KOSOVO 1999

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M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell “A reward of $500 US dollars will be given for information leading to the return of twenty-five video cassettes and/or a video camera with an apparatus. With those people with any before knowledge or knowledge of the theft of a black camera case at the upper end of the main street where the minibus collects passengers please telephone either radio Kukes or radio television.” And there we left the telephone number. plaster, and strewn dirty blankets on the floors. The Albanians are stealing from everyone, even their cousins and even the Kosovars. Armeil’s daughter had witnessed the theft of the camera and tapes. Five teenage boys had been talking and one raced from behind their group to snatch it while I was not looking. With my flu my concentration has not momentarily lapsed but continuously. Often when I am in an alien and hostile environment every move is an exhausting challenge. The shelling, trying to give to people who need, while simultaneously others are stealing with the other hand. How can I possibly give when everyone is stealing from us? How can I be generous when everyone wants? When everyone is drowning they will drown us with them. Armeil’s daughter had witnessed the theft but she was only five years of age. Firouz red faced and breathing hard returned with a bemused Albanian, Mr Plod, the policeman. They were both talking and gesticulating, breathing hard. He was in khaki fatigues and gave us the complacent knowledge that under his fatherly guidance the stolen goods would be returned immediately. He was happily prescribing aspirin for cancer. And the patient was already dead. Needing a resurrection, I had to develop a game plan. I decided that our departure for Macedonia was to be postponed. To the widows apartment we returned with our bags minus one, stone-faced and numb. The widow was out and only that evening where we able to communicate to her, or rather she could finally ascertain the greatness of our misfortune. I exclaim: ‘So we…I’ve just lost , ah, 15 hours of video tape.’ Back at the ‘America Bar’ feeling crumpled and disheveled, the PR girl from one of the Kukes papers…with her slash of lipstick and a Turkish wisp to her countenance translated a document which we were to place on the radio and television:
M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell “A reward of $500 US dollars will be given for information leading to the return of twenty-five video cassettes and/or a video camera with an apparatus. With those people with any before knowledge or knowledge of the theft of a black camera case at the upper end of the main street where the minibus collects passengers please telephone either radio Kukes or radio television.” And there we left the telephone number. We printed the text up on a broken old Olivetti and Xeroxed a hundred copies which we sticky taped to lamp posts, dilapidated kiosks, pine trees and broken avenues. Hordes of children follow us while the pieces of paper had a shelf life of four hours before being dismembered, torn into two by agitated hands and thrown to the wind. It is almost like a white ant which goes through the wood work of a building within days. Here everything is eaten including pieces of paper stuck on walls. The television advertisement about the reward was announced three times. We went to the radio station, Zhana was there as we explained our plight. Her hands lifted up in despair: ‘Oh Albania. It is an old and sorry story’. We were attempting to illegally negotiate with the thieves. In another world with laws and enforcement this would have been unacceptable but here in a country of insanity, lawlessness and war only the path of insanity can be followed. So if we could get the footage returned through financial inducement well and good. We had US$1,500 dollars left. That was all. That day we heard about the journalist from Finland who had been abducted by the Serbs at the Morine border. He had strayed too close to the border crossing and had been snatched. And it was that day that I heard from Ardian that our surrogate friend Ezerum, a bony businessman with dopey eyes and a fluffed pate, was attempting to squeeze US$20 dollars per night from the widow from our stay. He was always trying to talk with us but he had no English, so he was like an old canine mongrel without teeth who could not get his bone; he could not even suck on it for that matter. As we crossed the street numb and dejected and clumsily stuck the reward poster to walls, to dead trees, to pine trees to derelict kiosks the thieves were laughing. I’m sure it was so obvious to them because they knew the city, they knew what we were doing and they were just laughing away. At 7.15 we returned home after having completed as many leaflet drops as humanly possible and at 9.00 pm the widow raced in to our bedroom to say that it had been announced on television that the bag had been found. This was not to be the case. We ran on foot breathless across town to the television station; climbed the ceramic stair well to the second floor of the Television Station Kukes which was the size of a scout hall with a corridor. I strode straight through the centre, a dozen rooms placed either side of a corridor to greet a man in a grey camera vest. The cameraman from Kukes TV who had been at the concert and photographed the concert proceeded (but his English was minimal) to help us negotiate with the thieves. They had telephone 45 minutes before to say that they had the bag. They were in command of the situation; they had what we needed and they were not going to expose As we crossed the street numb and dejected and clumsily stuck the reward poster to walls, to dead trees, to pine trees to derelict kiosks the thieves were laughing. themselves to an arrest. Firouz’s remarked: ‘I would not be surprised if the thieves were the police who had already requisitioned the stolen goods and were deciding to make a profit or make a little pocket money.’ So we sat down ejected and exhausted even before anything had happened. We knew it was going to be a long night. We sat in the director’s office waiting for the telephone to ring. It rang, and then it rang, and then it rang. The information relayed backwards and forwards. It was like a kidnapped child was held hostage and the child was being negotiated and ransomed off. The most important point was not to retrieve the camera equipment but to return the video footage of the event. The footage contained the concert, interviews with the refugees, and important declarations about human rights abuses if not genocide. I was hoping that by regaining it we could use it as a tool to bring people’s attention to this titanic tragedy that was surrounding us. We were now another victim of this tragedy. But we may have lost the camera but we had not lost our homes or our lives. Ermine (and I will get his full name later) was a sweet, slightly glaucous-eyed, and heavily pigmented cameraman for television Kukes. He used to complain that as a poor cameraman from Kukes TV his tool was a bad clumsy VHS Panasonic to film, but it was his respect or camaraderie with Firouz that made him decide to help us.
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KOSOVO 1999

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