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.

I have one remaining memory from the time I was part of the assembly, it is the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Prizren League on June 10, 1978. It was an amazingly organized event, it was great, I believe Prof. Dr. Pajazit Nushi who was also the minister of culture and education was in charge for the event. We collaborated a lot at that time because we needed to collaborate, because renovations were taking place in the League’s building. I remember there were some poor people living in that building, then apartments were given to them, the building near the League was renovated [the current museum]. All that took place for the hundredth anniversary, Agim Çavdarbasha sculpted the statue of Ymer Prizreni [and Abdyl Frasheri]. I remember that Albanian opera was Goca e Kaçanikut [Girl from Kaçanik] of composer and professor Rauf Dhomi was first performed in Kosovo on that occasion. The ceremony took place at 8 PM in the evening in the sports center, there was direct broadcasting of it all around Yugoslavia, from Slovenia to Pristina, it was a very well-organized event, but then after ‘81, they started to fade away…

He started to screen films in Kosovo, then after a while he went also to Albania as Italians were there, they had cinemas in Tirana. […] The youth watched films so much, so much. Not only the youth, but also the elderly. My father would tell me about a friend of his, he’d go into the cinema at 4, he’d get out, he’d enter again at 6, he’d get out and enter again at 8. He’d watch three films a day. […] Then when I grew up, there were those leaflets, with the content of the films, my father would give me, I’d look at them, read them and propose the ones he should pick. I knew so much for films, also for artists, directors, and subjects.