… for each document of that time, which is different from today, you had to have a headshot for the identity card, for the passport, for driving licence, and for different documents. The authorities at the time asked for pictures, and the only ones who could take pictures were photographers. The most important aspect of a photographer’s work at that time were photographs for documents and memory pictures. Now memories could be family pictures, couple pictures, for the wedding, before the wedding, {counts with his fingers} after the wedding, photographs during the wedding, photographs with wedding clothes, these kinds of photographs. Most of the time, memory photographs, for memories’ sake, to immortalise the moment. So, people wanted to get photographed to remember a moment, and there weren’t many, video cameras were almost nonexistent, and the only tool to preserve memories, to create memories, were photographs.

The cultural life was complemented by the arts and culture societies which were based in the city of all nations and nationalities, as we referred to them at the time. Along  with the theatre, I was also a member of the Agimi Society, and their concerts oftentimes were good, not very often, but they were quite good and successful. Also, the experience I had in that society was grand. […] I was lucky that at the age of 15, 16 to go to Germany with the Agimi Society for example. That was a great experience, because the city of Prizren and Bingen were twinned and that tradition continues.

So they have the Bingen Fest, they collaborated with Progress, a Prizren-based company and the wine producers of Krusha e Madhe and Rahovec. So, for the first time as a 16-year-old I flew by plane, at that time it was rare and out of the ordinary. The same trip we took two years after with the Agimi Society at a festival in Turkey, in Italy, and many other places in Yugoslavia. We also participated in the Olympics in Sarajevo, I led the Society’s concert. We were invited to the Olympics in 1984. […]

That was a very unique experience for all of us, because youth and their parents could not afford it, not all parents could afford to have their children travel to other countries. That was the satisfaction and the reward that you got, of course, you also received a certificate, an acknowledgement for your role that you played, and that was very satisfying for us.

Every year, we went to Macedonia, Ohrid, Dibra or any other place in order to see the language differences, because we speak differently from them, we spoke gegë there. In ‘72, çak [colloquial], it happened that we started to speak the standard language. It was difficult for us, more difficult for the students and even more difficult for the parents because of additions and suffixes…but they reacted to it, ‘Tell us, tell us how it should be.’ We had a hard time getting used to it, then it seemed all normal to us after a few years. Wherever I go for official visits, I still speak the standard language, I can’t speak the gegë.

I didn’t have children. My husband also died in ‘82, in the late December, his name was Reshat Isa. And since then, I only read, sometimes I do handmade stuff,  I used to work gobelin tapestries and I still do sometimes. […] I really really miss that time. Even though I am old now, I really miss the staff of that time, we were a great staff. I still miss them, I come here to take books, sometimes I come to visit them, ‘How are you, what’s up?’ and they also invite me, the director, whenever there are library holidays.

We often use this word, that when a Roma child is born, they immediately know four languages, because the social circle here requires it and we have no problem with that. […] What will always remain registered in my head is an image which was also a motivation for me to continue motivating my children, I am talking about one moment when, my mother who always walked me to school and back, and what was interesting, she knew the rule that parents needed to follow their children, to help them with the homework and she asked me, I mean, when I returned from school, to do my homework, to write, to do my mathematics homework, or writing-reading sessions. And, until the second or third grade, I really didn’t know my mother was illiterate, because she always hovered  over my head, I thought that she knew what I was doing, what I was writing and reading. I thought that she understood.