One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [89]
“We still have many shkja here, you know,” he said to me later, knowing that the subject of ethnicity interested me, knowing that I intended to talk to Serb children as well. A mischievous smirk spread across his face. “You could take some with you when you go. Take as many as you like.”
If young people act as a mirror to society, these youngsters in Zahaq were an excellent mirror to Kosovo. They were full of hopes and humor, resilience and grit, and an unrelenting grip on history, so strong that it might keep them mired in their past hatreds forever.
In Babin Most, an isolated Serb enclave halfway between Mitroviča and Pristina, the children were preparing to celebrate Vidov Dan, which Bujana, an eleven-year-old girl who was originally from Pristina, explained to me.
“We celebrate every year so we do not forget the Serbs who fought,” she said.
“Fought where?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
“The Battle of Kosovo,” she said. “In 1389.” She then proceeded to tell me the story in much the same way the children in Lapjo Selo told it, though with perhaps a bit less emotion. She was a quieter girl, blond and engaged in the details of her drawing. She told the story as if she had told it a dozen times before, which no doubt, she had. It had the ring of a schoolroom report, which no doubt, it had once been for her. Her story lacked the spontaneity that the kids on the soccer field had when they told it, but the details were all there, just as they had been, the traitors, the martyrs, the names of the dead. Despite her dry telling, this story was her story.
To quote Slobodan Milošević’s famous speech on the six hundreth anniversary of the battle, the speech that propelled him into leadership in the waning days of Yugoslavia: “Today, it is difficult to say what is the historical truth about the Battle of Kosovo and what is legend. Today this is no longer important. Oppressed by pain and filled with hope, the people used to remember and to forget, as, after all, all people in the world do, and it was ashamed of treachery and glorified heroism. Therefore it is difficult to say today whether the Battle of Kosovo was a defeat or a victory for the Serbian people, whether thanks to it we fell into slavery or we survived in this slavery.”
This was indeed how Bujana experienced the story of the battle, not as a collection of facts, which could be true or false but as a piece of herself and her people, how they suffer and they survive.
Oorus, her cousin who was two years older than Bujana, had more pressing concerns than the old stories. “Five years ago,” he said, “we could walk around without being afraid. But during the war, Albanians kidnapped my grandmother and grandfather in Pristina. We fled to Montenegro for a year and then came back here. In this village we don’t have Serbian television or movies like other kids. We don’t have any freedom to go anywhere. And no money either. I want it to go back to how it was five years ago. People should go back to their old apartments and jobs.”
“Freedom to move would make me happy,” Bujana said.
Two young children were visiting from Belgrade. They sat in silence while she spoke, doodling with the crayons I gave out. They did not have the problems of their cousins in Kosovo. Their cousins were country bumpkins; somewhat backwards, isolated hicks, but family nonetheless. And better than the shiptar, they made clear. My translator spoke their words faithfully, though he himself was shiptar, part of a multi-ethnic human rights group in Pristina. He had known the families in this Serb enclave for years and many trusted him despite his ethnic background. The atmosphere in the room cooled a bit as the two kids from Belgrade spoke. Perhaps they did not realize an Albanian was in their midst. How could they have known?