The Devil Couldn't Break Me

by Laura Aslan

  I saw Rejhan first. She was barely able to stand, propped up on either side by two women and at times she appeared to be being carried, or should I say dragged. I later found out that Rejhan had been pumped full of sedatives to get her through the day. I could hardly take my eyes off her and cried her tears with her as she sobbed uncontrollably following her fiancé’s still body. As was the Muslim way, he was carried on a flat table wrapped in a white cloth. There was no coffin and his face was covered but I could clearly make out the shape of the body and it took my mind and my memories right back to when my Grandmother, Nexharie, was buried when I was small. That was a ghastly day but this was a hundred times worse because of Nasijet’s age and the violent way in which he was taken. The funeral procession passed and I slipped into the following crowd as we walked slowly through the town and towards the graveyard on the outskirts of the village.

  I wasn’t allowed into the graveyard, that was for men only, but I think Rejhan and her mother were allowed to pay their last respects over his grave. It was probably a good thing I wasn’t there. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to see that beautiful boy lowered into the cold earth.

  Nasijet’s friends were angry. He had been a student not a soldier and many of his friends talked about joining the unofficial army in Kosovo and fighting against the Serb soldiers who had killed him. It was all spiralling out of control and I feared for my village and the town’s people that up to this point had escaped relatively unscathed.

  It was some months after the funeral when another incident was reported on television, an incident that to me was simply unexplainable and at the same time beyond belief. Even at that point in time, with all the anti-Serb feeling in Kosovo, the young men of Kosovo still had to do a period of National Service with the Yugoslav Army that was made up predominantly of Serbs. These poor men were sent wherever the Yugoslav Government decided to send them and in many cases they were sent to fight and restore order in places they were more than familiar with, towns and villages and cities where they had relatives and friends. I suspect a great number of them refused to fight or simply deserted and the news reported on those killed in active service. Their bodies were always sent back in coffins and the parents or families advised not to open them because in many cases the bodies had been shot or blown to pieces. The TV was reporting on a scandal that had angered the Kosovans and in particular the Muslim population. A young serving soldier of nineteen years of age had been killed and his body returned to his parents in Pristina in a closed coffin. The authorities once again had ordered the coffin not to be opened as their son had been almost blown to bits by a land mine. The normal Muslim funeral prepares the body for burial when the family or other members of the community wash and shroud the body. The deceased is washed respectfully, with clean and scented water, in a manner similar to how Muslims make ablutions for prayer. The body is then wrapped in sheets of clean, white cloth. On this particular occasion the mother felt she was unable to grieve properly for her son and almost as soon as the coffin came into the house she insisted on opening it and performing the pre-funeral rites. Her family advised her against such a practice but she insisted, as she wanted to wash whatever was left of her son. In the end her protests won through and they reluctantly opened the coffin. To everyone’s amazement the body was completely intact and instead of bullet holes and shrapnel wounds, it appeared as if a surgeon had worked him on. There wasn’t a single scratch on his face. Instead, it appeared that he had been cut open by someone with medical knowledge as a ‘Y’ shaped scar ran the length of his body from just below his neck to his groin region. The authorities could give no explanation why. He had been neatly stitched together and there was no apparent cause of death. No bullet or mine damage could be found on any part of the body. It was a scandal with huge implications but even the TV news channel refused to suggest a likely cause or indeed reason for his death. That didn’t stop the Kosovan rumour mill. They claimed he had been executed and that the ratio of Kosovan soldiers dying while on National service was ridiculously high. The young men and indeed the adults were furious and there were protests and riots all over Kosovo. I’m sure there were many reprisals carried out against Serbs in revenge ‘tit for tat’ killings. One man interviewed on TV even suggested that the young man had been summarily executed and his organs removed for sale. I thought that comment was a little over the top. It was like something out of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’

  Over the coming months the recruiters from the Kosovo Liberation Army came to Veliki Trnovac. We were right on the border between Kosovo and Serbia and it was inevitable. The Albanian speaking young men from the town were ready to help their Albanian speaking brothers from Kosovo and I don’t think the recruiters had too much trouble persuading the men, who saw themselves as freedom fighters, to pack their bags and make the short journey to Pristina and other areas of conflict. The young men seemed more than happy to fight for ‘the cause’ and on one or two occasions as they left the town, I watched as they pumped their fists in the air, holding up guns and rifles from car windows as their friends cheered and clapped them on their way.

  Sticks and Stones to Break Your Bones

  Nani and Agi were at home one evening discussing the unrest in the next town called Bujanovac. There was an Albanian speaking school there and the Serbian authorities had informed them that the curriculum of the school would be changed overnight. The school was no longer to take lessons in Albanian and that only Serbian should be spoken. I remember thinking that wasn’t so bad as everyone spoke the two languages anyway, even the children. But my parents and especially Agi was furious saying that it was a human right to be able to speak in whatever tongue they wanted and the Albanian speaking schools had been in existence for over a hundred years.

  Bujanovac was only ten minutes drive away and was what was known as a mixed town. Serbs lived side by side with Albanian speaking people who made up a large portion of the residents. Fifty per cent of the town were Orthodox Christian and fifty per cent Muslim. The tension at the school simmered for many weeks and the Serbian Army were often in attendance to keep control. It was said that behind closed doors the teachers continued to give lessons in Albanian but over time, gangs of young Serb men formed and began to taunt and abuse the children and teachers alike as they made their way to lessons. As the abuse and the crowds and the violence grew (while the Serb Army stood and watched) many of the teachers and the pupils stayed at home. They were genuinely too scared to walk the daily gauntlet of abuse and even the Headmaster resigned.

  The school was slowly dying and it appeared there was nothing anyone could do to stop it from closing. It seemed the rule of the mob had won through in Bujanovac, that is until a document was leaked detailing that the Serbian Army would take over the premises once the last pupil and teacher had vacated the building. That seemed to galvanise the Albanian speaking population and in particular my parents who offered unwavering support for the school at Bujanovac.

  One night Nani announced that she would take a job at the school. My father looked concerned but she was having none of it. She explained that she was a very good teacher and the school needed teachers and therefore she would apply for a position at the town and the children would be taught in the language they had always been taught in. I looked at Agi when Nani came out with this and although he certainly wasn’t happy that his wife was putting herself in the line of fire, I’m sure I caught a flicker of a smile of admiration and of course we both knew he would back her all the way. Whatever people said of my parents I did not look upon them as rebels. A little militant perhaps, but they were pacifists too and tolerant of everything and everyone with an unwavering determination that no one could change.

  So some weeks later a letter arrived telling Nani she could start work at the school whenever she was ready. She was grinning broadly as she announced she would be there first thing on Monday morning. I confess, that weekend I was absolutely petri
fied and didn’t want Monday morning to come.

  By this time there were very few teachers and pupils at the school and it became known in the town that a new teacher would be joining their ranks. The mob was out in force that day including whole families who ridiculed and taunted my mother as she walked through the gates. She was having none of it as she walked towards the school gates with her head held high. As she reached the entrance of the school one or two stones were thrown and a glass bottle but the perpetrators aim was poor and they missed their intended target. When she came out of school the mob had swelled in numbers and she noticed one or two of her old friends in their ranks too.

  My father looked on proudly as Nani explained her working day over dinner that evening. She said there had only been three pupils in the class and the school had resembled a ghost town. As I sat and listened I thought my mother was fighting a losing battle and yet as her and Agi spoke there was a determined positive vibe as we sat cross-legged around a low table eating dinner. Despite the hostility and the abuse Nani suffered there was no doubt about it... she was more than happy in what she was doing and confidant that people would eventually see sense.

  As the weeks passed something strange happened. The mob became smaller and the pupil numbers grew. It appeared that Nani and the other teachers had turned the tide and Nani was all grins one evening as she announced proudly that the pupils now outnumbered the mob. The protesters and antagonizers were growing bored it seemed and had turned their anger and hostility elsewhere. One of the mothers who had stood and shouted at the teachers in the early days even came to Nani and apologised. She said that she had been caught up in something she knew very little about and now realised that the teachers wanted nothing more than to be able to teach the children.

  A few days later the Serbian Army were conspicuous by their absence at the school and eventually it returned to normal. We were all so relieved and happy and I can remember a celebration dinner of sorts when Nani came home that afternoon.

  I lay on the sofa that evening and thought things through. Common sense would always prevail I whispered to myself, good would always triumph over evil. Soon these little hostilities would come to an end and we could all get back to normal.

  But it didn’t happen. The victory for the school at Bujanovac and for common sense was soon forgotten. We were watching more and more killings and unrest on TV and there was open fighting between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. Every day, every week seemed to propel us closer and closer to a Yugoslav Armageddon and massacres in towns and villages and indiscriminate killings were commonplace. It appeared there were agitators everywhere, men in particular, who looked as if they were happy for the war to continue, happy to agitate and escalate the violence. It was plainly obvious to everyone that a major Kosovo war with Serbia was inevitable.

  But there was still a little hope and I reminded myself of my wonderful parents and their outlook on life and how Nani and Agi always tried to take a positive stand, no matter what was going on around us. Agi said that stabilisation forces and NATO peacekeepers were on the ground and we just had to hope and pray that people would see sense and the peacekeepers would bring about a permanent ceasefire. And while there had been some small-scale violence in Veliki Trnovac, no one had been shot on our streets.

  A Massacre Averted

  We lived in fear of murder coming to our village or even worse, a massacre of the entire population. The news on TV and the newspapers, especially those brought in from Kosovo, were covering incidents of mass killings and ethnic cleansing. I must have been around seventeen or eighteen years of age when I first heard that term and even though I didn’t actually know what it meant it made my blood run cold. I asked my father outright exactly what ethnic cleansing meant and he explained to me in detail including the stories of soldiers indiscriminately raping young girls and women. I think he guessed it was time that I should know what possible dangers lay ahead of me.

  The television newsman was saying that there were too many reports of massacres for them to be without foundation and more and more survivors were coming forward to tell of grave incidents at places such as Tuzla, Zvornik and Visegred. It’s not unfair to say that most of the massacres were reported to have been carried out by Serb soldiers and police but of course their generals and politicians were denying everything. I wanted to believe them... sincerely I wanted to believe them all. I knew what the word propaganda meant too and I was well aware that all sides in the conflict tried to score points against their enemies to try and motivate their foot soldiers and at the same time court sympathy from the outside world, especially the European Union and NATO who were now heavily involved in the conflict. In fact NATO were now coordinating air strikes on Serb positions in Kosovo pushing the Serb Army back to the border. At first I believed that it was a good thing that NATO had intervened in Kosovo but my father made a chillingly accurate prediction. I can still hear his words to this day.

  “It’s all well and good turning the heat up but it’s the towns and villages on the border that will suffer the most.”

  I was well aware that Veliki Trnovac was fifteen kilometres from the Kosovo border and I was also aware of an illegal army who were hiding out in the mountains close to Dubnica, twenty kilometres away. They were made up of Albanian speaking Kosovan’s affiliated to the KLA and many of them, mostly the young men, came from our hometown. That made Veliki Trnovac a legitimate target in the eyes of the Serbs.

  It was late autumn and light flurries of snow hung in the air most evenings. We had yet to have a covering in town but we could see the snow lying on the tops of the surrounding mountains including our mountain Beli Breg. We were having dinner at home when we first heard the noise outside. The garden had a raised wall with steel gates that were either being climbed or forced open. Whoever was trying to get through them clearly didn’t have a key. My father had ran upstairs for some reason. At first I thought it might have been to get the key to the gates, but no, he was trying to get a better look from an upstairs window. I heard the familiar sound of military boots running up the path towards the front door and before we could do anything a soldier had kicked the door from the hinges. It didn’t matter to him that it had been open at the time. He wore a Serb Army Uniform with a mask that covered his face. He clearly didn’t want to be identified.

  “What is it?” Agi shouted from the top of the stairs. “How can we help you?”

  Looking back it seemed like a silly thing to say and yet it diffused the tension for a few vital seconds. The soldier spoke in Serbian, he ordered everyone from the house and as another four of them stormed in I began to shake with fear. They were screaming at my father to come down, training their rifles on him. He obeyed and calmly walked towards them.

  “How can I help you?” he repeated.

  One of the soldiers lunged at him and grabbed him by the shirt collar.

  “Get your wife and your pretty little daughter into the street before I put a fucking bullet into your skull,” he snarled.

  I remember thinking that my father was very calm but I also remember looking at one of the soldiers who clearly couldn’t take his eyes off me. I felt vulnerable, more vulnerable than I had ever felt in my life and the horror stories that I’d heard about what soldiers did to young girls came flooding back. Nani and Agi were standing next to the front door where the winter coats were hanging on a hook and Agi politely asked if we would be out of the house very long. The soldier pointed to the coats indicating that we could put them on. Agi sat on the floor and reached for his boots while Nani took a coat and a scarf from the hook.

  “Fucking hurry up,” one of them shouted and cuffed Agi across the back of the neck. “I’ll fuck your wife and daughter one after the other if you don’t get a move on.”

  I was more shocked at their bad language than I was from their aggressive nature. I could feel the tension and menace in the air and yet b
izarrely I was more upset at the filth that had poured from their mouths. These were not the sort of words ever uttered in Agi’s house, at my uncles or even in the school yard.

  As I made to walk towards the door the soldier who had been looking at me blocked my path, slid his hand around my back and grabbed my buttock. I was frozen in fear and despite the fact his face was covered I could tell he was grinning a perverted grin from ear to ear. Thankfully he released me and moved out of the way telling me to put a coat on. As I walked passed him he slapped my backside hard. I wanted to turn around and hit him but I managed to control myself. I sensed that it wouldn’t take much of an excuse for these soldiers to shoot all three of us.

  We were marched out of the house, through the garden and into the street then made to form part of a line of other villagers we of course recognised as our neighbours. We were ordered not to talk and as we stood in the cold my mother put her arm around me and pulled me in tight.

  “What’s happening Nani, what do they want with us?”

  Nani didn’t answer. She shook her head and placed a finger across her lips motioning that I should be quiet. We stood for some time while every single house in the town was cleared of it’s inhabitants. It was plain to see that the Serb soldiers had wanted everyone out of the houses and onto the street. There were children in nightclothes and the elderly with walking sticks and even heavily pregnant women who all stood in a long silent line. The only noise I could hear was of children crying and of course the soldiers barking out their orders.