Girl of Kosovo

ONE
I loved our village life. I loved our farm and the apple orchard. I had my friends at school, and at home I did chores--helping with the cow, fetching water, bringing in firewood. It was an honor for me to serve tea to my father and his friends, like Mehmet Bagu, the beekeeper. He was old, and my father respected him very much. Mehmet gave us honey made from apple blossoms.
My best friend, Lena Goran, lived next door, just up the lane, although we didn't see each other much anymore. Lena's family was Serb, and mine, Albanian. "Zana," my Uncle Vizar told me a few years ago, "you shouldn't play with her." I didn't like him very much.
I was used to the Serb police, stopping us in the roads and shops, searching the boys' backpacks when we walked to school. The police had always been there. Ididn't pay any attention to them really, although I knew enough not to speak at all around them. That was because I couldn't speak Serbian very well.
But the way I remember it now, everything changed on one day. It was the day of the Serbian New Year, January 6, 1998. I was eleven. Mama, my fifteen-year-old brother, Ilir, and I had taken the bus to Prishtinë, our capital, to sell eggs at the street market by the soccer stadium. Luckily, my other two brothers, Luan and Burim, stayed home.
That day there were police everywhere in the marketplace. Some were in uniform, some in everyday clothes--but even without any uniforms, you could still tell they were police because of how big and muscular they were.
They were taking money from people. A few were drunk, probably because it was their New Year's and they had been celebrating with lots of beer. They took whatever they wanted from the Albanian farmers who had come to town--watches, fruit, anything. I guess Milosevic, the Serb leader, didn't pay them enough, so they had to take from us Albanians.
An old man, a villager wearing a traditional white felt hat, began to yell at them. "You have no right to bully us like this!" he shouted. "You're no better than thieves!"
The police grabbed his arm and twisted it up high behind his back. The street was packed with people. Butnow everyone stepped back, and a space cleared around the old man. I was standing at the edge of the circle and could see everything.
They twisted his arm up so high that he stood on his tiptoes. Then they began to beat him in front of everybody. They punched his stomach. He tried to bend over, but he couldn't. Four of them were beating him. One took out his club and cracked it against the side of the old man's head near his eye. Blood began to flow.
The Albanian men in the crowd did nothing to help. No one dared to move or even speak. We all watched in silence. We knew that anyone who tried to help would be arrested.
Finally, after about five minutes, the police let go and the old man dropped to the ground. He lay hunched up in a mud puddle. They kicked him, but not that hard, and told him to go to Albania. Then they left with their German marks and food.
Ilir whispered to me, "Someday I'll kill them for this. I will never allow them to forget what they've done to us."
I looked at him in surprise.
"I will. Don't you believe me?" he asked more loudly.
"Shut up!" I whispered. "What if someone hears you?"
But that was only the beginning of our trouble. By afternoon, the bus station was full of police and soldiers inlong, brown wool coats over their camouflage uniforms. Compared to the police, the soldiers looked so young. They were boys, really, with pink cheeks and ears. Not much older than Ilir.
In the crowd waiting for the buses, I saw Lena and her mother. I waved hi to Lena when no one was looking, and she grinned. I knew my mother and Mrs. Goran wouldn't speak. There were only three Serb families in our village. Most Serbs lived in Malishevë or Mitrovicë or Fushë Kosovë.
Lena and her mother stood at the head of the line and boarded the bus first. When we got on, three policemen did, too. One sat in the very first seat behind the driver. The other two sat way in the back. Lena and her mom sat in the middle, two rows in front of us.
It would take us over an hour to reach our little village in the Drenicë region. We lived just past the town of Gllogovc.
We had gone only a few kilometers when the bus was stopped at a large police roadblock in Fushë Kosovë, a Serbian village on the outskirts of Pristine. Well, we Albanians called it Fushë Kosovë, which meant Field of Kosova. The Serbs called it Kosovo Polje, or the Field of Blackbirds. In Kosova, there are two names for all the towns.
The policemen began to walk slowly down the aisle of the bus, checking everyone's identification cards. "IDs.Here, hand it over. What's in that bag? Open it. Good. Next. You--where's your ID?"
They were looking for weapons. Each policeman took out a knife and used it to poke through the bags and under the seats. They even stabbed at the ugly brown bus curtains to see if anything was hidden there. But what could be hidden in those short little curtains? They did it to scare us.
All this time, no one spoke. The bus windows were steamed up from everyone's breath. I tried to ignore the approaching police by drawing funny faces in the steam. In the old days, when Lena and I were together constantly, we played ticktacktoe on the bus windows. Now I couldn't even talk to her in public.
Without thinking, I wrote my name with my finger, Zana Dugolli, but quickly erased it so the police wouldn't see any Albanian words. Zana means "nectar" or "magic one."
When they got to us, they stared at Ilir too long. My heart thumped. Could they somehow have overheard the angry words he had whispered to me in the marketplace? That wasn't possible, was it?
Ilir blushed and stared at the back of the seat in front of him. Mama sat next to him, looking completely calm, her hands quietly folded on her bag.
They picked up our shopping bags and searched them. Then one said to Ilir, "How old are you?"
"Fifteen," he answered in Serbian. They would have beaten him for sure if he had answered in Albanian. All the people on the bus held their breath, sensing trouble. The police studied Ilir's ID card.
"Hmm. You live near Glogovac?"
"Yes."
"Do you know Adem Jashari?" he asked casually.
"No."
"No? Of course you do. Where does he live?"
"I don't know."
Those were lies. We all knew Adem Jashari, at least we all knew of him. He lived in Prekaz, another small village in the Drenicë region, and was the leader of a new secret army called the Kosova Liberation Army, which had killed some Serb policemen during the past year. Every Albanian child knew that.
The policeman grabbed Ilir's arm. "Come on. Get off the bus."
He pulled Ilir, making him scramble over Mama. Mama got up, too, and followed them down the aisle so that Ilir wouldn't be alone with the police.
Would they beat him? I knew they had taken him because of his age. Now they would call him a terrorist and say he was bringing weapons for the KLA. And the terrible part was that my father and my Uncle Vizar had joined the KLA two weeks before. It was supposed to bea secret from us kids, but we all knew. In a village like ours, there were no real secrets.
By now I was crumpling up with fear. My heart felt tight and I was crying inside, but I didn't make a sound. Why had we ever bothered to go to Prishtinë to sell a few eggs? The moments dragged by.
I couldn't bear sitting and waiting. I had to find out what was happening. So I got to my feet and went to the front of the bus. The police had pulled the driver off as well, and the bus door was open. They had taken Ilir and Mama into a large shed by the side of the road. Meanwhile, two other policemen were questioning the driver. They made him open the compartments under the bus so they could look for weapons there. I hesitated by the door.
An old woman in one of the front seats caught hold of my puffy ski jacket and tugged me back inside. "Stay here," she whispered. "Your mother doesn't need two children to worry about. Go sit down now. Everything will be all right. Go!"
I knew she was right. If I got off, too, that would only make things worse for everyone. But it was agony to feel so helpless. I was powerless to help my brother, just as we had all been powerless to help the old man at the market this morning. Ducking my head, I blinked back tears as I hurried to my seat.
When she saw me pass by crying, Lena's mother immediately got up and got off the bus. I peeked out the window as she entered the shed. Lena turned around in her seat and gave me a tiny smile. Maybe her mother would tell the soldiers and police to leave Ilir alone.
And then, suddenly, Mama and Ilir were back, edging their way up the aisle, followed by Lena's mother. The driver was back, too. He shut the door, and the bus lurched forward. The police took their seats. No one spoke. I looked at my mother, but she sat as still and calm as ever, her hands folded as quietly as two round stones.
Copyright © 2001 by Alice Mead