted friends. They agreed. They accepted the idea of establishing it. A meeting was held, it was during a literary session. I stood up and presented the concept, the idea, and the proposal to create the association. It was approved by everyone.

 

To avoid it seeming like we were just a group, we formalized it on paper and had everyone sign their agreement for the establishment of the association. Additionally, Setki Imami was there, an experienced worker in Belgrade. I’m not sure if Anton Çetta was there, I don’t quite remember. Dančetović, who was the head of the department, did not sign it.

During that period, it was more difficult to go… also due to the nature of the play. It wasn’t like we staged it in a cultural hall because it was a performance that, in a way, was unacceptable to the regime of that time. However, we performed it in, let’s say, halls, in schools that were improvised. In the physical education hall, if there was one. They were somewhat larger halls, if I can say so, or, for instance, when we were invited to villages, all over Kosovo, not just in Drenas.

 

It happened that we performed even on tractor trailers that had been set up and improvised in schoolyards for their performances, and we used them. Or in school corridors, where they were longer, desks were set up, and on top of the desks, so to speak, the play was performed by us, the actors, while the audience sat on seats, chairs, desks, or even stood. Children, teachers, and often even villagers from the surrounding houses would come to see a performance in Albanian.