KOSOVO 1999

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.