One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [90]
It was strange for the visitors to talk about these things, they said, because in Belgrade, Serbs were in control. They could go where they pleased; they had access to movies and television and all the things of city life that Oorus and Bujana lost after the war in 1999. Their drawings were of houses and cars. Bujana also drew a house, but hers was surrounded by thick black coils making a tight outline. Trees, flowers, roads, everything was on the outside of the coils (Figure 23).
“Barbed wire,” she said. “Because we are trapped here. If things don’t get better, we will leave Kosovo for Belgrade. Most of the young people leave.”
“Do you want to leave Kosovo?” I asked her.
“I want things to go back to the way they were five years ago.”
“Do you blame the Albanians for what happened?” I asked her.
“Politicians cause the problems,” Oorus said before Bujana spoke.
I would only realize when I spent that night in Babin Most without my translator how much his presence changed the children’s attitudes. Even though they had known him for years, none of them trusted him. He later acknowledged this, but told me it was the only way things would improve. He would just have to keep going out there.
He left after lunch, and Oorus and I sat in his TV room. He poured me a glass of slivovitz, a potent homemade plum brandy. I marveled at his access to it, as he was only thirteen years old, but he poured himself juice. There was plenty of time in life in the Balkans to discover alcohol. He was in no particular rush. It would be there for him when he grew up, he joked. I might have preferred juice. Oorus’s mother had insisted I eat lunch with them, a real traditional Serbian meal, with cabbage and beef and cheese, pastries, a tomato and cucumber salad, and several glasses of slivovitz. I was a little drunk. Oorus wanted to practice his English with me. With slivovitz coursing through my body, I felt I could practically speak Serbian.
“You like Kosovo?” he asked.
“Yes I do.”
“You stay Pristina?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am staying in Pristina.”
“Pristina is not good now.”
“Not good?”
“Many shiptar,” he said, using the pejorative he had avoided while my translator was present.
“You don’t like Albanians?”
“All terrorists,” he said.
“Terrorists?”
“I hating them,” he said and ended the conversation by insisting we watch his favorite video, a fuzzy tape of Children of the Corn 3. He did not want to talk about the past any more.
A few hours later, he took me to the school to watch the traditional folk dancing group practice. I helped him tie a braided belt that makes up part of the costume for the traditional kolo dance. All the children I had met that day were part of this dance group, and they were glad to have a visitor. Bujana danced with particular enthusiasm. Oorus, it seemed, was a bit embarrassed by the pageantry, but it was part of the Vidov Dan celebration every year. A group of older teens played the music and the children moved and swayed in circles, kicking and bowing and linking arms. It was a remarkable dance, one they had all practiced countless times.
“Folk dancing,” Oorus’s mother said to me, pointing, exhausting her English with that. She called Bujana over to us from the dancing circle. The teacher looked annoyed but let her go, deferring to their guest’s need for someone who spoke English, even if it was his eager eleven-year-old dancer. Oorus’ mother spoke to her for a moment and Bujana translated for me.
“She say folklore is good to have. It make children good.” Bujana didn’t have the English skills to clarify what she meant, and we couldn’t find anyone else in the remote village who could ease communication, so I was left to wonder what she wanted to tell me about the folk dancing. Folk dancing kept children out of trouble? Folk dancing gave children a positive sense of their national identity?