The factory was, the craft’s factory was called Metal, Metal Factory. I experienced it here too because the factory was in Janjevo, yes. The space was small here. There were 300 workers, here in the factory. But in the meantime, the municipality, Kosovo then had built a building outside of Janjevo. Look at that, that building was planned so other villages could also join in, so they could come from the Municipality of Lipjan for example… Actually, when we moved down there, there were workers from Obiliq, from Golesh, from Lipjan, from Gadime, from Ferizaj, from Plitkoviq, from Banulla, Llugagjia, everywhere… there wasn’t a village that didn’t have workers in Janjevo’s factory. There was, that factory progressed, from 300 workers we had somewhere around 800 workers. The salary was pretty good, we had the cadres, so work went well, we worked, it was good. Because after I finished school, they hired us to work there immediately. I was working there from ‘66.

In front of Bash Çarshia, there used to be a state-run café, a state-run café. They used to have singers and stuff, I remember that surely, I remember because 55 years ago […]The atmosphere was, how do I put it? That will never return. That atmosphere will not return here. That café was always full. There was music, they had singers. The young and old went there, even the middle-aged. Whoever could, got in, whoever had money, of course. You cannot enter a café without money to pay for drinks. There were no divisions, no one cared if you were Croat, Roma or an Albanian. No, no, no. Regardless, we ate and drank there together. All together. We had no issues among one another. But I don’t think that time will come back. Life was really tasty, life was sweet.

The Bazaar was full of people. You had funny people here, who knew how to have fun and prank and talk. Today, I fear this, in the past two years, it has entered my mind that our children will forget how to speak. Always on their phones. If you leave them for 24 hours, you know they will forget how to speak.

People knew how to speak and invent stories. As a child, I remember when I went to buy cigarettes and later, when I grew older, we started going out. Then around ‘86, ‘87 when the cafés opened, I was a young man. Then in ‘88, ‘89, that was, what do I know, no one can describe it. It was beautiful, we had friends. We were friends with Albanians, we played football. Even today we socialize. 

Only men went to cafés? What about women?

Yeah, yeah, women too started going out. So in ‘88, ‘89, women started going out. It is there where we met, where we married, in the cafés.

We had that day we called Rifana. On the evening of that holiday, St. George’s, people gathered with friends at home. But also at Glama. They set up a tent, and there they start a fire, cook lamb, sheep whatever they want. There are drinks, singing. But you could also go and steal something, though that never became a habit to take something from someone. But food that people prepared, whoever could steal and eat it, and the deed was done. That was a tradition, a trick, you know to have a story to tell. But it was really… 

You did that every year?

Every year. The whole night we sang until morning, some would stay at home. Then we tied the swings to the roof, now we have gutters, so you cannot. But then you could tie it on roof beams, you placed a pillow and swung the entire night.

I remember the end of the ‘60s when the Cultural Center was built. We got a screening room and then that was, the idea was that now we can go and watch Dean Martin and some cowboy movies and the like. Then it got easier and it was sweeter. Every Sunday, we would gather at the Center. There was folk dance, dance, live music. Of course, we created and financed that music, and so on.

I remember the time when we did not have enough money to buy more guitars, drums, more instruments that would help and improve the quality of those dances. Then, so to say, we nagged these people in the neighborhood, demanding them to invest a bit in the youth. ‘Invest, we need more money for this and that.’ So whenever there were those moments, we would collect the money and I recall that is how we founded the brass orchestra.”

We played local slow romance songs, beautiful city songs. But also, Tom Jones’s music was present, also the Beatles. So, we played both. Unfortunately, very little… we didn’t know, or I don’t know why, but folk music was played less, we were more interested in the music that was modern at the time. Songs of, for example, Miša Kovač, Jevremović, also our old Prizren songs, and so on.