© 1999 Global Beat Syndicate. All Rights Reserved.

Escape from Pristina: Letter from Skopje

 
By Gjeraqhina Tuhina*
April 5, 1999
 
SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Even after 10 days of NATO air attacks, I didn't think it would happen. Even after the after the trains began running to Macedonia (the line to Skopje hadn't run for ages), I didn't think it would come to this.
 
But suddenly, after Dragodan, an Albanian district of the Pristina, was cleared, it started. Everyone was somehow told to go to the train station.
 
We could see them from our window. There was shooting in other parts of town but here people walked down the street to the train station.
 
They walked in silence, their heads down, thousands of them, hour after hour, escorted by the police.
 
The first day we saw them, we thought, "Amazing." The next day, we said, "Oh, here they are again." By the third day, it had become normal. Everyone just wanted to know which neighborhoods the people had come came from so they could know when it would be their time to leave.
 
Still, it didn't become real until they came to our house. By then, I was desperate to leave -- I was frightened and wanted to live. But I still had some kind of hope. I could never imagine myself and my parents just walking like that to the station, with our dignity and pride destroyed, losing everything.
 
It was a "normal," quiet day. We had three other families living with us -- 15 people crammed into our small flat. We had become an extended family. It was lunchtime. My mother was preparing a meal of meat and rice. Then we heard a commotion on the floor below and we knew.
 
I wouldn't say they were polite but they weren't abusive. We were surprised. There was no shouting, no pointing of machine guns. Four young soldiers in the dark blue uniforms of the Ministry of the Interior just knocked hard on the door and said, "You have to go. You have fifteen minutes."
 
The soldiers waited patiently. We quietly moved to pick up some things. My computer was still on, so I sent off one last, short e-mail to say I couldn't file a story that day: "Pray for me," I wrote.
 
When we got to the street, while everyone else turned left towards the train station, we turned right. We weren't ready to leave yet. Like those who had come to our apartment seeking refuge, we walked over to stay with friends in another neighborhood.
 
When we arrived, our host and his friend were having a heated discussion. Our host made his position clear. "When they kick me out, I'm leaving," he said. His friend argued he didn't want to give up his life and become a refugee. "As long as I am not forced, I will not go to the train station," he argued. They talked for a long time. We just waited in the dark.
 
A day passed. It was a horrible feeling, just counting the time. We were disappointed because there weren't even any new NATO air strikes near town. We discussed ideas for leaving, but nothing seemed safe. I refused to take that train which would mean three days in the field, and losing all my documents. Never.
 
The day before, I heard that the authorities were burning all the civil records -- birth, marriage, death certificates. The message was clear: We were about to become non-persons.
 
I just gave up emotionally. I wasn't afraid but I was sure I would never see my friends again, sure that nothing would ever be the same.
 
I had to get out of that house. My brother came with me. We put hats on, kept our heads down and walked quickly. By now, this city of 300,000 was half-empty. You could feel the emptiness, as if you were the only person breathing in a room. Pristina was dead.
 
A car stopped in front of us. The driver was a Serb but someone I was friendly with. "Hey," he said, "you are still around? What the hell are you doing? Don't you know your life's in jeopardy?"
 
I thanked him for the reminder.
 
He said he knew of a way out of Kosovo. Two of his friends were heading to the Macedonian border right now. He promised it would be safe. His friends had already left, but if we hurried, we could catch them. I didn't have time to think. I wanted to believe that he wouldn't harm us. We jumped in his car.
 
We caught up with his friends. There was a brief conversation and we got in the other vehicle. There were no introductions. The driver and his friend didn't seem interested. They were Yugoslav customs officers.
 
As we drove towards the Macedonian border, I got a proper view of Pristina for the first time in ten days. There were tanks and police everywhere. There were armored vehicles in front of all the government buildings. Except for the shops, the center of the city itself didn't seem too badly damaged. Even the traffic signals were working, although no one stopped at them.
 
But as we passed through some of the residential areas, we saw that all the homes had been burned. It was strange: I'd lived in Pristina for 23 years but felt like I no longer knew the town.
 
The drive, which took less than two hours, was quiet. Many of the villages we passed along the way had already been burned down. There wasn't that much more destruction than I'd already seen.
 
There were a few checkpoints, and armed civilians were stopping some vehicles, but the roads were basically empty and we sailed through. The driver and his friend chatted, complaining about how hard it was to get cigarettes in Pristina now and the long day they had ahead of them. They saw I was in no mood to talk.
 
As we neared the border, we began to see the line of refugees, 10 kilometers long. There were people in cars, tractors, wagons, and thousands on foot. They were all lined up to get out of Yugoslavia. There were old people and babies. It was very cold.
 
My "driver" took me to the head of the line, and let me out right over the border. I asked if they wanted to see my documentation, and they said no. "Just have a good trip, and good luck," they said. Could it be that they didn't realize I was Albanian?
 
I was out of Kosovo, out of Yugoslavia, and out of danger. I felt reborn.
 
Others weren't as lucky. In this no-man's land along the border, there were thousands of people who had been trapped there for days. I saw an old woman that had died. A few men carried her body into a field and buried her there. It's a sad place for your parent's grave. There were many children crying and a mad rush whenever milk or bread arrived.
 
Because I had a mobile phone, I become the center of a mini-stampede. Everyone wanted to borrow it to get in touch with his or her families. I spoke to many people while they waited to use my phone. They had no idea where they were going or what they would do next. "If we get lucky, someone will give us a room," many said.
 
The Macedonian authorities were in no rush to process people and after eight hours, the line of cars at the border had not moved. Every hour or so, they just singled someone out and said, "Hey, you. You can pass now." And you were through.
 
By nightfall, it began to rain and get really cold. I was very lucky: I have family in Macedonia and a relative found a way to come pick me up. Just outside this no-man's land, a few hundred Albanians were standing in the snow and the rain, waiting to pick up strangers with no place to go and take them into their homes in Macedonia.
 
The thing that we had feared for so long had finally happened. I had left behind Yugoslavia, the police, and the fear. But I had also left my home is Kosovo. I will have to start my life over again.
 
Still, I think the people will go back. I met people who, even right now, want to return. But for now, whether they like it or not, Kosovo, for now, belongs to the Serbs.
 
*Gjeraqina Tuhina is correspondent for the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting. She has reported anonymously on the situation in Kosovo from within Pristina from the first night of the NATO air strikes.

 

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© 1999 Global Beat Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. The Global Beat Syndicate, a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, provides editors with commentary and perspective articles on critical global issues from contributors around the world. For more information, check out http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/.

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