KOSOVO 1999

M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell
the diesel
blowing into
our mouths,
asking
questions of
these people.
Again the
same answers
are delivered;
the same
shit is going
through their
minds.
A man turned to me with a trembling lip to stare
straight through me as he recounts: ‘At four am they
kicked us out. We left everything. We were three
metres away from our home when they set it on fire.
What can we do? And here we are.’
That the children are exposed for so long to the
hot biting sun is frightening. There seems many red
rashes on the children’s faces which appear look as
blemishes or rhubarb splotches. Perhaps they are
heat rashes, which spread run from their forehead
down to the beginning of their nose. At one point
on the dirt road back to Kukes the truck seemed to
pause; missed a gear then coughed to a shuddering
splutter, screeching to a halt very abruptly which
made Firouz lurch forward and then backwards.
He or I knocked this shawled woman who is
desperately clutching her baby. The baby after being
so dramatically jolted completely freezes up for one
second. It could not breathe. Twelve, then fourteen
seconds had elapsed and still it had not breathed.
What the… an epileptic seizure? The mother hit...
no slapped the child on its chest and it began to
breath and cry again. I just breathed one sigh of
relief because there would have been nothing more
upsetting than having this child dying here and now.
We are still sitting in the tray when the mother
explains to me what she has witnessed: ‘Four
members of the Iberdamaj family have been killed
and they were burnt, and they burnt the house. In
the Kuqi family, they killed father and son, and the
uncle. One woman was executed. Her destiny is not
known. We don’t know where she is, her name is
Bute Husad. There are many others killed and they
are not buried as yet. Our homes are burnt down,
our husbands are separated from us. Yesterday they
took my husband away from the tractor, and I am
left with my four children. I have no idea what they
did with them, or where they are.’
Has my presence here helped? I know that it
has done something but in relationship to the big
picture, what is happening now? Yes and no, and
I don’t know. Seven thousand people have just
crossed over this border in the last three hours and
we have been interviewing some people in the back
of the truck
and I is just...
the stories,
some people
just can’t say
anything. The
people are so
traumatised.
Still five
kilometres
from the
Morine
crossing we climbed out of the first truck and into
a second to bump along with the cloudless blue sky
racing past us and the wind. We interviewed yet
another mother with a child. At a petrol stop when
more people started to get on we realized we were
needed to leave to make more room for others.
Once we had disembarked I walked up to another
passing wagon with a crying child leaning over the
tray. I put my index finger out of my right hand and
this child instantly wrapped its tiny little pudgy
hand around my finger and immediately she stopped
crying.
We returned to home, or at least our temporary
home, to recharge the camera batteries on the
Sony VX1000 video camera. Ardian took two hours
off. Firouz remained home and I came here to the
‘America Bar’ to read and recount my journal.
Thursday, 6th May, 1999, Kukes,
Albania
While recounting my diary to the cassette in the
‘America Bar’, Whitney Houston is playing and I was
thinking about her.
Where You Are
I saw the news this morning
Saw your face across the screen
And as I poured my coffee
I picked up a magazine
(Chorus)
But as I turned the page, and looked inside,
there you were again
Oh these lonely times, they never seem….
I was thinking about how in the West, there is
nothing wrong with people being great singers. I was
contemplating excellence and then my meditation
returns to these refugees.
It does not matter who they are and what they
are; it does not matter what talent or wealth or
beauty a person may possess, because a person’s
birth right is the most important, illustrious and