I was four years old when my mother passed away. And this is… I’ve written a book Rrënjët e familjes (The Roots of the Family), where my grandfather is the main character. I suspect that a Serbian activist killed my mother. My mother was killed. I only remember the blood {touches her stomach}, a pillow, because they would remove us from the room. My father quickly rode a horse to the city and brought a doctor. […] I suspect she was killed, they threw a bomb into the chimney, at the fireplace where they used to cook.

 

[…] And when they came to take our wheat and corn, this Serbian woman entered the granary, and they took the wheat, but also the granary and the corn. And my mother grabbed an axe and, standing at the granary door with the axe, said, ‘As long as I’m alive, you’ll never leave here alive, because you’ve already taken the flour and the wheat, and now you want the corn too, leaving my children without bread.’

 

She [the Serbian woman] got very scared and told my father, ‘Take your wife away from here, I give you my word that I won’t take a single grain of corn.’ And my father somehow signaled my mother, as he later told me, and said, ‘Go, go to the house because the children are crying, or the bread might be burning.’ As soon as she left, the Serbian woman came out and ran away. However, she knew the entire layout of our house. And I believe that… because in ‘50 my mother was killed. She [the Serbian woman] threw a bomb, as my mother and the stepmother were there. The stepmother was slightly injured, but my mother was severely injured and died because of it.