…it’s not like it used to be, like when we would go to some state office and if you can’t remember some word in Macedonian, the office clerk would throw you outside.
FITORE BAFTIJA: Did you read the book?
AK: I did… One part of it, some of the interviews.
FB: Did you like it? I mean, was it authentic…
AK: It was… The stories were… There were some who were even more tragic than those… Yes.
FB: Yes, it’s different for everyone.
AK: Right.
FB: How was your life in the place where you used to live?
AK: In the place where I used to live… I had a relatively normal life… because I was working, I had a job, then… we had a small land, I was working on my land, I had some cattle too, so I had a [normal] life.
FB: And your neighbors, the people who were living…
AK: I was in good relations with everybody.
FB: With the peasants…?
AK: With the peasants, with all my neighbors, I never had any… misunderstanding with any of the peasants.
FB: Your village was only populated with…
AK: Our village was only populated with Albanians, the whole region of the Shara Mountain is only populated with Albanians and…
FB: Did you ever have any problems in your village before the conflict of 2001?
AK: With whom?
FB: Any kind of conflict, some incident…
AK: With the other folks?
FB: Any kind…
AK: No, I never had any conflicts or misunderstanding with the people from the village.
FB: How did you go through 2001?
AK: Look… 2001… More or less… we knew that it was going to happen, because first there were some things going on in Tanusevci, around Kumanovo… And we expected it to come to our village, sooner or later. But when it did, we got very upset […]
FB: How did you know it was going to happen?
AK: I was informed by the television and the newspapers… Yes, that’s right.
FB: So, you got upset…
AK: The first day, if I may say…
FB: Yes, sure.
AK: On March 14 the Albanian cultural community had a meeting at the center of Tetovo and I took part in it. I left the meeting a bit earlier because I was supposed to have classes at 1 o’clock. I got inside my car and… I heard some fire, but I didn’t know where it came from, and then when I got near Gajre, all the fields around were full of heavily armed cops, and some other two or three vehicles stopped there and people got off them, I got really upset, because up until then I didn’t have any idea what was going on, because I was at the meeting. I went home and… my house is at the end of the village, I have a garden too, I went there and saw that all the fields were full of policemen, they were in their positions and they were shooting at the fortress. Someone was shooting back from the fortress. That’s when I realized that something was going on and that the thing from Tanusevci had come to Tetovo. After a while, at 1 o’clock I went to school, the students had already come and they were inside, my colleagues had come as well and we all started talking about what to do about it. We were trying to avoid panic among the students, but then their parents started coming and we let all the students go, and they didn’t leave by the usual road, but they took the road from behind the school, and so that day we let the students go home. This was on March 14, then there was more fire toward the fortress for the next few days, in Gajre there were no soldiers stationed yet, and after a few more days, as far as I can remember, the soldiers came, but the paramilitants from the UCK came as well, and that’s when the shootings Gajre – Fortress – Gajre began.
FB: Did you know how long it was going to last?
AK: I couldn’t know how long it would last, it was…
FB: What changed in that moment?
AK: What do you mean?
FB: Why did you leave your house, how did you leave?
AK: Well, look, after a few days all the peasants gathered in the village.
FB: You too?
AK: Me too.
FB: With…?
AK: With my wife, my sons, with all of them, with one of my kids who is married, we were all in the village… After a few days, I went to the city, but we had to use an alternate road, not the usual one, and we couldn’t go by car, but we had to move through the mountain…
FB: On foot?
AK: On foot.
FB: Who was you with? (the wife enters the room to take something)
AK: I was alone, I went to the city to take care of some business and I left my family at home.
FB: Why did you go to the city?
AK: It’s just how it is with us peasants…I didn’t have anything in particular to do, I just came down to the city. I met some friends, we talked about the new situation and around noon I went to the “teleferiku” – it’s how we call the ski lift, that’s on the road to Gajre, and I saw all the peasants in their cars and one of them pulled up and said to me: “Teacher A., where are you going?” I said: “I’m going to Gajre.” “Did you know that all the inhabitants from Gajre had been transferred, relocated?” I had no idea. I went home, again on foot and no one from my family was home, they had took the alternate road and left on foot, that’s how it was, and… Somebody, I don’t know exactly who…
FB: Your family took the alternate road to get to the city?
AK: Yes, to get to the city.
FB: There was nobody at home?
AK: No, nobody… They had left the key at the secret spot where we had agreed to keep it in case…They had come on foot all the way to this building. This building was still under construction back then, it wasn’t finished yet, there was nothing but walls, and yet they went there and I stayed at our home that night. Soldiers began to move around in Gajre, then the next day I went to see my folks and I found them in this building.
FB: Your family?
AK: My family, all of my relatives, but there were no conditions for living here, because there was no toilet, no kitchen, nothing, just… Nothing, just concrete walls.
FB: Nothing but walls?
AK: Just walls… and windows. Then my wife called her sister in Germany, she has a house here (in Tetovo) and they agreed for us to go there, so we went to her sister’s house, but then I got back to Gajre, along with my sons.
FB: And the women, your wife, they stayed at your sister’s?
AK: My wife and my girl stayed at her sister’s, yes.
FB: At your wife’s sister’s, right?
AK: Yes, my wife’s sister’s place, not here.
FB: The one from Germany.
AK: Yes.
FB: At her house.
AK: At her house. We took the key from some neighbours of hers… This was up until march 14.
FB: Then you stayed in Gajre with your sons…
AK: Yes. My sons sometimes were staying in Gajre, sometimes in Tetovo. That’s how it was.
FB: And they always went on foot from Gajre to Tetovo and vice versa?
AK: They had to… I was a part of that… This crisis headquarters had been founded. I took a responsibility to be the night’s watch of… this place where the medicines had been kept, and that’s how I spent my time.
FB: Ok. How about that incident that happened that time when your house…
AK: Now, it’s good you mentioned it. Up until March 25, 2001 there were no Macedonian soldiers in the region of Gajre. The morning on March 25 I was on duty at the station where the medicines were kept. At 6 o’clock I finished my shift, I had one of my fellow peasants replace me and I left. That day we gathered with all the folks from the village, and I didn’t know what had been going on because I didn’t have a cell phone, so I just went to the square randomly. You can see Lavce (a village on the Shara Mountain) from there. On the road to Lavce I saw this armoured vehicle moving towards the village. I couldn’t say whose vehicles they were. Then from the other side, from Selce (a village on the Shara Mountain) a “Lada Niva” car was moving towards the city, and then right at the point where the road turns towards Lavce, the “Lada” bumped into one of the armoured vehicles and what happened next, I don’t know. But some say that they stepped outside the car, run away and climbed up to the mountain. I was with my son and with many other peasants on March 25. I left my son in one of the houses, just inside, but outside behind a concrete wall and I went to the station to take care of the medicines, so that the police wouldn’t find them in case they enter the village. We were going to take them out of that house and hide them somewhere. When I got there, someone had already taken care of that, there were just a few packages there, so I took them, threw them away and went to the square. I was alone, the shootings had started already, bullets were coming from all four sides around Gajre.
FB: How did you feel at that moment?
AK: I felt really bad… A few minutes later, I came across some of my ex students, two of them. I have no idea why they hadn’t left yet, so we all went behind the concrete wall, we were scared mostly because of my kid, he was very young and hadn’t trained in the army. When I went there I saw that everybody was gone, except for my son who stayed waiting for me. And… that morning the battle of Gajre began and one militant from… Shipkovica (a village on the Shara Mountain) got wounded in his leg, so we took him to the nurse to bandage him.
FB: You were there?
AK: No, I wasn’t there. I was holding the second shift. Two of my fellow peasants took him in a car straight to Shipkovica, and on their way back to Gajre encountered armoured vehicles making their way to Gajre and setting 6 or 7 barns on fire on the way. The peasant, one of which was my colleague, left the cars and ran away when they saw the army vehicles. These then opened fire on their cars.
FB: So you were leaving and going back to Gajre all the time in that period?
AK: Yes.
FB: The last time, why did you leave?
AK: I’ll tell you about that as well, but I still have much to talk about 25 March, because on that day I stayed with my son, I was moving around the village sad and scared…
FB: Why didn’t you find any shelter?
AK: I was afraid, because bullets were coming from everywhere and then suddenly I found about 15 people from the village hidden behind a wall. It was a concrete wall, there was a house behind it, the bullets were hitting the walls and were bouncing off the walls, it was dangerous, so we went to a barn. It was an empty barn, there was nothing in it, just a wooden floor. The armored vehicle stopped about 200 metres away from that barn and what came to our minds was the case in Rachak (The Rachak Massacre). And we wanted to… It wasn’t safe for us to hide in any house… Yet we did, and moving from the barn to the house, they saw us and started shooting at us with a machine gun, but luckily we bended and the bullets missed us, but they hit the roof and these three bullets are still in that roof… You can still see the holes. Then when things got calm, I left that house and went to see my home, see if I could find anyone there, but there was nobody, and so, it was night already, my son and I, along with two of my neighbors, much younger than me, came down to the city, and when we got there…
FB: Who did you go to?
AK: I went to my family, to the place where they had…
FB:…settled.
AK:…settled, yes. Can you imagine what they thought when they saw us so sad and terrified? That’s what happened on 25 March, then they (the Macedonian forces) made their way to the entire region of Shara, they entered the fortress, they entered Lavce, set checkpoints in Gajre and at the entrance of Shipkovica and the situation got calmer.
FB: How where you received in your sister-in-law’s home?
AK: Now, I didn’t stay there for long.
FB: Where did you stay?
AK: I went back home to Gajre. After the ceasefire agreement, I went back to Gajre with my family.
FB: Ceasefire? When was that?
AK: Somewhere around April. It wasn’t just my family that got back, all the peasants went back. There was a checkpoint at the entrance of Gajre and another one between Gajre and… One night – I can’t remember the date, I didn’t lead a journal, I can’t say which date it was, there was a big crash, they opened fire and right then I was standing outside unarmed with some neighbors, I guess he was unarmed as well, we were standind outside just in case they make their way to Gajre, so that we could escape instantly, because they were too close.
FB: You saw them coming?
AK: We were standing with some neighbors, sort of like a night’s watch. There was a lot of shooting that night in Gajre, a few houses were damaged. In one of the houses a grenade was dropped while the kids were inside, but it only damaged the back of the house.
FB: When were you most afraid?
AK: I was most afraid when I was thinking of the Rachak scenario, that day on 25 March. We were almost certain then that they would come and find us, all 15 of us. I was older, the others were all young, and they could have… That was my biggest fear, and then when they came… After the crash that night, we gathered on the square, all men gathered to talk about the situation, what to do and no one could think of any idea for defence and in the end they called someone on the phone… Someone gave their orders and that day I came here.
FB: To the city?
AK: To the city.
FB: You were with your family?
AK: Yes, with my family.
FB: You traveled on foot again?
AK: On foot.
FB: Did you take something with you?
AK: I took two bags with food and some clothes, nothing else. I left my house in a good condition… I built that house in ’68, I got a job in ’69 and I had been investing in that house for 30 years, and then in August they set my barn on fire and it burned to ashes…
FB: You never came back after that time you left?
AK: The others from my family didn’t go back, while me and my sons would go to our house every couple of days. One of my sons even took part in digging trenches in Rasadishte (an area at the entrance of the village). I would spend the entire day there, I often witnessed bombings, but I didn’t live there like before 25 March.
FB: When was your house set on fire?
AK: My house and my barn.
FB: The barn too. Were you there?
AK: No, not that day.
FB: Where were you?
AK: That day I… The house was set on fire somewhere after dinner.
FB: Which month was that?
AK: It was…the beginning of August, I think. At that time I usually spent the daytime at the village, but that day I was in town. There was a horrible bombing and many homes were burned down.
FB: When did you see your house burned down?
AK: I saw it the following day because I could see the smoke from far and I thought it was coming from my village and so I went to see, without my children’s approval. When I saw it, I can’t explain how I felt, I sit in the front yard and I was just staring at it, I don’t know what to say. It was burned to the ground (excited, about to cry), it was something…
FB: What did you expect to find? Did you think it was going to…?
AK: I didn’t expect for that to happen because… I had just heard the news that some agreement had been reached… They talked about it and… Yet it happened.
FB: How were you treated while you were a refugee? Did you have contact with other refugees?
AK: Yes, I did. Mostly with my fellow peasants.
FB: What was that…like?
AK: We often gathered with my fellow peasants to talk, to share our problems.
FB: How did your sister-in-law welcome you, the one that took you in?
AK: She wasn’t there.
FB: Yes, I got that. But, was she generous?
AK: Yes, yes, yes.
FB: Who helped you most?
AK: To tell you the truth, nobody helped us, except some donations we got from the Red Cross and some things from the humanitarian association “El Hilal”.
FB: And from the Macedonian side?
AK: I took nothing, I received no help. No one even mentions the events in Gajre. Gajre was the most damaged village in the whole region of Shara, along with Lavce. Those two got hit in the worst way. Some German humanitarian organizations built some buildings in Gajre, but they left them empty, without any furniture or anything else. Now, this irritates me because all the Macedonians received completely equipped homes. They were given furnutire, kitchen elements, and one of the groups from Lipkovo and Skopje were even settled in a hotel during the construction, they were given free food and free accommodation, and according to the newspapers they were even getting 400 denar per day for each family member. The state didn’t give a penny for us.
FB: What do you blame the Macedonians for?
AK: The Macedonians… To tell you the truth, they bear the blame for the conflict.
FB: Why do you say that?
AK: They bear the whole blame because… I was never a member to any political party before the 90s. With the establishment of the pluralist system, PDP[1] was formed. The representatives from that party outlined from the beginning that we should be equal, that we should participate equally in the constitution of the state. They never wanted to hear about this, they had no interest in our demands, and I was following the situation from the beginning, I would watch all the parliamentary sessions and all of our representatives always outlined this, that there has to be a change, or else it would come to this. And it did, even though the Macedonians could have prevented it.
FB: How so?
AK: They could have because – you’re young, you may not know how discriminated we were up until the ‘90s, you can’t even imagine. I’ve been working as a teacher for 42 years now and when I started working at the school, we did everything in Albanian language, and then after ’81 they launched an unseen shauvinism against the Albanians. Mixed groups were being formed, you don’t know that. Mixed groups, but all the classes were being held in Macedonian only. Each Albanian teacher was forced to teach in Macedonian. That’s where the Albanian revolt began. But even after 1990 they continued with the same policy as the one from Yugoslavia.
FB: How could have we prevented this war?
AK: It could have been prevented if the Albanians enjoyed the same rights as they did, as equal people. This wouldn’t have happened then.
FB: Do you blame the Albanians too?
AK: The Albanians… I think they bear no blame. I don’t want to sound biased, but to beg for something for 10 or 20 years… Then the conlict began when Macedonian forces killed a young boy in his field in Tanushevci.
FB: Who are you most mad at?
AK: I’m mad at the unjust Macedonian politics.
FB: Can I ask you when it was hardest for you?
AK: I was when I saw our house… burned to ashes, the house in which I invested for almost 30 years… (the wife comes in to serve us coffee) That was the hardest thing for me.
FB: Why didn’t you ever go back? Your house has been restored now, has it?
AK: We never got back because by the time the house got restored, I already had my apartment. It took two years for the house to be rebuilt, but then we had the apartment and that’s why we never went back. There’s no other reason.
FB: What did you lose during the war? Apart from the house… the trauma…
AK: Look, I did suffer from all the trauma in the beginning, I was upset, yes, but as time went by, it all began to fade, because I didn’t have any human loss, and that’s what matters most.
FB: Under what conditions would you go back to Gajre?
AK: Look, I have good conditions in Gajre, I have my house. There’s furnutire inside, I have fields, I have everything, but I can’t go back there, I can’t part from my children right now, and I don’t know how it’s going to be in the future.
FB: The kids want to stay here?
AK: Yes.
FB: In the city?
AK: Yes, in the city.
FB: Do you think a coexistence with the Macedonians is possible?
AK: Yes, it certainly is. Coexistence is possible, but the Macedonians need to realize once and for all that they’re not first class citizens, they have to stop thinking that they are entitled to give rights to someone else, that the Albanians have to beg for their rights. If this is changed, if they start considering the Albanian people as equal, if we don’t have to demand for anything anymore, then yes, there can be coexistence. Macedonia is a small country, but it has a small population, there’s room for everyone.
FB: Can you forgive them?
AK: Yes, I’m a forgiving person by nature, that applies to everything. I’m able to forgive any kind of misunderstanding as there been many such cases in our village, I can forgive, but only if they become more rational and realize that the reality is different from what they think.
FB: So, peace is possible?
AK: Yes, it is, but they don’t want it. Even now when things are better for us, they still don’t want it, but things are not better because they wanted that, but because they were under international pressure. Otherwise they wouldn’t have done any of this, they even distorted the Ohrid Agreement.
FB: Is there anything you gained because of the war, because of the conflict from 2001?
AK: There is. We can’t say that nothing changed, because it did. A number of people got employed… that’s it. At school… it’s easier for us teachers now, although we still try to do all the administrative work in both languages, but yes, things have changed after 2001. (drinks coffee)
FB: What are the general benefits for us? Language, freedom to… you know what I mean.
AK: Look… About the language, yes, we can now use it freely, it’s not like it used to be, like when we would go to some state office and if you can’t remember some word in Macedonian, the office clerk would throw you outside. Now it’s different, they are more tolerant, you can speak Albanian openly. Now it’s a different thing with the flag, we can’t use it whenever we want to. For example, there’s around 90% Albanian population here in Tetovo, and while we can use the flag during our holidays and at weddings, we can’t use it in the public institutions, such as the police, the court, the archive, we can’t raise our flag there. I don’t think this is just and I don’t feel free to use our national flag. You can’t see it in any of the public institutions, the court, the police etc.
FB: Is there anything you would like to add?
AK: I think I shared the most important things I had to say about 2001.
FB: Thank you.
AK: Welcome.
(break)
AK: If I can say just one more thing, something very interesting…
FB: Sure, feel free.
AK: Something peculiar happened to me and my colleagues at the school. When all the peasants came back to the village, students went back to school. One day there was a shooting and around 1 o’clock I set off for school, and some students were walking in front of me, going to classes. When I got to the school gate, right in front of the house of a neighbor, suddenly Macedonian forces started shooting at us from the fortress at the entrance of Gajre and… They started shooting at us, and the same happened to other teachers who arrived before me, so they had to hide along with the students, to get inside. We didn’t know what to do. We made a big mistake, we didn’t know which way to go. We tried to get out through the gate, along with the students and some of the other teachers, but they started shooting at us again, the bullets were flying right above our heads. We were very scared. We couldn’t take the road, so we started running through the neighbor’s yard and we saved ourselves, no one got killed. We had […]
FB: You were with your students?
AK: We were with the students. We didn’t know… what to do, if we stayed in […] There were around 60 students. We decided to get out. We couldn’t guess that they were ready to go that far, to shoot above our head, but nobody got hit in that…
FB: …incident.
AK: Incident.
FB: Do you think you were doing the right thing all that time… during the conflict? What would you change if you had the chance?
AK: Look, I don’t know what to say, whether I did the right thing or not. But in those moments, especially on 25 March, I was terrified. When I think that they could have come any moment and find us in that room, because it was a simple room, not a basement. We expected them to find us any moment. I don’t know what else to say, but I pray God it doesn’t happen again, because if it does, it might be even worse. That was it.
[1] The Party for Democratic Prosperity or PDP (Macedonian: Партија за демократски просперитет, ПДП; Albanina: Partia p’r Prosperitet Demokratik) is an ethnic Albanian political party in the Republic of Macedonia formed in April 1990.