Ljilja
Interviewer: Can you introduce yourself? To say who you are, what you are, where you are from and where you were born?
Interviewee: My name is Ljilja, I am born in Nedakovac near Vushtrri/Vučitrn. Seventy one years old.
Interviewer: Until which year did you live in Vushtrri/Vučitrn?
Interviewee: Until the ninety-first.
Interviewer: Ok, then most probably you moved somewhere else?!
Interviewee: The I got married in Leposavić.
Interviewer: Can you describe me further that thing.
Interviewee: Well I got married in Gornji Krnjin for my husband Tomica.
Interviewer: Fine.
Interviewee: I worked in Vushtrri/Vučitrn, as a ticket clerk at the counter.
Interviewer: Mhm.
Interviewee: I was selling bus tickets. Bus tickets. I gave birth to Milica, after that I gave birth to Marijana, and then I got pregnant with Tamara at ninety-eight. Then I went on maternity leave, I didn’t… I didn’t work anymore. The ninety-ninth means that there was a war – not a war, but the bombing began, on the twenty-fourth of March.
Interviewer: Mhm.
Interviewee: I was already about to give birth. Tomica was recruited to the war on the ninth of April. I was left alone with two, so to speak, babies. Maybe not a babies but what?! Milica was six, Marijana was three years old.
Interviewer: Aha.
Interviewee: Then later, on April 23, I give birth to Tamara. My mother-in-law is taking me to give birth. I give birth on my own during the day. So, the next day, I was released from the hospital because it was a bombing. All sides are shoting, all houses are set on fire; there are no male heads anywhere, Serbian, younger than 60. So everyone is on the battlefield, everyone is mobilized. My mother-in-law comes to pick me up with my Tomica’s uncle, who was sixty-two or sixty-three years old. We stop at a gas station at the exit from Mitrovica, Siniša Spasojević was working at the time at that gas station. He says that it is not possible to refuel because the bombing of Mitrovica has been announced. I’m coming home, it’s creepy. So, on June 16, my family moved to Kruševac, with nothing taken with themselves.
Interviewer: From Nedakovac?
Interviewee: Yes, from Nedakovac. Mother and brother and father; my parents enter the yard in Krnjin, they stop by my place. Mother hooks how she left everything, then. I started crying, after all. That is so … for me
Interviewer: Difficult.
Interviewee: Difficult. Mother hook, dad too, brother. They are going to Kruševac, there is nothing anywhere. No windows, no doors, only recently built skeleton of the house. They have only built walls, they start from scratch. They left everything behind them, property and house, cattle and everything.
Interviewer: Mhm.
Interviewee: And then they somehow manage there. I survive, but with a lot of stress. My brother-in-law was injured… on the battlefield, his head was injured. With a baby and two small children, I’m struggling there. Well, I mean, other are withdrawing from the battlefield, but he is not there. We thought that he was killed or that he was arrested and kidnapped. A mother-in-law who was nervously ill, who is still nervously ill today, means… she doesn’t know what happened to her children. My brothers-in-law, too, both unmarried, actually one got married on March 14, he was mobilized. His wife is Snaša. We haven’t known anything about them for a month or more, so about both brothers-in-law. My husband came occasionally, but it was all for a short time.
Interviewer: Mhm.
Interviewee: Those were difficult and stressful moments for us. I don’t like to think about, I don’t like to remember that.
Interviewer: Yes, of course. This… can you tell us something more about life before the war while you lived in Nedakovac, what were the relations like?
Interviewee: Well, what were the relationships like?! It all depends, we lived nicely and well with the natives. I worked more in an Albanian company, eh… and all in all it meant… there was no freedom of movement. You weren’t allowed to go out to a cafe late as a young person. To relax, it means fear and trembling were present. And when it gets dark, we close ourselves in the yard, we close ourselves in the houses. Due to fear, means… from all sides, especially before the bombing, it was felt from all sides, then the bullets… you hear bullets falling on the tile, in the yard on… in front of the house, on the terrace. It was scary.
Interviewer: Yes.
Interviewee: It was really scary. I would never like to experience that again; it was terrible for us and our childhood. We spent our childhood more in fear than in freedom.
Interviewer: Mhm.
Interviewee: And so. So I have nothing nice to say. I can only say all the worst thing.
Interviewer: Yes.
Interviewee: Moreover, in the eighty-first, my father and uncle were arrested. Without any guilt, because they were judged to have poisoned the Albanians (in Serbian Šiptari), while they never had anything to do with it. But they were arrested with malicious intent. And that was our neighbor… he arrested them. They were in custody for seven or eight hours. I know that when our corps arrived from Novi Sad; our Serbian police, they are releasing them. My dad, my father Jova, is leaving his job because his colleague beaten him up, in front of company where he worked, and they arrested him there. A colleague then beat him up and left the job out of fear.
Interviewer: Mhm, mhm. Were there any… were there any perhaps positive and pleasant actions during the war or after?
Interviewee: Where?
Interviewer: … from Albanians?!
Interviewee: Well, rarely with whom… with whom. Only they, the natives, the ones in the neighborhood who lived here with us for long period of time… and with these others, i can rarely say something nice about them.
Interviewer: Okay. And this is the last question… when now, today, you remember the war of the year ninety-ninth, what feeling goes through your head, body?
Interviewee: What feeling ?! Well, no, just… so I don’t even like to remember that, I do not to remember.
Interviewer: Mhm.
Interviewee: That means a terrible feeling, so I can’t describe that feeling as it is.
Interviewer: Aha, aha.
Interviewee: Something terrible that I survived.
Interviewer: Mhm.
Interviewee: I can not say anything positive about it.
Interviewer: Mhm Have you ever returned to Nedakovac, after the war …then your family members become displaced people, would you return to Nedakovac?
Interviewee: I went to visit the property, meaning property of my father and uncle. Then I also survived great stress; then my stomach hurt. It hurts me… so since then my stomach hurts non stop. There is nothing to see from it.
Interviewer: Mhm.
Interviewee: It means only… they moved the local roads, it means where it suited them; they moved, so they opened the roads where they are… where the roads were convenient to them. Houses were demolished, destroyed, mutilated, set on fire; taken what they needed; they even buried our wells and threw… I don’t know… our pigs which they slaughtered and threw into the wells. I can’t describe what’s creepy, it’s scary.