March, 1999: I have the impression that I am the only Serb on the bus, Gjakova is deserted

I wake up around five or six, I realize that it's still quiet, but, well, I continue to stay in bed until I hear my friend's heavy footsteps approaching. I dare not ask him to take me to Gjakova. The idea that an Albanian can drive me to Ivani, through all those police checks in Kosovo, is something that cannot be done. I feel guilty about the driving problem as I haven't got my driver's license yet. A day ago I tried without success to convince the driver of our office in Pristina to take me to Gjakova

I slept well, if we can call it that, for several hours without stopping. It was quite cold in the room, even though N. turned on the old radiator, but it could not quickly heat up the room where, apparently, no one had lived. Before that, with his wife, who was Serbian, and his daughters, we talked about general things. For life. Then we all smoked and sipped coffee.

N. is optimistic about what is being played. According to him, Milosevic is only bluffing, since he cannot withdraw immediately. N does not believe it will come to the point of bombing and, if it does happen, it will be a purely symbolic thing and will not last more than a day. I disagree with his assessment, although I really wish it were true. 

I wake up around five or six, I realize that it's still quiet, but, well, I continue to stay in bed until I hear my friend's heavy footsteps approaching. I dare not ask him to take me to Gjakova. The idea that an Albanian can drive me to Ivani, through all those police checks in Kosovo, is something that cannot be done. I feel guilty about the driving problem as I haven't got my driver's license yet. A day ago I tried unsuccessfully to convince the driver of our office in Pristina to take me to Gjakovë. He told me very openly: I will prepare the car, but I myself am not allowed to go there.

I leave the suitcase with Ivan's personal belongings at N, because he promises to give it to the ambulances arriving from Gjakova, as soon as the tension subsides a little. And this will be done, as he thinks, in no more than a week.

N escorts me to the bus station. There are many people there and the noise prevails. Everyone seems to be moving somewhere. I immediately understand that the road Pristina - Gjakovë is impassable because of the fighting. But the road Prishtina - Prizren has been opened in the meantime. From Prizren to Gjakova, as far as I remember, it is about twenty kilometers. I can also take a taxi there.

also Culture Supplement April 14, 2024 Terrible Memories: 20 March 1999 – 20 March 2015, Friday

The bus is full. At least five mothers with babies are also there. The air is stifling. Mixed contamination of wet clothes, sweat and small children. I sit by the window somewhere in the middle of the bus on the right side. The bus stops every ten kilometers. The middle of the bus is full of people standing and swaying back and forth and left and right to the rhythm of the bus. A baby cries all the time. I have the impression that I am the only Serb on the bus, but precisely because of this, I do not feel even the slightest fear. I feel unreal. Military and police vehicles cross Suharek. Someone is watching how smoke is coming out of a destroyed building. A day ago, the KLA set an ambush. At least that's what I heard on B92 (9). No one, however, stops us or controls us.

A little before ten in the morning I am in Prizren. The bus to Gjakova stands empty, as if it is waiting for me, twenty meters from the platform. Instead of going for a walk in Prizren, where I have never been before, I sit and wait on the bus. (I stay like this for almost an hour.) Ten minutes before the bus leaves, six passengers enter. It's a sunny and windy day. This time I sit on the left, and all the time I can see the fields separated by the mountain, behind which was the dark and dangerous country of Albania. 

The road is narrow, but clean and newly paved with asphalt. Suddenly I notice that spring has come.
In Gjakova, we arrived in half an hour. On the way we stopped maybe two or three times. Only three passengers entered the bus. An old man with a beret perched in the middle of his head clutching a large black umbrella, all the while turning around uncomfortably. Fortunately, the police did not stop us anywhere; as if this part of the road was a free space. When we arrived in Gjakova, I came to the conclusion that the old man was not paranoid at all, but had a nervous tic.

The Gjakova bus station was completely abandoned. I didn't see any other bus there. There were also two taxis, old Mercedes, one black and the other yellow. I went to the black man and said: In the Old Barracks.

Such a small town and it has two barracks: the new one and the old one. The new one is located in the center of the city, which is made up of modern and bare socialist buildings. A kind of New Belgrade, only without the skyscrapers. The old barracks are located in the rest of the city, a kind of historical center, which is a combination of the oriental bazaar and the usual type of Mediterranean ghetto. The streets are deserted, as is the bus station. This kind of emptiness is combined with an expectation, and this is felt at every step. I myself have taken very small steps - someone will drive me there.
The taxi stops at the entrance to the barracks, which has some damage on the only corner I see. Here there is a waiting area from which a concrete path leads to a long, low building. Behind the building stand out several other mostly one-story buildings. A low metal fence surrounds the entire complex.
To the left of the entrance to the barracks, in the direction we came from, there is a Catholic church and a nunnery that radiate an extraordinary European peace. I see a venerable nun washing the windows. On the opposite side of the road, there is a row of bungalows surrounded by gardens.

In front of the reception area there are three benches for visitors. The sun warms pleasantly. The non-commissioned officer of the guard politely tells me that I must wait a little. Sitting on one of the benches, I hear a man and a woman talking, apparently a father and a mother who have come to visit the boy. They are from Kosovo. Of course, Serbs. I can't figure out what they're talking about, but I can feel myself getting irritated. I tell them without hesitation: do you know what is happening? In a few days the bombing will begin and the Americans will catch up sooner or later. Do your best to attract the boy however you know, and however you can, that's all that matters now...

They answer me in chorus that they will all fight and that there is no chance for anyone to conquer Kosovo.

Okay, I tell you. But, aman, this does not calm me down at all. I feel as if the foolishness, as happens with the storm or the earthquake, nailed me to the ground. Fatalistic vision of a disaster approaching not with the speed of lightning, but more likely that of Zeno's Tortoise. I have been waiting for Ivan for more than half an hour. - They are looking for him, the non-commissioned officer tells me, trying to calm me down.
Finally Ivan appears in uniform. It is waxy, completely black and looks thinner. I see that he does not believe that I have come. He was released until the evening. We go together, on foot, to the "Pashtrik" hotel. We talk about anything and everything. The streets are empty. It's just that I feel that they are watching us behind the curtains. But now that I'm with Ivan, I'm no longer in danger. The war is elsewhere.

The hotel looks abandoned even though everything works as normal. We even have a good lunch. (I think we ate some kind of specialty: a kind of alla-Karagjorgjevic steak that they call "Pashtriku steak" here?) After lunch we went to the room, where Ivan took a shower. I managed to sleep only half an hour. Then again, we talked about everything we could. I told him that the airstrikes would begin in three days. Of course I didn't have any kind of reliable information about when they would start, but I had some kind of certainty when the attack would start. I told him that, in that case, he had to leave the barracks and that, under no circumstances, he should not return there. Even if there was an idiot commander who would order them not to leave the barracks, they must run away from it. (Of course, luckily, there were still the kind of idiotic commanders they suspected hanging around.) The order came from Belgrade. Ivan's commander was a certain colonel Gjoshan, who later appeared before us at Milosevic's trial in The Hague as a witness. Ivan described him as an arrogant and a little haughty man. From the mold of Nebojsha Pavkovic (10), but perhaps not the mold of a lover of his zeal.) We talked about where and from where we could escape. We had to capture Montenegro and from there go straight to Sarajevo - to my aunt's daughter.

I'm leaving my dreams!

I couldn't help but think back to the phone conversations when my cousin had begged Ivan to go to Sarajevo immediately to finish the Faculty of Medicine. And my mother, who died suddenly in November 1998, reassured us by telling us that everything will be fine. I don't know what comment she would make about this Gjakova and this stench that came from the fear and worry that were inevitably produced in that situation. Eight years ago, if I'm not mistaken, Damir came to us on the last plane from Sarajevo, and I begged him to leave the city immediately and come to us. Now, Damir lives quite safely in Denmark. Another aunt and uncle, also from Sarajevo, have been in Canada since 1994. The family on the mother's side are all either scattered or dead. How the hell is it possible that a man finds it easier to advise others on the useful thing to do than to find any good advice for himself and his people? 

It was a clear day and it was really spring. I accompanied Ivan to the barracks. Then we greeted each other clumsily like men, with a strange hope, faith, or what, that in the end everything would be fine, that we would survive. Such feelings usually last for a short time even though they are very intense. It seems to me that only a believer can act like this. 
But already on the way back, walking through the cold, in the old part of the city, I see that my faith has left me and that the only thing I feel is a deep despair and helplessness. On the short journey to the hotel, I manage to walk around in vain. Suddenly I find myself in some streets where children are still playing. When I appear there, they stop the game and stare at me in silence. (Couldn't this be the sense of loss that Camy describes in "The Stranger"?)

Suddenly, as dusk fell, I realized that I had very few dinars left for the hotel and the bus ticket, so I asked to exchange twenty marks. On the way, passing through the main road of the city (illuminated), I suddenly began to get angry. I stopped at a kiosk where I asked if I could exchange some money, but the seller cut me short because they don't convert. He must have been frightened by my sight and voice. The next place I tried was a flower shop. I don't even remember now what I managed to tell him, until the money was exchanged. They were an elderly couple, husband and wife, probably Albanians, who just looked at each other. I caught myself again, just like in Kurshumili, cursing Milosevic, the Serbs and the Albanians, the state and the army, and all the living who lived under this narrow sky, where I was myself. Why am I, along with my loved ones, condemned to live in this hell? And why did they take my son hostage like that?

At the hotel I managed to calm down a bit. I drank coffee and smoked a lot. In the dining room there was a television set, placed directly above the floor where again a disgusting news was being broadcast. There were about six or seven guests, all men. It seemed to me that everyone had come to visit their children in the barracks. A man from Bijello Polje had decided to stay with his son in the army as a volunteer. I wasn't sure if he was appreciating this or lamenting his bad luck.
I tossed and turned in bed all night. I was tormented by bad, terrible dreams. I kept thinking: how can I leave him in this place? Could we have tried to escape? Will I ever see my son again? But will he be able to avoid the war! I was shivering from fear and the feeling of cold in the room even though I was covered with two blankets. I would try to avoid the nightmares but I would manage to calm them down for a little while, maybe only five or six minutes, and then they would come back even stronger than before. The only censorship that still worked for me was that I couldn't see the dead boy, except that all the other combinations were playing in my head. 

Early morning. A hotel room window faces Pashtriku. The dark mass of mountains fills the entire horizon. Over there is Albania. Evil will probably come from there. But my son will stay here.

When I got off, the woman at the reception consoled me somewhat as she told me that I could call whenever I wanted from Belgrade and that she would tell me how the situation is. He only asked that Ivan come at the appointed time so that we could connect with him. He was saying it as if nothing unexpected could happen in the meantime. (What a senseless feeling!) It was early in the morning, about six o'clock, again a beautiful, clear day, and I was again the only person walking through the deserted city. 

The Gjakovë - Pristina line has started working. There are about ten passengers in the bus. Of these, only three men: me, a middle-aged Serbian man and an Albanian Catholic priest. The rest of the passengers are simply Albanian women with children. The Serb sits next to me, right next to the door. He immediately begins to tell me about the wealth of Metohija (11). We pass by a vineyard and he begins to explain: This is why the Americans want to rob us of this. - Yes, they can't hold it for long, they have wasted the Californian summer. Man, however, does not understand what I am thinking in the meantime. This is the reason why as we take another road I say: Come on, enough now, what the hell wealth, what Americans, I have left my son in Gjakova hostage to politics and Milosevic. No one was talking on the bus until then, but after that there was such silence that not even the smallest whisper was heard. The first checkpoint appears about ten kilometers north of Gjakova. In front of the bus, an owl decorated with a red beret rocks and shakes. An ordinary policeman enters the bus and, quite casually, glances at our identity cards.

The Albanian woman sitting next to me silently offers me a candy. They are one of those old, soft "like silk" candies.

On the left side of the road several times we come across the ruins of freshly burnt houses. Neither gunshots nor smoke can be heard anymore. We don't even see anyone on foot anymore.

And then we entered Fushë-Kosovo. In the middle of a road extension, in front of some low one-story houses, three "Hamera" were parked. As soon as we encountered them, their crew immediately put on their hoods. 
It was very terrible as a sight, a cold brutal scene, where there were neither executioners nor victims, nor shots, of course, nor massacre, but in every movement you feel these as if they were right there, as if they were alive. In fact, this scene only lasted four or five seconds. The bus didn't stop, it just slowed down tremendously. Later, this act of those who immediately put on the hoods has turned into a nightmare for me. I had the impression that again, and again, in different countries, and not only in Kosovo, this is how people would put on their masks and get ready to go somewhere. When, after less than a month, Slavko Quruvija (12) was killed, I thought that now there is nothing left to do, even in Belgrade.

The bus station in Pristina was full of people. The buses going north were completely full. I called N to tell her that I was going straight home and that I didn't get to do any of the things I had planned to do. - Don't worry, he told me, very sober, in a few days everything will be fixed and I will get Ivan out of there myself.
I managed to find a ticket to Belgrade on a private rickety bus going via Mitrovica and Novi Pazar. I was sitting with my back to the road. Next to my seat sat a young Roma couple with a child who was crying all the time. The bus was moving slowly but surely. (As if he wanted to leave Kosovo an hour ago.) We stopped only for a while, somewhere in front of Kraleva at a large private tavern. The tavern was full of military reservists, the youngest of whom must have been in his forties. Or so it seemed at least. It was a beautiful day, I stood outside drinking a lukewarm Coke while new reservists poured in from all sides. The tavern also served as a kind of gathering center. 

I remember that we traveled all the time by the old road, maybe because of the tolls or the traffic police. The weather was good at that time, so we were counting that in Topolë (13) we would really start to feel the beautiful spring weather. Meanwhile, it occurred to me that time was not being pushed so easily and it would be much better if the dark fog fell in Serbia and hid our children. When we are in the tunnel, it would be good to stay, like this, in the tunnel!

To be continued in the next issue of the Culture Supplement 
Translated from the original: Ben Andoni. Published with permission of the author. 
 

Velimir Ćurgus (1948, Novi-Sad – November 11, 2018, Belgrade). Journalist and well-known personality of Serbian journalism. Director of "Ebart Consulting" since 2002. He was editor of the cultural column in "Politika" newspaper from 1988 to 1996. Before that, he worked as an editor and publisher for eight years at the Serbian Youth Research and Publishing Center in Belgrade. . He is one of the founders of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia and the author of about ten books of prose and essays on the topic of culture and cultural politics. His essays and books have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Polish, Japanese and several other minor languages. He is the author of several books on media relations, politics and culture, and also the drafter of several projects in the field of media and culture research. Velimir Ćurgus received the International Essay Prize at "Lettre International" in Weimar in 2000. He was a member of the Serbian Center - PEN since 1987. But Ćurgus was also a painter, especially in the type of combined technique on paper. Five exhibitions are associated with his name. He was also the author of two short film scripts.

Footnotes:

(9) Media group based in Belgrade, consisting of a television channel, radio and an online site. During the past years, there was also a program in the Albanian language

(10) Nebojša Pavković is the former Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Yugoslavia from February 2000 to June 2002. He also served as the Commander of the Third Unit of the Armed Forces of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War, from December 1998 until February 2000. In 2009, he was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Kosovo War

(11) Metohija or the Dukagjini Plain (for Albanians) is a large geographical space that includes the southwestern part of Kosovo, which covers 35% (3,891 km2) of the total area of ​​Kosovo. The name "Metohija" derives from the Greek word μετόχια, which means "wealth of monasteries" and in the case of Kosovo it is related to the large number of villages and estates in the region that were once owned by Serbian Orthodox monasteries and Mount Athos during the Middle Ages. The designation "Kosovo and Metohija" was in official use for the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija (1945-1963) and also for the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija (1963-1968). But the term "Metohija" was suppressed as the official name of the province in 1968 and since then, Kosovo was known simply by this name

(12) Slavko Ćuruvija (9 August 1949 - 11 April 1999) was a journalist and publisher, who was executed in Belgrade. His assassination sparked a huge international reaction and was widely condemned. Only in January 2014, two people were arrested, while two more were later identified by the Serbian police as suspects in the murder of Ćuruvija, including Radomir Marković, former head of the State Security Service (UDB) from 1998 to in 2001

(13) Topola is a town and municipality in Šumadi Locality in central Serbia. It was the place where Karagjorgje, a Serbian revolutionary, was elected as the leader of the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1804. Here in the church of Saint George is the burial place of the Ducal and Royal Family of Serbia and Yugoslavia (the Karagjorgjevics).