I was lucky: I had done my specialization together with Angela Merkel’s husband at the Moscow University. […] Some of the professors who taught us there, English-speaking, American professors, had taught me earlier in Zagreb. I distinguished myself very much. Believe me, when I went to see Merkel after I became Minister of Albanian-language schools [for the Government in Exile], the Serbian state seal was still dominating. I took the seal of the Republic of Kosovo and told them… As soon as he saw the request with my name, her husband asked, ‘Were you at Moscow University?’ The government’s secretary came running, together with Merkel’s staff, and said, ‘ Merkel will receive you at this hour.’ Ilaz said, ‘So fast? Not even two hours have passed.’ I said, ‘He recognized me as a professor.’ I hadn’t even reached Merkel yet when her first question was, ‘Were you at Moscow University?’ I said yes. ‘You were there with my husband.’ I told her, ‘You know, there are many Albanians here. We’ve opened Albanian-language school courses in Germany. I see that the Serbian Republic’s seal still dominates. We have the seal of the Republic of Kosovo. We are a republic now.’ She said, ‘No problem.’ A few days later, half of my teachers and students came to me saying, ‘Minister, Professor, look, the stamp has arrived: Republic of Kosovo.’

Serbian students fought with Albanian students in Runik…They sent Vahide Hoxha, Fadil Hoxha’s wife, to take care of the incident…That woman was a lady, an incomparable woman. A woman like [Madeleine] Albright… There were communists there who, when something like that happened, liked to act holier than the Pope, acting like they cared so much about Serbs…We were stuck there for almost half the night. Then I spoke. I said, ‘What happened here often happens even among Albanians; they fight. It didn’t happen with any kind of agenda. It didn’t happen because they were Serbs and we were Albanians… We can try to give it whatever meaning we want, but it has no political color, no ethnic hatred, nothing.’ The meeting ended…There was still a café open, we went in for coffee and talked with Vahide. Vahide said, ‘You got us out of a crisis. Morning would’ve caught us there if you hadn’t spoken’… Avdyl Miftari, the history teacher, said, ‘Comrade Vahide, Xhafer wants to stay here all night because he has nowhere else to go, no apartment, no nothing.’ She looked at me and said, ‘You don’t have an apartment?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ She said, ‘You’ll have one.’

[The Trepça technical school] started the school year ‘94–‘95 in a private house in the Bajr neighborhood, and that’s when the police intervened…It was the 15th of December. It was a cold day, a day with thick fog, very thick fog. While coming to school, the students noticed the police circling around. That house had a yard surrounded by a wall, we came out and closed the gate… But they climbed the wall, entered the yard, and went straight into the classrooms… I remember that they mistreated me in front of the students…Whatever they found on the desks, they threw into the stove, those were iron stoves, and they burned it. They made the students write their symbols on the board. And then, at some point, they let them go. I was savagely mistreated in the hallway… They destroyed the classrooms, they even knocked over the stoves, stoves that were still lit. Before they let me go, they made me grab the lit stoves, I am telling the truth, until my hands were burned.

It’s interesting, to be honest, when both teachers and students were mistreated and [the police] would actually leave, we used to think that the next day, not a single student would show up. But, strangely enough, by the grace of God, everyone was there, no absences. The teachers, the students… of course, I can speak for myself, but also for others, it was enough just to know they were there. And they were close to us, meaning they were by our side. Then we’d calm down and continue the lessons.

 

[…] I mean, all the students were at school. The bell rang, it was time. Strangely, at the exact minute the bell rang, within three minutes, the entire school was surrounded. Luckily, we tried to stay calm and watched from the windows how they were acting and what was awaiting us, obviously. First, they took us to the third floor, or the second, I’m not sure, but the main thing is they formed two police cordons. Fortunately, the students weren’t mistreated. And among the 30 or 40 of us teachers, it was Professor Muharrem Peci who suffered the worst, he had very serious injuries.

We had a front-line house in Lower Klina because we couldn’t use the high school in Skenderaj, since it was the main center here. I later went around schools as an advisor, since those were established a bit later. We held competitions, we organized quizzes, and we even won first place in the region. So, normal activities, even though at the end of such events, they would take us to the station, sometimes beat us, mistreat us, but they couldn’t stop us entirely.