Interviews Who We Were; Who We Are Kosovo Roma Oral Histories - 2004 - "Roma never wanted to be rich; they always searched for happiness in any place, and this is all." -Feride Hasani, Preoce, Kosovo Who We Were; Who We Are Kosovo Roma Oral Histories - 2004 – TEAM Bobby Anderson Sebastian Šerifović Adem Osmani Aferdita Beriša Table of Contents 1. Introduction/Project Background 2. Roma History a. Introduction, origins, the migrations, and the Roma presence in Europe from the early medieval period to the Second World War b. The Romany Holocaust; Roma in post-WWII Eastern Europe & Yugoslavia until 1989 c. Kosovo History- from the medieval Nemanjic Dynasty to 1989 d. The 1989 revocation of autonomy, the nonviolent resistance, the Kosovo Liberation army, the 1999 war, and Kosovo today 3. Interviews 4. Castes and Clans: Roma, Ashkalija, Egyptians and sub-classifications 5. Politics 6. Education Issues 7. RomaHolidays 8. Music 9. Weddings 10. Interviewee Area Profiles: a. Southwestern Pristina Municipality - Gracanica, Preoce, Livadje, Laplje Selo & Caglavica b. Kosovo Polje, Obilic/ Obiliq & Vucitrn/ Vushtrri Municipality: Kosovo Polje, Plemetina Village, Plemetina Camp, Crkvena Vodica and Priluzje c. The Northern Municipalities - South Mitrovica, Cezmin Lug (North Mitrovica), Zitkovac (Zvecan) and the Warehouse (Leposavic) d. Novo Brdo - Bostan, Gnjilane/ Gjilan e. Prizren 11. Adem’s War Diaries, 1999 12. Roma human rights report excerpts 14. Acknowledgements/ Project Staff/ Donors and Implementers 15. Bibliography 16. Maps INTRODUCTION Introduction All place names mentioned in this project - towns, villages, and municipalities - are in listed primarily in Serbian. Where relevant, the Albanian name follows. This is not a reflection of our political beliefs. Serbian names are internationally recognized; the new Albanian names are not known outside the province. The name Roma is used in place of Gypsy - a word with its origins in the misplaced assumption, by Europeans, that the Roma in their midst originated in Egypt. Europe was recently emerging from the dark Kosovo in Europe ages when Roma first appeared there; no one had seen Egyptians in a long time, and things got a bit confused. While the word Gypsy has romantic connotations in North America, it is generally a racist term, as are its many equivalent terms in the European languages: Zigeuner (German), Cigan (Serbian/ Croatian), Maxhup (Albanian), Athingani (Greek - do not touch), Kipti (Turkish), Gitano (Spanish) and Gitan (French). This project exclusively uses the word Roma. It encompasses all sub-groupings. Sometimes, Roma in this project are sub-identified by their particular clan, be it Gurbeti, Muhadjeri, Arlija, Bugurdjije, Ashkalija, or Egyptian (although Egyptian is more a hopeful non-Roma classification than a clan). A British ‘Gypsy’ was once asked why his people were called Roma. “’Cos we’re always roamin’,” he answered. There is a much simpler answer; Roma is the Romanes word for man, or us. Prizren's Terzi Mahala This project was implemented between February and July of 2003 in several Kosovo Roma communities. It started long before that - in early 2001, when we began to see and understand the need for such a project. - 1 - INTRODUCTION In November of 2001, we conducted a random interview in Gracanica to see what it would yield. We picked the mother of the middle-aged blacksmith next door, who we’d paid to weld iron bars over our windows. His mother, on sunny days, would slowly walk outside her small, well-kept home, to sit in the sun. She brought a small stool with her and placed it on the edge of the dirt road that ran up to the unused railroad tracks and the Serb homes beyond. On every sunny day I exchanged greetings with her on the way to or from work. Adem Osmani interviewed her. He struck gold. She was almost 90 years old - she was sharp and lucid, she cracked jokes and occasionally she smoked a cigarette. She revealed to us a world none of us knew about; the woman spoke of growing up in Pristina’s Moravska Mahalla in the 1920s, when the Serbs were rare and the Turks were still the elite of the town. She spoke of the smells, the languages, the Turkish markets, the politics, and her best friend who she played with despite the fact that they shared no common language. She learned Turkish in order to better play dolls with her. She talked about Italian officers and the German occupation forces; she spoke of Roma traditions that we’d never seen or heard of - not even from the Roma we knew around Gracanica. Father and Son: Kosovo Polje She was not the inspiration for this project; she was confirmation that it was worthwhile. We were going to showcase her, and others her age, and we would dig into them - sell them the project idea and the value it could possibly have. Through eighty or more interviews, a broad picture would eventually emerge; a history of people who no one had ever been too interested in before. Roma have been studied exhaustively - by some that hate them, by some that treat them as pets, and by some that are simply curious. Only a few scholars paid attention to Kosovo’s Roma - Crowe and Duijzings - and it wasn’t enough. We’re not scholars. We thought that we would paint a picture of a world that no longer existed. We’d find Roma that could remember a southeastern Europe before the borders were solidified, and later sealed. We dreamt of bridal fairs and horses run through mountains to graze, families and clans that would wander this area according to their trades and the seasons. We got romantic; it was naïve, and it was stupid and wrong. No such picture emerged. We were lucky with the first interview, but we didn’t record it. We laid down improvised shorthand in a child’s soiled notebook. And when we secured the funding for this project, we went back to that old woman who used to sit in - 2 - INTRODUCTION the sun before the winter came on and the power died and we were all buried in snow until March. She didn’t survive the winter. Her son told us that she went to sleep one night and never woke. Since then we have not found others as lucid or revealing as her. Her generation is functionally dead. Their stories died with them. Occasionally we thought we’d get lucky again. We discovered a 101-year-old woman in an Ashkalija Mahala in Kosovo Polje. She was deaf and blind. We interviewed her son; he could tell us nothing about what she had told him; Roma bride in Obilic, circa 1960s maybe she never told him anything at all. She sits in Kosovo Polje now, still alive, with a shawled head full of memories she’ll never speak of. Roma appearances are deceptive. Life in Kosovo’s tough. It wrings the beauty out of the women and the ambition out of the men, because ambition here was never rewarded unless, depending on the decade, you were a Serb, or an Albanian, or a communist or a nationalist. We found elderly Roma in every site but in the end, many of them weren’t so elderly - 55 years old on average. We discovered older Roma who wouldn’t talk, or couldn’t talk, and we found Roma that wished to speak with us but couldn’t recall how many children they had. And while they told us some things, what we really wanted - the memories of their parents, of their stories - came out to a paragraph or two. Maybe the memories were painful, whether good or bad, because they represented poverty, desperation, racism, and times past that may have been better than the Roma situation now. We asked Kosovo Roma to share stories, events and histories at a time when those memories may be exceptionally painful to recall. “We don’t have anything that is our own. All we have was taken by other nations.” - Ibrahim Eljšani Prizren, Kosovo - 3 - INTRODUCTION This project is a document of what has been lost. It’s about a language choked with foreign words; traditions often followed by rote; a people removed from their past, trying to preserve the things they have left that make them Roma. It’s about a people who have lived in Kosovo for hundreds of years and have never been afforded a true place there by others. It is said that the Roma version of history is simply the earliest memory of the oldest member of the community. And when they die, they take their history with them. Kosovo’s Roma live precariously. The Albanians say they sided with the Serbs. Some call them Shqiptarët I dorës së dytë - Second-hand Albanians.1 Many Albanized Roma in western Kosovo declared themselves Egyptians - before, to reclaim their culture, and after the NATO war’s end, to offset the murders, rapes, beatings and expulsions that were collectively directed at Roma after June of 1999. The NATO campaign against Yugoslavia began on March 24, 1999. It ended after 78 days of bombing. In that time, Yugoslav forces expelled roughly 800,000 Kosovo Albanians, and killed thousands in the process. The West thought it would take years for the Albanian refugees to return. It took weeks. Returning Albanians - and the Kosovo Albanian community at large - turned on Kosovo’s Roma. The Kosovo Destroyed Roma home: Kosovo 2003 Albanian perception of Roma - collaborators, spies, looters and gravediggers - was accepted as fact. And Kosovo’s Roma were beaten, raped, murdered, expelled, robbed, burned out of their communities and driven into fast-established enclave areas. Those that avoided this fate fell back into their Mahalas – neighborhoods - where most continue to suffer at the hands of the majority community. Some Mahalas - in Mitrovica and Pristina - were entirely burned and destroyed. No matter that it was not their war. In the end they, as the weakest minority in Kosovo, were shattered. “My son was killed. He was 44 years old, and now his wife is a widow with three children. He was murdered by the Serb military; they thought that he was someone else, and they shot him. - 4 - INTRODUCTION My other son found him, and when he saw him he collapsed.” - Azem Beriša Kosovo Polje/ Fushë Kosovë Kosovo The security situation has improved. This may reflect that Roma and other minorities have gotten smarter instead of the hatred getting lighter. Roma refugees are slowly returning; this is a long, slow, and oft-times hazardous process. Roma are now visible in Pristina; some of them beg, others recycle, and a few entrepreneurs have set up squeegee businesses by the UN-installed traffic lights; they’ll clean your windshield for 50 Euro cents or one Euro if you drive a big white car. They’re all smart enough to make themselves scarce after dark. Bullet for Enemy: Pristina Graffiti, 2003 The NATO campaign ended four years ago. Most Roma still speak of it in the present tense; it has not stopped. They also don’t refer to it as ‘the war,’ or ‘the NATO campaign.’ They simply call it ‘the bombing,’ as that’s all it really was for them. With Serbs and Albanians, Roma were in the middle. Both sides courted them, neither liked nor trusted them, and all thought the Roma were a notch beneath them. So the Roma were pushed, pulled and broken between the two, and many of them were expelled along with the Albanians, while others were bombed along with the Serbs. Mythology has solidified into history for many Albanians; they were on the side of the Serbs, and that’s that. History has no need for simplicity or clarity; it recognizes no such things. But people who seek explanations for the terrible things that they dealt with and witnessed do. Humans aren’t good at history; we seek to categorize. And most Albanians have categorized the Roma as fifth columnists. No matter that they were forced to dig graves. No matter that, for every Roma that stole something, more were expelled. No matter that Albanian-speaking Roma were driven into Albania and Macedonia only to find themselves assaulted by Albanians in the camps; they were intimidated into registering themselves as Albanians, and were refused humanitarian aid by local NGO employees - both Slavs and Albanians. No - 5 - INTRODUCTION matter that some were killed by Yugoslav troops, or that when they fled to Serbia, many were expelled back into Kosovo as undesirables. No matter that many of their women were raped and deal now with the trauma of not being able to mention it because they’ll forever be regarded as unclean by their own. No matter that, as a suspect people and a nationality with no nation, they have always had to gravitate toward those that are in power, and those that own the scaffolds, truncheons and whips. Kosovo’s Roma are now convenient scapegoats for one side and manual laborers for the other. Or better, as a Roma in Gracanica told me: To the Albanians, we’re dogs. To the Serbs, we’re pet dogs. Who We Were; Who We Are is the result of two and a half years of work with the Kosovo Roma. This project was thoroughly shaped by their suggestions and ideas. After all, it’s their story. Here’s to them. Bobby Anderson BACK to Table of Contents - 6 -