Ariana Kasapolli
The interviewer: Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. You told me that you lived in Prishtina. Let’s start the story from when the bombings started and the beginning of the war; anything you can remember.
Ariana Kasapolli: Okay. I lived in the center of the city, and I still do. Before the war, I remember the time when the situation started to worsen. It’s not that we didn’t go out, maybe because we were not fully aware of the dangers since we were young. I remember that me and my friend walked her dog on a daily basis. So we had to take her dog on a walk every day. I lived close to the police station and maybe they got used to my face, until other militaries came. But, for the people who were there for a longer time we were known faces, they most probably thought we were of a different nationality. So, yes, we went out and walked the dog, and stayed at the park. We walked around the city and we didn’t have a problem.
The interviewer: How do you remember when the situation started getting worse?
Ariana Kasapolli: I remember it from when the bombings started. The post office got bombarded, the post office in the center of the city, close to the square, near the government; the post office got bombed. I believe it was March. From then the situation got worsened. Too many unknown people came there. We felt in danger so we decided to go to my uncle’s at his apartment so that the two families could stay together. My uncle…
The interviewer: What was the location?
Ariana Kasapolli: My uncle lived in Dardani. We got together. We stayed in an apartment that was meant for one family. We didn’t have quite good conditions and we didn’t have enough space. People had mainly left the apartments in that building, only the Serbians were left. A Serbian who worked at the police station lived on the upper floor of that building. I remember him as a really bad person. We felt in danger and needed to stay quiet so they wouldn’t hear us living there. This didn’t last for too long. We went through some bombing phases. We knew the exact time they’d bomb; it was at 8. We went to the window to look at them. They were like fireworks to the children, we didn’t know much of the danger. After a while they forced us out of the apartment, too.
The interviewer: Before we move to that part, you mentioned earlier a story when you ran out of food in Dardani. Can you tell us the story?
Ariana Kasapolli: Yes. While staying at my uncle’s we ran out of food and you couldn’t find food even in the stores. We could only go out and buy food at a specific time. But, in Dardani and Kurriz the stores started getting broken. Those were all ruined and there was no food left… let me tell you this one once more…
The interviewer: It’s fine, go on, we can fix it. So, the stores were broken and ruined, there was no law…
Ariana Kasapolli: The places where they were furnished with food were ruined, and there was no food or products left. But, we had to buy anything we found. Also, the paramilitaries broke into those stores. The Serbians as well, so they were all ruined and we didn’t have where to go and buy food. The whole country was almost empty. People were taken out of the country by trains and we didn’t have a choice. So, me and my father decided to go back to our house and take the food we had there. It had been some days since we didn’t go out and the situation had changed. They had put some checkpoints in some parts of the city and we couldn’t pass. So, we had to take the road from Dragodan – Arberia – to go to our apartment. There was a checkpoint and the road was all blocked. Nobody, no vehicle, could pass without being checked first. They were all masked and drunk. They had their alcohol bottles on the top of their cars. There was a big tank and they were all armed. We were so scared because we didn’t know how to react. My dad didn’t have a good reaction since I insisted to go with him because I believed I knew where we had our food in the apartment. My dad was so stressed and just told me to sit. And I started laughing out hard because I was already sitting. The police saw us laughing and maybe they thought we were so relaxed and I am sure they thought we were Serbians. They didn’t stop us, they just waved their hand as a sign that we could pass. We passed. We went home and took all the food we had there. When I opened the fridge I saw there were three eggs and some other stuff. Then, I started laughing, we didn’t know if we could survive or how we could go back. We had to pass the same road again. I told my dad I don’t know if it was worth it to die for those three eggs. We were joking because the situation was tense. We passed them once more, and they remembered our car and didn’t cause a problem. We went back to my uncle’s…
The interviewer: Then the police came and forced you out of the apartment…
Ariana Kasapolli: After 2-3 days the police came also to our place. They were checking on every apartment. So, they cast us out. They forced us out and we couldn’t take anything with us. They pushed us. They pushed me into the elevator. There were two elevators in Dardania but they pushed me into the small one which didn’t have a light. I don’t know how I arrived on the first floor. I was too scared and from that day up till now I never get on an elevator. I was traumatized. We got there, hopped in the car, and set off but didn’t know where we were heading actually. We took the road to Macedonia and they stopped us again. We wanted to go to Skopje, maybe to the camp, I am not sure if we knew there was a camp. We simply didn’t know where we were going. Along the road, the police stopped us. They took some money from us and told us to go in the direction of Tetova, at the Zhinca border. When we arrived there the line of cars was long. We stayed in the car for three days. It was cold during the night and we couldn’t even start the car because we didn’t have enough fuel. We had to save fuel because we didn’t know where we were going. When it rained we sometimes just started the car for a little bit to get the car a little warm. We were afraid to get out of the car during the night because the situation would change. The military would let their dogs go. There were too many dogs around there so the people had to stay inside their cars. We stayed there for 3 days. We didn’t have enough food. I remember how they said “are you coming to get some bread” – but the line was long and they pushed each other; it wasn’t worth it and it was impossible to get a loaf of bread. My uncle and his wife tried to but they gave up. We didn’t eat almost a thing, only some bits of what we had taken from the home. We had a piece of cheddar cheese and we all tried to it from it a bit. So, our blood pressure went down. There was the Red Cross in a tent where people went for check-ups when they didn’t feel fine. If they’d give you a medical certificate that you weren’t fine, then you passed the border. That was the only way. So, we went there. Me and my sister went there. I was 17 and she was 14. No, in fact, she was 13. When they went for the check-up, we looked so pale because we hadn’t eaten or drunk a thing, so they identified us as sick and gave us that certificate. Only me and my sister got that certificate, not the whole family. So we had to separate from our family in order to pass the border. My dad insisted we passed it no matter what. That was a hard moment because we didn’t know whom we would meet or what will happen there at the border. We got in a taxi and my dad gave us some addresses of his friends who were journalists back then so that we could contact them to stay at theirs. Those were kind people. A taxi driver picked us up and tried to find those people and their addresses but we couldn’t find them. People there had changed location and if they had a house in the suburb or anywhere they picked up people at the border and let them in. Afterwards, we went to a family. The taxi driver took us to a family. They were kind people. It was a man with his wife who had three children. Fortunately, his house was in the same yard as his brother, his father, and some other relatives. His brother worked as a policeman at the border and when he saw us there he asked about our family. We told him all about it and he took us in his police car and went to pick up our family; my father, my uncle, and everyone we were with at the border.
The interviewer: Tell us the story when you passed the border and asked for kebabs.
Ariana Kasapolli: Yeah. When we got in the taxi, the first thing I asked the taxi driver was to take us to eat kebabs. I needed to eat something salty. I was starving, and my sister, too. He then took us to eat kebabs and we ate like crazy. We put a lot of salt in them. We needed to. Then I immediately thought of my brother. He lived abroad. I remembered I had to contact him because that was the first thing my father told me to do as soon as we passed the border. Another part of my family was abroad; my other uncle, grandmother, and aunt. They moved abroad before. That was like a real trauma when I heard my brother’s voice. His reaction was emotional because maybe we didn’t feel the passing of time but we had lost touch with them for three-four days and he didn’t know a thing about us. Those three-four days felt like 3-4 years to him. When he heard my voice he was too happy… he also was scared and told us not to go to a foreign house. It never happened to us to go and stay with foreign people. But, I felt the positive energy of those people and noticed their readiness although I was young. Many families were open to accepting people into their houses. They were extremely good people and we stayed in touch.
The interviewer: You stayed in Tetova for 10 days, right?
Ariana Kasapolli: We stayed there for 10 days because we wanted to go to my brother’s. I met there all my friends from Prishtina. We met in Tetova in a Sweets Cafe. We would gather there and it was something that gave you hope. Each day someone new would come. That was like a light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone was kind. Some of them lost hope so they wanted to go abroad. Each time we met we got to know that someone had gone abroad. And then… okay I’m not telling this part.
The interviewer: Okay. Don’t worry.
Ariana Kasapolli: Do you cut these parts?
The interviewer: Okay. Then you wanted to go to your brother’s.
Ariana Kasapolli: We wanted to go there after 10 days that we had stayed in a house. Some people, whom we had never met, gave us a room where we stayed. The conditions weren’t bad. The most important thing was that we felt safe and ran away from war. But, that wasn’t a place where you could stay for a longer period. My brother, of course, attempted to find a way to get us there. We decided to go to Hungary and then from there to go to Czechia. We didn’t need to have a visa to travel to Hungary back then because we had Yogoslavia’s passports. We went there, bought the tickets, got on a plane and went to Budapest. From there then we tried to go… we went to Slovakia, we didn’t need visas to Slovakia either. But, we needed visas to enter Czechia. It was impossible to get the visas so we tried to cross the border as refugees but it didn’t work out. We returned to Budapest. My brother and uncle then came there and found us an apartment because we couldn’t stay for too long in a hotel. We got settled in an apartment and stayed there for a month or a month and a half. That wasn’t a bad period. I met people there. I also met people from Belgrade there who had run away from the bombings. I met people I’d already known and new people, too. Those people were against the war. But, I wasn’t allowed to hang out with them because it was a weird situation. We knew why we were there and it didn’t make sense to hang out with them during that time, even though they were good people and against the war.
The interviewer: You decided to return after a month and a half when NATO came here.
Ariana Kasapolli: Yes. After NATO got here, we stayed there for a short period and returned here. The happiness we felt when we returned is indescribable. I will never forget those moments. I didn’t know what I wanted to do first. We were lucky enough not to lose any family members in the war. I knew too many people who fought, especially from Peja, because half of my family is from Peja. They were part of our military, but, fortunately, they were alive. I wanted to meet everyone. I wanted to meet my friends. When I returned my friends had already started working. Some of them had turned 18 and some of the others had not yet. It was the time when they all started working with the UN and OSBE and similar international organizations. I just couldn’t accept the fact that now we could start working. I was waiting to meet my friends and pick up where we left off. After a few days, I also found a job…
The interviewer: And from that moment…
Ariana Kasapolli: I haven’t stopped working since that moment.
The interviewer: So you were 17 when you returned and started working.
Ariana Kasapolli: 17 and a half. It wasn’t a big deal to find a job, the only condition was to speak a little English and you could immediately start working because they didn’t have a choice and they needed employees because there were many organizations. I first started working with DFID, an English organization, that helped people who had mining accidents after the war. I worked there for a year and after a year I resigned because there’s when I experienced the true war. It affected me negatively so I changed my job and started working with the UN. Although it was a humane job because you helped people and…
The interviewer: You had to face…
Ariana Kasapolli: I had to face people who had mining accidents. So, imagine in what condition they came to the hospital. I saw all of those cases. Our role was to get the doctors’ medical reports, so there was a commission of doctors who identified which cases couldn’t be treated in Kosovo. There were no prostheses back then; there were people who had lost their leg, or hand, or hurt themselves in a way and they couldn’t be treated in Kosovo. So this commission board would identify these cases and allow KFOR to take them. There were times when they picked them up by helicopter and took them to the hospital. Those people now live a normal life with those good prostheses… you still can’t be treated in QKUK. And they treated those cases back then. It was such a humane action, but it was difficult to see people as such.
The interviewer: Thank you very much!
Ariana Kasapolli: Thank you!