Part Two
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: My mother cried a lot, I didn’t know what to do, I was in such a shock, I was in such a shock. I remember it as if it happened today, we could barely breathe, it smelled so badly while walking over the burned houses, we could smell burned corpses, man, literally. And we…The street Fehmi Agani here, which before was named Milos Gilić, is around one kilometer and four hundred meters long, the whole street is around 1.4 kilometers long. There were some burned houses, some of them were not burned, but that house there, that’s where all the murders happened, they were all in the street. There were people, I don’t know how many, but I know I saw around four to five people lying on the ground.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did you know them?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, they were turned this way [face down], I don’t know. They most likely were from other mahalla and had escaped or something. You couldn’t even look at them, how would you even be able to get closer to them, man. You know how it is. You just tried to walk, you tried to walk as fast as possible, [so fast] that you even started running. We didn’t know if we should have moved forwards or backwards, you no longer knew where it was coming from. We arrived home, my mother sat down to breathe, she wiped her cheeks and mine and said, “This will all pass, this will all pass, you don’t need to think that way.” Because as a mother, she would get into that….
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Parental obligation…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: The obligation…but just as we sat down to take a rest, three Albanians came. I don’t know, they just jumped the wall and broke into the yard. “Where to escape? Where to escape?” It was the only thing they asked, “Where to escape?” On that moment, we heard a big noise of cars, it was the special police forces. The noise was so loud, they didn’t see us together only by ten seconds, because if they saw us together with those men, that would be our end too. Just when they came inside, exactly in our house, the Albanian men jumped the wall to the other side, I don’t know what happened to those people after that. They kept asking us, “Where are they? Where are they? I mean they kept asking my mother, “Gde su oni? Gde su oni? [Where are they?]” “Jel ste ih videli? Jel ste videli albanci? Jel ste videli šiptari? Gde ste videli šiptari? [Have you seen them? Have you seen the šiptari? Have you seen the šiptari? Where have you seen the šiptari?]. My mother said, “No, I haven’t seen them,” and kept crying because it was that moment…and they asked, “Who are you? Why are you here? What are you doing here?” Somehow my mother kept explaining that this is our house and we came to take some flour. “Why are you lying? You came here to steal.” That’s when my mother took one of her photographs and showed it to them, “This photograph is mine, this house is mine.” He kept shouting at my mother, “Where are the Albanians?” for around half an hour. They didn’t do anything physical, but they were so aggressive.
Then they left, we went downstairs to the basement together with my mother, because we kept the flour in the basement, it’s this basement here. Our house was not fully built, it was only in bricks, the basement was partially built. We took two bulk bags of flour and went over all that blood again, man. I don’t know, I don’t remember anything after getting out of my mahalla, from my lagje, because I was in total shock.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Why didn’t you think about escaping, was it too dangerous?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: It was too dangerous as we moved to the other mahalla, because they used to come and register the people who were there in order to know who is leaving, what’s going on, who are they and so on. In fact, they also gave booklets, in order to allegedly register people, it was a kind of ID Card or something.
And that’s it, I mean, after two-three weeks the situation got calmer, they removed the corpses from the streets. I remember well that they would take…usually the Roma people were the ones to do the most difficult jobs. They would for example come to the Sefa mahalla all the time and take the first they would meet, a boy or someone like that.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: They would employ them?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, they would just randomly take them into the van and send them to clean, to remove the corpses, to bury them and so on, this kind of things happened. And of course there are some of them who aren’t here, none of them are here in fact, and they were killed while working for them. They just sent them and never took them back. And surely there are some of them who know where some of the missing corpses are. I believe that maybe they know, maybe they don’t dare speak, maybe they are not here, maybe they killed the ones who knew something.
That’s where all the business was made, the cigarettes and other things were sold, in Sefa, which is not only a Roma mahalla. There are two lagje inhabited by Albanians down there, Roma people always tried to defend Albanians.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Why, in what position were Roma people during the war, that they were able to defend Albanians?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: We were in that position that, “Okay, they’re not touching us.” Now, we had the line that the local police, from before, is defending us, and plus the soldiers. No, they did not tell that there were Albanians, but somehow, “Are there Albanians?” As soon as they came in to check, there was the house’s line, they would put some child in charge to warn..or to give a signal, “Go up on the rooftop, so that they will not find you when they come.” There were many things of this kind that happened.
There is another thing I remember from that period, I had a CIvic Education teacher, I forgot her name. I was passing by… there was – the situation got already calmer – a shop called Dushkaja. My big brother was employed there during the war, he was employed because we had no food to serve on the table, we had no drinks. We had no flour left, we had nothing left, my father went to that warehouse to look for a job, to at least get some food every day. That shop was owned by some boss, a commander, I don’t know, someone important. He would never give money, you know, and would barely give you food. You had to work there all the time. I went to pick him up, I usually had to go and pick him up at 8:00 PM, he would give four bread loaves to my brother while there were eight of us, four bread loaves and two liters of milk and that was it.
It was 8:00 PM, I went through Sefa mahalla, in the part where some Albanians lived. There were some very good houses there, and my teacher saw me. I didn’t know that she was there. She waved her hand to me from her window, “Bajram, Bajram!” I turned around, “Who is calling?” and as I turned my head I saw the teacher. “Can you please buy two liters of milk for me? I will give you the money.” You know, you were allowed to buy there. “Yes, yes I will,” I replied. First she asked, I am trying to tell the story because in fact it’s quickly fading in my mind… (sighs). Then I went and bought two more liters of milk for my teacher. I brought them to her, she kissed me, invited me inside and hugged me, “Are you all alright?” That’s what she kept asking, “How come you are not scared of going out?” Somehow… when you get over a phase, I had no fear even though I was only 14 years old, people somehow get used to it after living with it everyday for two months.
The spot where my maternal uncle’s house was, it was 100 meters far as the crow flies. The Gjakova’s main SUP, the new one, the one that they called “the new SUP,” the place where people were beaten the most, in the seventh floor, the underground basement as far as I know. There, I mean, was not farther than 100 meters far as the crow flies. And there…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did they bomb?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: They bombed it every fucking [in English] day, until the house of my uncle got hit, we were there, man. They used to bomb every day, you know, they bombed every day. It’s very interesting when you try to conceptualize things later, how can you bomb some part where the whole lagja lives, you know. It is a public space, you know, is…people live there, don’t you know that people are there? That was very interesting.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: They were bombed by NATO?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: They were bombed by NATO.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did they ever miss the target?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Of course they did, it fell a bit farther. There is a tyrbe, the tyrbe of Baba Çetë as they call it, it fell in its yard. There was the building where Albanian people were living. It was terrible to see the bombings everyday… okay, they did it for two to three days, it was destroyed, but they continued to bomb, man, it seemed as if they were throwing bombs to get rid of them.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Maybe because of the basements, the underground floors.
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: But there is no way out when it gets totally demolished. You know, it was… obvious [in English].
Erëmirë Krasniqi: General madness [In English].
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: You know how… a building of 40X50 meters got bombed for one week, you know how, dropping ten to fifteen bombs a day was simply abnormal.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Were the sirens warning you?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, the sirens stopped working already, you know… sometimes there was no electricity at all. There was no electricity back then. There was electricity only for one to two hours, because they would shut it down in order not to have…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did there ever exist an imaginary reality during the bombings? In Pristina it did.
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, it existed, it existed. That kind of normality happened three weeks before liberation. It was imaginary, you have no idea how imaginary that was. We got liberated in the sense that we could move more freely. There were no paramilitary forces, they left, only the army troops remained. They wouldn’t bother you because they were very young. They were innocent people, I don’t know… I never saw them stopping someone, nor checking on someone, nor doing something. They had their position, they stood, for example there was one close to the park, another one near here… close to the trucks garages, right to the street up there, where they turned back. Actually, there was the buses garage, the big trucks garage, I don’t know which factory from. That was their spot, they would take turns, there were three or four of them.
And there was one…after those three weeks, we came back here for two weeks. We came home. My big brother with his wife stayed at my uncle’s and we came back. Serbs were still here in their houses.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: And you stayed a bit more…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: We were freer, way freer, because the bombings in the center stopped… but they were still looking for tanks or things in the fields. It was very interesting, there was a carpenter here close to our mahalla, Vraniqi was his name. Serbs made him build big wooden tanks. He was old and they forced him to build tanks, they asked the soldiers to help him build the tanks and after that they took the tanks and put them in the meadow. This happened on the riverside, if you want we can go and see it. It was a meadow and Roma people were there. They sent them three kilometers away to put the wooden tanks there, then NATO bombed, bum-bum. It didn’t make any sense, senseless tricks, we laughed, man, trust me, we laughed because it was so stupid [in English]. I saw them build tanks, that was very stupid [in English].
Then it was normal, they left. I had a Serbian friend here…it is a lagje down there. When we came back, I went to visit him after about two months and a half of not having met each other. I went to his house and saw that he already had 50 balls, 70 bicycles, a Playstation, no, not a playstation but SEGA Mega, he also had a Nintendo and many other things. I didn’t understand that, it didn’t make any sense to me. I asked him, “Where did you get all these?” He said, “My father brought them from the warehouse.” That’s what he said, he asked me, “Do you want me to give you a bicycle?” I took the bicycle and brought it home, my father said, “Take the bicycle and give it back,” and grounded me for three to four days, I was not allowed to go out.
The war was over! The war was over, they left. Over 50 trucks came to the mahalla and loaded up.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did they take things from houses?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, yes, they came and took things from houses. They took everything people had, of course valuable things, appliances, and so on.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Officials, right?
Bahram Kafu Kinolli: No, they were random people.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: They stole things as they were moving, right?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, yes. They filled the trucks, they were full, full man, full, full, full. I don’t know man, 50 trucks, seeing 50 trucks all of a sudden like that. They entered the mahalla, there were one hundred things. We were in the streets, you know. We only dared to go out in that street there. If you went farther from there, he [a soldier] would be waiting for you there, you know. We had a certain time when we were allowed to pass by that street and go to the center of town, for example, to buy bread and stuff. There were only some special cases when the soldier would allow you, when he would come and take some bread, you were freer if you knew the soldier, because they even changed the soldiers after some time. Because when they became your friends, you would bring them food and they would warn you that, “You dare not stay here tonight, you better go somewhere else because they will come…” He knew all the information. You know, there were good soldiers man, you have no idea how many good soldiers there were, they wanted to defend people, you know. They were so young, they defended people, because in fact they didn’t come…the war happened to them.
There’s one person who happened to be in Gjakova during the war, he is in Serbia now, he is a very close person to me now, we almost have family relation, not through my wife, but my godmother.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Can you describe him to us?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Helena is one of my best friends and my godmother at the same time. She is my wife’s best friend. Her brother happened to be in Gjakova during the war. She has some letters that she exchanged with her brother during the war. They are so good, so touching, there are so many things that you can even write a book from their exchange. I don’t know if we are allowed to contact that person. He is married now and has one child, he is still traumatized because of the war.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did he tell you?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Ah no, I never met him. I never met him because, I don’t know, I never felt like meeting him, while with Helena we’re so good, she is my friend, my sister, we simply work together and do everything together. I cannot meet him because I get a feeling…I don’t know, maybe trauma, I am not ready to meet him yet. It’s not that he did something bad, he didn’t kill anyone. Helena told me that he didn’t kill anyone while he was a random soldier, he was at the checkpoint, just waiting, when he finished his turn he would be replaced by another soldier, but they suffered a lot. They suffered in the rain, in the snow, they suffered, you know. They suffered for bread, they went five to six days without eating, then they were sent to villages to guard, you know. There are many interesting stories like this one, as the longing for the family, longing for a piece of meat, longing for a glass of raki. He has some very beautiful poetic descriptions, then it’s very interesting, there’s many good things.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: In fact the army didn’t commit many crimes, it was the paramilitary forces that did everything.
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: In Gjakova it was different, the crimes in Gjakova were committed by the police, by the ones who wore uniforms. There were some hooligans after the war, some… but also the paramilitary forces that came. There were even some Albanians who committed crimes, man.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What about the skinheads [in English], did they wear uniforms?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli The skinheads, [in English] they went to bigger places because…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: They had greater ambitions?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Of course. For example…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: How were the Albanians?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Albanians…it is very interesting. There was a pretty well-known family in Gjakova, they are known to have committed crimes. Mushë Jakup was one of the greatest spies. Their house was close to my school, they were… his son was free to go out by bicycle and car. That Albanian always wore… I don’t know why his uniform was green. I don’t understand that thing. He was the only one to wear a green uniform. I don’t know if he was someone very important.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Green or yellow?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, green. He had a green uniform with white stripes here {touches his left and right arm}. He had a hat in the same shape as Tito’s, he wore it like that, he had a moustache, he spoke Albanian. They also spoke fluent Serbian with his son, they were like that all the time, they were in control.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: They were working for Serbs?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: In fact they worked for Serbs. I also know that they burned many houses.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Of Albanians?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: He, himself. I know it well…that’s the person who burned many houses. I saw them in the street, they would throw something inside the houses and after some time it would explode and the house would start to burn. It was some kind of… I don’t know what was that thing that they threw inside the houses. They would just throw it, fëp [onomatopoeic] and the house would burn, they didn’t care. They would go inside and check, they probably would find something and…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Can you tell us how were they positioned?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: He so looked like Charlie Chaplin, man. There were some very interesting scenes as if it was [a film] in black and white [in English], they kept smiling all the time as if nothing was happening. I haven’t seen such maniacs in my whole life. When I think about them now, they were such maniacs, they would enter houses, take whatever they wanted and leave. They would change their cars everyday, they would take new bicycles everyday, they would carry stuff everyday. You know how, they would carry stuff all the time.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: They were having a good time [in English] (smiles).
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Exactly! [in English]. But they were many brothers and one of them got killed after some time, while the others escaped.
Gjakova was cleaned up in five days {rubs his hands}, no one knew what was going on anymore, they all entered…Albanians went out, Roma people went out, everyone went out breaking into the shops that had been left unbroken, taking things because people had no food. People were hungry, they were…you know, when chaos happens in the city, people went out to break things, to take things. They went out to break the big shop where my brother used to work, the only shop in Gjakova that was actually working. Actually, Žito Promet, worked as well. They went to take flour, all these things happened so quickly in only five days. The city was cleaned up, man, then suddenly people came, the KLA was the first to come. When the KLA came, we went out to the city center to celebrate. I actually wasn’t there, I was at my uncle’s home, staying with him. I know my big brother was there. I know that they didn’t let him work in order to celebrate the liberation, because we felt part of those who liberated the city. But in fact they didn’t allow him, “Who are you? Get away otherwise we will kill you!” They were all carrying Kalashnikovs, now, they went out carrying Kalashnikovs. The ones who were hiding in the attics came out, or the ones who were staying in Çabrat, or the ones coming from somewhere, I don’t know…I don’t know where those people were coming from, you know. I don’t know where those people were hiding, you know. There was… but I don’t know where they took those guns from, I don’t know where they took them from .
And…NATO started coming, but NATO was not… not… they were not aware, they would stay in trucks pinzgauera, they were only staying in tanks and nothing was happening from NATO, you know. Their plan was to just get located. Now they took the kasarna, which is close to the bus station that used to be a park before. They thought there were mines inside, and I guess there must have been mines inside. I don’t know how the kasarna was inside [in English]. It was a big chaos, all Gjakova’s gangsters got into uniforms, there were some of them who used to sell cigarettes before. I know all of them because I used to sell cigarettes man, I sold cigarettes on the streets from ‘96 to ‘98, and I know well who they were. They sold cigarettes together with me, they might have been two to three years older than I. They got into uniforms, they suddenly became part of the KLA, you know how, they became part of it, they took power in their hands. They would go and rob Albanians as well, this kind of things happened.
This house here {points his finger behind him} is my grandfather’s house, this is the house where my epileptic aunt used to stay with my grandmother. One year ago, before my grandmother got paralyzed, we were all here, we came home. You know, we could feel the tension growing in Sefa. Albanians started coming with their cars, and taking Roma people’s cars from their yards. They would take money, rape…you know, they did this kind of monstrous things out of feeling of revenge and anger, “You were on the side of shkije. You have to get out of here!” They wanted to take our houses. They would go inside and take your stuff from your house. On the other side of the city nothing happened, the lagje was under the protection of the UN because there were still 29 people there, because they burned the house to the ground. The house got burned, they burned the house when they left. The UN isolated the whole lagje for ten days. They would come and ask us, “Have you heard?” I always told everything I knew. They were so fine, so correct to us.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did they ask you questions about the massacre?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli :They asked us questions about the massacre, there were people from the media, many cameras, it was big [in English] man. The whole mahalla was there…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Were the corpses still there?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: They burned the corpses, you know how. They took them from a house to another one and burned all of them together. I didn’t know what was there until one of the correspondents told me, he said, “Here is the family…here is the Vesa family.” And I immediately thought about my classmate, we were in the same class for five years. The Vesa family and the Caka Family as well. My teacher was from the Vesa family and my classmate was from the Caka family, only her brother and her father, who is now in the US, survived.
It was so sad [in English] when I found out man. It was so sad [in English], I mean we grew up together in the mahalla, plus you know, somehow the neighbors…I knew that I passed through that street.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Those days?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: I knew I passed that way on those days, my teacher somehow, my musics teacher.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Are we talking about the same one who asked you for the errand, to bring her milk, or another one?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, she was my Civic Education teacher. And she was… I don’t know when I went to school, because I actually failed the year, since we didn’t have enough money to pay the percentage.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: The three percent?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, the three percent and so on. After that, I lost all the contacts with my former classmates because when the school started I joined another class. But there is another tragic story that happened to us before the school started, the KLA came while I was staying at my grandmother’s. This is what I wanted to connect with, but I can notice that I am losing the point sometimes.
It is…they live in Germany, they went there during ‘89 and ‘90. Their plan was to go there, to work and make money in order to build houses when they came back. This house belonged to four brothers, this land is four ara wide, each one of the ara belonged to one of the brothers where each one of them was supposed to build their house and live. They were all married. They used to send many things from Germany to Kosovo during the ‘90s. They would send everything: WC, bathroom tiles and so on. All these things that they sent were packed, with written detailed instructions of where they were supposed to be put.
That entire room belonged to my grandmother, that’s where she kept everything that her sons would send during the ‘90s. Sometimes she wouldn’t even give us the things that they sent to us, she was like that, “I don’t know!” {raises his hands}. She was such a kind of, “I don’t know!” She didn’t even know how to read. My aunt was a bit sick, I mean, she was not normal. We couldn’t say anything to our grandmother, she didn’t know and there was nothing we could do. All this was very normal somehow.
The UN left after they finished their mission, then the KLA came to our mahalla with a truck of 15 people, all of them were young and gangsters, they were being so rude to us. They came and broke into our house, my sisters were 20-22 years old, they were young. They harassed my sisters all the time in front of my father and my mothers. “You have to come with us,” like this all the time. You know, there were attempts to…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: To rape?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: To rape. They broke in and said, “We have to check you because you were here, we have to see if you took anything from here. People have no food to eat, you have to give some donation, something.” They kept asking for money, gold, and whatever they found all the time. We had already opened the walls that used to be the prolaz at that time, we had prepared them during the ‘90s in order to pass in case of danger, because there used to be only walls. They broke in just when we passed to the other side {shows with his hands}, to the other part. My mother went to the other side, my father had heart problems. He had gone through bypass surgery in ‘97. We went to the other side and got inside. They broke into our house, broke the door of the other room because my grandmother didn’t want to give them the keys, she was such…you know, “Who are you? What do you want in my house?” You know how? Very normal, you know. “Who are you? What have you got? Have you got any documents?” They broke the door, they saw all those things, they called the truck and loaded them with all those things. They took everything, plus they wanted to rape my sister, my sisters, and on top of that they abused my father because my father did not want to let them do that, he resisted them, you know, somehow it was very normal to protect your territory. They pointed their guns to his throat. We were there all the time and they pointed [their guns] at us, there was nothing we could do, they took everything, they took everything they wanted. The neighbors came, the neighbor a little down from here, they came and took it, as if, “Oh, this is mine.”
Until the evening, I… that was such an intense day. When I think about what those people did and that most of them are still free, I still see them in the streets, not only to us, but also to the other mahalla, the lagje down there. It’s…there are other mahalla, if they broke into here, they must’ve done it to other mahalla. It was already obvious that it was organized. Man, they might have not been members of the KLA, but many people just dressed like that and robbed. My mother used to work in the hospital even during the bombing. One of the injured men was from the KLA and my mother took care of him all the time because each room of the hospital had one housekeeper, because the nurses weren’t there anymore, Albanians didn’t work anymore. Serbs just didn’t want to see them, man. Imagine it, the housekeeper was doing the nurse’s job. My mom did that job, cleaned scars…removed cut legs, cleaned blood…she saw many things that she wasn’t supposed to, and she’s still strong. She still had to go to work because you would be killed if you did not, because they knew where you were.
It was very difficult for her. The person whose scars were cleaned by my mother was injured and in a coma and he also happened to be a dervish. They took my father that night, they took him with a truck and sent him somewhere, I still don’t know where. We were in shock. My big brother wasn’t here since he had already left for Albania, because my father knew what was about to happen, he knew exactly what was about to happen. Just when Serbs left, my father said, “See, now that the war is over, the first war is over, now we have the second one.” He would say this all the time to us. He was very stressed, to the point that he lost it, man, in fact he also started suffering from sclerosis a bit, in the sense that…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: He would forget?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: He would forget, man. He would forget, he would forget, he couldn’t articulate anymore the topics we discussed, he was not the same person, you know. Simple as that, after the mistreatments, he couldn’t handle all of them. He was concerned about what to eat, what to drink, you know… stressful (coughs) Can you give me that water? Eh, thank you [in English] {drinks water}.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did your mother know any of them?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, you know, they took my father into the van. My mother said, my mother said to them, “I will not leave my husband alone,” you know. And when they went to the place that was called the slaughterhouse, there was the old slaughterhouse of Gjakova, when they went there, my father saw the person that my mother treated with her own hands – he was something like a leader or I don’t know. They asked him, as he told us the story, “Where did you get these things?” My father collected all the papers that he had from custom and so on and took them with him, he also took the complete list of names and last names and the serial numbers of the things that my uncles sent from there [Germany]. Just a minute {answers family members calling for him}. And.. “No, you stole them,” he said, not that one, now there was someone else. “You stole them,” someone said, “and admit that you stole them, let’s not make a big deal out of this. You have to leave your husband here,” that’s what they said to my mother… trying to scare her, you know how, they were threatening them that they either admitted that they stolen those things, or they would both die, you know how.
My mother, as she told us the story, asked him, “Do you remember me or not?” while he was writing on the table, he was writing what they were saying, he was taking notes, you know. She asked, “Dervish, do you remember me or not?” “No, I don’t remember you.” And that’s it.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Are you serious?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: “No, I don’t remember you.” That’s it. “Really, dervish?” My mother literally spit on his face. “Bre, don’t you remember? Are you injured in your leg? You have this mark. Here’s the spot where you have your mark. Here’s the spot where you have this mark {shows with his hand}. I washed your ass, I helped you go out and urinate, I helped you. I fed you, I brought you food from my house and you want to do this to me? You don’t know me, right?” “Auuuu, it’s you, Sofije.” Well!
All of that, there’s a paper where it is written that my family donated to the people who needed the things that were here, the total value of which is around one hundred thousand euros.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Looks like you’re very rich!
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, we are very rich. For example, with that paper you could get some help from the Red Cross, otherwise you could not get any help, Roma could not get any help.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Seriously? Why, who controlled the donations?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: The KLA.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Weren’t there the internationals?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No. You didn’t even dare to go on line and get any assistance if you didn’t have the paper from the KLA that you “were rich” and clean and that you did no harm to anyone, that you gave some donation or something else.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Wasn’t there any institutionalization of their right to…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: I guess this is gjakovarski {raises his shoulders}.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: How did your parents decide to stay here after all this?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: We wanted to escape, there was the tension of fleeing, man, the tension of escaping. This kind of, you know, there was this tension of escaping all the time. I used to say to my father, “Let’s escape,” you know how, all of us children used to say to him, “Let’s escape.” But he would say, “No, you don’t need to flee because you are not dirty. Because if you escape, you are giving them a reason to think that you are dirty. If I am meant to die, I will die in my house.” That’s what he said all the time. He didn’t want to escape, man, you know how, he didn’t even want to let us escape.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Not to escape, but I thought just…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: There was no place to escape to, man, all borders were closed at that time, because that happened late. The time when it was established…KFOR weren’t on the ground yet, they still didn’t know the map, where were they, who was Roma, where are they. Albanians would burn the houses of Serbs, the Albanian children would burn the houses of Serbs just because, you know. Anyway, you know how, I totally understand the anger. I totally understand that they were touched, I understand it very well… but what’s my fault here? Wasn’t it a lesson to you not to cause anyone else the harm they caused you, why are you doing it to someone else, you know how? Doesn’t it seem to you that you are getting to the same level of those who slaughtered and killed you… you know the thing my father said most often was, “I will never forgive what you did. They killed each-other, they ate each-other.”
He was so angry and… the situation got calmer after all that. The situation got calmer and we somehow accepted it. There was nothing else you could do, accepting it was very normal. Where to go? What to do? You had no money. You had no contacts with people abroad. You had no phone, you had no one to talk to. My brother was in Albania.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What about your relatives in Germany?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: You couldn’t… we had no phone, man, there was no phone back then. The phone was in the Çarshia e Vjetër, it was a satellite phone, you know, the big old ones, it belonged to an NGO that I don’t exactly remember now. Plus you had to pay in order to use it, for one minute of use you had to pay twenty [deutsche] marks. I know that the use of the telephone was supposed to be free, but certain people wanted to benefit from it. People would wait in line from six in the morning just to use the telephone.
After ‘99 was over, the situation got calmer in the beginning of 2000. People started to build houses, the schools started working, that was when my mother and my father told me, “It’s very dangerous to go to school. We want you to go, but it’s dangerous.” And I said, “Let me just try, they are my friends, they will protect me,” you know how. My father told me that, “It’s very dangerous to go to school.” He didn’t know how to explain the situation better.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did you go?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: I went to school. I went on the first day because there were some friends from the lagje with me, some of them, some Roma who were whiter fled to Albania. So, I had these kids, actually I was in the same generation with them, after failing one year, I was in the same generation as they. They were…they had not experienced the war, because they had fled earlier. They usually didn’t allow Roma to enter the school, they only allowed the ones who were whiter and looked a bit like Albanians. They were in Albania all the time. Now I had my friends here, from the mahalla, and I told my father that, “Okay, I will be with my friends, I will not separate from them.” You know how. “Everything will be alright, don’t be afraid.” You know how. “Everything will be alright, don’t be afraid. They cannot hurt me, they cannot hurt me, I am 15. Why would they hurt me?” You know how. “They have no reason to hurt me.”
The beginning was very hard, the director forced us to pay homage, I had no idea why I had to pay homage when we were given some names of the KLA’s members to whom we had to pay homage. Adem Jashari, who is Adem Jashari? I didn’t know who Adem Jashari was. I didn’t know what was happening, somehow they were…the structure changed, professors were of a level…I don’t know man, they were very harsh with us. Because we were in that class, in fact there were only twelve Roma people in the whole school and we were all together in the same class, but mixed with Albanians as well. It was a nice trip [in English] with the classmates, it was really good, we were a strong class. We were the strongest class of the school, we would beat the hell of everyone, man.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Physically strong, right? (smiles)
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yeah [In English], we became so strong, you know how. Because you had no way out, you had to put fear into people. Everything was alright in school even though there were some troubles like, magjup. Then they started with, “You were on the side of shkije, you have no place here,” blah, blah, blah, “You have always been on the side of shkije.” There were this kind of things all the time.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What about your Roma classmates, were they from other mahalla?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, from here, we were all from the same mahalla…it was very interesting, other Roma didn’t go to school anymore. The year 2000 was very dangerous, but it was easier for those of us who had their houses closer to the school. Actually the school is ten minutes from here by foot, there were some small paths that we took in order to arrive in school safely. And in school, I mean, the director was an alcoholic. He was drunk all the time. He would beat the children, you know, he even beat me many times, you know. My hands were like this because of him {shows his palms}.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: How? He would just go out in the school and…(smiles).
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, no, but for example, you would…no, no, but for example you were late a bit, “Why have you come earlier [sic] to school?” You were a little late for school, simply one minute late for school. He would catch you in the corridor and get you into his office and beat you, man. Or if teachers were absent and you went out to play, or just stayed in the corridor, he would call you to his office and beat you.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Wasn’t he supposed to take care of the school management?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, of course…he was such a maniac, he is a psychopath, you know, he was such a psychopath, man, he was such a psychopath. He hit me with a hammer on my back just because I went to school earlier, I couldn’t walk for a week. I went to school earlier because we wanted to change.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did you present the case to the police?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: It happened long ago man, I was in seventh grade, you know… after 2001… And…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: I am interested in knowing this aspect, how did you…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: This aspect…The same director left the school, we fired him, actually some people fired him from the organization. I presented his case, and they fired him from there.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: That’s what I am interested in, I want to know about your relations with the law as a community.
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: There was no law, man, where, to whom. There were some “Coca Cola police,” as they used to be called (smiles), they used to be called “Coca Cola Jeeps.” To whom, and where to go, you know? There was no [population] registration, there wasn’t…there was no way, it was so difficult.
For example, at night my father would go and patrol with the whole mahalla, man. They would take turns, you know.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Were you self-organized?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: We were self-organized to the maximum, all the time. We were self-organized for approximately four to five months. They would guard every night in turns. Then the son of my paternal uncle was killed, he lived in the same mahalla here, he was 21 and was working with a trolley and was killed.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Was he attacked in the street?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: They beat him up. He went to the market to work, they caught him in a corner and beat him up, we couldn’t find him for ten days. Now, the position, “Jump in and I will kill you, jump out and I will kill you,” is very interesting, we no longer knew whose side to take. My father was traumatized because of all this and that’s why he died at the age of 41. I just finished eighth grade and my father died just two days before my graduation.
I had just fallen from the bicycle (smiles), my eye was like this {describes the size with his hands}, it was very interesting. I was doing both, working in a warehouse and going to school at the same time. We would download sugar and flour and so on, we were…my father knew the owner of the warehouse, he was a guy from Peja who moved to Gjakova. We worked because we needed to make a living…they wouldn’t take us for any other job, you know. I fell from the bicycle on my way home from work. After two days my father was here {shows the spot where his father sat}, it was Friday, he got sick in the garden. We were eating breakfast when he got sick and decided to go to the hospital where he died. He died so fast, everything happened so fast, I mean that whole Monday. I came back from school, actually I finished school because then after two days I had prom night. My father died on Monday, everything happened so fast, I couldn’t even manage to go to prom night. Life was gone, a period of time has gone that way … blackout [in English].
My brother came back, he got employed and started working, but I don’t remember my father, I only remember him in the period of ‘96 to 2001, the 21st of May, then I don’t remember anything. That’s when he started to change, he was not himself anymore, he was so stressed, so nervous, he kept watching the news all the time, he seemed so crazy. He couldn’t go out, he was not the same man that I knew before. He was not the man who held my hand and said, “Let’s go somewhere, let’s go for a walk.” And all of this happened because of the conflict in which we took no side.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Here I would like to…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: In fact we did take side, to be honest, we did. Because we spoke Albanian, man, we spoke Albanian. I went to an Albanian school, my mother as well, my grandmother spoke Albanian, my great-grandfather spoke Albanian, you know .
Erëmirë Krasniqi: It was part of the culture.
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: And then, the time after the war came, everything that shouldn’t have happened, happened. My father died and a whole new life took place. I started high school.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: This situation that you were in… the moment you speak a language, of course, that’s where thinking takes place, you become part of a culture. But this moment after the war, did it put you in the position of not taking sides, did that necessitate developing your own position? I am interested in knowing what happened to your life… you got discriminated because you were part of the Albanian culture, then after the war you were denied the fact that you were part of the Albanian culture. Was that the moment you realized that you don’t need to take side, that you should empower your community in order to be able to…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: In fact that’s when the political parties started to get established. That is to say, there were Egyptian political parties, Roma political parties, Ashkali political parties. I mean, I didn’t know what it meant to be Roma, man, you know. I never had the word Roma, you know, never in my house, man. Magjup, gabel, çërgash, are terms that we only heard in the streets, man, or that they would swear at us. I used them without being aware, I didn’t know what that was. Gabel were the ones who spoke Roma, Romani, magjup were the ones who spoke Albanian, çërgash were the ones who went out in the streets asking for money. These were the classifications made by the Roma people, by us, [they came] from within the community.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Does that mean that they are not derogatory?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, to us they are just ways of classifying, but [in English] somehow it was… Roma, much later, in 2002, there was the word Roma. Then I was interested, later I was interested. My big brother would say to me, “We are Egyptians.” In school they would say, “You are Roma.” Someone else in the street would say, “You are Ashkali.” It just started to get… I was only 16 years old, my mind went everywhere, man. Where am I? We had no literature, no internet… I mean there was internet, but it was the very beginning of it being approachable, we had no information, man. You had not enough information. It was really weird [in English]. But then the political parties took their position, Haxhi Mërgja was in charge for the Roma people.
There is one from Gjakova, he has a name, an Egyptian, I forgot his name. Anyway, then the Ashkali from Ferizaj, who did the scandal of faking passports, papers and so on, the one who is in Germany now. And you know, they established political parties and entered Parliament, they entered the Kosovo Parliament. After the elections, they entered Parliament. Look… I think, who is Haxhi Mërgja to represent me? Who is the other one from Gjakova to represent me, whereas as a leader you did not come to solve the question, who am I? a question I had for three years. Who am I? Why are they calling me magjup, or gabel, or çërgash, or Roma? Why do they call me these things? …or Ashkali, or Egyptian.
You know, these things were very interesting… I was very confused [in English]. Then I just dropped it, I didn’t deal with finding out who I am. I knew it was over as soon as politics started to interfere… I didn’t know it myself, but the older people with whom I spent time told me. My brother would say to me, “Don’t deal with this kind of things,” because he was working with various organizations and knew what was going on. It’s all a business matter, it’s all a matter of votes, position, chair, nothing else. “Don’t deal with this issue at all. Why are you asking about these things? Just keep going with your thing.”
I went to the High School of General Economics, it was alright. I had a good time there, even though there were psychopathic professors, coming from the KLA, I don’t know. Adem Jashari, I have nothing against Adem Jashari, you know, neither do I have anything against Skanderbeg or Tito, but that’s a school, it’s heroes, who is this heroes? It’s not my heroes [sic – in English]. It was not part of me. I learned about them in the history class, you know, but what’s the point? Where is the other side? [in English]. Why am I not part of that history, where are Roma people in the history of Kosovo? What did Roma people do, why, how many Roma people were killed, how many of them are disappeared? How many Roma mahalla were burned? None of these things are talked about, you know .
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Is there any organization that is in charge of any kind of investigation…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: The organization exists, but it only exists to launder the money of Roma people, which is the greatest mistake that exists in Kosovo, the belief that they are not capable of doing that job. Very simple, who murdered my cousin? Why isn’t the gunman found? It’s been almost fifteen years now. Very simple, the time of war continues and normal life continues as well.
I was very young, the normal life of high school started, I had very good friends, they were all respectful, even though I fought with one of them on my first day of school. He said, “Magjup, you have no place here!” I beat him so bad because of that. The school director came to me on the first day and said, “Did you just liberate this place, what did you achieve? Why did you beat the boy?” “He called me magjup.” That was it and he shut his mouth. That guy became my closest friend after that. It was very interesting how I fought with him on the first day, then we became best friends… All of it (smiles). It’s so weird [in English] man, now that I think about some things, it’s like…oooh, very paradoxical, very stupid [in English], we lacked information… I don’t know, maybe the streets raised me in that way, I got to spend more time with older people when I went out to sell cigarettes, we did business, we talked about various things, politics, the leftists. We talked about…it was very interesting, very interesting.
I went out in ‘98, I was the list of the students .. I went out to protest with the whole school, with the professors. I was in the protests with the professors, while other kids were taken home by their families.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: In Gjakova.
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes in the marches in Gjakova. We protested two to three times, the police would just stand there, nothing happened but I went to the marches.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Can you tell us about your activism?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Okay. My activism starts with marijuana (smiles).
Erëmirë Krasniqi: That’s not… [in English]
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Right…[in English] (smiles). No, I don’t know, my activism started when I started to be engaged a little in organizations, the youth center of Gjakova. The youth, I started to somehow explore Gjakova after the war by meeting different people. What’s postwar Gjakova? I knew the prewar Gjakova, I used to go and play football and so on… but the postwar was different, there were other people… I grew older. I wasn’t scared anymore, I would freely go out.
The youth center started there, I contacted Lati who was a very close friend of mine. He is a Catholic of Gjakova, he was so…he is still cool [in English], he is still my friend, he was very supportive of me. They usually invited me to parties when it was weird [in English] for a Roma to go to Albanian parties. I was the one to always go to every party. I was like the guy who plays the goblet drum, he does that because he earns money out of it. I was that one all the time, the guy who wants to know people, to be friends with someone. The guy who always needed to have friends.
We became a very interesting group at some point. There was the Global Motion organization. I started to be engaged in theater, it was something like a social dance theater [in English]. It was a kind of activism mixed with a cult, you never knew what was going on there. We only found out later that it was something related to Bahá’í, you know , but it was alright. I learned many good things there. I learned what an initiative is, how good it is to be humble [in English], why you should be sincere, why you should… you know, it put things like tuk, tuk, tuk {explains with his hands}. We had study groups every two weeks. There, I mean, school, I used to go to school but we wouldn’t learn anything in school man. High school was stupid [in English], it was stupid. High school was very stupid [in English]. I would solve mathematical problems for my math teacher because she didn’t know how to solve them. You know how, high school was very stupid [in English], there was much chaos {moves his hands}. Maybe it seemed like chaos because I was young, or I didn’t need to go to school at all, I didn’t need to go there at all.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did you perform with this group?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: We performed a lot, man. It was this, it had… it was very interesting as an organization, very good. This program was financed by UNICEF for five years, I think. The program lasted from 2002 to 2007. I joined at that time. I heard about that group before, but it took me sometime until I caught up with them, I met Lati there, then I made my own place in that group, it took me two years, I joined them in 2004-2005 and it continued in a very good way.
I joined the theater, we learned step dance, Make protest without words, just with movements and beats of your body, clap your body [in English]. I caught up with this very fast, they taught us well, we created the choreography. We made some show [in English] which I had to present in Pristina. My first time in Pristina was in 2004, and my first time in the National Theater, what the fuck, man [in English], was very…I am going to Pristina in 2004, you know. It was so good, I didn’t tell my parents nor anyone else, I didn’t dare to tell them because they wouldn’t allow me to go, because they were scared of letting me go after 2000 and so on…
And I was like that all the time, I became a rebel now. I became a rebel to my family because I didn’t have their support, I found support from other people, from this cult that would cultivate me very well, that would give me the strength and the knowledge to be self-directed. They made me a strong leader, very individualist, they were all the time like… do something on your own, they opened me up, they made me bloom like a flower. I opened up, the spring blossomed, I very quickly forgot everything that had happened.
We went to Pristina and gave the show. Every city had their group there and I didn’t know what was going to happen. There were 150 children from every city of Kosovo and Macedonia. There were also Serbs from Graçanica and before the incident happened…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Yes, the one of 2004, the March riots.
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: I don’t know…it was very interesting to meet 150 people gathered there. It was very good, then we started with messenger and e-mails, we had big groups. We talked about starting the initiative of collecting clothes for poor people, we got organized to find the locations, write the names and send clothes to people. For example one, of the first actions of my life was in Gjakova in the lagje of Kolonia, which is a very poor lagje, the waste landfill is close to it. They live there, they make a living out of recycling… and it’s very interesting. For example, one of the things was… see, they had a very interesting thing, this cult that I was just talking about, the Baha’i. Ramadan month for them was to be dedicated to service, you had to write a project, to serve. My idea was this, to take little flyers, I mean two days before, and send them to the apartments. We were in a new building in Gjakova. We went to various buildings.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What kind of information was this ?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Our information was, “We are coming in two days… We are from this organization, we are coming in two days. If you have any clothes you don’t use anymore and you think someone who is poorer than you can use it, it would be good if you left it in a plastic bag in front of your door. Thank you.” That was it. We left it there and knocked on the doors and left , we were just like guerrillas, tak-tak [onomatopeic]. We collected a lot of clothes which filled a big truck, man.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Yes!
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: It took us two weeks to select them because it was hard work. There were only five of us, you know! That project was to me like, Wow, this I can do! This is what makes me happy now! This… I find my way [in English].
I caught up with them later in 2006-2007…I used to be more rapper back then… we were like West Clan Records, we were a clan of rappers. I was very vulgar there, the kind of rap that was more uuuh {puts his hand in his face}. When I listen to some of them now… oh my God, I can’t! It was very extreme. Because then, after this cult I learned gender equality and so on, everything changed, it made me softer.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: It changed you?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes… it made me softer. I became more me, I got engaged in Baha’i rituals, because they got to you.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What was this Baha’i?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Baha’i is a very new religion that originates from Iran. One of their leaders is Baha’i, Abdul Bahai, Shogi Efendi is his son. Most of the quotes, for example one of Jim Morrison that says, “As long as you don’t make peace with the animals, there will be no peace among us,” is a quote said by Abuld Bahai in 1800, or something. That is to say, they have many books, their center, for example, is in Haifa. I can say that it’s a very modern sect in the sense that they are more open intellectually, but they have the same things as other religions such as, no sex before marriage, no gay, you know… you have to know each-other for one year in order to know if you can become partners. You know, they had some very interesting rules. You could pray in whatever way you wanted, from the Qur’an, from this, from that… it was not determined.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: One book.
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, they didn’t have any. They only had some rules that you had to follow. I liked it, I got pretty much into it. But… I don’t know, later… ë-ë {shakes his head}.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What did you do with the truck filled with stuff?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, we distributed them, we distributed them. It was very…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: In that mahalla…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: In that mahalla, they were very interesting. There was this center that was led by both Roma and Albanians, it was a kind of learning center [in English], in fact it still exists. We selected them all, they had the list of the people, who are they, how many family members, how old are they and they distributed the packed things among all of them.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: How did it happen with music, can you tell us?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: That’s what I wanted to say. I was in the fourth year [sic] in 2006. There is this guy from Gjakova because Gjakova is small, we all know each other. He is one of the founders of the movement of LDK, he is also a professor, now, he has finished some Ph.D. in the US, I think. His last name is Rrahmani. He is a lawyer by profession. He used to be a drummer. He organized a party all day long, because during high school parties were usually organized during the day, since girls weren’t allowed to stay late at night. The thing was to gather all together. I looked at him as a friend, we used to sometimes play counter-strike [in English] together.
He was a drummer. It was very interesting because he listened to Bijelo Dugme (smiles). He loved the drummer of Bijelo Dugme, man. He had all the CDs of Bijelo Dugme because his father had studied in Belgrade, now he left everything about music to him, he was very knowledgeable about music, more than I. I was knowledgeable about old music, the ilahi, some Guns N’ Roses and so on, some Arctic Monkeys, very little. It was his birthday when I met him. He took a band to play for his birthday. They started singing “Sweet Child O’ Mine” of Guns N’Roses. I knew the song and just jumped to the microphone and sang together with them, they were fascinated, “You sing so beautifully.” And he said, “Can you come to rehearse tomorrow? The name of our band is The Strings” (smiles). That’s it, the music started for me.
Since then I rehearsed with them in the basement for one year. It was so good there, man, that’s where we established the first band. It was so good. To me it was the best period I had as a teenager [in English] until I matured, I mean what I wanted to have in my life and the first svirka…I did my first svirka man! I found the place for the first svirka. It was in Klina where we played music man. There was a Hard Rock Café in Klina and we did a svirka there. We already had 25 songs and sang all of them. People enjoyed it, they invited us again after two weeks. Then we went to Peja, then we came to Pristina, you know …some years passed. I competed in Ethet e së Premtës. At that time I was a little… I used to smoke weed, as every youngster does. Weed should get liberalized in fact. The visas (smiles), yes… because it related. The last night which was the night to get selected for the top ten in Ethet e së Premtës I was stoned, to be honest. And it was…I don’t know. It went the way it went and I worked as a carpenter at that time…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did you get selected for the top ten or not?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, I didn’t because I messed it up (smiles). I messed it up so badly there. And I worked as a carpenter together with my brother at that time.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: In Albania?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: No, here!
Erëmirë Krasniqi: How did you find yourself with our Albanians…
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: With the good people (smiles). I wouldn’t call them Albanians, I don’t know, they are good Kosovars, because they want to be defined. I mean, the maternal uncle was like… the maternal uncle of my father, I called him uncle, uncle Hadi. He was a very interesting person, he was really charismatic, he had a very good character.. A person who has lived for real, has lived a lot. He was a cook, he worked in the hospital, man. He used to cook very well! You have no idea how well he cooked! I learned many things from him, how to cook stew with onions, or bean soup or mijone and many other things. He was so, and I needed someone… after having lost my father, after my father lost his concentration, he lost it…I needed someone like uncle Hadi. He was there, he filled that emptiness.
And beside that, the other thing, the music, man. He was so great in music, creating sevda as they say it in Gjakova, much aşk, the exact aşik, singing with his heart. He would always say, “When you sing, don’t mind who is in front of you, who is there with you, who is there. Close your eyes and sing! Sing from here {slaps his chest}, you have to feel it here. Sing, sing your voice, what are you afraid of! Sing your voice.” He would shout at me all the time, “Why are you rushing, why are you rushing?” when I made a mistake or something. You know, my mother, my mother, I don’t know, I never heard her play the contrabass. I don’t know. I only heard her sing once, she was so good, she sang the songs of Nexhmije Pagarusha. We had the radio, it was long ago, for a new year. She was preparing some fish and the “Baresha” song of Nexhmije Pagarusha played on the radio and she sang along, with a loud voice. No one was home because we were all at our grandparents’. I slowly entered the house, I was always slow, I was fat, I was really fat when I was little. I slowly entered the house and listened to her, she was astounded when she saw me… she stopped. I never heard her sing again and it was very interesting.
Anyway, I never had a deep communication with my mother, it never went beyond, “What are you doing? Where are you going?” School was what she mostly pushed me for, “Go to school! Did you finish your homework?” You know, she would always keep me under control even though she worked all the time, she did three-four jobs at a time. It was hard to feed six children. I learned it from her that as much as you work, when in the end of the day you know what you did and you know that you did something good for someone else, it doesn’t matter if you are tired, tomorrow you gonna be a new one [in English]. That’s what she says to me all the time, “Just work. Your time to work is now! See how I turned out” (smiles). She is good. She doesn’t talk much, she is not so deep [in English], I think probably because they didn’t allow her when she was little, because she was the seventh child, plus she got married at a very young age. They probably didn’t allow her much… I mean, they didn’t allow her to talk much. So, it would probably, it’s traditional for us…She would probably be different if she went to school (smiles), she would be different had she not gotten married that young.
Another influence on my music is the music of Sufism. I used to sing ilahi in teqe. I actually had one hundred ilahi memorized because I had to be prepared when I went with my father, “You’re a sheh’s son!” You had to know every ilahi a dervish would ask you to sing. If you didn’t know any of them, you and your father would be embarrassed. So, you had a kind of hierarchy, responsibility, it was there all the time, but I loved doing it. What else…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did you understand those ilahi?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: I kind of understood them spiritually, man, because I was close to them. I was pretty Sufi within. That’s what gave me the softness, it gave me the calm down, think about [in English], you know, feel the thing before doing it. Sufism is a kind of energy that I never understood why it has that effect on me when I talk about it. I have a kind of… {touches his stomach }.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Fuzzy [in English].
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes, as if the birds are in my stomach [in English], I have a thing. Even though recently I am not active in the sense of believing, I respect Sufism for one thing they have. Their mysticism is very sophisticated, they have some very good stories and they seem to me the punk of the Muslim [in English], somehow they are revolutionary [in English] (smiles). They don’t have those… I don’t know. Some say that they drink alcohol, some say that they don’t. I personally have seen them drink alcohol here. It’s true that they drink alcohol, but they don’t do what people say they do, they talk about them doing group sex or something like that with women that turn [in English] … you know, that switch the light off and do this kind of things. That’s not true!
Erëmirë Krasniqi:Those prejudices do exist?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: There are some… Yes, these prejudices do exist. So, they are not like that. That’s the reason why Sufism gave me the feelings for music. My uncle gave the, ”Be present” [in English] to me, “Come on, do it!” [In English]. And my mother… I don’t know what she gave me… maybe she gave me life (smiles). That’s what I know for sure, I was born from her. She raised me, I slept by her until I turned seven (smiles).
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Kafu, can you introduce this room to us?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: Yes?
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Can you read this for us?
Bajram Kafu Kinolli: This maquette was made by my brother. This is the tyrbe, this is the shape of a tyrbe, what my father’s tyrbe looks like. Now they call it tyrbja e Babës Ukshin, and they go there to visit on the second day of Saint George, they set that day. I don’t know what Saint George in relation to Sufism has to do with visiting the tyrbe that much. It’s very interesting how they respect the day of Ederlezi or Saint George in Sufism. I haven’t understood this thing yet. I have to research it, why are they related like that, because in fact Saint George is a pagan holiday. But maybe it is from Roma people, they are the ones to have spread it the most until now, that there can be a relation. I don’t know, I guess it’s that. But I have to research.
Other…{looks across the room} I said everything. Ah here, this photograph is very interesting {takes a photograph in his hand}. These are the branches of Sufism, it’s very interesting. We are Halveti, I mean my family is Halveti. My mother’s family are Rufai. In Gjakovë we have Sadi…and Bektashi. I mean, the center of the Halveti is in Prizren. That’s what I know, I forgot many things because I haven’t been active lately, and I feel very ashamed.