Xhejrane Lokaj

Peja | Date: September 5, 2013 | Duration: 154 min.

One night when all my family was sleeping, […]  I went straight to the police station of Deçan. It wasn’t easy because our  village  was five or six kilometers from there. And I had only one desire, I wanted to be educated and my family wouldn’t let me. But what I did, some other women have done it too, three or four women, one from Podujevo, one from Pristina, that’s what the newspaper wrote about them. […] My family’s reaction was horrible, but I stayed at my cousin’s.

I registered and settled in the dormitory, I had a scholarship, but I had to pay a price, my family broke all contacts with me.  […] Someone  would come and say, ‘They arrived in Prizren today,’  and back then Prizren was farther away from Pobergi, not very close, not every family had cars (smiles), I mean, there were buses. For them too  traveling was difficult, they would travel only for something important, and that something important, I thought, was they they would come to take revenge for the shame that I had brought to the family.

Dafina Beqiri (Interviewer), Donjeta Berisha (Camera)

Xhejrane Lokaj was born on  October 26, 1955 in Pobergj, Deçan. She has worked as a midwife in the mountain region of Dragash since 1978. She is a women’s rights activist who dedicated her life to women’s health.

Xhejrane Lokaj

Dafina Beqiri: Can you tell me more about your childhood?

Xhejrane Lokaj: Yes, my name is Xhejrane Lokaj, I was born on 26.10.1955 in Pobergj, a village in the municipality of Deçan. My parents were Smaj Lokaj and Hate Morina. My mother comes from a village in Gjakova, her parents were, my grandmother from my mother’s side, Zoja, and grandfather Adem. Meanwhile, my father was born in Pobergj to Ryva and Sadik, his parents. I am the second child in our family, there is a sister before me, I was born in a big family. At the time the tradition was to live in an extended family together with all the cousins, not only with the brothers of the two parents.

I happened to be born in the fall, the busiest season, when almost all the families were involved in farming. At the time, as my mother tells it, it was a very harsh winter with a lot of snow and frost, and when I was born the number of family members had reached 87. I feel good about this period, because there was work in the fields and with the livestock, and not other activities, even men did not migrate or went to school. There was a great harmony, it was a great school, because there wasn’t only one class, but it was almost as when you unite two classes and all the generations were together. And there was a great opportunity to get educated  in the tradition of the place you belong to, in fact Dukagjin, the place where I was born and raised.

On the other hand, we learnt a lot from all these group activities that we did in the extended family, I am always speaking about all generations. There was also the possibility of loving all those people and have your soul full of love, this is perhaps what is different between my generation and yours (smiles) {addresses the people present}, and other generations that had the same luck.  Nevertheless, these extended families had their own rules and everyone knew their duties. As a child back then, I must have been four, five, six, I was not charged with many tasks, besides playing games with stones, with burdock,[1] and other games with a rope or something else.

We did more after starting elementary school. In this case, I mean my generation, because [I] Xhejrane was no exception, we used to take care of cows, sheep, and chickens, we started doing chores and helping our mothers. There was no television or computer, we didn’t have the chance to go out to visit our friends, because our friends were all living in the same house. It was a big family and there were many kids, we didn’t feel that need. Frankly, those occasions were quite rare, because our family might have been the largest in the village when compared to others.  In the morning we tended the cows, said that, and prepared meals in ways that were much different from the way we prepare them now, and from the food we put on our table today, because we cooked everything at home, and so we went to school with food in our bags. Something interesting that I must mention is that school bags at that time weren’t as big (smiles) and beautiful as they are today, but also not as heavy as the ones that children carry now. We had a book, two notebooks, a pencil and we used to borrow even those from our friends, from our classmates, this is something that my generation remembers well. I will be modest, but this might be a praise too, we used to study so much more. Also, as soon as we got home from school, we started doing chores.

I baked cornbread from the time I was very young, but I was more ambitious, more curious, and I wanted to help my mother more than the others, since other pregnancies and the birth of other children came after me, and someone specifically needed to take care [of the house]. I may have felt more responsible in that sense. We used to spend our summers in the mountains, for example the mountains called Pllaqica [Prilep mountain], one of which is near Gjeravica,[2] that Pllaqica, and from the time I was very young, I would say very young, not older than ten, I took over a great part of the family responsibilities and took care of my sisters. At that time we used to collect berries, blueberries and other medical herbs about which we didn’t know much, we just knew they were beneficial. I’m mentioning this again, I was very young but carried a greater and more special burden than other children my age.

As soon as we got back from the mountains, at the end of August, beginning of September, there was another opportunity for economic profit, and I’m not randomly saying this, because this is something we now lack, this responsibility for other generations, the younger generations and even those older, and not about the time when I was only ten… Chestnuts too [were an economic activity], and Pobergj is a village where there are many chestnut trees. Podi i Gështenjave [Valley of Chestnuts] [3] is a lagje very near my village Pobergj. And I’m mentioning Podi i Gështenjave because it was there that we collected the chestnuts which are the signature of our village. However, Podi i Gështenjave is where the Serbian-Slavic army was stationed, and they shelled Dukagjini from there. That is the terror we’ll never forget, because from there they shelled the villages of Pobergj, Vokshi, Sllupi, Prilep, maybe all the way to Gramaqel. Chestnuts gave their name to Podi i Gështenjave.

As a child, I collected many chestnuts, they were the produce that gave us the money to buy clothes, we grew up sharing each other’s used clothes, sisters with sisters, brothers with brothers. It is known, there were no shops then, there wasn’t…until I was an adult, and by that I mean when I was fifteen, I could not tell a dinar from another because we rarely saw money, neither did other families. The [authority of the] head of the household was as the family law would have it, an unwritten law… but it functioned for years and it was the tradition of the place where all of us grew up.

I studied a lot in school, and I was always an excellent student, I was very quiet, kind, I always listened to what I was told, but I was very hard on myself (laughs), I was always very demanding, I demanded more of myself. I was so demanding that I could never be satisfied with what I had. Maybe this is a good thing, a good quality that not everyone possesses, because it helps one reach one’s goals, you know, I did what I was told, I was always quiet though I was very ambitious, I worked very hard, always studied a lot, always listened a lot.

In brief, this is my childhood…I grew up with my sisters, my mother and father, who passed away six years ago, may he rest in peace. They weren’t fortunate to have a son reared as their own, my brothers died when they were babies, one was seven months old and the other one year old.  So, even though I did it willingly, it was also necessary that I took on a bigger part of the responsibility for my family. When I say that I really worked hard, one had to work hard, life needed to be organized, people needed to be fed, we had to live, like everyone else. When I was older… I wrote a lot, I still do. I remember very well the poems (smiles) that were unique in their way, it’s understood that while in school you wrote about birds, the sun.  We wrote a lot about freedom, about an old man, the things that were close to us, the things that inspired us and then we expressed them.

But what makes me proud, what distinguishes Xhejrane from many others, not only among my generation, is that I always saw women as someone who needed to be supported. I somehow noticed that their lives… maybe it was the traditional rules governing family life, closely connected to the traditions we have here, but also the situations in which they lived. I wouldn’t say that women were more oppressed, but their right to demand [things] was always more limited. Women were always the ones who stayed home and worked around the house, and had to be satisfied with what was served and offered to them. The woman was the one who somehow always said, “Amen,” her souls never really mattered, her needs didn’t matter, she had specific duties that she had to perform, without complaining or making a fuss, it didn’t matter whether she was tired or not, you had work, you has to be exhausted. And that is something that always made me feel different. I considered it an injustice and that is maybe why I pushed myself, I gave a lot to others, I gave a lot to my gender.  Since that age, I understood that women must study, they must change themselves and the paths they take, they must use all the necessary means to reach their goals. This made me aware that I wasn’t satisfied with the way women lived, and to be completely honest, since that time I took this path.

Dafina Beqiri: How was the summer and the fall like in Pobergj, do you know any interesting story that happened in the village?

Xhejrane Lokaj: In the villages of the municipality of Deçan, summer is always spent in the mountains. When we went to the mountains, we were separated from our parents. Every summer we went to the mountains with our uncle, may he rest in peace, and his wife. Life in the mountains… being separated from our parents, and spending three months away from our families was quite sad, and some time I was worried as a sister with no brother, because I was very, very emotionally and physically close to my family. On the other hand, my sisters were younger than I, and we worked a lot with cattle, sheep, cows, doing what was necessary to feed them in the mountains, and it was ok with us. But for us as children, they prepared [food], they called us “red cheeks” (smiles), you know, the air was fresh, the  greenery, it was truly healthy. So, the whole summer… at that time we almost never organized weddings or family parties during the summer, there wasn’t so much emigration then, so there wasn’t a specific time [for partying]. So, wedding parties took place also in winter, spring, fall and summer.

We spent summers in the mountains, where we took care of the cattle. I…I was worried about my sisters, they were younger than I and I always stood up for them, and we milked the sheep, not the cows, my uncle and his wife took care of them and our duty was looking after the sheep because they were smaller. We processed the milk, we washed the clothes and cleaned the place where we were staying. It was a tiring life but in the mountains we had these stane [huts] as they were called, and there too we lived in an organized way and close to each other. Of course, with no electricity, and different food, with news from my family coming only once a month, all my dreams were about my family.

And this is how we spent the summer, doing household chores, cleaning, and the biggest joy was coming home down from the hills. I want to thank my uncle’s wife, who took care of us just like our own mother, she cooked for us and made sure we were clean. She is a woman I owe a lot to. She was never mean or mad at us, even when we cried for our family because we missed them, she always comforted and cuddled us, she always took care of us. It was different because she had sons, and my mother had daughters. And I was always wondering about what were they doing, how was my father making it without a son, an old man, supposed to handle the corn, the fields, the lawn and the other usual fieldwork that the villagers lived from since life in the village was organized that way…

Then September came, and something special was that even during elementary school, as soon as we grew a little bit older, it was traditional, especially if someone was prettier, people came to the house and asked for her hand. So, basically that’s what is stuck in my memory, I mean, as soon as a girl grew up, they got interested in her. People came and asked for her hand without knowing whether she was a minor, or knowing that at that age she shouldn’t be thinking about marriage, that they were interrupting… they were interrupting her childhood, her school, her education, and her dreams would immediately take a different direction. And so, she was psychologically prepared, forced by tradition and family. And on those occasions I always strongly reacted, always, always and maybe… who knows, maybe one’s life is determined before one even lives it, and life leads one in a certain direction. I always told myself, “Oh God, when I grow up, do I really have to get married? Should I do nothing else with my life?” You know, this always troubled me, always bothered my conscience, it was not just about me, but other girls too. And in school when we were twelve, thirteen, we always talked about when we would start puberty, because my generation went through it later than others. We weren’t properly fed, and we were not developed as we should have been. We were very small, very tiny girls. But what always concerned me was, what would happen to my sisters without a brother, how much of an impact tradition would have, how much longer my father would be able to resist in this situation, what would happen to my mother.

To be honest, even though I was very young and petite, with my friends, those who studied a lot, I always noticed that things needed to change, that something had to be done. In fact, when I finished eighth grade with all Fives,[4] I studied a lot, I had many supportive teachers, the class supervisor, and some teachers became my idol, though not all villages had teachers. And when I saw my teacher at work, I was inspired, she gave me motivation, a model to follow, and I envied everything. It was something to aspire to.  And every day, every night, I would think about my sisters and myself, I never separated my life from theirs, they were younger, raised without a brother.

At that time, I also must say, I must say perhaps for the sake of the new mothers and the new society we are building, a fact that pleases me, that mothers had nine, ten, eleven children until a boy was born, so the family would have an heir. That was obvious in the family too, you were always oppressed [if you did not have a boy] and had to work ten times harder to be considered equal [to the other women]. Unfortunately, that was obvious in Kosovo families, it was very obvious! This also was something that troubled me, and I always said, “Why shouldn’t women be educated? Why shouldn’t they go out?” I saw the imposition of those rules for living that were made for women by others as a form of punishment.  On the other hand, it was very painful to see that one person after another would come and ask for a girl’s hand. We women were just notified that somebody had come, and after two or three days someone else came to ask for the hand of this or that one. You know, women were engaged and married this way and it looked like something illegal, because neither the mother nor the girl knew what was going on, and there was no transparency.

And I always thought about that, though speaking of that perhaps isn’t so interesting, but then as a young woman I said, “Oh God, oh God, a [woman is a] person just like everyone else, but she is punished, she is a person like everyone, but with no rights.” And believe me here, here, Xhejrane’s will and courage came to the surface, that something must be done. At that time I didn’t know war, I saw it as something huge that my grandparents talked about, the Second World War, but I felt that an effort, the need for an effort, an engagement, for something to be changed.

In front of me was my teacher, or the village midwife, as someone I would have liked to be, my idol. On the other hand, the teachers gave us, the best students, gifts and encouragement at the end of the school year. Everybody likes kind words, compliments are nice, and let’s not lie, people are people, they are human, they are not that stiff. And the teachers influenced us, and you found yourself to be more special than others, and since then my soul was troubled. However, I belonged to a family, even though this family separated later.  We weren’t together with the cousins with whom we live now, we had only my paternal uncles with my father as the eldest, but without the right to ask that I would be educated.

[1] Green plant, with soft leafs, used to play games.

[2] Highest mountain peak of this mountain range.

[3] Lagje usually means neighborhood, but more specifically, in the traditional tribal organization of northern rural Albanians, it refers to a group of families sharing a common ancestor. This lagje was near the village of Pobergj, where numerous Serb troops were stationed.

[4] Grade A on an A-F scale (Five-0).

 

Dafina Beqiri: How was the decision about your education taken, did your father have to ask his brothers?

Xhejrane Lokaj: Absolutely, absolutely, it’s actually the first time I will be sharing this with you publicly. I will share it because of respect, of the respect that must exist among human beings, and for the sake of young girls, for the sake of a message from the past, which still has value, I mean, I am happy to do this, without feeling uncomfortable. I finished eighth grade with not a single Four.[1] I wrote and performed in school.  I didn’t have brothers, I was a sister without a brother and didn’t have that inner strength to be joyful, I was very hard-working and brave. And when time came to register to school, to register to high school, and when the class supervisor or the teacher asked us, I always knew that Albanian language and literature suited me best. But believe me, I never had the courage to ask my father, “Will I be allowed to go to school?” You can imagine what we went through. We always asked our class teacher, he was a teacher from the village, those people who gave us the opportunities that we ought to have from our families. And we always waited for their reaction, because it was impossible for a parent to tell you that you could go to school, it was that kind of rigidity, and we didn’t have much right or freedom to ask in that kind of family, because of how we were raised, being shy, showing respect and fear too.

You continued to live like everybody else, and I always waited for the moment that the reaction would be different. Somebody would come and ask for your hand in marriage, and you had no idea who that person was, but a member of your family would drop a word. And I was always scared I would get a request for an engagement that I couldn’t accept, and not because I didn’t know that person, or I should have known him, since I didn’t even have the right to get to know him, but because I couldn’t accept what life offered me. I saw myself as a person who should be more engaged, I felt that in my soul, maybe not as something necessary for my success, but because I didn’t compromise easily.

And for three years I waited for whatever little shift in my parents, for them to be disposed to let me finish high school. Believe me, for three years, and I did not notice such a thing. I was always waiting and observing, as we say, if there was a move, I was always waiting for September to bring change, but I never accepted my position. In addition to not accepting my position, I was always aware that I had six sisters after me, and I said to myself, “But if I don’t fight for them, what will happen to them?” I always knew my family asked for a victim, and it was like that. So, I predicted that my family was looking for a victim, and I felt sad to leave my sisters behind as victims, and not because I didn’t trust their courage, I always supported them, but because I didn’t know what they would go through, because the rules were very strict.

My family… before we get to the rules, one night, it was the end of September-October, and I experienced an uncontrollable desire to go to school. At that time, I feel indebted to my mother very much, because I have caused her many concerns, she didn’t have the power to protect me, because as a mother without a son she was in a lower position in the eyes of the women of our rreth[2] and the men too, and the entire family. But I always told her, “Don’t make the mistake of agreeing to an engagement, I will not go!” And after I’ve said that, I felt very bad because I knew I only brought troubles, but I had to give a signal not to place the family and me in a difficult position, since I knew how stubborn I was in that respect, and things could turn tragic. And at the time, one evening, I decided to visit a cousin of mine, Hateme Lokaj Kastrati, who was always supportive of me. At the time she was the head of the [Yugoslav socialist] youth in Deçan, and I had secretly communicated with her through letters that I gave to my younger sisters, who didn’t know of this affair, or I when I met her somewhere in the village, and I said, “I don’t agree with this, I don’t accept this situation, I have to do something.” And that’s all I could tell her, nothing more, because I was accompanied wherever I went, and one should not be seen in the street, one shouldn’t…. and I’m talking about the 1970s, at the time, for example, the position of women was completely different.

One night, when all my family was sleeping, [I did] something that only a youth would do, and that today I would do, that Xhejrane would do, but not just any woman.  I went to bed and I woke up without money of course, we never had money in our hands, I only had my report card with me and I went straight to the police station in Deçan. It wasn’t easy because our village was five or six kilometers away. And I had only one request, I wanted to be educated and my family did not let me. But some other women also did what I did, three or four women, one from Podujevo, one from Pristina, that’s what the newspaper wrote about them. And I saw it as a solution, so I did it too. My family’s reaction was horrible, but I stayed at my cousin Halil Haxhaj’s. He had an apartment in Deçan and I stayed there for a few days. The institutions handled my case, and the police stopped my family from seeing me in order to protect me from them. I never saw them even though they continued to try to see me, what I had done was a disgrace at that time, my father felt very bad, he felt even more threatened by tradition and other family members.

Others were encouraged by what I did, because I had done something, and I was considered a stubborn, rebellious girl, and what I had done was a shame for the family and frankly, the punishment was very harsh. It was a concern for other relatives too. It wasn’t an easy situation, but today I would say that if we went back in time, I would still decide to do the same thing, maybe I would be more stubborn, but I would do the same. Some possibilities were explored, since the deadline for student registration had passed. Only a few girls were educated, the principal’s daughter, the teacher’s daughter and the daughter of the mayor, and it was a surprise that I, the daughter of a villager, went to school. But I did go to school with the daughters of the politicians of that time, and thanks to my cousin Hateme, Hateme Lokaj Kastrati, to whom I owe a lot, to whom I am indebted without ever being able to repay her, I ended up in the medical high school in Prizren.

We made a compromise, despite the fact that I always loved Albanian Literature, I never had the opportunity to choose my profession, and in that moment there was a job opening for a midwife. In fact, I had no idea of what was expected of me, believe me, I had no idea, but I knew that I was determined in my demands and goals, and so this is what I recommend to everyone, work with persistence, work with persistence, until you reach your goal. I registered, settled in the dormitory, had a scholarship, but the punishment I got was losing contact with my family completely.  I knew nothing, I didn’t know what was going on, someone would come and tell me, “A war is going on there,” someone else would come and say, “They have decided to murder you,” someone else would say, “They have completely isolated your father.” I lived with these stories, someone else would come and bring me the news, “Today they have arrived in Prizren,” because then Prizren was far from Pobergj, not very close, not every family had cars (smiles), meaning [they came] by bus. Traveling was so difficult, they would have come only for something big, and something big, I thought, would be killing me to avenge the shame I had brought upon them.

It wasn’t an easy situation, I mean, it wasn’t an easy situation for me either, because I had registered late, one month past the deadline, I knew the reason why I went to school without books, notebooks, clothes, without knowing how I left the house at night and got there… I studied hard, from the start I easily caught up with school, lived in the dorm, had friends, some of them I knew from before, but the teachers knew that I was a case for the institutions, the institutions were dealing with me, not the family. There were obstacles regarding payments for food or other issues that I don’t want to remember because they are in the past, though they are part of my life. In medical school I studied as hard as I had studied in elementary school: one Five, two Fives, ten Fives. My courage was noticed there, I established very good friendships with the other girls. I began…but even there I was troubled, because I had to go through something like that, and I said, “Oh God, how many girls in Kosovo must take the same step as I did, and they don’t have the courage!” But I didn’t dare to speak up then, because I was not free, I was enslaved, I didn’t have the right to go public, but I took the opportunity to do that through my work and my engagement, which was noticed by the teachers and the  school directorate. Truth be told, I am thankful to them too, because they too noticed that they had to deal with a more courageous Xhejrane.

I became president of the class, president of the school youth, member of the board of the Youth Club, member of the board of the Red Cross, member of the board of the Youth League of Prizren, afterwards president of the youth in the dormitory, and all these activities… I was entrusted with a position, it’s not clear to me even today what that position entailed, but it required a trusted person. I was always present at the meetings with the director. I mean, I began to experience the privileges, which that time offered, the situation that I was in, that reality, was in my favor, my position was strengthening because of what I had done, and somehow I had proven myself.  And I finished medical school in the midwifery department.

After a year, the family situation was more relaxed because I had proven myself, I mean, I didn’t embarrass my parents and my family, but in a way I gave them the right message that I went for education, I was studying. Only then the contacts with the family started again, although they were cold, they were more formal than they should have been, but I had made my choice and I accepted it. One year passed like this, the second year too, the third, the fourth, then the relationship became more normal. I graduated in 1976-1977.  Of course with straight  Fives, I didn’t have to go through the procedure for the preparation of the diploma, and they… the teachers loved me very much, somehow I  fulfilled my life, even though, on the other hand, I felt a huge emptiness. When you are young and someone tells you that you are doing something good, you feel happy, you are proud, you find motivation again for something else. And those four years of studies went this way. During my third year, my sisters had grown up to go to high school too, and the time came for me to deal with the decisions that my family would take.

At the time, after I had done this embarrassing thing to my family, I am saying embarrassing in quotation marks {makes air quotes} because it divided my family… My uncles were divided from my father, and it wasn’t easy to deal with such thing. Another great additional concern was that my father wasn’t working as a farmer, while we were eight sisters. For one to feed eight girls in the countryside in those circumstances was clearly not an easy situation of course, especially for me because I was feeling guilty, because I was to be blame for that. Do they have [enough] or don’t they, will they make it, and all these sorts of things…. Afterwards, I had to deal again with my parent regarding the education of my sisters. The sister after me paid the price for me, she couldn’t even mention going to school, because it was right when I had no relationship with my family, and no one was on her side, she didn’t have the courage to even ask to go to school. But I confronted my father about the others and told him, “Our family doesn’t accept illiteracy anymore.”

Bre, bre, bre[3]…. I didn’t compromise in any way, I took full responsibility for them, the responsibility of managing their studies, and other responsibilities, and said, “No, {extends her arms} it doesn’t do and period. It doesn’t do anymore to lock the girls in the house.” And that wasn’t easy, wasn’t easy …I mean, I was guilty and I wasn’t omnipotent, I mean, I, the guilty one, was asking for someone else’s rights, you can imagine, but I was persistent, I was the guarantee, I was supportive. The decision for the others to attend school was made, I mean, the others afterwards continued their schooling without difficulties.

Dafina Beqiri: Considering that your sisters were also educated, and your parents didn’t work, how did you manage to get supplies such as books and clothes?

Xhejrane Lokaj: Yes, that was one of the difficulties I went through at that time, during that period of time, maybe for someone else it would have been impossible to overcome such difficulties. Initially, as I mentioned, we sold the fruits and berries back then when we were in the mountains, in September the chestnuts, and later [we sold] kilims. The region of Dukagjini, especially the cities of Peja, Deçani, Istog, maybe I don’t know how to explain in detail, because back then I was young and I wasn’t interested that much, but I remember hearing very often, “The merchants have come to buy kilims,” I mean, I knew that. Those kilims were woven, but before starting with the kilims you needed to have the wool that was bought in the city, usually Peja, and it was in bundles.  I was studying in school, I mean, I was more curious, more ambitious, but I also made a lot of handmade crafts. Maybe I should say now that I loved that work, I knew how to do it, but we had to knit socks, we had to knit sweaters, we had to knit… because this was what we wore at that time, especially women. And, when I was little, very little, I took those knitting needles, I knitted socks, I knitted the clothes that we used to wear, and it wasn’t a surprise that I started to weave wool for money.

First it was the spinning fork, then the knitting pin, as we called those primitive tools, later some wooden machines were introduced. They enabled weaving, that is, the process of turning the wool into thread. We began to work for money, and we were happy when we had a chance to weave for money. But there was another phase, the cleaning, the coloring of the wool, and the opportunity to work with the loom. For you, young women, {addresses the people present} a loom can be only imaginary, but for us it was something very, very welcome, that during my third and fourth year, after I had restored my relationships with my family, I set up the loom in my room every summer, fall or weekend.  I had the machine that spun the wool, or the thread, near the loom and I can tell you that I couldn’t wait to finish something. I did this together with my sister Shkurta, who is here. We two did a lot of the housework too, and we helped our father with the fieldwork, mowing and hoeing, harvesting corn, going to the mountain to get wood, because we had to be both girls and boys for our family, so it could  function properly. And we worked, we had two looms close to each other, and we measured by thread which one was working more, in order to produce more. We sold them on Saturday, at the Saturday outdoor market in Peja. Then we bought flour, we bought clothes, we bought all the food items, and all the necessary things for the family. But we planned the consumption of one part of all these goods, which we had bought for the whole year by selling chestnuts and blueberries and other things, and we used them little by little until the end of the year, because we were many people, with many demands and many needs.

However, after I finished school…I mean, for someone else this could be a hobby, for me it wasn’t a hobby, it was a parallel job that I was doing, together with other obligations, but I did it willingly because it brought us profits. Afterwards came the engagement and wedding of my sisters, and we had to prepare the dowry for their weddings as part of her bridal possessions, it had to be all handmade, the kilims, what to tell you, the pillows and other things I made. However, I started working for money for other girls who were getting married. And this way, I mean this way, I managed, carefully, without a lot of money in my hands, but without letting the situation come to the point where we would miss something major, or would have to borrow money from someone else. Proper management was needed, a detailed attention was required, supervision was required. But to tell you something, here I, Xhejrane, have a more than 100% clear conscience, because I gave my best.  Maybe sometimes I skirted things for myself, basic things, but I was always thinking, they are girls, they shouldn’t be missing something, we shouldn’t serve as an example, let us not be the center of attention, so they would not feel very hurt. We were very careful that our parents did not feel that they had done something, that they had to feel bad about something they had done. Because of all this, I felt obligated to carry the burden I told you about, and I gave myself the right to break the ice, to break some rules, to violate some traditions, to take a path that wasn’t easy.

In 1978, on September 10, I mean, we arrived very fast to this date, when I started working in Dragash,[4] it was the beginning of September, because I took a year off after I graduated in 1976-77. I will tell you something that I always kept inside, a debt that the municipality owes me, I am talking about the municipality of Deçan, because I mentioned above that I was going to school with the daughters of directors, the daughters of chairmen and it wasn’t easy to get a job. Luckily, I was an excellent student, and they used an elimination method, telling me every time I was searching for a job – the director told me, the whole staff told me when I  contacted them because I needed a job, they all told me, “You must become a doctor. But we need you to finish university.”  I mean, they were eliminating me this way, because I didn’t have the means to go to university. I was searching for work to bring bread home, while the other party, maybe they did not have that intention… maybe they had very good intentions, they wanted to advance my education, but it was something impossible. And I saw that it wasn’t easy to go through it, because my friends were getting employed time after time, so I enrolled in the university, the  biology department, as a part time student, just to fill that emptiness.

Meanwhile, I received an offer from my friend from Prizren, she knew that region there, and she told me, “Xhejrane, we need a midwife in Dragash.” I had no idea where Dragash was, absolutely no idea, I didn’t know that there was a Dragash. I finished school in Prizren, but I never had contact with that region, and I needed to start working somewhere. On September 10, 1978 I started working there as a midwife. When I went the first day, I remember it like it was today, I had given the exam of anatomy and morphology of plants, the professor was Beqir Hundosi, and I got a Nine[5]  that day, and I went from Pristina to the bus station of Prizren. At the bus station I asked, “For Dragash? For Dragash?”  I had no idea where I was going. I went to Dragash, of course I went through real difficulties, because I was a young girl, very young, who was going to another region where girls weren’t allowed to have an education and they work where they were born, and I was going from one region to another. I remember like it was today when I arrived in Zhur, when I got off the bus, I thought that it was Dragash. Someone next to me asked, “Where are you going?” “To Dragash!” “But Dragash is not here.” I didn’t know whether I should trust him or not, because he noticed that I was a young girl, I mean I didn’t know the person. I said to myself, maybe he has good intentions. [This happened] again at the next station, this is how it was in Dragash, and other difficulties.

But what is worth mentioning is that I got a Nine in anatomy and the morphology of plants, and I couldn’t pass any of the other exams when I found that there was a major need for a midwife, especially on the night shift. I found another phenomenon there, which wasn’t so emphasized in our municipality, or maybe it was, but I didn’t know it, because at least in our families non-Albanian names of midwives, such as Verica or Zorica,  weren’t mentioned that much. There, I found that the staff came from Macedonia and Serbia too. The first contact was with the mothers, with the older generation that was bringing the young brides to give birth, and saying to me, “Do you speak Albanian, my daughter?”  And that made me very sad. “Do you speak Albanian, my daughter?” And I said, “Yes,” because they were used to Vera, Gollupa, I don’t really feel like mentioning their names in detail. And they didn’t know Albanian.

Then this feeling grew inside me, that I knew Albanian, and I told them, “Yes I am Albanian, yes I speak Albanian.” And trust me, I unconsciously gave myself this task, please God forgive me that I’m saying this, (smiles) {puts her palms together}, “A Serb won’t step in here anymore as an employee,” because communication is very important in the nursing profession, because you are not a midwife just to treat a patient and go home, you had to be there twelve hours near the women who gave birth, you had to be with women who need you, your help, twelve hours, and let me not… Today I accuse them for not being able to communicate, to speak, to communicate in her [the patient’s] language. I saw this as something very, very terrible.

And this gave me the strength, I mean, I was born in a family with many girls, where women’s rights and freedom were missing, how can you not be an activist. The way I went to school, how much did I pay for the brave step I took! I went to a place where, again, I saw that women are the ones who pay the price for their lack of freedom and rights. The lucky thing for me was that back then, also because there wasn’t any gynecologist, there was a general practice physician, who wanted to establish a management of a higher professional level. I knew  theory very well, luckily I wasn’t used to someone giving me things in life, because I achieved everything through my hard work, and very quickly I understood my profession in practice. Second, going to Dragash allowed me to improve the economic situation of my family, although this lasted maybe about one year: when every Friday I went to my family for the weekend, when I left Dragash I said I would never go back, I cannot handle this, I cannot be away from my family. We didn’t have phones, we were many girls, when I went back, maybe my mother was tired, the family had difficulties.

But every time I came back home, I noticed that something was missing in my family, that’s when I realized that it was necessary that I worked for my family, for my sisters’ education, for their high school education. I would say, “I finished high school, they should at least finish a professional school or university.”

There was an increasing need for me to commit more and more. I was not happy with the conditions in which I found the women of Dragash, they were the same women as our women, but maybe with less opportunities for education, a girl who wanted to be educated in Dragash lived farther away, in a more isolated place. At that time the middle school was in Dragash, the high school in Prizren, and the university in Pristina, quite a long way for the families’ economic means and also mentality. And that’s how this added to the concerns that I already had about women, and I was always interested in being close to them, understanding them better, being close to their families. And somehow we created our new friendship, to serve as an example, to give… to fulfill that emptiness for which none of the generations is to blame, not the generation that came before, and not even the generations that came afterwards, because Dragash had its own peculiarities.

People were living off kurbeti,[6] I mean, the head of the family lived outside the country, the whole responsibility of the family was left to the mother, the mother was depending on other family members. The decision-making processes are also very, very important in life, especially for women. Plus, the nature of my job as a midwife was that you were close to a woman who was pregnant and within some hours or minutes she brought another human being to life, and she was a mother. To tell you the truth, I said this many times, I will say it again here, when they – the director of the clinic back then, the major of the municipality and whoever was there at that time – said to me in Deçan, “We need you as a doctor,” often I said to myself, “How good would be to be a doctor!”

But my job in Dragash as a midwife fulfilled me so much, that not even for one moment I said that it would be better if Xhejrane were an obstetrician in a clinic, or said that Xhejrane shouldn’t be a midwife in Dragash. I saw myself better as a midwife in Dragash, because our presence there, the presence of Albanian midwives in Dragash, filled an absence that wasn’t easy to fill. I mean, midwives or doctors from Pristina didn’t come to work there. And I got closer and closer to them, I created a relation that I thought was very good. I became their friend, part of their worries, part of their demands, part of their problems to a great extent, and the solution or the mitigation of their requests. Definitely this made me feel good, I found myself feeling very good, it was far from my birthplace, but not much different from it. Because Deçan as well, where I grew up, has woods, mountains like Dragash, the winters are also very harsh and make life difficult. I began to adapt easily, and it made me feel very good. And I can say that I am proud and feel indebted to Dragash, definitely I’m indebted to Dragash. I fed my family with what I earned in Dragash, I organized the life of my family.

What is sadder is that, and I am not saying that I am a big patriot, but I am Albanian, I mean, I am not saying that I am a patriot but I am Albanian. And the commute Dragash-Deçan-Peja was very difficult, and I am not talking only about kilometers. It was in Deçan, Kosovo in general. I am mentioning Deçan because it is my hometown and Peja, the youth movements against the authorities that enslaved us so much[7]… Serbian violence and terror were worse in other areas than where I was working, it wasn’t any privilege, it was that Dragash wasn’t interesting for the government either. And I experienced them from afar, I always noticed and heard some things, and the more I heard, the more they crushed my soul, the more worried I was, there were no mobile phones like now, the family was…

After a while, not being able to bear village life without the labor of a man, we sold the house in the village and moved to Peja, therefore the family transferred to Peja. My sisters continued their studies in Peja, in private homes then.[8]  That time was very difficult for me too, because out of eight sisters who were alive, three were poisoned in the poisonings of students.[9] One of them was employed in the factory Napredak,[10] later called Jatex and then closed, and the other two sisters were students. And back then it wasn’t easy, only with my salary, with those long commutes, a house without a man, to take care of all those things without great consequences.

I remember many times when I was coming from there… It is very important to mention, for those who didn’t have any family members poisoned, that the poisoning manifested itself through convulsions, as we call them in medicine. Convulsions are like stomach cramps and trust me, those moments were so terrible, that the whole family was terrified. And back then not even a taxi driver accepted you without being paid a huge amount of money, or without going through suburban streets to find and ask for help from a doctor, to ask for help from a doctor. You had to be a special doctor or a neurologist, or a doctor who was preferred as  braver, not more patriotic, though I don’t categorize patriotism on a scale, because some know how to show it, and some hold it in silence, there are different ways in which people show it, some like to brag, some keep it to themselves. And I don’t want to deal with that part, but I know the difficulties that my sisters and I went through, and it was terrible, and very often I had to leave my family in situations like this and go back to work. I was psychologically unraveled, psychologically exhausted, very tired psychologically. But it was necessary to work, it was necessary to stay calm and these moments that I went through were difficult.

Later, only our family had a mobile phone, you know emigration, you know the worries, all the relatives was concentrated in our home. It was a family without a man, without much income, because I had started working in 1978, and in 1981-1982, when the inflation began, it hurt the family economy. Then other difficulties followed, it was the time when youngsters were sheltered in our family. In that period there was only the Democratic League in Kosovo,[11] there wasn’t the multi-party system which allows you to choose, and everyone thought that the Democratic League was the only solution to push forward the process in their own ways, something I don’t deny or judge, because I don’t deal with politics. And every time they pushed me more and more to feel an obligation to others, and even more towards the gender I belong to. Any time they ask me, when did I start being an activist, I say, when I was born, I was born in a time when there was need for activism, because I was raised in those circumstances, I was raised in that rreth.

Also this was a very difficult period, it was a difficult period because my family was under police surveillance. The sister who was living with my mother at home started to be taken away a few times. Another sister was in Kapeshnica, and protests started in Kapeshnica, the older kids and my sisters participated in the protests, my sisters’ children were part of the protests. The sisters who had been poisoned took part in these marches that included walking to Pristina through villages, I mean, my whole family was in the movement, while I was observing from afar, which was very difficult, I am telling you it was completely out of the ordinary, completely. I did not break down, but each eruption [of the protests] had consequences for me.

I remember many times, during the weekend, I came from Peja to Kapeshnica, where the protests started. We put some onions in front of the door, also some of my sister’s clothes, and she didn’t have a lot of them, trust me, because back then we didn’t have the money we have now, just so the guys could cover their noses and mouths during the protest, and they said that the onions helped neutralize the tear gas. And we did not let those lightly wounded fall in the hands of the police, or go to the hospital where doctors would report them. When I said that I don’t call myself a big patriot, regarding these activities my soul was always full, maybe I couldn’t be as committed as I should have, but I worried a great deal about my family.

I remember another time when I proposed something. I said that I had many sisters and we prepared dowries, when we realized that without a struggle nothing could be achieved. And I said to them, “We are organizing a bridal shower every week in my house.” I have many sisters, one day they are married, in a week they are separated, get married somewhere else. We began to gather the girls, teach them how to treat wounds, teach them these things, because even if they did not need them for themselves, they needed them for other people, at least they needed those skills for their family. So these were the thoughts that you had to live with, that were a part of your life.

Another time they, you know, our children, cousins, nephews and relatives started to take up weapons. Sometimes they gathered at our home to make plans, it was necessary to be vigilant, so their plan didn’t leave the circle of the people who were making them. They left for Albania, they needed to work there, I couldn’t get any information because the phones were bugged. It was a difficult time, which made me feel indebted more and more, it took time, it took even our peace of mind, or the psychological strength to do something.

I forgot that I was a biology student, I didn’t deal with that back then, I was fully dedicated, always, every time, to give life, give to people around me who were in need, do always something. For example, the fact that the women in my family were being taken to the police station, a child taken by the hand, or poisoned or… all those events had their weight. And I managed all of them from afar, I was part of them from afar. Sometimes I felt guilty, but it was necessary to work, it was necessary to work, so the family could function. And during this period there was a distance between Dragash and my hometown, and I was somewhere in the middle, I wasn’t completely here, but I wasn’t completely separated from here either, and I can easily tell you that it was a very difficult period for me, that many times I needed to act or to react with a cool head.

On the weekends I was followed, not everyone gave you this kind of information, someone would say that you are being followed because every week you are going to Peja and the situation in Peja is being observed, you would come to the point of thinking whether you should travel at all, you couldn’t talk. There was also the situation… there are so many things, for example, I came here [Peja], earlier we had given a lot of penicillin, this was linked to my profession, even at work I was being shadowed without knowing it, it is a very sensitive profession. Afterwards a very bad time came, many people were influenced there, some were being more patriotic than they had to, others were left behind – you can’t compete in this field – and you realized that you have to give more and more, because it’s not the women’s fault, it is not the people’s fault. We gave penicillin, we mixed two-three packs, today they don’t give it, they don’t give it because penicillin can cause a shock, a reaction… for example, I found people waiting in line when I came here [Peja], when the women couldn’t go to the hospital, their husbands were in the war, they were the first fighters, and I had to manage them. Everything was done at home, all these activities were taking place, and again I had to leave all behind because I had to go to Dragash like nothing had happened. I had to be someone completely different, these were not easy times, but I’m aware that I didn’t do as much as I wanted, but I did as much as I could, trust me, it’s a debt to other people that a person feels, also for the opposite sex.

Dafina Beqiri: How long did you work for in Dragash as a midwife?

Xhejrane Lokaj: I still work there since that day, I mean, since 1978. In Dragash there was no enforcement. When they fired the policemen, and when they fired the teachers for example, when schooling in private homes began, yes [they fired] postal workers too, a decision was made by the political elite of that time, they made sure not to abandon the front completely. And the decision was made that the workers would not be fired massively. If they fired someone here and there, we stayed anyway, which was the right decision then like today, if we see it from the same point of view, yet it wasn’t easy for us where I was working…

[1] Grade B on an A-F scale (Five-0).

[2] Rreth is the social circle, includes not only the family but also the people with whom an individual is in contact. The opinion of the rreth is crucial in defining one’s reputation.

[3] “Bre” adds emphasis, like “more,” similar in English to bro, brother

[4] Mountainous, isolated municipality in South Western Kosovo, with a large minority (up to 45% in the late 70s and 80s) of Gorani, a Muslim Slavic group.

[5] On a scale where Ten is the top grade.

[6] From the Turkish gurbet, migration, an old term that originally meant traveling for business but came to signify also exile, nostalgia for  one’s home.

[7] This refers to the protests that began in 1981 to demand the status of republic for Kosovo and the subsequent state repression.

[8] By 1991, after Slobodan Milošević’s legislation making Serbian the official language of Kosovo and the removal of all Albanians from the public service, Albanians were excluded from schools as well. The reaction of Albanians was to create a parallel system of education hosted mostly by private homes.

[9] In March 1990, after Kosovo schools were segregated along ethnic lines, thousands of Albanian students fell ill with symptoms of gas poisoning. No reliable investigation was conducted by the authorities, who always maintained no gas was used in Kosovo and the phenomenon must have been caused by mass hysteria. The authorities also impeded independent investigations by foreign doctors, and to this day, with the exception of a publication in The Lancet that excludes poisoning, there are only contradictory conclusions on the nature and the cause of the phenomenon.

[10] Textile factory near Gjakova.

[11] Lidhja Demokratike e Kosovës – Democratic League of Kosovo. First political party of Kosovo, founded in 1989, when the autonomy of Kosovo was revoked, by a group of journalists and intellectuals. The LDK quickly became a party-state, gathering all Albanians, and remained the only party until 1999.

Dafina Beqiri: Can you describe the time when freedom of movement was difficult, how did you move or how did you work?

Xhejrane Lokaj: I finished the war in Prizren. Deçan, Peja and Gjakova fought also in 1998. My family moved from one neighborhood to another. I will mention one day, the day that my family had to move, when my father stubbornly said, “I won’t leave my land to the Serbs, this is my house,” with the stubbornness of his age. And when the other family members were in danger, because we had other family members in our home, aunts, cousins, relatives, a full house (cries). And when I called on the phone 35 times asking, “Did you get out?” because the only chance for my family and relatives who were sheltered in my home was that…

Maybe this is something that even if I die ten times, and I am reborn ten times, I will never forget, I will never forget that day. That day is the only time, and thankfully my family doesn’t know about these words, that I said, “Thank God that Hyrija is dead,” my twenty year old sister, “and that she is not part of what is happening.” We were girls, death is a blessing, as old people used to say. I don’t want the women who were raped to hear this, especially because I have a lot of respect for their strength, I feel hurt for what they have been through, I feel a big debt to them for their situation, I feel that in a special way, even though I wasn’t raped. However, I was more scared about women being raped in front of the eyes of my family, and my dad was old, without a son I used to say. I mean, if he had a son, he would defend us girls. And that day, when I called 35 times, maybe for four full hours, “Did you get out?” When the phone rang and nobody answered, it was a sign that they were trying to leave, and I said, “Oh my God, they left because nobody is answering the phone at home, but let me try once more.” When I called once more, “Oh we are here, without a chance to leave, we are surrounded from all sides, there is no way to leave.” Therefore this is the day, trust me, when for the first time I said, “Thank God that my sister Hyrija is dead from natural causes, and that I have other sisters” (cries). There were the daughters-in-law of my uncles, there were the daughters-in-law of my aunts, all of them young. There was the son of my paternal aunt, a martyr, other family members, many members of the family were killed, sometimes my sisters were taken away a few times, a few times my sisters went through police procedures, and I was following this from afar.

I mention this day that was followed by many, many other difficult days. You can imagine when my family, my father 80 years old, left through the Qakorri mountains, that’s how we call them, the snow was up to here {touches the chest}, on the day of Bajram [Eid],[1] moving along while sitting on a plastic bag to stay above the snow, and being pulled. There are many more things.  I war far away, my other sister in Gjakova was left with her son in the hospital, and other commitments of course, her mother in-law was sick near Qabrat, a neighborhood there, that was  horror in itself, my sister in Mitrovica was separated from her husband, not divorced, she was separated  because of the war, left with her two kids, and you know how these convoys [of refugees, during NATO intervention] in Mitrovica used to go, how the paramilitaries made them turn back, or moved them along, under the rain. Therefore the most terrifying thing in my life was the war itself. I felt very indebted, the war in Kosovo… all the information and all the Albanians were one, there were no figures. Whatever bad news you heard, you felt it within because your people felt it. There was no greater or smaller sadness.

In ’98 I was working, but the road here in Hereqe[2] was closed, completely disconnected, no phone, nothing, on the other side a big war was going on. Radio Tirana used to give the news at ten o’clock. They were giving the names and the last names of the people killed in the war (cries). I remember this period as if it was today, when on the first day I knew the one who had been killed, because they were giving the names of people from my rreth, my relatives, and I cried, I did not sleep that night for the whole night. But after three days I got used to it  and I  began to say, “Oh they killed this one too,” you know, I became as numb as a piece of wood, I didn’t know how to react anymore. If they had said… if they had said they killed my mother, because during the war I was notified that they had killed my father too, and my sister’s husband, and how they had left the dead bodies in the yard, I mean, all these were terrible difficulties, but I swear to the God that created us, for Xhejrane Lokaj, all the Albanians were one. They were Albanians, they didn’t have a name, or a last name. The case of children is very sad, of the old people with their houses burned, of the women who were raped, the way these three categories were treated in the war was very sad, otherwise any death for me was just another death.

In the beginning I cried and felt sad and said, “Oh they killed this one too.” I thought that everyone would have been killed, one by one, they were all going to be next, one by one, at that time I became numb, I didn’t know. But now I see, that was the death of the soul, that a person’s soul dies and that you act like a robot. You don’t know what is happening to you, what is happening around you, because psychologically, spiritually you don’t exist anymore, you are dead. I believe that a lot of people will tell you the same, I believe that this is true for many people, because these are real experiences, it is not acting.

Because of that, when I remember today, even 14 years after the war, maybe because I’m a woman, maybe because I had a hard life, and life has tragedies, it has pain, it has successes, it has losses, it has downs, it has ups, but I don’t know why it leaves women in so much debt. Maybe because I felt a debt for my life and others too, I don’t know why, I can’t understand this. Maybe because I always tried to calm things down, to find the easiest solution, or be transparent, although I’m very brave, there are some situations that I say we should endure. I mean, I am not saying that we shouldn’t always endure, I know that I am Xhejrane, who says, “Give time to things, and slowly analyze things ourselves.” If they stole from us some omission, some abrupt reaction, maybe my profession, a noble profession for me, makes possible all I have been talking about. Don’t let Xhejrane Lokaj be in the skin of the corrupt ones, because the corrupt ones do not experience birth as birth. You see every mother who cannot give birth without pain, and in these moments you hear everything, because women confess in those moments, and you think that you could build a huge house with the money that you take from there. May I never be in the skin of those people.

Maybe I was always very, very committed to find spiritual tranquility, a spiritual life, to have my soul free of debt, to give to life, and to give to people, and I can say that the life is not that easy.  It doesn’t prepare only a bouquet of flowers, and even that bouquet, if we analyze it in detail, we see there are thorns, there are spines, there are tears too, there is also pain, suffering, there are also “whys” without an answer, and there are unfinished dreams.  I mean, if we analyze it further, life isn’t how we see it, or how the young generations dream it. I had my dreams too, I dreamt a totally different life, but dreams are dreams in your head. Life is lived as a journey, and your presence is on earth and not in your head.  Even though the head, the brain, only orders what a person does, but life isn’t how people take it, and especially how we women take it.

Dafina Beqiri: Did you think that by starting the organization Women Initiative, you made  another step  to be closer to women?

Xhejrane Lokaj: Yes, yes, it’s a very good, a very good question, because maybe I’m not remembering everything sometimes, you can also see that this testimony is very emotional for me. During the war, while we were waiting in line for bread – we were going at two o’clock in the morning, and the sister who lives in Gjakova, I was able to find her alive in her house, during those terrors, terrors that I am still not ready to talk about, trust me, I still need time in order to gather myself and talk about that terror from the war. And while I was waiting in line for bread I met a doctor, all equal citizens, citizens who were stuck in Kosovo and couldn’t get out. And when I talked to her, she said, “I am a doctor.” I said, “Oh, that’s very good, I’m a midwife.” And I said, “We can, you and me, coordinate people in our neighborhood at least regarding health care, we can work from home.” And trust me, at that moment I felt very good because I was sharing the responsibility, the professional burden with someone else, because we had a lot of pregnant women who were almost due, we had women who were treated with cerclage,[3] because cerclage was used often in those days.

And I can tell you that on that day we all became one, there was no person who thought more about herself than others. We shared one piece of bread, one handful of salt, family to family, a drop of water was shared from family to family, we were so many people who were left here, because we the people who were stuck here, we were left as captive, we were captives. And we were waiting every moment, because we had registered all the people left with us, because someone would disappear overnight. But it was impossible for us to leave.  Because the borders were opened and closed from time to time, it  was dangerous for those who didn’t have a car, or for those who had sick people with them, such as I, I had my sister’s son with IVs. I was giving him the therapy at two o’clock in the morning, so that even if he cried, he wouldn’t be heard at night, because people were sleeping. And all of these things, going to find an IV when there were no more left at the pharmacy and all that, were difficult. And there I shared the responsibility with someone else, maybe for the first time I found someone stronger than I was, a woman who could handle problems. And that’s when I said, “God, oh God, I should be with someone, we must offer, women must…”

And after the war ended, you know, with all the changes the war brought, very often people were not happy with what they were experiencing, and I never talked about the activities I developed. Because even today, that I’m telling this because we are filming a documentary, I’m talking more so people can learn, so that someone can be empowered, because this serves for the benefit of others. Not that I can win some points, whatever that is, but maybe someone finds something good in this and says, “Oh that’s so good, this is in the past, let me do something different, but in the same vein.” This is the purpose of all this. And when everything started to fall into place, when the postwar storm passed with all the euphoria, the joy, the pain, the terror, the sufferings, and all these disorders and tragedies that my mother sometimes used to say, “It’s all ruined…”

[1] Muslim holidays that mark the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting.

[2] Village in the municipality of Gjakova.

[3]Cervical stitch that is used as treatment for cervical insufficiency to prevent miscarriage.

And in the beginning, in Dragash, maybe for the first time a woman said to me, “Hey, more!”[1] But what was ahead of us was something that we always expected, we didn’t know where we were going, or what was happening, some of them were going to Zlatibor,[2] they were organizing, we didn’t know anything, we had other worries. And we sat down and talked, saw that we didn’t have a doctor in Dragash, we don’t have a doctor even today. We lack staff in many different professions, we don’t have a psychologist, don’t have a lawyer, don’t have… and we felt the burden. We had to do something, we had to change something. We saw that women’s education and employment were terrible, citizens’ and women’ awareness was not satisfactory. I must say something, the municipality of Dragash has very intelligent women {counts with fingers}, very hardworking, very educated, very polite, very good mothers, very good sisters. However, this doesn’t satisfy me, because I don’t know the percentage of them who participate in decision-making, not the numeric percentage, but the percentage one finds in different situations. Maybe within the family they were well organized, but outside the family they were accompanied, with companions, with extra expenditures… Always begging, even if they were in the majority…

And noticing the lack of doctors, psychologists, the lack of lawyers, the lack, the lack… of all staff that other municipalities, even my hometown and the place where my family lived, did not lack. With my colleagues we always talked about how we should do something, it was our time to come to the surface, not just work in silence like before, not to brag, but we had to start and see if we could do something. We couldn’t go on like this, we owed it [to the community], and today that we have freedom, we have to give even more.

And I had the chance that my colleague and head nurse, I mean, my supervisor was Ms. Nexhipe Berisha, the wife of a martyr, the late Ruzhdi Berisha. With her we always thought things through a lot, because her fate was to have married from the city to the village, where she contributed in her way, from her house in the village, and I worked at the family health center, I worked at the same place. And one day there was a meeting in the municipality and Nexhipe said to me, “We will go to that meeting because we have been invited.” “No problem, we will go to that meeting.” This was where I could not contain myself, in this meeting we talked about the position of women in our municipality. Maybe because I was filled to the brim, to the brim, the meeting was organized by the OSCE in cooperation with the Officer for Gender Equality.

We are talking about the year 2008, when there was my public breakthrough. Ms. Lindita Kozmaqi Piraj was the Gender Equality officer, she is still working in that position, and I did not know her, I only knew her maybe as a public figure. When we began discussing the position of women, I exploded more than they did. I said that our women miss this, this {counts with fingers}, I mean, I made public the real position of women in the municipality of Dragash, where we had two communities, the Albanian community and the Gorani community, or Gora and Opoja. But for me they were equal because I am a midwife, I was close to both communities, and I knew the situation very well, and I knew their needs very well, perhaps they did not have organized demands, but I knew that they had needs. And at that meeting, at the end of the meeting, they made a decision, and said, “OK, we will choose a group of women who will organize activities, and we will start with advocacy and activities.”

Then I didn’t have any idea whether I was going to be a part of that group or not, but I liked the idea, and I congratulated them. It came to the proposal of names and she [the Gender Equality officer] said, “Yes, I am proposing you.” Although I had many other obligations, many other charges, I did not dare give this right only to myself, not because no one knew better how to do it, but because I could not escape from the debt that I had. And I said, “Yes, we together, I have to accept it.” And the time came for us to choose the board, it was the initiative of the OSCE, it was an idea of the OSCE, and I was chosen as the head of that board. And again because of embarrassment and the debt, due to the responsibility that I felt, I said, “Well, Ok,” but without thinking. You see, when something is happening, you feel a spiritual relief, at least I said what I wanted, and I wouldn’t deal with the rest. And that day I took officially the responsibility. “There’s no problem,” I said, “f we work together, there is a need for us to do something.”  I knew my humanitarian spirit, I knew my spirit of sacrifice, I knew my contributing spirit, I wasn’t lazy. And I knew Xhejrane very well and I trusted my courage, that if I couldn’t do something, at least I would change the way someone thinks, and I would be happy about that.

And we started holding regular meetings, and each time we organized them better, we connected very well as a board, and we came up with our demands in front of the mayor of the municipality too. And our meetings went very well, they started giving results, because we were working together, so the other party got used to the fact that the women were present. But we were young, without university education, without strong people around us, though we had a voice, we had our strength. Meanwhile the Gender Equality officer was in her second pregnancy, and the time of giving birth came. As the initial board members we started some activities, we did our strategic planning, and we presented it to the other party. And we began getting the respect of the mayor of the municipality, and of the other people who were close to us and had the patience of listening to us, and they were always offering solutions. That gave us strength and courage and strengthened our self-confidence, that we were doing something good. But the results weren’t very visible, because these were the initial demands, the biggest needs we had.

When the Gender Equality officer went on her maternity leave, in order not to stop the activities, although I was the head of the initial women’s board in the municipality of Dragash as a contact person, we needed someone for example to arrange the meetings with the mayor, the meetings with other people and those administrative procedures. And one day we decided… always volunteering, volunteering was the minimum I could do, I don’t even discuss that, also because I paid the transportation from Prizren to Dragash out of my monthly salary, I dedicated my time, and everything else, we didn’t even discuss these issues, because something had to be done, but we continued discussing what we should do. Then there was this proposal, the idea that it would be good if Xhejrane filled the vacuum as much as I could, while the officer wasn’t there. And I, by nature, for what depends on Xhejrane, I am not saying this easily, I mean, it is not easy for me to say this,  it isn’t a problem, I’m saying it again, but not for name recognition, not to be lauded, but because of the will for us to do something, so we filled that vacuum for all those months she wasn’t there. Sometimes the officer would come to the important meetings, and leave her baby. But that’s when I was encouraged even more, I worked without pay, always without any phone or travel expenses, nothing, I went out to the field as a volunteer.

When we made the first plan of how we would approach the field, I said, “Very well, I have an idea.” While I was treated for breast cancer, I went through these procedures, and when I was asked at the clinic, “Where are you planning to go?” then first I must thank Dr. Elvis Ahmeti, the head of the thoracic clinic back then, Dr. Shqiptar Demaçi, and the other staff, and the middle staff, I was very, very grateful, they did the impossible to keep me calm when I was facing my illness, from which I tried very hard to spare my family. It wasn’t an easy situation for me, and then I told them that I was going to Dragash. “Why,” they said, “do you want to go to Dragash immediately?” “I’ve chosen to go back to Dragash immediately because I don’t want my family to worry anymore, and say that she is sick,” because for some time I had kept it a secret from them. For example, this is another story in itself, my family’s  and my experience, they didn’t know what was going on with me for a long time. I am saying publicly that I lied to them, I hurt them, I mixed things up so they wouldn’t be touched much, there were large financial expenses and all of those things. So, I told them I will go to Dragash. “Immediately?” I said, “Immediately!” “Why?” “Because,” I said, “doctor, this is a place where a serious illness is not accepted so easily, actually, even within the family.” And I said, “I want to serve my women there, to be a motivation for them, to show that even having cancer, you can live as long as you live.” And trust me, I started working, I rested very little. I must say, I am one of those women who don’t have special demands in life. Maybe my idiosyncrasies are to give to life, and to give to others, without taking.

And I said to them, to the board, “We begin in the field with a breast cancer awareness campaign because all the women should know, there are only few who know, because there are 36 villages here, and I know every family, and I know every woman and every citizen of the municipality of Dragash and they know me, and I have not hidden my illness.” And I told them, “I am the best case to serve as a model, to show that breast cancer doesn’t have to be hidden, and to tell them how to discover it early.” Our campaign was very successful, it was effective. 2008 was the year I went out in the field, 2007 was the year that I had my last surgery, the fourth one, I mean, I had four surgeries. And in 2008 we began this campaign. And to tell you the truth, that’s when I understood that I should have done that much earlier. And when the women came to me, they said, without knowing, “It’s so good to see you, it’s so good that you came.” “Actually I came just to see you, oh it’s so good.” And it was more like a friendly meeting, and then again after the meeting, and on our way back, we said to each other, “It is so good, we have to be in the field. What are we waiting for at home, what are we waiting for at the office?” But it was more an issue for me, because I was living in Prizren, and the activities were in Dragash. My family’s budget was overwhelmed with my travel expenses, with the difficulties of travel, with [lack of] free time. But I was always saying, don’t ever count me as a problem, I will always be there when I am needed, I will not be together with you, but I will be a part of you.” It wasn’t the first, the second, the third…

And this way we began going to the field. The municipality always took care of travel expenses from Dragash to the villages. The OSCE supported us with a reception, they were there for us for some things, and we continued to do anything that came to mind. We started with the breast cancer awareness, we started with the education of young girls in elementary schools, meeting with the seventh, eight, ninth grade girls, and then we continued with health education. We started contacting parents, we started meeting them, and we came up with a very, very appropriate strategy.

And as soon as we started the breast cancer awareness, we found the need to meet with women, to see each other, to share memories and this separation line from the officials didn’t exist, we were equal. I can freely say that it was a special satisfaction for me too to meet these women that gave birth to three children with me, four children with me. They told me that their children were studying, that their girls were married, but very few of them told me that their girls were educated (laughs).  I mean, at the same time we were investigating the situation in the field. And right after the breast cancer awareness campaign, right away, we began researching where  we  were with the education of young girls in all the elementary schools, but we did not write a report.

The Gender Equality officer, the OSCE, and the city always provided us with a car to go from Dragash to the villages. We realized that there, here, not all girls were eager, as they said, “It’s not so easy for me to go to school, my parents, and the financial costs,” I mean, we found a situation in which girls from Opoja weren’t anymore the ones saying, “I will stay home.” We took them aside and we said, “You will have our support, you will, you will.” And now I can freely say that we are not doing terribly in terms of education of the Opoja girls, we still need to work in that direction, but we don’t have to start from scratch. In Gora on the other hand, it was perhaps because neither the officer nor part of the staff working with us spoke the language very well. But I didn’t have any problem with the language, I didn’t have any problem with the community, because I knew the people, maybe my profession allowed me that too, maybe my opinions, maybe because I had built good relations with them.

So then we covered the Gora and Opoja areas, and we started activities in other areas. We covered education, we developed health education, and I started to get really tired, also maybe because we understood that without any funding or donations, without donors, it is very difficult to keep up with activities in this field. I mean, everyone noticed that, maybe I was the first one to notice, but out of modesty I never said this, I never said no. I paid for travel, I paid for all that was needed, just let’s do something. And one day when we were all gathered, starting from the political leaders, whom I thanked very much for the support they gave us until then, the officer and the activists, I said, “Look, it is impossible for us to be successful without any funding…”

Dafina Beqiri: That is to say that all this period that you were talking about, you were working without any funds, as a volunteer?

Xhejrane Lokaj: Yes, yes, as a volunteer, as a volunteer. The only support we had was the transportation expense from Dragash to the villages, or the OSCE helped us when they could with receptions for the participants, otherwise, completely voluntary. But in the end, we concluded together [that there was the need for an organization], which wasn’t my idea, I accepted it, I wasn’t the first one to propose it, because I was tired, but I also wasn’t tired, I had a great time in the field. I was always going to the field during my time off, I paid the transportation tickets and I didn’t ask i for help. I used my mobile phone to contact the women, but I didn’t make a problem about that, just so something would be done, because trust me, so much was needed. It wasn’t because I was very good and that I wanted to do something good, but so much was needed because those villages were so far from one another.

Moreover, the organizations working there, the organizations from Pristina, they went there, finished their projects in the best possible way, I don’t want to judge, but there was a total disconnect. And women maybe benefited a little in the short term, but later there was nothing left out of that project. Without underestimating them, I didn’t find any change in the field, neither in the area of awareness, nor in the area of the capacity building, nor in the area of organizing the women. But I found that someone local had to offer more in the field, and that’s when the others came up with the proposal, because the municipal assembly had no funds, there were no funds for gender activities, the gender equality officers didn’t have their own budget for that. We had to do what we had to do, we had to register as an organization in order for us to be able to get funding, to get donations. And when it came to the organization, to who and how, again they proposed that Xhejrane had to be the leader of the organization. We had to choose the board, the staff, the statute, and go through all these procedures, but still, Xhejrane had to be the leader of the organization.

I will be very honest, I was born in 1955 and I was nearing my 60th birthday, when I was building my professional and intellectual capacity, as much as I could, I didn’t have access to a computer. My monthly salary, including all the family obligations, and all of my health checkups, and all the difficulties that we people face in our life, my monthly salary [did not cover all that]. And after the war, none of my bloodline was left without every stone being burned in their yard, and I’m not talking only about my sisters. The only thing that survived the war was a one-room apartment, a studio apartment that I had in Prizren, and all my family members were living in tents, all of them were placed there, displaced and crippled. Our salaries didn’t cover this and I want to say I didn’t have the luxury to buy a computer or learn how to use one. When I started these activities, I did it more because of a debt I felt within, because of the community’s needs, and somehow I felt bad [to refuse] the staff too, so I said yes. I must say that we started without known anything back then. Little by little, we learned, sometimes maybe you noticed too that maybe you weren’t capable, and I have to mention that organizations working far from us always called and said that we did not have enough capacity, that there was not enough capacity. I think that we needed to be especially supported, because I was with these people, I was part of that community, and I knew the needs of that community. I didn’t have the luxury to either lie, or steal, or start plans that could not be realized because I knew how they breathed, I knew their needs, and I knew the capacity that we could offer. I always said this and I don’t hesitate to do so, otherwise I would feel bad if I didn’t, we need to be supported, because we don’t have the capacity to have a strong staff.

Pristina has many university-educated women who are ready to work and be part of these activities, even as volunteers. While now we start having the first generation of women who are university educated, now we are lucky enough, because back then Pristina and Prizren were plucking our educated staff. They found opportunities there, they married, so it wasn’t easy for us to deal with this and be present at the same time. I can’t say that we achieved very much, but I don’t deny it, I was the one who did the least while feeling a debt towards the women, I will always feel a debt for Dragash, I will always feel a debt to Hateme Lokaj Kastrati and my family. Despite of how everything happened, I will never get rid of the debt I feel for Dragash and the debt that I feel towards my family.

But we did something there, we had some groups of women in some villages where we raised legal issues, because the topic of inheritance[3] was taboo until recently in the villages in the mountains. There, if you tell someone, “The share belongs to you, to take it,” we raised the issue in our meetings. Domestic violence, which despite being a crime remained exclusively inside the family as a topic, as an act and as practice, whatever it was, we put these topics on the institutional table. We built many mechanisms, some of them I still lead. I am not saying it was a privilege, again, it was a debt until I could train other women, until I could find the will and the time in another one.

Otherwise, I’m very sure that soon we will transfer some part of this leadership, for example, to the leader of the informal women’s group, to the leader of the monitoring of the implementation of the strategic plan, I contributed in drawing that strategic plan for gender issues that has been approved by the municipal assembly. I’m part of the [response to] domestic violence mechanism, I am a member of the midwives association, which I feel very bad it isn’t working as it should anymore, it is stagnating, but to represent Dragash through these mechanisms is not a small thing. I was the vice-president of the Union of the Family Health Care in Dragash for one mandate, that too. I mean, I was always lucky, even before I started these things, to be the first to start and build these mechanisms, which was difficult. But I gave a modest contribution there, I didn’t do so much, but maybe I was the one who wanted to tell other women, “You have a place here,” and I still tell them to this day. Look, it was difficult in those times to sit down with a man, and when they hit the table, you had to hit it too. When he said, “No!” you had to say, “Yes!” We changed that, it is much easier for you, and it makes me proud that I was part of these breakthroughs, that I was part of these changes. And to this day the fact that I was always the one that could freely knock on every door, enter every yard, sit down with any family to talk about their worries, and develop my capacity as a volunteer, still makes me happy.

Even now, although we are an organization, we do many activities on a volunteer basis. Donors have not always supported our ideas, donors haven’t always been ready to send their funds to Dragash, they do not always do so. Maybe sometimes, when they had some money left at the end of the year, and they needed to close their budget, or to write their reports. I’m being very honest without criticizing them, I always talk about reality. Had we waited only for the donors, maybe the organization would be closed now. The Kosovo Women’s Network is the organization where I felt better, where at least they listened and talked to me, because very often donors came and talked to you for three hours, and you explained  your needs and your capacity very well, and after all this, you never saw that donor again.  And then you stop and say, “Maybe I didn’t know how to talk to them, maybe they wanted something else?” And in fact I explained the need of the community where I worked and lived, of which I was a part.

But I cannot say that the donors were not supporting us. Xhejrane had to wait, but I wouldn’t wait! Thanks to the municipal assembly that took care of our transportation, I didn’t want even a salary, I didn’t want them to pay for my phone, I didn’t want them to pay even for the transportation. I only wanted to offer the women of that community what was best for them, so they would be integrated into the new Kosovo reality sooner. So they would become the women that maybe, not achieve exactly what I wanted, because I only finished high school. Very often when I went into different houses, or when I advocated for education, I said to them, “If I could just register even my mom at the university!” I mean, high school didn’t satisfy me, because this is not the time when you should feel satisfied with a high school degree.

High school satisfied me back then, in 1976-1977, when there was no other chance, but today I want a working woman, I want an honorable woman, I want an honest woman, I want an original woman, I want a woman who knows what she wants out of her life, and knows how to get that, I want a woman who doesn’t just want to take a broom in her hands, but a woman who can give with one hand, and receive with the other. And I want a woman who is a model for Albanian women like they were before.

I am from a generation when they used to call us burrnesha [4]we women don’t need to be called men-like because they are men, and we are women. I don’t like this term that was used for many years in the oda.[5] I was raised with that, when a woman was very brave, more… they said, “Wow, she is like a man!” She is not a man, she is a woman! And I want that woman who presents herself as a woman, who contributes as a woman, who loves herself, loves her goals, loves her family, loves her friends, loves her country, because life is only beautiful with love.

Love is not only what one gender gives to the other gender, because we weren’t born ready for marriage, knowing how to love a boy, but we, as young girls, loved our mother, sister, father, brother, I mean, love was born with the human soul. I love a woman who knows how to organize her life in the best possible way, and to tell you the truth, with all these changes that life is bringing, with the increase in the number of divorces without any big reason, or with big reasons surfacing, because before they were kept silent, the children suffer the consequences. I love a woman who, when she makes a decision, makes it fully conscious, she makes that decision like she has to, but she knows how to organize her life after that decision, and how not to become passive and say, “What am I going to do with my life,” or “What is going to happen to my children.” I want a woman who understands what human trafficking is. If I, as an old woman, am not endangered, my daughter is endangered, my grandchild is. I love a woman who has her eyes open and sees all these phenomena, I want a woman who can’t be corrupted easily, even during times when she is forced, she finds a way to bring that out, to share it with her friends, with her institutions. We as women should contribute to the elimination or reduction of these phenomena, because Kosovo is ours, the society is ours, the world is ours as long as we are a part of this world, as long as we are a part of this world, the world is ours. And we will never be freed from our debt without our brains starting to function properly. You know when a person gets out of debt, it’s when he/she is part of the third generation of old people and forgets, doesn’t know what to ask for and you don’t ask anything more from him/her.

There are 51% women in the world based on statistics, if 30% of women are mobilized enough, 40%, why not, even 50%, we would have built a society, a healthy society, a good society, a life with rules, a life with laws. There were rules before too, I mentioned them before, the unwritten rules that regulated life in the family very well back then, but change is necessary. Today you have computers, internet, airplanes. We used to say, “Balloons, balloons,” when an airplane passed by when we were young, and we went to watch, we didn’t know what it was. Today many people in Kosovo have traveled with an airplane, they experienced the satisfaction of flying, someone else of driving that machine. I mean, we have to move with time, but as women we have a  great debt, maybe I’m wrong, maybe I ask for too much, but I see that Xhejrane has to give, not only take.

Dafina Beqiri: In the ‘90s were you part of any political organization similar to the ones in Pristina? Women were very active in the Democratic League of Kosovo back then, were you part of that?

Xhejrane Lokaj: I was never a member of a political party. Maybe when I was a student, or when I started working, it was the Communist Party that you wanted or you didn’t want to join, maybe such arrangements took place against your will. Later on, as a midwife, I thought that I had to belong to my profession, as a citizen or as a part of this family, I believed that it was enough for me to give my contribution in this way. I never wanted to be the first one to hold the flag, although maybe this doesn’t match with what I have been saying. I was part of the leadership of this process, but I explained that it was just a need for things to start. I wasn’t a member of any political party, I am still not, maybe because we are few women where I work. Maybe there is not a big possibility for me to give my contribution through a political party, not as much as I can as civil society, and as a midwife in the workplace. I mean, I can say that maybe it was a bad decision on my part, but I’m not complete yet.

Dafina Beqiri: Did you have any invitation to join a political party?

Xhejrane Lokaj: Yes, yes, I definitely had invitations. And I didn’t want to make this public. Maybe that affected me, because I had invitations from all the political parties, but if I disconnected and joined one political party, I thought that I would not be part of all the people. And if I was part of a political party then I would have to avoid the other parties, maybe because I didn’t value them much, and I wanted to be everybody’s Xhejrane. Maybe that was one of the reasons, because not coincidentally I said earlier that I know all the people, and all the people know me. I think that I belong to everybody. Maybe I wasn’t scared that I would belong to someone more than to someone else, but I wanted to respect everyone and contribute to everyone. Sometimes I think that in this sense I’m a bit incomplete, sometimes I think, and especially because in our municipality there were women politician, maybe…

Dafina Beqiri: How do you think that a greater involvement of women in decision-making can be achieved, meaning that they are also included in politics?

Xhejrane Lokaj: Though Xhejrane fulfilled her debt, I say this makes me flawed. Here is where I see myself flawed, maybe all of us owe something to political activists. Votes, decision-making, it all exclusively goes through political parties, because the municipal assembly, people, and council members who sit in the Municipal Assembly are chosen by political parties. In the Parliament, the parliamentarians are from political parties, I mean it is necessary to be where decisions are made, except when citizen initiatives candidate individuals as such. We, women need to be organized politically. We thought that this time around we were a little late. Maybe this was supposed to be done immediately, before the candidates were chosen by the political parties, I mean, every political party has already chosen their candidates for the Assembly. In my opinion, I think we are late, I don’t know why, maybe because we were so busy with other things that I missed this one when it was time. I say this because I have much respect for the members of the Municipal Assembly of Dragash, they are all very good friends of mine, but they only finished high school, they are students and none of them finished university, they’re employed somewhere, and one day, when they will have the opportunity to be director, or maybe occupy the position of head of some municipalities, they will be delegated by a political party. I mean, we in Dragash are missing this [political power].

I don’t see myself as a solution, or that I would be a better solution, I don’t see myself serving as a model for something like this, but I notice a paleness  and a void in myself, though not courage. For me it was more about respect and the question, am I contributing more or less, that for me was the tipping point. But I see women lacking preparation, the intellectual preparation to be more powerful, maybe not more outspoken, but more powerful. Because like it or not, in places such as Dragash, it can be noticed, it can be noticed very much. In Dragash almost all the women who are employed, the largest number of them, have finished only high school, very few went to university. We only had one [university-educated woman], the president of the Municipal Court, but we didn’t have any others in the decision-making. Until recently this year, I have some information that the political parties were choosing the Women’s Forum too, until this year we lacked such an organization. I mean, they went with 30 per cent,[6] and with 30 per cent in small places – again I’m saying it with much respect because that is the real situation –  means that with 32 or 33 votes you can win a seat at the municipal assembly. This percentage definitely doesn’t satisfy me, I don’t think that entering the Municipal Assembly either with this quota satisfies the elected women either, because they don’t have the power to shake things up, to move things.

This year I noticed, in fact we noticed, I wasn’t the only one to notice it, that in the application for a teaching post we had a number of girls who finished the university and looked for jobs in our municipality. This fact makes me very happy, we also had those who finished the university and returned to the midwifery and nursing departments.  I mean, thank God Pristina, thank God Prizren, you are allowing our girls to come back. We are aware that not all of them will be employed because of the capacity of our municipality…

With all due respect for them, but in small municipalities such as Dragash, with budget such the one of Dragash, with the existing structure of two communities, with those political parties… I would like to see women, I would like to see a woman who is in charge of herself, a woman with more powerful capacity, a woman able to express support, to express not only herself but not to allow herself to become nothing, and a better way of organizing. We were trying last year with continuous activities, but there are many factors that inhibit the acceleration of these procedures. What gives me more courage to express myself in this way, not to mention the courage I many times used in my sentence, it was this year we had the largest number of applicants, even more so in education Those were women who finished university, and had the willpower to come back and contribute to our municipality. Maybe this was what we didn’t know many times, that Pristina mercilessly plucked our staff, Prizren mercilessly plucked our staff. The lack of perspective in our municipality, the marriages of our boys, I’m talking about the ones who finished the university in different fields, and got married to girls from other areas of Kosovo. I’m not a “localist,” it’s not my right to be “localist” in this way, but I express localism here, because this was a very big issue in our place, the relocation of the youth, the young staff, a problem that was always on our table. The boys relocated and found themselves in Pristina, and those brides, not only they didn’t return here, they followed. And we always had a great movement of youth, young staff, [this has] always been a problem on our table.

If this continues this year, we will have a group of girls, a group of married women, a group of young girls who are interested in being employed in Dragash. And soon we as an informal group of women here – I want to thank Igo [Igballe Rogova] too, who has expressed her will to help us, because alone we can’t do anything in Dragash. We have a plan to invite all of these young girls who finished university, that it’s not enough for them to finish university and be employed, or unemployed, if they want to change the position of women in our community for good, they have to join political parties. And we will come up with a request of that type, we will give our commitment in this field, we will do everything together with others in order to change the position of women in our municipality, in politics and in decision-making. Again, I’m saying, I would be very happy, that’s what I am saying, that we will do it in the coming weeks and I believe it’s going to be in September when we will realize these meetings. We should have done this in June for example, but back then we didn’t have this situation, now we noticed that women’s willpower.

We see women in politics as a necessity, definitely a necessity, not only to change the position of women for good, or to contribute in the decision that enhance the lives of women, but for the society in general, they are part of politics that will be debating citizens’ issues. And I believe that many issues suit women naturally, really suit women. I continuously say that, we women, we are not men, we are women. Let us be feminist, so let them call us feminists as much as they like! We are women.  In some situations we are sharper, more vigilant, more visionary and more courageous than men. By the way, when it comes to corruption, if you catch one or two women, it becomes such a huge fuss until it’s investigated, although maybe the poor woman wasn’t part of it at all. Meanwhile, I think that men pass through these procedures more easily. But if we, because we are many and have intellectual capacity, and a sense of obligation…. obligation because without it, you can’t volunteer, only obligation makes you be a volunteer. So if we, women, mobilize better, learn from one another, teach one another, work with each other, we can change a lot in our society.

Dafina Beqiri: How did you think Kosovo would be and how is it now, how much does your image correspond to what Kosovo is today?

Xhejrane Lokaj: Certainly, before we lacked freedom. When I say freedom, maybe you had a particular amount of oxygen to breathe, but even the oxygen then wasn’t a possibility, it was poisoned or you owed it to someone. Comparing freedom back then to today’s freedom is a topic only for those who don’t have brains or eyes to see the difference. Secondly, the opportunities then and now, please! As I said before, women should be educated regardless of other values, should be loyal, willing to work, brave, generous, intelligent, healthy first of all, because that is necessary in order for you to realize your plans and be able to give your contribution. And also the opportunities, there are more education opportunities nowadays. Now Prizren has a university, when Prizren didn’t have a university they were saying to me, “How can we go to Pristina, when my family doesn’t have money to educate either me or my brother. But my brother went because the ticket costs this much, the apartment costs this much, I don’t know anyone in Pristina, Pristina would swallow me, it’s an unknown place, I have never been to Pristina.”

I mean, today there are more opportunities because other cities have universities. They don’t have all the departments, but it’s an opportunity for more women to be educated. Even though, based on the per capita statistics, we are categorized as poor – and that is true, I don’t want to go there, I don’t want to prejudge – Kosovo has been built up, houses don’t have those small windows with bars anymore, or small rooms, they don’t have those old furniture, but you can see and feel a different standard in our families. Compared to employment opportunities, the number of people searching for jobs are way too high, but there are always opportunities to earn one’s bread [against all] suffering. A person has to work, to engage. Opportunities are something else, the opportunities for education exist, it is easier now in that field, women’s interest in education grows each day.

Is Kosovo what I have thought it would be? Maybe if you listen to the news and focus on what the media say, or when they talk only about problems and not the achievements, I would say there is a darkness. There is a fog, and I don’t want to be part of any of those meetings or workshops, or be part of any media or presentation of Kosovo. It’s not black, it’s not all black, we are somewhere in the middle. Starting from the fact that we lacked everything in a way, everything that we achieved, we achieved it earlier. We achieved [everything] with great engagement, with a big fear, we achieved it with a greater mobilization, and it still  had a price. Every year Kosovo had victims, every family was in fear, and every family was insecure.

I can remember it like it was today, there was this price of 3000 Euro that the families had to pay to send their sons out of Kosovo. If that boy was bigger than his age, for example, without being 18, if he was 16, but in the eyes of the occupier he was older, immediately when they saw him they added some years to him, and said to him, you are a terrorist, you are part of demonstrations, you are against what I ask for, and stuff like this. And if we see it in this respect, that insecurity, that lack of freedom, the lack of freedom to live, to breathe, to plan, we survived somehow, but first we paid a price for everything. But now we have our freedom and it is without a price, the price of today’s freedom are the people who were killed during the war, the civilians, the women who were raped, all of them are a part of price for freedom, children, the elderly…

Now the opportunities are different. The opportunities for organizing are different, the opportunity for self-initiatives are different. Everything can be done only if you are organized and mobilized, without that nothing can be achieved. Although we are a country, although we are independent, although more than 100 countries have recognized us, although we are trying to enter the UN and other world institutions, this is not an easy path. You should be aware of that. Maybe, what I don’t like for example, I don’t like it when a part of the society is neglected. I mean, someone walks fast, and someone gets stuck. Opportunities should be offered to all categories, this is something that I didn’t expect to tell you. I was expecting equal treatment for everyone.

I can’t say that it is an equal treatment for everyone when members of Parliament increased their salaries to enormous amounts, they gave themselves huge salaries. Without disrespecting their efforts, I myself work in civil society, and I know how much you have to give from yourself to change something, to do something. I appreciate their brains too, their work away from their families and all those things. But their salaries are so high, that their families can live comfortably, and that comfort that they give to themselves to go even higher than they are. Or, for example their pensions could be higher than the pensions of academics, or of the people who have built the foundation of this country in a way. I didn’t expect these things, to tell you the truth. I expected many things.

I think about how women too… considering we have many women who died during the war with weapons in their hands. They are ours, if it’s not my sister, it is my sister. If she is not my daughter, she is my daughter, because she is Albanian, she also [fell for] Kosovo. She also went to war with great willpower. And then it comes to me that we women in a way are not treated well. We need to ask for so many things, we need to work a lot in order to achieve that. Or, for example, the contribution of women and men, even if they are on the same level, men always go further, they are faster, even though we, women, don’t lack the skills. But we are more modest, we are more responsible in front of the family, with more engagements and more obligations. Very often working women are seen as victims in comparison with housewives because they have extra engagements and responsibilities, and the question is how much they accomplished their objectives, and how much can they move along with their objectives. I didn’t expect these things.

I expected an equal society, I expected a more generous society, not one so heartless. I can notice greed, especially when their own interest is at stake. I noticed that to enter university you need to have connections, there was a time when they said, “You must give me money.” Absolutely there was no need for this to be part of the life of a family, or a family’s worry. I didn’t expect these things, to be very honest. I didn’t expect the corruption, because corruption for me is stealing. I don’t know why they named it “corruption,” why we changed the vocabulary so much. You should say, “You stole brother, you stole.” If you steal in you own house it is embarrassing, but to steal in your country publicly and to be so cold blooded! Individuals who do these things are so calm, completely removed from responsibilities and debt. Besa, besa[7] and [the honor of] your family’s name, because everyone likes to be proud of the family’s name, that is very normal.

I didn’t expect these things, I didn’t expect the trafficking of our women, who are taken from the streets after being promised a job and end up in those dark alleys. In those instances, on one hand it’s not sad because of dignity, but on the other hand, it is so sad because she is being forced to go through those things. Where are our values as Albanians and as humans too? Honesty {counts with her fingers}… There is no honesty where there is corruption, there is no honesty where there is human trafficking, but there is no security too, there is no equal treatment either. I didn’t expect this phenomena. I expected a larger generosity from our citizens, I was expecting a higher debt. Everything that is happening with voting [fraud], the vote is a debt. I think that some people, if it’s true what they are suspecting, and those procedures that they go through, if there is something true there, then they are multiple debtors.

[1] “More” adds emphasis, like “bre,” similar in English to bro, brother.

[2] Mountain region in the western part of Serbia.

[3] In traditionalist Albanian communities, inheritance follows only the male line.

[4] The Albanian term burrnesha literally means men-like, but can refer to women’s show of courage, wittiness, or general disregard for social roles that often limit women’s participation in the public space.

[5] Traditional men’s chamber in the kulla, where women are not allowed.

[6] Kosovo has a gender quota: by law, 30% of candidates in the political parties list must be women.

[7] In Albanian customary law, besa is the word of honor, faith, trust, protection, truce, etc.  It is a key instrument for regulating individual and collective behavior at times of conflict, and is connected to the sacredness of hospitality, or the unconditioned extension of protection to guests.

 

Dafina Beqiri: What do you understand with the word feminism, Ms. Xhejrane?

Xhejrane Lokaj: What do I understand by the word feminism? As I said above, in the past they would call a brave woman burrneshë and I said that it is not good that they called us “man-like,” because we are women, you can say that she is a strong woman. With the word feminism, I understand the fact that we are women, we have our own world. We have the right to live our life as women, but on the other side we have a debt that we can’t ignore the other part, that stays with us forever because it belongs to us, we are women.

Personally, I can say that I am a feminist, and I should be a feminist, and I think that it is needed for us women to be feminist, and to work and achieve the level that we deserve and can achieve, because not everything can be achieved in one period of your life, whether we are ten years old, in a decade or something else. But we should work to reach the position that women deserve, the position that the women have the right to have in order to achieve what they want in life. Maybe every behavior, maybe every demand, maybe every engagement that has to do with the life of a woman can be included in the group that we call feminism. And I never see a danger in this, neither for the other gender, nor for society, and I don’t see that it should be something that we need to say, “But no, by God, I’m not!”

But why shouldn’t I be the one worried about the position of women, when I am a woman and I understand women, because as a woman I want to do something good for women, because as a woman my soul hurts when a woman goes through something. But as a woman I can’t repair that. I can’t improve her life, I can’t help her. I mean, normally all that and much more can be included in feminism, and maybe, if I’m not asking too much, I would like that all women be more feminist than I am, in fact, express themselves more, because we are who we are, but we shouldn’t just express it, we should work, work, in a way work for what belongs to us, why not.

I will take myself as an example as a midwife. This has to do with my profession, but with my family too, because we are sisters without a brother like many other families. The only difference is that our number is larger, and that makes me happy because each of us has her own world, but each world is connected to each other in harmony, happiness, and great love. It is impossible to be born in a family with a lot of sisters, with a lot of worries, and not take care of each other, and not to have much love in your heart. A soul that doesn’t have love is selfish, a soul that doesn’t love and understand the people around who have needs, is selfish, and must accept that.

As women we are at least 50% of the society, somewhere they say 51% and somewhere else 52%. With all these experiences, with all these violations of our opportunities and our rights, with all these things that we experience along the road, different types of violence, inequality, lack of our power, all of these things, how can we not be feminist? I believe that the other party, the other gender, doesn’t have the same qualities, I’m very sure. Always, when we talk about domestic violence, now lately with “ the modernization” {makes quotation marks with her hands} of things, without understanding things properly, the many things that the transition brought, the many changes, it is mentioned that here and there the victims are the men too. But the largest number of victims are women, with fewer opportunities for education and employment.

In the private sector, when they understand that a woman is going to get married, they immediately calculate that after the marriage she can get pregnant, and from the start she is discriminated, you can be sure {addresses the present}, because we as civil society accept this, we work in this field even though publicly this is not accepted yet, but it is a reality. If a family from a rural place has a boy and a girl, even if they are twins, even if God didn’t separate them and they lived together in their mother’s womb and they were born only few minutes apart, and they were raised together, I assure you, that the education of the boy will have priority. If there isn’t the same opportunity to be educated for a boy and a girl, how can you not be a feminist?

In all these situations, in situations where for decades and decades our marriages were a form of market exchange, without knowing each other, or he was married,[1] the husband’s family congratulated you and you had to go, women experienced so many things, different forms of torture as a consequence of rules and the traditions, they paid for all that. Or when the men emigrated, the women stayed loyal, they raised their children living with their in-laws, with sisters-in-law and the children without a parent, while the man could have a life without constraints, fulfilling his life that way, and with a little money he closed the eyes [bought the silence] of the family left behind here. I mean, I always see women as the ones who have paid the price of their sacrifice and even the war showed us that. They always said, “Death is dignified, being killed is dignified,” but the women were raped, I always saw that women paid a special price compared to men. Even if I wasn’t a women’s rights activist, I couldn’t forgive myself. This is the least I could have done until now, trust me, the least, and I still feel an obligation. But even if I wasn’t a feminist, they could have said that something was wrong with me…

Dafina Beqiri: So, do you consider yourself a feminist?

Xhejrane Lokaj: I consider myself a feminist. And you realize step by step for many reasons. For example, If we go to a meeting, and you have a much better argued, more reasonable proposal, maybe better formulated than a man’s, you can be sure that women’s proposal will be left in the shadow, and the other will dominate, I assure you. This can be noticed any time in the society in which we are living, and which I see as a transitional society. May God help us with our activities, our engagement, as civil society, as citizens, as individuals, and as institutions too, that these things will improve, and change. Everyone should find the place they deserve, a place where one is equal in front of the law, the family, the society, in a relationship with their environment and employment opportunities, and all these. May God help us that everybody works in that direction, that we are equal, and for us not to be the ones who, “aiii…aiii!”.

For a long time the word “aiii” has followed women, and when she was the smarter one, “What does she know? But what does she know?” These words underestimate us, in specific situations it could be very irritating. There are moments when they can be humiliating, there are moments where they are too much… They damage you more than you can handle, maybe because they touch your dignity too. There are moments where they affect your self-confidence, and the women pay for all of this. Why not be a feminist? Definitely yes!

[1] In some rural regions of Kosovo men can take more than one wife, usually because they don’t have a male heir from the first wife.

Dafina Beqiri: What were your dreams when you were young and did you fulfill them?

Xhejrane Lokaj: Oh, a very interesting question. No, my dreams are not fulfilled. Like every young man or woman, when people are young they have suitcases of dreams. Maybe it is because it is  the age  when the brain functions in a way that everything goes very fast, everything is much more enviable, everything seems like, you are sleeping in Kosovo, and the same day you fly to America, and on the same day you return from America. And you see yourself in different professions, you see yourself in different family situations. You know, sometimes those dreams are real, maybe sometimes they are real just because you are of a certain age, or in a certain situation.

But definitely I can’t say that my dreams were fulfilled, no.  Earlier I, Xhejrane, the way I was in my life before now, at the age of 58, I thought differently, I saw it differently, and I wanted it differently. I thought that I would be either the first or I would be the first failure after my education. I thought that I would contribute to my town, I would give my professional contribution to a larger field in my birthplace, to my relatives. I wanted to be close to my family, to be close to my people, to be close to my fellow villagers. I think that I experienced an injustice there, and it followed me throughout my whole life, and it created other difficulties in my life.

It wasn’t easy during the late 1970s, I mean in the beginning of the 1980s, when the years 1980-1982 brought many things in Kosovo, things that caught me in a place very far from my family. I can freely say that if kurbet was a way out of the country for men, also for me, as a young girl, going from Pobergj to Dragash was a sort of kurbet. And I see it was then when everything broke in me, everything changed in me. It influenced me to live a totally different life from what I thought, a totally different life from what I would have lived in my birthplace. For me, it was the disconnection from my family and rreth that offered me new opportunities. I started everything from zero in Dragash, I went there very young, I went to a totally different environment, I went there a different mentality, and I had to change many things from the way we think in the place where I was born, where I was raised, where I was formed, and had to adapt to a new place.

That is the first thing. The second one is the political situation, the changes that the times brought versus the courage of our plans, our dissatisfactions with the government. That cost me a lot too, because it threw me into a totally different place. It separated me from my rreth, my people, my group, my plans, and definitely had I been employed in my birthplace, I would have had many more things that I don’t have today. I’m always talking about major things. Since that day I think that life, although I gave a lot to life, took from me what I could have had, because while I gave to other people, it took away from me much more than I deserved, so my dreams weren’t fulfilled, my plans weren’t accomplished.

Even if I had dreams back then, I wouldn’t have dreamt about Xhejrane, the life that she lives today, because I wouldn’t have known to dream these kinds of dreams. I dreamt an educated, employed Xhejrane, with opportunities to advance in her profession and in her reeth, in a place in Decani where they started educating their women very early. You didn’t have the barriers there that you had there [in Dragash], there you were alone, everything you did was out of the ordinary, while in my birthplace you would do everything as part of a group. And a place like that, for example my birthplace, where my family still lives, creates totally different opportunities, it continuously gives you different opportunities. That place [Dragash] was for me like a sentence, and I’m paying for this punishment, and when you are punished, you know how much you could fulfill your dreams and your plans.

I saw Xhejrane studying by correspondence. I told you, I got a Nine the day I went to Dragash, it wasn’t easy as a student by correspondence. And I must cite the words of the professor who said, “Colleague, if you were a full time student, you would get a well-deserved Ten.” And that was the last exam I took. Had I been employed in Deçan, I would have never left the university, but they told me that they needed a midwife not a biologist, and that I couldn’t go [to school]. For example, I had to go from Dragash to Pristina to give an exam, I was disconnected from my colleagues there.

Secondly, the creation of my own family, this is also the result of my relocation from my birthplace, from my people, because I have seen everything, and I managed it and everything functioned from a distance. You know how difficult it was for a woman to manage a whole family of women, in those circumstances, in those difficult circumstances, from a distance, because I had to work, and maybe I forgot myself, and I didn’t exist as Xhejrane. I only existed to serve others’ demands, and all of these and many, many other things are unfulfilled dreams for me. But I mentioned these because maybe these are the ones that broke me and didn’t allow me to fulfill my other dreams. But you need to accept this, there is nothing that you can do, it is what it is.

I am here where I am, I am what I am, I did what I could do. I know that the debt is very big, we are born with a debt, and we will finish this life with a debt, at least this is how I understand it. I feel indebted towards the people who supported me, they are not few, such as my colleagues, my friends, the people whom I could share the good and the bad. This means a lot, I don’t want to underestimate these people, because in specific situations, for example, in the situations that occurred to my family, because the family is the cell, the family is the soul of the person, they meant a lot to me. I mean, I am grateful, but I will feel indebted forever, because I did not do all that I should have done for them. And maybe for what I could have done, I could not have changed anything for the good of others. Also because today I’m 58 years old, these are not few years, it is five decades, how to eliminate those eight years for example, because during eight years, or ten years, you understand some things, you see some things. I think that human beings need to give to life, to give to others, to do things for others because as much as you do for others will be returned to you, because you fulfill yourself, you are yourself, you are close to people, you are with people, and you are part of society.

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