Dafina Beqiri: Mrs. Remzije, can you tell us something about your childhood?
Remzije Dauti: Yes of course, I was born in Mitrovica, and my parents’ family was very large. My grandfather was an Ulqinian, he was transferred from Ulqin to Gjakova when he was still single, and he got married in Gjakova with my grandmother, from the Mala family. My uncle and my father were born there. Then they came to Mitrovica.
They opened their stores, being merchants. Three other uncles were born, my father had a butcher store that sold meat. My uncle, born after my father, was a leather merchant, but was killed in Kolašin because they wanted to take his money. The third uncle was a shoemaker. The fourth uncle helped my father in the store. The fifth one was exiled by occupying Germans and interned as an SS.
So my family was simple, hardworking, my parents…my father and my mother were illiterate, in a word, but they but were very forward-thinking. My mother’s family came from Gjakova to Mitrovica, the same as father’s family. My mother’s family, the Dajçi family, was very large, when they came to Mitrovica they were a large, well-known business family, and intellectuals, but they also dealt in trade.
After the war with Serbia, when the war with Serbia ended, the men of the Dajçi family, together with women and children were forcibly expelled to Albania. The daughters, six daughters got married. My mother and aunt, with the four girls of my uncle, grew up in one family. They stayed back because they were married, all of them had five or six children and they couldn’t leave the children and go to Albania with their parents, but they stayed and lived in Kosovo, I mean Mitrovica. All right, we kids grew up, our conditions were decent, but our parents, especially our mother and aunt and those cousins, were very, very progressive. They were illiterate, except my aunt’s daughter and another cousin, they finished school in Serbian, they were different and you could tell they knew how to read. Their conversations were convenient for us, so they studied in Serbian.
So, like that, women in Mitrovica were very free, they were different from all others in Kosovo, because they had very good living conditions. Trepça was working, trade was blooming, and when there are good economic conditions people are kinder, they don’t differentiate, who you are, where are you from. We grew up in Mitrovica and did not discriminate. In one street lived Turks, Bosnians, Serbs, we all played together. I grew up in the Bosnian neighborhood. The Bosnian neighborhood was very, very good. Our street was among the best streets. As you crossed the bridge, on the right there was the mosque, across the mosque there were the two houses of Isa Boletini, I think Isa Boletini’s parents’, then, going down a little further, there was our house. On the right, there was the river, the Iber river filled with much, much water, there was so much water that we children played, swam, we grew up in the river.
That’s why all Mitrovica’s women knew how to swim, because they were free, because at that time parents didn’t allow anyone to swim, especially women. The Iber river was very, very interesting for us, not because we swam in it, but by the Iber bridge on the North side there was the Deva’s factory, Xhafer Deva’s factory. There they collected wood from Kolašin, they cut the large stock of wood to make planks, it was collected and separated for the factory. And logs of a diameter of about two to three meters, depending on how they cut the wood, one meter, two meters, three meters, went underneath the thick wooden bridge, and the river was so big, all the logs went down the river. And down there, by the train station, there was a divide and the logs were collected again there, and down there was a Serbian man’s wooden planks factory, the name of that Serbian man was Žarković. We swam non-stop. Those wooden logs we spoke about before, when those logs came down, then we went to swim, we dove like squirrels. I myself have saved two, three small children because they sank under the logs, I picked them up and pulled them on the surface so fast, we ran through…if today someone saw that, they would not believe it, how fast we were. When I told my grandchildren, when they were looking there, when we went to the sea, on trips, and I would tell the event, my grandchildren were stunned.
We were very free, at that time, I heard, maybe women were like this only in Prizren, they could go on walks. In Mitrovica all women were free, in the morning they went out to meet for fun, we used to say, they met in the morning like now, that we are meeting in the morning to drink coffee. Then, they met in their homes, but they used nature more, because we had a very nice place after the bridge, now there is a theater, and down there we called the mulberry tree cliff, [at the confluence with the] Sitnica. There was a mill there, it was a very, very nice place. In that field there was an English tennis court, they played tennis, and there was a beautiful spring, I don’t know now, but we children used to go and drink water, because water was very healthy and we enjoyed watching the English women playing tennis at that time.
We had some a sort culture, it it something unique to Mitrovica’s women, because this too had an influence, that the train coming from Greece, the trans-Balkan train, as they called it, continued for Belgrade and Vienna [through Mitrovica], that did have an impact. When we wanted to buy something, because after the war there was not much, there were no nice clothes, and the food was not so good either. So like this, a few of us friends gathered without any fear, hopped on the train and went to Belgrade. We would buy clothes, we would buy shoes, we would even buy some magazines that we were interested in, on how to make handicrafts, knit sweaters. We would find it there, because by us in Pristina, I mean Kosovo, there were none, then there was only in the Serbian language because in Albanian, after the liberation…
I mean, after the Germans entered [Kosovo], the Albanian school began, and the initiator was a guy named Bedri Gjina, he was a good patriot, he was…for us, there was no one holier than he. I was very young at that time, I didn’t go to school then, but I remember a little, when the first holidays were organized, I saw the flag for the first time on November 28.
This way my childhood was very, very happy, we were free, and after I started going to school, after four or five years, during the German period, then during the partisans, having been liberated … I continued my first grade in elementary school, you know… It was a very small school, it still is a music school and they call it “by the market,” a very, very small school, but we students were not [divided according to] generations, all the children were gathered and went to school. 14 years-old, seven years-old, five years-old were gathered together, because there were not enough children back then, and the point was to bring them to school and not let them stay illiterate.
The teachers were very good. We were so happy, that when we went to school, without any means, conditions were very poor, but the sheer will to go to school, we felt like we were flying. Teachers engaged with us. Alright, the school had only seven grades, after we finished the seventh grade, then we decided where to go. Some friends went to the gymnasium, I and some of my friends, went to Shkolla Normale in 1952 in Gjakova, we were sent by the Committee because there were no teachers then.
The school had seven grades, and after we finished the school, we decided. Some remained in high school in Mitrovica, others… some of my friends and I went to Gjakova. We went to Gjakova on scholarship, we were paid to finish school in two years, instead than four years. We finished the two years and it was decided for them to leave. We had a salary for two years. And after finishing Shkolla Normale, the Committee here decided, and you had to work.
My luck was to work in Mitrovica at the Meto Bajraktari school. There was a very good principal, Eshref Kadiu, a very hardworking man like they don’t exist anymore. He was from Albania, but he was a good worker. We respected him so much, that I can’t believe that today someone can respect [a principal] the way we respected our principal. In the school where I worked then, Meto Bajraktari, our teachers were all college graduates.
So, there was a stove and when we gathered around the stove during the break, during the break some teachers sang accompanied by a guitar, and when the bell rang, we had a minute to go to the classrooms. One time, it happened when someone was telling a story, and we were hanging by the door listening, the principal came, opened the door, looked at us only once, and said only once, “What are you doing?” We froze, from that time, it never happened again that we were late, when the bell rang we were in the classroom, and everything was alright.
So like that…We worked a lot, it was never ordered that we should be there all day, I think we never had set working hours, such as two hours, or four, like regular working hours, we went in the morning and stayed in school from eight o’clock until evening, because we had to volunteer during the holidays. We sew dresses from soft rolled papers, we made crowns, we dressed up children so beautifully with flowers. The carnival, and we didn’t have means for the carnival, but we placed students in some carts – horse carts, and we, together with them went through the streets, it was a really, really very nice carnival for that time, it was really, really very nice. What I want to say is that we worked very hard, and we never got tired, and we never complained.
Sometimes it happened that the school didn’t have money, but we didn’t protest, when money came we took it, when there wasn’t any…And also in the other school, Meto Bajraktari, there was food, I think during the war, there was no good food, but America sent us powder milk and eggs. We had a kitchen in the school, we went to work, there were two people who lit up the fire, heated the milk, and we, supervising class by class, sent our students down there. I have a photo somewhere, in the morning kids had to eat, the children ate lined up like this, they were fed. It was normal, all this continued.
I, myself, worked for four years in that school, and then, after having worked in that school, I got married. I moved from the city to Stari Trg, because my husband Rasim was also a teacher and he worked in Trepça [Serbian: Trepča]. They gave us an apartment and we went there and got married. We lived nicely, we had two daughters, by the way our daughters finished school, and were very good students. When they finished eighth grade, they had to go from Stari Trg to Mitrovica, then from Mitrovica to Zveçan [Serbian: Zvečan] to finish high school, by two buses. It was not easy, but it had to be done, we encouraged our children to study regardless of the conditions they had. So like that, they finished high school, after they finished high school, we built a house in Mitrovica, then we sold that house so we could come to this apartment.
We came to this apartment because our daughters were in college. They both finished college, Albanian language and literature, and they were good students, then they got employed. Aferdita [Dita] worked with our son in-law, while Rasim worked at the power plant. After a period, it was Aferdita’s luck, her husband came from America to work here as a volunteer with small children, to give them vaccines, he is a doctor. They met and got married, and went to America. It was our luck that they went to America, because here the situation was very difficult for the two of us retirees.
Then Dita brought us to America, and this Ilire of Fatos Shita, she lived in Pristina. In the winter we went there, because in Texas there is no winter, there is just a little [winter], it could be three-four days, one week maybe, it was minus two, minus three, but not lower. So we went there during the winter, six months during summer here, six months Ilire was here with her two children, so we helped Ilire, and during the winter we went to Dita’s. So like this, we had a great commute America-Pristina, and like this our old age passed very easily (laughs).
Dafina Beqiri: Can you tell us how many children exactly were in your family?
Remzije Dauti: In the family we were seven girls and a brother, the brother was the fifth, after the brother two more girls, seven girls and one brother (smiles).
Dafina Beqiri: What was the relationship between brother and sisters?
Remzije Dauti: We got along so well with one another, I can’t remember that we ever said an offensive word, let alone something else. Even our children, each one among us had three children, our children were together non-stop. We spent together every vacation, so our children grew up the same way as we did, together. We never had any problem with children, like beating or offending each other, nothing, really nothing.
We were a family, I don’t know how to say it, as now the intellectuals take good care of their children, like that our mother was a very good mother, she was very, very caring. She knew how to sew, she sewed our dresses, she worked handicrafts, she did embroidery for Ottomans, she made them very nicely, she fixed the curtains, and all with embroidery, she did such a good job.
Like this, I don’t know how to express, well, we didn’t have problems among ourselves nor did our children, and all of our children were educated. Even the children of our children are finishing college, we didn’t stagnate, our children progressed. We were teachers, our children in college, our grandchildren are going further than our daughters.
Dafina Beqiri: Can you tell us something about the dress code of you sisters, did you have a chance to select your clothes?
Remzije Dauti: About clothing, this too is very interesting, back then there was no material to buy by the meter. But the Red Cross brought aid from America, and who knew how to manage went to the Red Cross or to the stores we always shared. And we took old dresses, and we knew how to sew, so we took them apart, and we recreated them according to our body size. They fit so beautifully, that people were stunned, and they would say where did we get those dresses, not only our mother, but in general those Dajçi sisters who were there, they knew how to sew. They were intelligent women, both for style and in the kitchen, they knew to cook very well. My grandmother was ideal in the kitchen, my mother and all of us girls knew, I think, how to cook in the kitchen.
Dafina Beqiri: Did it ever happen because you were a lot of sisters, to want to wear something one day, and get confused?
Remzije Dauti: No, no because we were not all the same size, no one could wear my dresses. We had little difference in shoes, so each could wear the other’s shoes, we agreed who wears what…So it was normal. I was the tallest, (smiles) no one could wear mine, so it was easier for me than for others (laughs).
Dafina Beqiri: Do you a have any childhood history to share with us, for example some mischief with your brother-sisters, or parents?
Remzije Dauti: I was the liveliest of all the children, I was not even ten years old, I was…I was the third one, when I was born everyone treated me as if I was a boy. Really I was very lively, and I always went to help my father at the store, always. And my father very, very, soft and good-hearted man, when he came to the store they brought the meat for sale, and all the offal, which others sell, my father never sold it for money, instead he gave it all to the poor people who were waiting in line, we gave them the lungs, intestines, legs, all the offal. First we distributed it to the people who didn’t have anything, then we sold the other meat for money.
I helped my father because I was interested, because I was the liveliest, most resourceful, I managed everything and to be everywhere, I always wanted to help everyone, and the neighbors… And I mean, when I had to carry our neighbors’ garbage, when they left it in front of the door, we never allowed the neighbors to carry the garbage, the minute we found the waste we took it to [the river] Iber. There was a special place to dump garbage, not to throw it in the water, but there was a place. We had more cleanliness at the time than now.
There was never any garbage on our street, we carried the garbage ourselves with a wheelbarrow or we filled a plastic bag and carried it like that. I think this was a priority, our street was of cobblestones going downhill, and when it rained, the whole street was washed by the rain. Our street was so beautiful, that even when there was no rain, we went out and swept it and washed the cobblestones so the water could run through.
We worked a lot as children, we were different from other children, because our street was a multi-national street, and we cooperated with each other. We never argued because one was speaking Turkish…on the street we spoke Turkish, Serbian, and inside the home our family spoke only Albanian, because our parents were Gjakovars and we used no other language except Albanian. We learned these other languages in the street, we learned Turkish and Serbian, like now we are learning English.
Serbian was like a native language to be honest, because we read a lot in Serbian because there were not too many books then. When they brought books from Albania, we gave them to each other to read, because if they found the book on you, you went to jail. One did not dare to read Albanian at the time and Adem Demaçi for example, was in prison for a flag, for books, you didn’t dare read Albanian.
[1] Trepča in Serbian, large industrial and mining complex in Mitrovica, one of the largest in former Yugoslavia. It was acquired by a British company in the 1930s and nationalized by socialist Yugoslavia after the war.
[2] Isa Boletini (1864-1916) was a nationalist figure and a military leader who fought both the Ottomans and the Serbs and Montenegrins. His remains, which travelled from Podgorica, where he was killed in 1916, to Mitrovica and Pristina, were ceremonially reburied in the village of Boletin in June 2015.
[3] Xhafer Deva, (1904-1978) was a leading Albanian collaborator of the Germans during World War Two, after the Germans took control of the region. With their support he and Bedri Pejani founded the Second League of Prizren, a nationalist movement that forcibly expelled Serb and Montenegrin colonists settled in Kosovo after World War One.
[4] A European type of secondary school with emphasis on academic learning, different from vocational schools because it prepares students for university.
[5] The Shkolla Normale opened in Gjakova in 1948 to train the teachers needed for the newly opened schools. With the exception of a brief interlude during the Italian Fascist occupation of Kosovo during WWII, these were the first schools in Albanian language that Kosovo ever had. In 1953, the Shkolla Normale moved to Pristina.
[6] There was a high demand of teachers for Albanian schools after the war because they were the first schools in Albanian language in the history of Kosovo. This demand accelerated the training and employment of new teachers.
[7] Mining town in the southern part of the Mitrovica region, part of the industrial complex of Trepça.
[8] Adem Demaçi, born in 1936, is an Albanian writer and politician and longtime political prisoner who spent a total of 27 years in prison for his nationalist beliefs and activities. In 1998 he become the head of the political wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army, from which he resigned in 1999.
[9] Pioneer, a socialist student magazine for elementary school students.
[10] Ramiz Sadiku was a socially owned construction enterprise.
[11] Member of Parliament elected in 2010 as a representative of Vetëvendosje, in 2013 she switched to the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK).
