Author: Luljeta Selimi Tel: +377 (0)44 209651 Web: luljeta_s@hotmail.com     Translated by Alban Bytyqi

INSTEAD OF PREFACE

Why did I have to publish the real life stories of the raped women of Kosovo?
One of the main reasons is because the truth about this chapter, the most heartbreaking and sensitive of the last War in Kosovo, which ended in 1999, has remained overshadowed, and it must be brought into the public domain however shattering and disheartening that might be. The real truth always hurts and is a heavy burden, especially when it concerns the largest wound of every war, the raping.
Rapes occur in every war and everywhere it is considered the biggest crime of them all. Even during the last three wars in the region, the Serbians used unseen and unheard rapes, in Croatia, Bosnia and finally in Kosovo. Hence, even in Kosovo, apart from murders, homelessness, burnings, ruins, insurgents, kidnappings and imprisonment, there were also rapes.
Rapes are a heavy embarrassment for every nation in the world, and especially for our people the moral values form the most sensitive part of its existence. During my fieldwork, I have come across rapes which were violent, and seen how heavily emotional they were for their families, their social circle and every Albanian. People in Kosovë, both ordinary citizens and the high- class politicians, avoid discussions about rapes at all costs. I do understand why Kosovars do not talk, write and do anything to investigate their own rapes! But, what I do not understand is the International Organizations acting in Kosovë, which receive large amounts of donations for these projects and literally do nothing to investigate the rapists or help the raped women.
The other reason which pushed me to publish this book with the horrifying stories of some of the raped women, is the unacceptable behavior of those who have been asked to do something in these respects! They behave as if nothing has happened, no war, no murders, no burnings, no insurgents, no rapes, nothing at all. To make it even worse, they behave as if the rapes have occurred somewhere else, not here in front of us with the entire world to see it! Today in Kosovë, there are women who suffer from a very difficult physical, psychological and material state! These women need support, both moral and material. They need continuous treatment and medical care. Nobody does anything for them. The Tribunal in Hague does nothing to help these women, although its main and only function in Prishtina ‘carried out’ by the International Prosecutor is: to investigate all the rapes that have occurred in Kosovo during the war. What is more important for these Kosovar women to know is that plenty of Bosnian raped women have and will carry on testifying for their rapes during the war in the Hague Tribunal. A similar opportunity should have been made available to Kosovë’s women, too. It is these women who should have been given the opportunity to testify and report Serbian criminals. I do know and perfectly understand this is a very difficult task to carry out, however, something must always be clear: a crime cannot and must not be hidden, because these criminals will tell the truth themselves one day; the truth cannot be hidden forever. It is to their benefit and in their best interest; they must speak the truth, because it is the only way to spit out the poison and misery they store in their souls. The raped women must try to find the cure to heal themselves from the wounds inside their souls, as their health and emotional circumstances may have irreparable consequences, especially when it is a known and accepted fact that they lack the most elementary professional and institutional care. This is a fact: How can a 14- year old girl heal herself and want to live her life again? How can a young girl accept her fate when her fiancé has abandoned her because the Serbian raped her? How can a young mother accept her fate and the fact that she can no longer have children after being raped and losing her baby? How can a mother ever return to her own children and family after being raped by the Serbians in front of them? How can those women forget all this without the help and support of the whole Kosovër society? How, how...?? I probably would have never published these stories if it wasn’t for one victim telling me one morning that apart from being raped, they are also abandoned and offended. When I tried to console her and give some support, she whispered in my ear: “We, the raped women who today suffer all this, are the morality and immorality of all Kosovë.” Even when we are in the middle of the living ones, we feel dead again! Even when we cross the street, we feel the burden of rape, we see it in people’s eyes, which will never be able to imagine and describe what we have gone through. We are the wound of every person, the suffering and absence of every child. Even when people do not know about our existence and laugh, we still think that they are laughing at us and making fun of our tragedy. Even when they cry, curse and spit, we still are the most vulnerable and tragic part of this whole war... Today we feel abandoned, and we carry the heavy burden of everything that is being built in Kosovo! We are the blood, the dust and the spit of Kosovo from yesterday, today and tomorrow, which is why someone should speak up for us. I am telling you this, because I know that you can do something for us, you heal our wounds every single day. Our suffering would be greater if someone did it for a profit or insult...” Our suffering would be greater if someone did it for a profit or insult...” she said, wanting to emphasize that her and other women’s wounds should revive vivacity in every one’s consciousness. We should all know that freedom bore a heavy price and, the largest proportion of that price has been paid by the raped victims of the war. Those who step on their graves (as many of those who were raped, they were massacred afterwards), those who step on the wounds, sufferings, tears and tragedy of these women, they must know well that they are the image and true face of Kosovar women, they must know that they step on the most vulnerable and hurtful part of the freedom of Kosovë. The ones that feel ashamed are those who step on the victims of a sad and sour tragedy and insult them. Let them remind themselves once again how it would feel if this happened to their mothers, daughters, sisters, girlfriends who they love so dearly! We should realize that all these women are asking for is support, help and daily medical treatment professionally and institutionally. May this book be of modest help; not only in uncovering all the rapes that occurred, but also ensuring their adequate treatment. Maybe this book will come across criticism of different kinds, but I always believe, that no matter how sad and sour the truth is, it must come to light at the end so that nobody forgets about it and it does not repeat itself. I have shared the pain with all my sisters, and I apologize in advance and request their understanding, if I have hurt their feelings by reviving their sad and hurtful past in this book.
The Author

2. “I HAVE NO MORE POWER LEFT TO RETURN TO MY BIRTHPLACE”

“Even today, I do not know how many days have passed since the Serbian police came into our house. I was so scared and thought, we had run out of luck just like many other families had; but we escaped, nothing happened to us on this occasion. We had three minutes to get out of the house; we got out.
When we arrived in Pejë, a town in the western side of Kosovë, very close to the Montenegrin border, the police stopped us again. They demanded 50 Deutsch Marks per person in order for us to be allowed to continue towards Albania. We only had 200 Deutsch Marks, and there were nine of us. We began to whisper questions; who will be saved? Which one of us will they detain? Meanwhile, my father handed them all the money we had, and told them that we were eight people altogether. The Serbian police looked at us, and after they took my mother’s and my wedding rings, they let us go.
As we got out of Peja, another police patrol stopped us. They too demanded Deutsch Marks but we had none left; luckily, one other family from Glogjan paid them on our behalf otherwise they would not have let us go. We departed again. Several hundred meters further, the Serbian police had stopped the snake-like column of people that stretched all the way to the border with Albania, which is positioned south of Kosovë. All these people were the war-fleeing inhabitants of the villages surrounding the towns of Ferizaj, Suharekë, Rahovec, Prizren, Malishevë and even Gjakovë.
Now the police had stopped us permanently until they could finish searching us, thus we had to wait on the road. Although it was not too hot, it was tough to stay waiting there. We had neither bread nor water. The police would not allow us to continue towards Albania, to return home or even sit down. Standing and leaning on each other, we stayed for over eleven hours. When the first shades of the evening darkness began to fall, the column of people slowly started to move.
We were so exhausted, yet we hoped to arrive alive in Albania. It was a long way; as we continued it became a long and winding road and during the night heavy showers of rain began to fall which immediately lowered the temperature.
The next morning dawned and it was so cold. Our children began to cry; the police officers were getting angrier by the minute. At some point they became real savages; it seemed that they had just learned that they had lost some of their fellow soldiers at the war-front with the “UÇK”, “Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës”, which in English means the NLA, “National Liberation Army”. There were still two or three kilometers to go until we reached the border with Albania; now we could see there was another police check-point. Once we arrived there, the Serbian police begun to search us again. Now everything became worse. Pretending to search us women, they started touching our bodies; in the meantime, men were heavily beaten and were forced to give all their money to the police. Our family had no money left; last time we had been saved by a family who now faced death alongside us. As I followed the officers’ command, to move to the other side, I saw some other officers beating my twelve-year-old brother; I ran from the police officer who was searching me, towards where my brother was being beaten. I wanted to save him as best as I possibly could. He is the only brother amongst eight sisters.
The officer who was beating him dragged me by my long hair and pushed me towards the chief officer in command; I could tell he was a chief officer because of the army stripes he was displaying on his arm, and, in front of thousands of people, he began to take my clothes off with the tip of an army knife. He took all my clothes off in front of my father, in front of my mother, in front of my brother, in front of my husband, and my children. My children began to cry loudly, but the police had no mercy upon them or me. The chief officer pulled me by my hair towards an army cabin they had built near the road. At this point, I was crying and screaming my lungs out. One of them pushed me against a table, which seemed to have been built especially to rape women; now they tied my hands. I remember, after he began to rape me, to dehumanize me, after he took my human dignity in front of my people and the whole world, I knocked the table with my head, whereupon they began to laugh as if this was a spectacular theatre play. I remember, like the worst nightmare, when they ordered my family members and other relatives to keep on walking. Even today, I can hear the screaming of my mother, not willing to continue towards the Albanian border without me. My nightmares now only occur when I see or hear my mother; whom I never saw thereafter. My nightmares not only remind me how I was raped, but also how they knocked my head with their gun-butts. I had lost consciousness; I do not remember who took me to Kukës, a small city in northeast Albania, or how, but I remember the cries, the screeches and mourning by other women and children along the way.
Little flashback nightmares remind me how many other women had been raped just like I was. I was taken to a hospital in Tirana, Albania’s capital city. There, I stayed for nineteen days. My husband had stayed at my bedside for six days, but I did not recognize him. I had lost my senses and memory from the knocks I received from the soldier’s gun-butts. It was my five-years-old daughter’s crying voice that I first began to hear; she had been asking me why I was not speaking to her, when I began to come out of the coma status; a situation from which even doctors were surprised to see me come back to life.
Today, I consider it impossible to go back and live where I lived before with my children and my husband. I cannot return to my birthplace because I have no will left, I do not have any kind of willpower, because I feel ashamed for what has happened to me. Hundreds of fellow neighbors and thousands of other people have seen every part of my body. Fortunately, my husband understands me, but for the rest of my life, I will be haunted by two wounds which will never be cured. I will always be haunted by the death of my mother under such circumstances and the physical rape I suffered from those heartless people, which is heavier than death itself—”, stressed, at the end of her shattering story,
D.R. from the village of Pejë.

3. LIFE TURNED ITS BACK ON ME; NOW I AM HOPELESS3.

Bedrije now lives on its own; her difficulty in securing some food for the next meal and the next day is just another life-shattering aspect of her loneliness. She lives in a little shack on top of a building in “Dardania”, a vicinity in Prishtina. The little hut, as dark as the evening shades of the approaching night, furnished with some old furniture, a bare floor and a broken toilet, reminded me of the extremely poor conditions of the rural villages of Kosovë. Yet, this was in the heart of Prishtina, Kosovo’s capital city.
On the little old wardrobe, which Bedrije had built for herself near the bed, she had placed a few old clothes and a few books. The rest of this little space she dedicated to some half-ripped apart, family photos. One of the photos displayed, stood out from the rest; it was a half-burned photo, enclosed in a valuable frame that attracted one’s attention. Bedrije’s face, though beautiful, conveyed the sadness of her living. Even while she uttered the usual greeting words, her eyes looked down. The look which she gave at people conveyed her deep depression and disheartenment. As Bedrije began to move her bedding clothes to make a little space to sit down, she groaned and furtively bit her lip as if she wanted to hide something.
She sat on that old bed of hers that did not look like a bed at all and without being questioned, with tears showing through her eyes, she began to speak. She said: “do you see this shack? I have been living here for two years. I would be able to stand the poverty and the broken-down furniture if my rent was cheaper, for this henhouse,” she continued,
“I have to pay one hundred Deutsch Marks per month. When it does not rain it is not that bad! But when it rains I need to move the bed in the middle of the room and I have to place the dishes in the four corners of this so-called room so as to hold the rainwater that leaks inside. I have had to go through the same situation throughout the whole of last winter. Think about it,”
She continued,
“How can a human being warm herself in this kind of dwelling? There are so many cracks that let the cold through. Oh God, I don’t know how I can
3 Translated by A. Bytyqi
stand it…but this is not what agonizes me the most; the problem is not that I have to survive on 240 Deutsch Marks, which is the wage that I get paid for my job as a nurse. It is not this misery, for which I am really suffering; it is not the lack of food, the need to eat plain mouldy bread, sometimes even without salt to accompany it. This is not what impairs my heart…My trouble is huge, it is much bigger because I must pretend to be like everyone else, I must work in order to live and, at the same time, act so that people will not have the opportunity to be happy because of my misfortune”.
Bedrije wanted to continue but she covered her beautiful face with her hands, her face it became paler by the second and in silence she cried for a few minutes. Her hands began to shake while she was crying and she tried to stop them trembling by pressing them strongly against her body. As if this was not enough, she hid her trembling hands between her shuddering knees. The darkness of the room became heavier; her tears constantly falling met at the bottom of her chin and her imagination was now overtaken by the memories of the war that was yet to end for all the people of Kosovë. She looked for a few seconds at the framed picture, took it in her hands and after a very deep breath she said,
“Do you see those people? They are the most beloved people I have ever had. In this picture I am together with my father, my mother and my only brother. These are the days of my childhood, the days when I did not understand what was happening around me; the days when I did not understand why it was so important for my father to watch the news. He wanted to know what was happening around us and what would happen to us.
My father knew that the door to the near-future was being knocked by the looming horror of the inevitable war; and that we had to sacrifice ourselves for our freedom and that we had to work for our future. I know that, as all the other children, I tried to be happy with the few things that I had, without being able to understand that the police officers that roamed and looted our city on a daily basis, one day would take my happiness as they were taking it from the people of my city.
My father sometimes used to say, pretending that he was joking, “If something happens to me or to any of us, the rest must continue to live with the freedom that will come, because freedom requires sacrifices, freedom does not come without blood; freedom finds its roots inside our blood.”
These words sounded too rhetorical to me as many as old sayings do; I did not understand that my father’s words were plain advice; I did not understand that his advice was going to be needed in the near future. When the Serbs massacred the Jasharaj Family4, my father said:
“This is what I have tried to explain to you for all these years. Serbs are as such; they will do anything to keep Kosovë occupied. The fate of the Jasharaj family will be that of many more Kosovar families. We will have
4 Jasharaj Family
plenty of martyrs until the war is over, Freedom will cost us very dearly, but we must become free at any cost. This should be the last time that we Kosovërs take the guns of freedom to get rid of this monstrous occupation.”
It was at this time that I realized that my father had been speaking all this time about a war that was now so close, but like all other children I contained my fears, I could not dare to believe that something would happen to me. I could not dare to think that something would happen to someone like me; a child, who was growing up under motherly caresses, I could not dare to believe that one day I was going to be living in complete loneliness, with no one in this world…” and she burst into tears and the cries again stopped her breath and the words were stuck in her throat.
At this moment she rose to her feet and began going around the damned room; she could not hide her gloom; she begun rubbing her hands against each other and in desperation she continued: “After the Massacre of Prekaz,5 my father no longer hid it from us that he was connected to the NLA and that he worked with their commanders. Thirty days had passed and he had not returned home. Sometimes when he came home we could not get off his lap, even though my brother and I were no longer kids. In September that year he was killed, and that’s when the whole world became a hell. Back then I thought that nothing could make me sadder. A few months later the NLA soldiers came and asked us to move to a safer place, but my mother said “We will stay and wait here, let happen whatever is meant to happen to all people of Gjakova” and there we remained. When the Serbian army bombings began and when they began to randomly murder people regardless of their age and gender my mother said nothing, as she now understood why we should have moved to a safer place. On the fourth day the Serbian police came to our house and shot my mother and my brother. They took me with them, raped and tortured me; they burned me with cigarettes so much I cannot describe it. Every time I change my clothes and see the marks of ravishment something dies within me, it consumes me like the mouth of hell. Now my life is destroyed, my life is ruined, it is demolished forever. Now I live alone without any help even though someone may think about me.”

4. “PLEASE LET ME DIE!”6

When soldiers brought H.N to the military hospital, she was between life and death. The military doctors did not know how to help a raped woman; but they asked a female doctor who was near by. They gave blood to her; her wounds though were still bleeding. The doctors wanted to save her regardless of her condition. When another female doctor arrived, although she was unqualified as a gynaecologist yet, she decided to intervene surgically, also regardless of her patients’ dying condition. When another qualified female gynaecologist came in and saw the wounds, she said to her colleagues “don’t even try, let her die. Her organs are coming out; I would not do such a thing” The unqualified doctor, very worried and upset as she was, cleaned her sweat then turned towards the qualified doctor and said “Are you going to help me or not?” “I think she is in
see map6 Translated by A. Bytyqi
7
Kommentar: How old was your brother?Kommentar: Here I mean that the gynaecologist had not yet been wualified to take such decisions. danger, she is going to die” replied the other doctor. “As it is, if she is not sewn very quickly she will die, so please help me, so we do not lose more time” said the young doctor again; she asked the nurses to help her and everyone was informed of what was happening. The young doctor enjoyed a friendly relationship with everyone in the hospital, but she was valued most because of her insistent nature.
The minutes dragged; not only for H.N. but also for the doctor and her assistants…The most difficult time occurred after about an hour in the operating theatre, when the area came under new army bombardments. Now casualties were to be expected. The only operating theatre was still occupied. Bombardments continued, but the NLA soldiers begun to return fire against the Serbian army, in our defence. Two grenades fell very close to the hospital. The young doctor was shaking with fear, but she continued what she was doing. Every second was a war on many fronts for her and for all the others. She now saw that the girl’s womb was ripped apart and, her genital organs were filled with sand, consequently is was impossible to sew the wounds without cleaning them thoroughly. Once she finished the internal sewing, she thought that it was over, but now she saw that the girl’s stomach had another wound. Although she was very worried, she finished successfully. Yet, even after she had finished the whole operation she did not leave the operating theatre, but stayed at the girl’s bedside. After she had been looking at her patient for a few minutes, she uncovered the girl’s body and begun to clean her other wounds. She began from the girl’s scratched legs, then her chest, where in between her breasts, with the tip of a knife; they had drawn the Serbian cross. While cleaning it she found a peace of glass. She very carefully took it off, cleaned thoroughly and placed on a piece of gauze. Then, H.N. stirred as if she wanted to write something and moaned. Please do not move, u have been operated on” said the young femaledoctor, who would not take her eyes from the sad eyes of the girl that were turning into a lifeless yellowish colour. “Why?”, she asked; two tears begun to fall from her eyes.
“You have been in danger but now everything has finished, you have been saved. You will need the energy that is left in you to recover so please do not try to remember the bad things that have hurt you. Close your eyes and try to rest.”,
Said the young doctor, thinking that her patient was not aware of the fact that she had been operated. “Why did you do this? Why did you save me? Please let me die! Please do this service for me! Please…”, said the girl, while her tears streamed, and her lips trembled. “Listen” said the young doctor “do not think but only rest now!” but her patient, while biting her lip, shook her head in a sign of disagreement.

5. “THE ONLY THING THAT HAVE REMAINED IN MY LIFE ARE MY CHILDREN”7
“—A few days after the bombardments begun, my husband said “Grua” which in English means wife, but unlike in the English language, in Albanian this noun is often used to address your partner instead of using their name or any other form of affectionate nicknames, “People are coming from all sides of Kosovë, and they are fleeing towards Macedonia, what about us are we going to stay here? What if
7 Translated by A. Bytyqi
police catch us alive?”. I looked at him; somehow I felt a promotion of the fatality that was to follow. I felt that my life had come to an abrupt end long ago, in the past. My whole body began to shake. I prepared my children and put some food in my bags. While we were going out through the garden gate, I looked one more time towards the house and said to my husband “I have never lived such difficult time, will we even return to this home again, to continue our life?” He looked at me, but said nothing; I was crying silently not to worry and upset my children. A few meters before we joined the huge human snake line that was coming from central Kosovë, the Serbian police stopped us. They ordered my husband to get out of the car and then begun to hit him with their gun butts. My children began to cry and so did I. When they approached and dragged me out of the car, the children began to cry even more. They did not hit me, butencircled me and began going into circles around me, just like the wild animals go around their prey.
They called a man to come over to where we were; “You have a fish” they said to him. After about two minutes, a man with a long beard and reddish eyes, whose breath was stinking alcohol, arrived. He began speaking to me with a bastardized Albanian dialect, and said “You are the most beautiful Albanian women that I have seen, and you will be the most beautiful Albanian women I am going to have in bed”. I began to beg him; I was crying and could not take my eyes away from my husband who was in front of me. With him were my children. “I love these days when Albanians beg and lie low; it is like the sweetest dessert.” he said. “She is a teacher, so we must see what she teaches the Albanians” said another one of them. “Even better! Get the camera because I cannot wait. I want to have her immediately”, said the one with the beard, and started to take off his trousers. Two of them were holding my arms. He came close and started undressing me. “I will give you my money and my gold, but please do not rape me” I said to them. Hearing what I said, one of them freed my hand and said “Go and bring them”. I went to the car, took everything and gave it to them, but their attitude did not change. They did not let either me or my husband go. The one that was holding the camera told them to start. My husband was shaking. One of the savages started to take my clothes off again, while the others laughed out loud around me just like wolfs howling. When they jumped upon me, my husband made an attempt to escape to come to help me, but one of them who was standing behind him, spent an entire magazine of thirty two bullets into his body. I shouted so loud and my children began to scream, I made an attempt to escape but my effort was only entertaining them. My children got out of the car and run over the minced bloodied corpse of their father, while I was being raped and dehumanized only a few meters away. There are no words or phrases to describe the pain and dehumanization that I felt during this time and ever thereafter. A few minutes later, the one who was holding the camera, turned around and begun to film my children beside their father’s lifeless bloody body, to record their cries, and capture their tears. “We need this! It will be a magnificent example to stimulate other young Albanians” said one of them. Later they put my children into a car, while our car was taken into the garden of the shelter they were using.
I was played with by some other soldiers as well, but at last I was locked inside the cellar of a house near by. They kept me there for a few days; I had lost my consciousness and the ability to stand up. I did not look like a human, yet they raped me again; I do not remember how many times. The only thing that I know
is that they dropped me on the road side where a family found me, took and helped me so much. I will never forget how the woman washed my wounds, and when I told her how they raped me she was so comforting. She commiserated with me and kept promising me that she would find my missing children, whether dead or alive. This family from Ferizaj8, has supported and helped me so much. They helped me to find my children, and even when we left to return to Kosovë. When I arrived back home, I only found the demolished remains of the house. Now I am a houseless widow, suffering most from a psychological pain, which has driven me towards madness. What keeps me alive are my children”— said the teacher, from Kaçanik9, and wept.

6. HER LIFE ENDED ON THE WAVES OF THE ADRIATIC SEA10
The day that we were evicted from our house, she had cried so much that every person present had thought her heart was going to break. “Will I meet my brothers again; will we ever meet again alive in this land of Kosovë?” she asked over and over again had been asking tens of times.
When her family had approached the Macedonian border, she stopped the car and joined the column made up of thousands of people. While the rest of her family had fallen asleep inside the car, she stood wakeful, and every so often she went out to smoke her cigarettes. The next morning her mother criticized her for going out of the car alone; with a very calm voice, she replied “Mother! This expulsion is death anyway. If bullets hit me it would not be any different”. Her wounded father, in loving way, said “My daughter! I will not live long! You have to take care of the family, and please do not stay out too long at a time, because they will notice you because you are so beautiful, they will come and abduct you immediately”.
On the second day, H.S. did not eat anything. It was just after sunset, in the dusk, when the Serbian police begun to extort money from the Albanian cars.
H.S. was not worried about the looting, that their car was chosen too, but was worried about her injured father. When her turn came to get every one out of the car, she had the courage to oppose their order and bravely said “I am not going to give you the car, I have a wounded person inside”. Before she finished what she was saying, one of the police officers shouted “Take them and their car together!” Her effort had been pointless as two of the police officers, mercilessly threw everyone out. They left her family outside there, in the middle of nowhere; they took her to a house in Kaçanik11, a town in east Kosovë, and tied her up. In the next morning, they shot two young people before her eyes; “At least I am not going to end up in their hands” she thought hoping and thinking that they would kill but not rape her. A few minutes later, the two officers who had taken here there, appeared again. “Are you going to give birth to children in Serbia, you Albanian woman?” said one of them, while the other began to touch her pubic hair; the room felt as cold and as dark as hell. She made an attempt to
8 Please refer to the map provided to locate this town in the map of Kosovë9 Please refer to the map provided to locate this town in the map of Kosovë10 Translated by A. Bytyqi
see map
10
Kommentar: How long had u been away from your home? run but his strong hand pulled her back, and like a monstrous cold snake, he began to touch her young body. Again she tried to defend herself but if was pointless; there two of them and her hands were tied with handcuffs. They raped her until they were tired; her face was covered in blood, because they had punched her head and her nose so many times. As they left she spat at them and one of them turned around pulled her again, and as she fell to the ground he dragged her for a few meters and said “This is going to be your portion every night, until you give birth to the child. Do not try to do something silly, because your family is in my hands, in case you have forgotten!”
It was on the fifth day. She had not put any kind of food in her mouth, because she hoped to die as soon as possible; and while the evening grew dark, the officers came again. She was praying to her God to die, but they raped her again. Just before they left they told her that her body was going to give birth to a Serbian’s child. “Maybe I will, but he will resemble me; and when he grows, he will come and kill you” she had replied. Before she finished what she was saying, one of them run and furiously stabbed her in her belly. She lost her consciousness, but she did not die.
Later, when she came to, she realized that her body was naked, but it was covered with a blanket. She blinked and, someone told her, that she was on a bus, which was going to Albania. When they entered Albania, a helicopter took her urgently to the hospital in Tirana, but her wounds were so deep and extensive that the Albanian hospital decided to send her to Italy. On the same evening they took her to Durrës, from where she was going to be taken to Italy by boat, and that night she slept on the waves of the Adriatic never to wake up again.

7. THE TRAGEDY OF A FAMILY12
“And, as I was being beaten by a police officer from behind, I heard three gunshots and three handgun bullets penetrated my only son’s body. My son fell to the ground, and died looking at me as if he was asking his mother for help; yet I was a powerless doll in the hands of those men. When the war began, I was so worried and upset that I spent days weeping. My husband, did not go to join our army (the NLA), or take us out of the village. Children behaved just like children as they were expected to; now they fear the noise of the heavy artillery. The noise of gunfire did not really make a difference gunshots noise did not really make a difference in their games; it was just like nothing strange was happening for them. I behaved like the mother that I was to them, except that fear could be heard and seen all around, I was so scared something would happen to them.
There were nights, when the battle began, that we had to lift our children from their beds as they were sleeping, and run to the nearest mountains. My face was never dry of tears. Oh God! How many tears I cried? My only prayer was, never to see something bad happening to my children. When my only girl, Nora was wounded, I do not know how I did not die from the pain that I felt in my heart, yet my sister said, “Now that your daughter is thirteen years of age, it would be better if a bullet takes her life than to be raped by the Serbian army, so
12 Translated by A. Bytyqi 11
Kommentar: Or those men? please be careful, take care and do not let her fall into the enemy’s hands alive.” One day my mother said, “I wish my children would rather die than fall into the hands of the ‘Shka’”13, “Because I know what the ‘Shka’ will do!” she continued. And while I was facing my daughter’s problems, my husband, just like an old powerless woman, had not even been for stove—wood. I had been married to him for fourteen years; but he had never looked so mad. When we took our wounded daughter outside of Kosovë, I was so relieved. One days, instead of telling my husband, I told my nine year old son, “Had you been a little bit older my son, you would have been amongst the NLA soldiers. There you would be safer and only there would you be able to serve and save your country”. My son told my husband what I told him; and my husband said “You may go, I want to die here, I am not a man for a rifle, I will stay here and die just like a weak bird, and if you go, you go but you will no longer continue to be my wife!” From that day, his words hurt me so much, but God will did not desert me.
I had made a mistake! The battles intensified from bad to worse during January ‘99. We and a few other families had remained inside the village, and when the police approached but a few kilometers away, I began to beg my husband to get out of the village, but he still said
“Me and my son will stay here! I am not going to let you take my son. It was your fault that my daughter got wounded; it was because you took her with you when you went into the woods for fire wood.” “But who was going to bring fire wood, what were you and the children going eat?” I asked him ferociously. For a few hours I thought that it would be better not to oppose him, after all I am a woman and I may not dictate to the man, so I shut up! In the evening, bullets began to come from all sides; there was not one side of our house wall that was not hit and drilled by bullets but maybe it was God’s will that we did not die. When the shooting lessened, I thought we would be able to escape, but they had surrounded us. As they approached my husband ran into the henhouse, while my son and I were sitting in silence. When one of them came and kicked the door with his foot, I took my son by the hand and I said to him “Son, whatever happens, you try to escape away; I have lived enough!” My son was now crying and was holding to my hand, but the police officer pushed us out in the middle of the garden, while other looked inside the house for valuable items. “Where is your husband? If you do not give us money and gold, we will kill your son.” In order to save my son I tried to find some gold I had, but my husband had taken both the money and the gold with him. “You have two more minutes, and then we will take the gold or your son” the police threatened me. My husband was still inside the henhouse, and was saying nothing; he loved himself more than his son. I was still in the middle of the garden; I was scared to go to him, because I thought they would kill my son, and standing there I had no money to give them. And, as I was thinking what to do, and at the same time being beaten by a police officer from behind, I heard three gunshots; three handgun bullets penetrated my only son’s body. I screamed so loud that I now wonder how the surrounding mountains did not fall upon us; how God not hear my crying scream, and did not feel my heart shattering with pain. My son fell aground, and died looking at me as if he was asking his mother for help; yet I was a powerless toy at the hands of those “law enforcement officers of a democratic state” as they called themselves. And now that I thought they would
13 Albanians from Kosovë and from the north of Albania have a traditional name for the Serbs, and Montenegrins.
12
Kommentar: Can I use this instead of mosnters leave, one of them came, tied my hands behind me. Again I saw my husband inside the henhouse, motionless. I and cursed my husband, but the police did not understand what I said, and kicked me and I began to roll a few meters downhill. They said something that I did not understand and then, one of them run furiously up to me. He ripped my clothes off to rape me. My husband still continued to look out at me every now and then; I was in such pain I could cry no more. I remember when they untied my hands, I hit one of the officers with a piece of wood but I could not escape them; I ran a few meters away but there were so many officers around the house. Many of them played with my body until I lost consciousness. A few days later, I was rescued by some people from the neighboring village, and they dressed the wounds that army knives had caused to my body. While the Serbian army was bombarding, my brother and his wife carried me from one mountain to the other in order to save my life. Four days after the war finished, my other brother, who had been told that I was dead, arrived together with my husband. After he looked at me, he said “Better if you had died, now you have no children, and no husband, you should have killed yourself; it is your fault that the Serbs raped you.” “It is my fault? Because you took the money and did not give it to those barbarians to save your son, I am guilty because you did not let us leave the village even when the danger could be seen by every one!” I asked him while crying. “Your sister was raped by Serbian soldiers, and I cannot have her to be my wife”, He said to my brother and walked away never to return…, so ended the story of R.R., from the village of Therandë14.

8. THE HORROR ON “APRIL FOOLS DAY”!15
S.S. did not want to tell her story in front of her mother, but as soon as her mother left, She began to tell us what had happened. “I never thought humans could endure so much. Myself as well as others, I though in such conditions we would die. I fell into the hands of “Shka”, the Serbian Police officers, soldiers and paratroopers, on April 1 ‘99, when the ethnic Albanian population was being expelled in massive numbers. When they separated me from my family, I only thought about them, but when the took me to the place where the police were sheltered and on a bloody table I saw women’s hair, nails and ripped dresses, I knew what was going to happen to me. I could not think or hope for anybody else; I only dreaded what would happen to me. The leader of this criminal gang called me. On top of the table, he had placed some “RAKI” a type of alcohol that is widely and mainly consumed in Balkans. His mad red eyes were an indication of the state he was in and everything that was to follow. On his chest there were chains and decorations, and in a far corner of the cabin, there was a pile of women’s dresses. “You must undress here, now, and then I will see whether you are for me, my commanders, or for my soldiers” 14 Please refer to the map provided to locate this town in the map of Kosovë15 Translated by A. Bytyqi
13
Kommentar: Is this correct I sat there pretending I did not understand what he said, but now he repeated the same thing in Albanian. I looked at him and said “No!” He threw the bottle of alcohol, and like e monster got up. “You bitch, have the nerve to disobey my orders, I am Dragan Spasic, I am the man who with these hands have cut more than fifty Albanian women” he shouted wildly. “This is the way to death” I thought and when he hit me with the gun butt, I still did not cry. I saw the blood running from my nose; I wanted to die and not fall into his hands. After a he calmed down, he ordered his soldiers to undress me. “Oh God”, no body in this world can imagine how I felt at that moment! “You have to dance, come on dance!” he shouted, while I was crouching, trying to hide my naked breasts and inner parts of my body. “Do you see that body?” he asked me; there was a dead and mangled woman’s body that I had not seen in the far end corner of the cabin, near the other victims clothes, “I will do worse to you!” I said nothing, but two of them came and lifted me and tied me against the bloody table. They tied both my hands and my legs and looked at me like a wild hungry wolf would look at his pray. At that point their chief, undressed and begun to rape and dehumanize me, the other were laughing and chanting. They looked and laughed at me while I was writhing with pain. After he had enough, he left me to the others, and they continued one after the other. The same thing happened to me for many days and later they threw my naked body on the side of the road where other people were walking towards Albania. A woman covered my body; I began to feel the pain and see the wounds and the knife cuts. They had drawn crosses and the symbol of the criminal Milosevic.
“Please do not take me let me die”, I said to the woman, but she whispered slowly, “Look we have only a little way left until we enter our mother-land” she said to me, meaning that we were just about to enter Albania. She was trying to help me, but I looked at the road, hoping I would die; because for me this was and remains the road of death.

9. MOTHER’S HEART WAS BROKEN16
We were hiding on the mountains some days. It was the biggest army offensive so far on the mountains of “Çiçavicë” Chichavice. It was September 22, 1998. In our family alone, we were 14; and from the rest of the village there were about 70 people. The army surrounded us on all sides; there was no possibility to run away on one side or another, and it was also impossible to get any food. By the third day, it was impossible to continue eating wild forest berries. Children began to cry; many of them became ill and we had no hope of survival. Due to lack of food, they were dying, and their spirits were overwhelmed by the terror. It was midday when the paratroopers arrived; their heads covered with fabric veils. They gathered and pushed us all together in a little space. Their faces were camouflaged. They took all the men and tied them up by the woods. Later they brought an army lorry and locked all the men in it. Then they looted all our valuable things and a few of our children; this tactic was to make us talk about anything valuable they thought we had hidden. They took the son of a woman who tried to grab a gun, and cut his ears and three of his fingers. My brother
16 Translated by A. Bytyqi
tried to react to that even though his hands were tied. For this reaction, they positioned him in front of everybody, took his clothes off, and amidst everyone, they cut his genital organs. God how he did not die at the moment! Our mother and his wife did not move, I walked towards them, but it seems my brother had died immediately from the pain and I never saw him move after. “I am going to rape you with his organ” said one of the officers, and two others tied my hands and then they tied me to the army track. I tried to refuse them, but with a heavy blow on my head I lost consciousness and I only remember when I regained consciousness, that I was completely naked and tied up. A few meters away they were raping another girl or woman whom I did notrecognize; but in front of me I saw my mother sitting and crying. Instead of giving me some courage, she said, “They killed your brother and his wife”. It seems she said this because her heart was breaking with pain. “Maybe, it is better that you die because it will be easier for me to be alone” my mother said. Then she began to tell me things that sounded very unimportant for that moment. I was shaking; I do not know whether I was shaking from the cold, or because of the pain I was enduring. There were a lot of dead bodies around us. There were so many pieces of fingers, hands, ears, that I cannot understand even today how I can speak about this kind of terror and horror and still live. A little later, a police officer approached me and said, “Since you were a virgin, I will marry you; you will come with me to Serbia. There we will build you a nest just like our leader Milosevic says. We should marry you with Serbian boys so you will give birth to Serbian children, and we should kill all Albanian man. Will you give birth to a boy? Tell me!” he demanded; and, in front of my mother began to rape me again. I do not know how much he hurt me because I could not feel any part of my body, but when I opened my eyes I saw my body was covered with blood. This time my mother had been crying by my side. Further away, the other women had placed the dead corpses one after the other. One woman approached me and tried to dress me, I did not, and still do not understand why I was not bothered that my body was naked and around me there were so many women and children. Maybe my body did not hold me any more, maybe I had gone mad! But I know I was suffering from the wounds; my belly was hurting so much, and the shame and the feeling that I was so dirty and broken by the raping and dehumanizing vulgar violence that the Serbs had done to me and my body. Some one gave me some water. I sat down and dressed myself. I had no feeling. I was still looking at dead bodies and still I do not understand why I loved death so much. Death had become my first desire. My poor mother only stood by my side and kept crying and said nothing.
A woman approached me and asked me to tie the three wounded fingers of her six year old son, whose fingers had been cut by the soldiers. I got closer but my hands were weak and could hardly do it. Somehow, I tried and tied his wounds with a piece of fabric from an old shirt his mother found somewhere around. Later, we buried the eighteen dead bodies. My mother now became very feverish, but we had nothing but one aspirin. After she had that, she said, “I should have not taken this drug; maybe someone else would have found it useful; my heart is broken anyway so I did not need to take it. I am going to die with a broken heart more for you than for your brother and sister in law. My daughter, remember to tell everyone. It looks as if you will live long, so please tell people what we have suffered, do not keep it hidden” and after that she died. I remained lonely and dirty” said the girl from the mountains of “Çiçavicë”17 Chichavica.

10. TO PROVE MANHOOD18

A few days had passed since the bombardments had begun. My husband and I comforted each other, but in front of our children we pretended that we were not afraid. War had reached the other villages outside the city of Gjakovë, consequently we sheltered with many people from the villages surrounding. Although they had fled from their homes and villages, like my husband and I, they too pretended that they were not afraid when in front of their children. For us it was impossible to flee the city because hundreds and hundreds of soldiers, police and paramilitary forces were present at every corner. On March 29th ‘99 they began to arrest every male member our vicinityI was terrified. “What are we going to do? We have a twelve year old son!” I said to my husband. “Let us wait and see what is going to happen. Our soldiers, the UÇK Soldiers, are not very far perhaps they are observing the situation in the city and we might be saved from the worst”. As darkness approached, we went to a friend’s house on the outskirts of the city. They had no food. My husband and left and went to ask another family near by. During the night we were joined by three more families. Unfortunately for us we fell asleep. We all woke up thinking that we had seen a night mare; the police had broken the door and entered the room where we were sleeping. “Money and gold if you want to continue living; we will let you leave for Albania immediately on condition that you never return”.
“In order to save our children alive, we should go” whispered my husband. Then, we gave them all the money and the valuable items that we possessed. Thinking that we had valuables left in our bags they took our bags too. Women should go first, and men will follow after half an hour; after we make sure they are not UÇK soldiers. “We are not going to be separated” I said and stopped walking. Meanwhile a young boy who had been sheltering in our house attempted to run away and was shot right in front of our eyes. His mother threw herself over her son’s body, but the bullet went through her into his body again. The crying and the screaming, alarmed and echoed the surrounding hills, but the wounded woman did not want to be separated from her dear son’s corpse. The Serbs became angrier. They tied up all the men, and undressed all of us women. The children, eleven of them, began to cry. During those miserable moments, the wounded woman died as well. “Now we are going to film a remarkable movie, because we need it for the late night programs of TV Prishtina.” Said one of the police officers while dragging a fifteen year old girl to the near by bed. I wanted to be dead just like the woman that was shot in front of us. Even now I want to be dead, and not live with these flashbacks. The girl died after half an hour rape by three men one after the other. Then they raped a friend’s wife and at the end of that raped me. I remember when they cut my breast, I was praying to God to take my life away with all my heart but death did not hear me. Once they left me, they took another young
17
see map 18 Translated by A. Bytyqi
16
woman, and when she began screaming aloud, they started ripping off her nails! When they stopped raping her they took her and the men with them. I survived but it was not a life any more, it has been a real dark hell ever since. On the same day they took my son, whom I have not seen since. Every one present, including my children, saw us women being raped. Together with my son and the other men, they took my husband whom they freed four months after the war ended. I was happy that he survived, yet when he arrived I could not hug him. I could not hug him because he had seen the police, the soldiers and the paramilitary men playing with my body, raping me and the other women present on that damn day; I was feeling sick of shame, I could lift my eyelids to face his eyes. These memories will haunt me for the rest of life. But with his tired limbs, tearful eyes, and crying heart he hugged me, and comforted me for our dead son,and then opened his arms to our daughters. On that day many people came to welcome him back from hell and every one of those hearts and eyes were crying for our tragedy. Our emotions were eased a little bit, but my heart was still crying, and some words began to pour out like yawns out of a dead mouth: “Husband, it is great that you returned, this is a great happiness, now I know that the house has a got a strong voice in it again, and a lord to lead it.19 I know that our six girls now have a dad, a pillar to lean, have a man’s voice to look after them. I, as a dehumanized and raped woman, which is what I have remained, am sick of shame for what has happened to me in front of your and every body else’s eyes, therefore I cannot look straight into your eyes, I am ashamed to speak to you, I am ashamed to live with you and with this family, so now that you are back and our children can depend on you, I will go back to my family where I was born, because I do not want you to feel ashamed living with a woman like me.” I wanted to continued further, but my tears, my cries and those of my daughters and my husband stopped me.” “No my wife, you shall no go anywhere, you are the honor of this family, and if someone should feel ashamed in this family for what has happened, it should be me. I should have done more to protect you and the honor of our family. You are innocent and you will always remain my beloved wife. You will be the pride of our family forever, because you did not want to go with them without me. But I and all the other men of Kosovë, who did not take arms join the UÇK, should always live with the shame. We should always look up to the mothers who gave birth to brave and courageous sons that bought our freedom, with pride.” said my husband.
I, B.B. from Gjakova, will live haunted by those memories and the shame and the dirtiness. But I am supported by my husband and my daughters, while hoping that one day my only son will return.

11. WOUNDS OF CIGARETTES20
R.N. from Prishtina was found in the area of the Law Faculty just after the end of the war. For months she had not been able to recover from the horror. Every now and then when she remembered she felt sad. She would cry and would start to tell her horrifying story. 19 In the Albanian Language it is common to use the words Husband and wife as nouns when addressing each other. 20 Translated by A. Bytyqi
When they took me out of my house they moved me straight to the area of the Law Faculty. There they placed me in one of the teacher’s rooms; hand cuffed me and kept me prisoner. I do not quite remember for how long I had no food. Strangely I was actually not hungry but I had a tremendous thirst. Thirst had dried my lips and made them bleed.
Some days, when they took me for interrogation, one of them asked me to undress. Obviously I refused. One of the policemen smacked me hard and the blood started to bleed fromm my dried lips. The other one “The Boss” came close and after picking the blood from my lips while tasting it said in irony: “Apparently all Albanian women have sweet blood so that I will enjoy them one by one with my knife” then with his knife he started to cut my clothes into pieces until I remained completely naked. I tried to do something but I was powerless. Two of them were holding me while one of them raped me.
The only resistance I could make was to scratch the face of the person raping me. “You and all other Albanian women and all the ones that will remain in Kosovo will pay dearly for this” he told me in an angry voice while one of them tied me again leaving me naked. In a few moments he ordered one of his colleagues to light his cigarette. He also offered me one. I was feeling so bad that in every second passing I felt my strength vanishing. After a short break he came closer and said “They call me Nenad Stojanoviq and I will now make sure you have a life long unforgettable memory from me. Perhaps you still want to live your life as you are young and beautiful but I will stop it very soon. I will kill you slowly but surely” and then he placed the cigarette on my chest by extinguishing it there, which created a horrible burn wound.
Then he lighted another cigarette and any time he wanted to extinguish he did that on my body by burning it bit by bit. That way he burned my body in a mater of hours. There is no word to explain the pain and the screaming, it was a terrible torture that I had never even seen in movies and I had never thought that “humans” would apply that to other humans even in the case of dealing with the worst enemy ever. The next night after they untied my hands and several other people raped me one after the other. I do not know exactly how many people played with my body but today I can see that my body is covered with cigarette burns and many knife cuts as they were writing words on it with their knifes.
R.N. interrupted her testimony as the emotional strain became too heavy and she burst into tears. For R.N. life has a bitter meaning for she carries on her body the stamp of cigarettes from those April days of 1999.

12. I WISH I COULD FORGET EVERYTHING 21 .

H.G from Prishtina started to tell her excruciating story wiping the tears away and shaking, closing her hands tight while staring alternately at her daughter and out the window. Prishtina was under severe bombardments and suddenly it was wartime. Only when the military, police and paramilitary forces were forcing 21 Translated by L. Deda
people out of their homes did I realize the extent the war had reached all over Kosovë. I didn’t have the courage to ask my neighbors for help, as I never had opened the door for them in the past. Besides, they say ‘the full up man can’t really understand what hunger is’. I considered myself an intellectual and was very close to those opposing the war as we were used to the fact that other people go to protests and other people get killed in demonstrations, and we hoped to benefit from other people’s sacrifices. The moment we were forced out of our home and they took my husband, I heard him condemning himself for not joining the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) and while being carried out to the car he said: “I do not even deserve to be cried for because I’m not dying as a warrior with a gun in my hand but as lonely creature full of regrets for not supporting the liberation movement of his people. When the car left, my daughter started to cry. Our neighbors were also expelled from their homes. Some other houses were searched and as all the men were taken away, all the women were taken to the “Naim Frasher” primary school building. There were about 20 women and most of us were young girls. Two of the women over 40 years old were immediately executed. The same happened with another old man. The first night we were left alone and the next morning they came and undressed all of us. Two young girls were taken away and we had no idea what was going on. They never came back. The next day some other soldiers picked up seven other girls according their preferences. I still don’t understand how my heart did not explode when they took my daughter. They brought her back after five hours covered in blood. They had raped her and than had bitten her badly so that she could barely say “Please mother take a chair and smash it on my head so that I can die and not suffer this humiliation, please”. I cried a lot but no one could hear us and no one really cared for us. Two days later they took some other girls who again never came back. The next day they took me and my daughter together. One of them raped me and the other one my daughter. Oh dear Lord, how powerless we were! Only then did I understand why my daughter wanted death instead. I don’t remember quite well what was happening to me as I was mainly concerned for my daughter so that when I tried to push the rapist he stopped raping and tied me up and started to remove my finger nails with pliers. My daughter was sent back to the room while I was forced to watch the girls being raped one after the other. I know there were more than twenty of them. Many days passed as I remained tied without any food, not even water. Some days later they put me in a cellar together with other six women meanwhile they kept dishonoring the young girls. Only god knows how much I cried, screamed, and suffered those days when I was present at the rape of the young girls. I was forced to watch the powerlessness of those fresh bodies, their cries and their screams full of pain. I shared the pain with them for my wounded soul was in pain. Dear lord, how can people not get mental when experiencing such horrible events. Who says people can get crazy from horror? Who says people die from pain?
If God says that a person should live, that person will live no mater what happens to him/her – I now know the power of God – and of course I now know what happens to you, if God says you should be a victim of the Serbian army. Or perhaps, God has lost his power over humans to the devil named “Shka” who took control over Kosovo and did all he wanted throughout its parts and terrains free of KLA soldiers. I know now I don’t even deserve to call those soldier’s names because my family and I did nothing for them. However, had I not hoped that those boys would defeat the Serb military forces, I wouldn’t be alive today and nor would those other girls tortured regularly by the beasts that never had enough of Albanian blood. When we were hurt and tortured, we would say to one
19
Kommentar: How old was she? another for consolation ‘God never let some land on earth without salvations therefore Kosovo has its own boys that took the guns to save the country. Sometimes we wished not all of us had died so that someone would tell the story. When the Serbs were raping me I even condemned my own sons although I sent them to the West with my own will. I condemned them for not disobeying me and fighting for the country instead. Even today I would say my full name in public, had I not had the sons who would be dead not alive should they know what happened to their mother and sister. When my elder son returned, one morning he said ‘Mother, even the imprisonment, beatings and torture you experienced is still less painful considering you escaped the rape’.
Meanwhile, he still doesn’t know we are both violated. He thinks I suffer for my murdered husband while he doesn’t know what really happened to us. Sometime I wish I could forget this entire nightmare. I know these bad memories caused by Milosevic’s barbarians will be in my mind for the rest of my life, yet, I do not want to die, because I want to see Kosovo Independent. Only then can I die in peace as I would be sure that our nieces and nephews would not be murdered and raped by the Serbs.

13. THE WALK TOWARDS CERTAIN DEATH22

Arbenita was not ever able to see her sister’s body since the Serb’s separated them from the convoy on the way to the Train Station. For days, she could not believe that her 16 years old sister had died from severe torture from the Serbs. Arbenita would stand for hours every day at the doorstep waiting! Waiting for her sister to return. Too long have the Hague tribunal waited for her to tell the story of what happened to herself and her sister. “When the Serb military and police forces captured us there were many other women so that I never thought they would rape us all. I had some money with me with which I hoped I could escape death. When they locked us up in a nice house in the Arbëria neighborhood I thought they would rob us and let us go. At dusk, ten policemen suddenly came in the room where we, five women, were locked. The ordered us to undress. My sister attempted to jump from the window but the policemen stopped her and started to beat her. They kicked her as hard as they could in the chest, stomach and the genital organs. One of them cut her clothes off with a knife when she wasn’t able to move. At this point she couldn’t even scream. We watched horrified while she was trying to resist while another one was hitting her on the head. When she fainted, I managed for a moment to release myself from the man that forced us to watch. She had almost no signs of life and when I threw a drop of water on her she tried to say something. I was crying while the policemen holding me pointed his knife at me and forced me to lie down. I realized I was the next victim and instantly I smashed a pot that happened to be near me on his head. He stood up quickly and fastened me on the table and did what he wanted to do….. There is no other thing can happen in life graver than that. There is no other thing more humiliating and more fatal. I was and remain lifeless although I’m still alive. I wanted to walk away when they began raping the other girl in the group, but my attempt to escape made them angrier against me, as consequence they began to pull my fingernails off with barnacles?? Do you see my hands? So that you can believe it! But my soul cannot bee seen and no one can understand how it feels. Those terrible days
22 Translated by L. Deda
separate me and my sister; I have never seen her again. They kept us there for many days, raped us several times; meanwhile we watched other girls dying at those merciless soldiers hands. I do not know who got us out of there. All I know is that after the liberation I was still afraid to return home. I still do not believe the war is over….
O god, what a pain does my soul bear, this soul is hurt so much, oh god” ended Arbentina.

14. THE POLICE ROAD BLOCK AT “UNCLE’S WELL”23

It was months since the war had begun and I was the only one from our family still in the village. I had to stay for we had cattle, which after the imprisonment of my brothers was our only source of existence. At the beginning of ’99 I was trapped and had no chance to break out of the iron circle of the military, police and paramilitary forces that had circled Drenica and Dukagjin. Besides me there were some other relative girls stacked in the village and soon our house became a shelter for children and women. We use to cook for 30 people and we had no man with us. When the enemy forces came closer to the village we would stay in the nearby mountain during the night while during the day we could go back to the house in the village to prepare the food and feed the cattle. As such our normal life changed to a life full of fear and horror. After a while we started to get ill from the cold. Because of the cold weather, staying in the mountains became unbearable. Besides the Serb forces knew exactly where we were when we made the fire and were watching every move we made. One day in February, when five of the children got ill we returned home. The Serb forces were constantly on the move! A woman from the district of Klina took her ill children, two daughters and another woman with three children and went away. We remained, 21 young girls of whom 9 were underage. We stayed at home not daring to light the fire as the troops would know we were home. They grew in number as the roads became impassible from the heavy snow. After some days we started to run out of food. We had very basic food such as a little milk and a bit of flour. I do not know the exact day as we had lost track of time, perhaps also because of the insufficient food. Suddenly without any notice the door was broken and Serb police and soldiers forced themselves in.Without asking anything and regardless of our reaction one of them started to touch cousin’s hair; Neta was only 14 years old and was horrified. She pushed his hand away which made him furious saying “I am the lord of Albanians and can’t stand to be insulted” and hit her as hard as he could. She only bent slightly, soundless. He tried to touch her again but she ran outside. He ordered for her to be tied up. Two of the policemen tied her hands! He rushed her and tore her clothes off while the other two were holding her. He pushed her in the cold snow and dishonoured her.She cried and screamed but we did not dare to go near.
23 Translated by L. Deda
We could only watch horrified. We did not dare to bring out the shotgun we had in a secret place as the Serbs were all over the place. While most of them were watching our sister being violated the sister of Neta, X one of the oldest of us, took the shotgun quickly and shot the men that were in the room. Those outside didn’t react as they thought their friends had shot us but in two three minutes three other policemen entered the room saying they were “interested in the game”. While Neta’s sister with her shotgun in her hand, was trying to shoot them, another policemen from outside shot her dead. One of them took her body and pushed us outside threw the body in our uncle’s pond). Neta was not moving anymore! She was dead. One of the merciless men was continuing to rape her even though she was dead. When he saw how we were looking at him and when his friends were laughing at him naked like that he threw her body in the pond too.
Then he got me by the hand and as I started to resist he cut my arm with his knife, I was bleeding while my clothes were cut to pieces. I started to scream and I remember like in a dream that one of the policemen was raping G too; she was only 13 years old. After raping her for some minutes, G was trying to resist but he was hitting her with his head. She was entirely covered in blood and could hardly bear the pain. I wasn’t sure if she died immediately, but as I was crying and weeping, I saw the same Serb that raped G, dump her body in the horror pond.In a while they dumped Sh. too, who I did not see whether they raped her or not but saw her being dumped in the pond, naked and alive. The policeman that was raping me stood up and ran away as he heard shootings in the nearby mountain, while I, half naked as I was, could hide behind some bushes and the garden hedges quickly without being seen. Two of them shot the rest of the girls and they all were dead and two of the dead bodies were thrown in the terror pond. They all run out of the village I remained there forever hurt. Even today, whenever I see whiteness I also see in front of me the horrifying scenes that ruined my life forever.
15. I hope you enjoy your freedom. I have to mourn my wounds24 That day E. R. from a village near Gjilan arrived at Schipol airport in the Netherlands. Her pale face resembled more a dead person than someone living. The wound that was still visible on the entire left side of her face was suppurated and had turned a strange colour. She sat down slowly and when she saw the TV cameras, she bent her head and warm tears ran down her cheeks. It seemed as if only her tears had remained warm. Everything else seemed lifeless. When those being expelled had set off by bus to the campus that had been prepared for them, she was clenching her weak fists and looking stealthily to see if anybody would accompany?? her. While the exhausted and worried crowd of people were walking, she was becoming more and more worried and her breathing was getting faster. The Albanian woman that was leading the group approached her to try to calm her down, but she was also stunned when she realised that in the hall were so many women. All had been raped. E.R. was not crying only for herself, she was crying for the fate of all the unfortunate Albanian women who had suffered the same fate. Despite the efforts of the
24 Translated by A. Morina
group leader to calm her down she asked : “ Did all of them got through the hands of those criminals like me?” And the tears ran down again like the string of expelled people from Kosovë. The ambulance cars had arrived to take the people to the camp.. E. R. got up together with 16 other women and climbed in.. It was a horrifying picture, all of them were weeping as they drove towards the airport as if to say: “We wonder if this the end of our journey; we wonder where our bones willl perish”. The journey, was as difficult as it was long. E. R. was silent and when the group leader sat alongside her she said: “Why don’t you leave us to die, those such as us do not deserve to live”.“Listen, my sister, life should continue. We all have our wounds, some more, some less”, said the leader. “But why should I live? How could I live now that… ?” And she tried to say something her breathing getting faster. “If you continue this way I must give you some sedatives. You must resist. You are alive and pray to God that other members of your family are alive. One thing we must bear in mind: no matter what happens to the person, life must continue!” “I have no reason to live anymore; I do not want to live. They dishonoured me in front of my mother, and when my family tried to help me the Serb criminals executed them! They killed them only after they saw how they dishonoured me and how they were enjoying my body. When two of them got off me,I saw that one of them had left a machine gun next to me. I took it and fired at them. I do not know if I killed anyone but I noticed two of them were wounded. Another one who was beside me hit me on the face with a machine gun. He pulled me by my hair and later raped my 14 year old niece. I was not able to help her. I was biting my hands in anguish. One of the policeman who was a bit further away approached us to join his friends. When he realised that they were dead he went into my brother’s house, and brought out my sister-in-law, together with her three children and killed them. That seemed not to be enough for him. From another house, he took out my aunt and some other people who happened to be there, wounded and unfit to fight. After they had killed all the men, they started to rape the women. The policeman who had raped my niece said that she was dead. My aunt went over to her and when she saw her screamed so much that it seemed to me that all the mountains and fields of Kosovë burst into tears.. After a little while, the Serbs started to shoot wildly, and when they heard a lot of return fire they ran away because it seemed they had seen the KLA fighters. If our fighters had not come to help us we would all have been dead. There were ten people shot dead and two died whilst being raped. One other was wounded. Eight of us that had been raped were still lying down. The KLA solders tried to help us and to console us. I loved life , but when I think of the day when my brother joined the KLA and I was afraid to join him, and, later when he found me raped and tried to console me I said to him: “Kill me my brother, please, now I see how badly I was mistaken in not joining you.” He looked at me sorrowfully and said . “Go and get well first because the motherland always needs people”. Now I can say: “Let others enjoy freedom. I do not need life”.
16. The heavy rain that saved me25 17 year old R.S. is from Obiliq. Despite keeping her head bent down, she could not hide the knife wounds on her face. These cuts were making not only her, but everyone around her, more miserable and more worried. Scared, she was clenching her hands. Despite her trembling which was becoming more and more uncontrollable, she gathered her last strength, bit her lips, and began:
25 Translated by A. Morina
“The suburbs of Obiliq felt the effects of war immediately after the Massacre of Prekaz. Because we did not have any more secure place to go to we remained at home. There were days that we were just waiting for our turn when the police would come into our home. Every day tanks and other military vehicles were passing by. Defeated retreating Serbs were up to all sorts of things: they were killing, kidnapping, raping and anything they wished to do. All the inhabitants of the villages along the Prishtinë-Mitrovicë road were very frightened, including us. Bombings were taking place around us and we could not sleep nor eat. Some days before the start of the bombardments, we went to the next village, towards the area of Llap. There were more than ten thousand people gathered there. As the bombardments started the number of people there increased. No one knew what was going on. We were surrounded on all sides. The houses of the village of Barilevë were too small to be able to shelter everybody so we were just sitting down. We could not lie down and sleep at all. But, even if could have done, none of the adults would have slept. We were all waiting hopelessly. We were all looking after our children and other than that, everybody was silent. We l whispered: “If only we could save the children”. And then the day that we dreaded came. The Serbs came to the village. First they took all the jewellery and money, and then they began separating women from men. In front of my eyes they killed my brother because he had nothing valuable to give to the policemen. I ran towards him and he stared at me as if he was trying to say something to me. Then he closed his eyes forever. The bullets had riddled his chest, and his shirt quickly became red with blood while I was clenching my powerless fists. I do not now why my heart did not explode during these moments. One of the policemen pulled me by my hair and dragged me off my brother’s chest. From there they sent us to Prishtinë. My God, what I felt leaving the unburied body of my brother. How on earth could I enjoy life again when they killed my brother in front of my eyes? “It would have been better for him if he had gone to fight as a soldier” whispered my mother as she walked holding my younger sister by her hand. She did not even turn her head towards me. A women from the village was helping me but as I was walking further my steps were shortening. I remember that at some point somebody gave me water, and I felt refreshed but this helped me only a little. In the vicinity of Prishtinë there was another group of policemen. This time they were separating only the women. There they separated me too. The woman that was holding me told me: “Calm down and don’t show any signs of emotion that will tell them that they killed your brother”. As the line of people was disappearing one of the policemen tied me up and took me in to one of the nearby houses . I asked him to untie my hands but he just stared at me and hurled me to the ground. In the evening another one took me from there to another part of Prishtinë. There were three more policemen. One of them started to undress me. I had my hands tied. My cries and pleas did not make any impression on them. Two of them raped me and the third approached and started to cut my face as if I was a piece of cheese and not a human flesh. The hot blood was flowing down my hair and I was praying to God Almighty that this flow never stops but flows quickly to make me die as soon as possible. But, then, when I thought that I was of no more use to them, one of them came up to me and besides raping me, he was licking my blood and kept saying to his friends: -“Do you see I am licking Albanian blood?” Only God knows how long they would have tortured me in that way if it had not started to rain heavily.. They rann away and I survived. Today, even if I try to get back to normal life, I know that everybody that knows me, knows the truth. Nowdays, every time I touch my face the bitter memories reappear and my life seems worthless.”
17. That day Prishtinë was also crying26 26 Translated by A. Morina
“Even I don’t know myself, how many days had passed after the bombardment began” -, the girl from Prishtinë started her story. “More than 20 members of our extended family found shelter in the basement of our house. We had gathered some food but we could not manage either to eat, or to stay calm. Very rarely, some of us went outside their homes to see what was happening to the others. We only received information by foreign radios or TV. After the massacre of Obiliq, panic had its effect. It got to us all. There were days that we were just waiting to be expelled from our homes. I and two of my sisters-inlaw were afraid to escape from Kosovë. We didn’t escape even when most of Kosovë did. It was a cold morning and, as if to spite all of us, we were asleep. The banging on the door was so noisy and rumbling that for a moment it seemed to me that the whole house was shaking. When my father opened the door some policemen got in very quickly and the first thing that they did was overturn the cradle where the baby was. My sister-in-law screamed and went to the overturned cradle and the policeman hit her with the butt of his rifle and she fainted. Despite being scared I approached the cradle. When I tried to take the baby, one of the policemen grabbed me by my hair and took me out of the house. There I saw that they had brought many other men to our courtyard. They were beaten and bloodstained. There were some wounded. There were some other neighbours that I did not recognize. ‘Tie them with this” - a policeman ordered me while I stood there just shaking. I did not use force and I did not like to do it.. When he saw that I was hesitating he began hitting the men with a metal chain and they did not have the force to resist because around them there were tens of policemen, and soldiers who were ready to react with guns in their hands. I thought that with this scene everything will end, but unexpectedly a covered lorry came where they put all the men one after another. I thought that they would put all of us there but they separated the women from the men and a bit later they brought some other lorries. I do not know how many women were there exactly but when I got to the basement I saw a lot of women, and five Serb policemen. “I wish we had a gun” I whispered to a woman that I did not know in the eyes of whom I saw bravery. “Now, you in Prishtinë are also asking for arms whilst you were accusing us in Drenicë -why were we fighting the enemy, why were our men at war. Now it’s too late, go on with your peaceful way”, - she said to me. I was standing frozen without understanding a thing when other policemen rushed in to the room. They separated us into two groups. They sent the first group away somewhere, and six of us remained there. With the first group was my sister-in-law with her baby. Even today I do not now where they sent them. We never found them or their bodies, and it is not known exactly what happened to them. Only God knows this. At dusk one of the policemen ordered us to get undressed and some other policemen came there and tied us up one by one. They took me in to the sitting room and only when a policeman came half-naked did I know that he was going to rape me. Only on that day did I supportI the war of the KLA. That day I understood the value of a unified nation when we had to pay with our bodies for the disunity of our leaders. If we had been better organised these rapes and these imprisonments would not have happened. Only God knows how much I wished to die in order not to experience that nightmare, and be a victim of these monsters that massacred and raped many women including myself. Tied up, I was crying and shouting but nobody was able to hear me. Nobody was able to help me. The policemen were coming one after another and I had to endure all that because I could do nothing. During these moments, the hardest in my life, I recalled what this woman had said - that I did not support Drenicë and KLA. The seventh day I heard two policemen talking about a dead person but I did not know if it was a woman or a policeman that was dead. That night when I heard the door opening, I do not know how many times the tears ran down my face, and my body started to shake even more. I was scared but when the door opened slowly, the woman from Drenicë entered, she covered me with an overcoat and said to me: “If you can’t walk do not come with me, because we have to kill the guards first”. I remember that I got up somehow and then I sat down again. Then she went out. When I thought that she had gone, she came back and said to me: “Other women are in their hands and we can’t save them”. We set off but I could not walk as fast as her. Along the way I saw that in the houses of my neighbours there were many policemen. When we got out of our street it was dawn. We got into a house where we found some clothes and food. But I could not eat. At about noon we left and went to the train station. Prishtinë was quieter then ever before. It looked as if there was nothing Albanian in it. I couldn’t hold my tears, I was crying for the city, for the dead ones and for those alive, and when the train arrived a fine rain began to descend. That day, it seemed to me as if Prishtinë was crying…
18. She will always remain insane27 That morning it was not obvious whether Dritë was quiet or she was asleep after the hard night that she had had. Despite the nurse’s care, she did not open her eyes for some hours. Even when she opened her eyes she did not speak. She was staring out of the window and watching the birds playing nearby. That day she did not even try to move because she needed to rest. She could not believe that the medicine that she had taken in the morning had acted so fast because the night before she took the same medicine but had a hard night full of pain. The doctor, alarmed, had called her relatives. He thought that after her nightmare it would be very difficult for her to regain consciousness. The first thing that one noticed about her was the scar on her face, a wound that will be visible all her life. Then, there was her hair cut in a very strange way. The wounds on her head made her two eyes look harsher, like two springs. Now she felt like a figure swinging between life and death, which is why her words were like that too. She was speaking about life, what she had experiencedof it about death, and about many other blurred things which we could not see and had not experienced as she had. The woman doctor did not approach her to stroke her hand; she just looked at her, and a well of tears ran down her face. When her sister saw her, she bit her lip and went away unable to watch her crying. “I’ll never become a mother”, she said - “I’ll never be able to give birth, I’ll never have my family and I’ll never be able to know what is love and a happy life, never… All that I will ever face will be spiritual emptiness, life without people around. I’ll always be tied up as I am now, with my hand in handcuffs. I can’t move my hands, and you, doctor, are asking me to calm down! And you are asking me to live! This is impossible.” She was speaking as if she was another person and not the one that the night before was crying and screaming, shouting and yelling so much that it was echoing not only through the psychiatric hospital, but beyond. It was difficult to hear her cry, and her words too. Most horrible was when she was talking about her child that they had killed, raping her. Despite knowing that she had become insane, nothing was able to take away her mothers’ pain. And, when nobody was expecting such a thing she started her horrible story: -“When they stopped us, they took us out of the car. My mother-in-law who was looking forward to her grandchild whispered to me not to be afraid, and when they saw that I was pregnant they said:
- “Give us all your jewellery if you want to live!” Of course, I gave them everything and when there was nothing lef to give one of them said to me: - “This child is mine, not just your husband’s.”I did not say anything, trying not to incite him. One of them came and said that he wantedme, because he had never had a pregnant woman, even less a pregnant Albanian 27 Translated by A. Morina
woman. When I saw him approaching naked, I felt powerless and I was hanging on to my mother-in-law.
- “I like her!” - he said and ordered two soldiers to hold me. He undressed me and said to me that either I should lie down or he would kill my child in my womb. It was horrible and very hard. I was in the eighth month of pregnancy! I pleaded in his language, saying that the God is above all and that for His sake he had to have mercy. But he hit me on my chest and then in my belly and I fainted. When I regained consciousness I saw that he was raping me in front of my husband and my mother-in-law! My brother-in-law was killed and my sister-in-law was mourning him. He spat on me and when I tried to get up the Serb criminal hit me in my belly with the butt. I can’t describe how I felt. This pain cannot be compared to any pain in the world. Since that day my pain and horror never went away. Some days later I gave birth in the Bllacë Valley, but my child was dead. My bleeding did not stop and when they sent me to Shkup hospital I had an operation. They had taken away my womb with the justification that it was the only way for me to survive. My husband had told them that my life was precious, but I know that he can’t live with me anymore, neither can he love me. “I do not have a reason to live; I do not have a reason to calm down, so do not ask me to stay calm, please!” She started to get upset again as if overtaken by a spell. She started to look after her dead child who died because of the rape that his mother had suffered at the hands of Serb policemen and soldiers. No consolation, no word had any sense, before her pain.

19. HE DESERTED ME AND OUR CHILDREN 28

“—When the bombardments began the people of Prishtina gathered in massive numbers to flee the city. I was lacking both money and courage. The landlady, at whose house I was lodging, did not leave either because her old age restricted her ability to take such a life threatening journey into the jaws of hell. A few months before, she had sent her son and her daughter-in-law to Turkey. During the days before the bombardments, I was scared to death by the “bombs” that other people murmured about. At the same time, I had no idea as to what was going to happen in the city from which, people were being exiled; were forced to leave their houses at gun point. Apart from hearing the bombs shells falling in the near by villages, I had no idea what was unfolding, not only in the City of Prishtina but in Kosovë as a whole because I had no radio or television. I had very little food left but other people lived in the same house as well. One day before the bombshells begun to fall in our part of the city, they decided to leave. When they left one of them said, “Everything that is in the kitchen is yours please make use of it.” It was April ‘99; all the food had finished. I had been living on almost nothing since the other house mates had left. All the food was finished; in order not to let my children die of hunger I begun going into all the deserted houses. I found enough food and other necessities, but I had yet to learn what horror would mean. One terrible morning, I heard the landlady and the police and some paratroopers yelling. When they broke the door and entered the room where I was I realized
28 Translated by A. Bytyqi
that they had been only an eye blink away. My children started crying; one of the officers locked them inside the toilet. My children were still crying their lungs out, but after I was raped by those barbarians; I became a drawing board upon which a Serbian cross was drawn. I was calling God to take my breath and my life, but neither God nor death, heard me. My body did not die on that terrible day, but my spirit died by the dehumanizing degradation. I was the mother of nine children, and a man’s wife, yet they still played with my body just like cats would play with the body of a dead frog. After about an hour they left, and I covered my body and unlocked my children from the toilet Although my oldest child was nine years old, none of them asked me what had happened; they knew they did not have to ask. They all looked at the cross shaped wound on my chest. A little later, the landlady came in the room, and in my children’s presence asked “Did they rape you?” The Serbian police and paratroopers came again next day. This time, apart from raping me again they beat my little infants. I took an axe and tried to hit one of them but it was a useless attempt. There were four of them and one of them hit my head with a gun butt. When I regained consciousness, my children were crying above me, thinking that I had died, and I wished I had. After a few hours, I pulled myself together and moved to a vicinage near by. A couple of elderly sheltered us, and nursed my wounds.
There I stayed until the Serbian forces left Kosovë. Physically I became a little bit better, but the flashback memories will always haunt me till the last minute that death erases them. At the end of June, I returned to Deçan.
When I returned, as I had anticipated, everything had been burned down to ground, thus I built a provisional tend in the front garden. When my husband came, I explained everything that I hade been through. Initially, he did not say anything, but a few days later, after I had had some nightmares I was living and he said “My wife you need to go to a psychologist. Maybe, you have been used without me but now I tell you, that I am no longer the husband you used to know. I know that what has happened to you was without your will, but your nightmares remind me of what has happened to you and it is difficult for me to accept this new version of life, you and I are living”. He wanted to continue but we both fell into each others arms crying for hours.
When I walk up from a deep sleep in the next morning, he was not lying on the same bed with me. He left me no letter no message and no word has ever been spoken between my husband and I after our long cry. He left me and my children, he deserted us and only God, if one exists, wherever he could be, and whether his wounds have been healed. I will live with the memories that wound me more than bullets and haunt every minute of my life—” so spoke the lady from Deçan, who regardless of her conditions did not desert her children.

20. THE CONFESSION OF THE GIRL FROM DUKAGJINI29

She was sitting in the “Skenderbey Square”, and was looking at the people walking in different directions.30 As the day went on, the number of people within her view increased. The little girl, tried to look beyond the hills and high mountains that stood between her and her country, Kosovë. Her gaze continued with such intensity because she did not want her mother to come and ask her to eat something. After her mother asked her she replied, “I do not want to eat anything. Do not disturb me please, my life no longer has a meaning and a purpose.” she said and bit her lip; meanwhile her tears ran towards her chin. Her mother looked at her with a painful stare, as her own tears fell.
The poor mother looked at her daughter, who was depressed, her body hanging between life and death. Her young body and face had lost the freshness of youth, because it had gone through the humiliating hands of Serbian criminals for ten days, and consequently had been hospitalized for three weeks after; or at least that is what she looked like in her mother’s eyes.
Obviously, the teenage girl needed psychological treatment, but she insisted that she wanted to go out and look at the people walking across the square for hours on end. It was not only the way she looked at people that attracted attention but also her fairytale-beauty. Doctors, nurses and her mother had tried every possible way to make her speak about her tragedy; so far she had not told them anything.
One beautiful summer’s day, as she was sitting down in this main square of the city, looking north-eastwards, everything changed. Two girls of approximately the same age approached and begun to stroke her long hair and it looked as if she found her lost self and as if her smile returned with her new friends. She caressed the hair of one of them and then took the other girl’s hand and kissed her on the cheek. She looked at them for a few minutes and then her tears begun running down her face just as water does from its source. The two girls crouched near her as if they were hugging her, and neither of them moved. At this point, as one of her new friends got a little handkerchief and wiped her tears, one of the doctors came and sat near by them looking at the three new friends.
“I know why you are here doctor. What do you want to gain from me or what I would have to say to you? Why do you make me suffer further? Would it be enough if I told you that on the table that my body was violated in the most degrading, dehumanizing and barbarian way, three other girls were raped just like I was or worse, died?” “I have lost every hope that one day there might be a sparkle of life for me. The only hope that has remained is that, I can do something about my country, and for those who died at the hands of the ‘shka’.”31
When she mentioned the noun “shka”, she froze like a helpless dead body, her jaws froze with anger and her teeth begun grinding the bitterness of her heart;her week little hands became knuckles that wanted to… Tears that begun running down her beautiful face, displayed the bitter grief “the girl from
30 Skenderbey Square is based in the heart of Albania’s Capital City, Tirana. Skenderbey, (in Albanian named Gjergj Kastrioti) is an epic medieval Albanians who fought against the Ottoman Empire back in 15th century. 31 Albanians from Kosovë and from the north of Albania have a traditional name for the Serbs, and Montenegrins.
Dukagjini”, this was the nickname the beautiful girl had been given while in Tirana.32
“I would like you to tell us how everything happened, how you fell into the hands of those criminals, when exactly, how many people were you with?” said the doctor, who had now turned on the tape recorder.
The little girl’s eyes again turned towards the east, to see the mountains of Kosovë, as if she could see what had happened and said “Look, I am going to speak, but first you have to promises that you will take me back there!” and continued
“When they, the barbarians burned our village down, during those freezing cold days of January 1999, the population begun to abandon the area of Dukagjini as a whole. Even though, the “UÇK”, still insisted that we stayed there, and assured us constantly that we would be protected by them, we the girls and the women of the village, unprepared and inexperienced of this kind of situation, decided to leave for Albania. As we approached Smolice33, the Serbian army and paramilitary troops stopped us and after they looted everyone’s possessions, they separated us, the nine women, from the long line of fleeing human wagons, who like us, were heading towards an unknown destiny.
It was a coincidence that we were separated into three age groups, three of us were young teenagers, three recently married wives one of them pregnant, and three elderly ladies. When they took us with them, they said they wanted to question us regarding the “UÇK”. A few minutes later, after they pushed us inside some dark basement cellar, they separated the pregnant women, and we only heard her yowls without seeing what was happening to her but fearing the bitter truth.
Her screams were heard repeatedly for a few minutes then and were never heard after the noise of a short spray of gun fire. Her life had ended at the moment; and I understood this after three days, because now it was my turn to live and experience what the other women before me had, inside that dark room of hell. After they pushed me in, they ripped my clothes apart as if, I had been thrown in the middle of some hungry wolves on the high mountain of Sharr in a bitter cold January day, waiting to be minced into pieces.34 The process of rape consisted of by tying both my feet and my hands to that damn life eating table; a commander known as “General Vujiç”, as I read it on the badge that was attached to his army uniform, begun to physically rape me.
After five days of living under such horror, somehow I untied my hands, and that moment I grabbed an axe that had been hanging at the side of the general’s belt, and hit him on the arm. The outcome of my action was a failed attempt, as I only scratched him a little, but the price I paid was very high. They tied me to a tree all night long in the bitter cold January
32 Please refer to the map for more info regarding Dukagjini see map
34 The Mountain of Sharr is based in the western part of today’s Macedonia.
30
Kommentar: Which year??? weather, and next day many of them raped me one after the other without mercy. On the first day that they raped me on the top of that damn table, opposite myself they were raping three other girls, who died because they cut their genital organs. As for myself, I lost conscience and I do not remember when they left me, and I do not know who brought me to Tirana, but what I know is that for me it is very difficult to live.
Perhaps it would be easier if I died, and was wiped off the face of the earth. Can you, tell me how can I comfort myself? How can I face my lover, my family, and my friends? They all know what has happened to me. I know that they will always love and support me, but my body is dirty with grime and my mind and memory is contaminated with such horrifying images of real life hellish misery. And in this way my life seems much more difficult than death itself—”
Said the girl from Dukagjini. As she ended her horrific confession. She turned again towards the northeast horizon of the Albanian capital, to see the mountains of Kosovë.

21. THE INCUBUS THAT NEVER ENDS…35