{"id":1564,"date":"2022-04-14T09:53:15","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T09:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/?p=1564"},"modified":"2022-04-14T13:00:57","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T13:00:57","slug":"sebush-demaku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/sebush-demaku\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Sebush Demaku"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Interviewer: Rita Berisha<\/p>\n

Interviewee: Sebush Demaku<\/p>\n

R.B.: Hi! Thank you very much for sharing with us your war story. Can you first tell us where you were at the time, who were you with, what were you doing? Where were you working?<\/p>\n

S.D..:At the time, I was working in the Institute. I started working in the Institute in 1998. We started off well, until they started displacing people from their jobs. We had also opened a small shop earlier because we weren\u2019t employed. My wife was displaced from the Paediatrics Clinic to the Infectious Disease Clinic, until the Court decided to return her to work. People started leaving. Two days before the bombing, we decided to escape to Macedonia, through Presevo. But the problem was, my wife was still working. She was on her night shift that day. So we postponed it for the next day. March 24 came. It was 7:30 pm. We watched the bombings on the news, and we were happy, thinking we wouldn\u2019t have to leave our houses. My neighbour and I bought some beers to celebrate. We didn\u2019t know that beer would be like poison to us! I went to work. I met professor Rrustem Berisha and the director. He said, \u201cYou\u2019re discharged from work. You have to decide yourself about what you will do from now on.\u201d On March 29, we sent my children at my cousins\u2019 living in Dardania, and my sons at my other cousins\u2019 in Dardania as well.<\/p>\n

R.B.: You were living in the Hospital\u2019s Neighbourhood, right?<\/p>\n

S.D..:We were. We\u2019d been living there since 1973. Everyone slowly started to leave. The problems started. The police would come to conduct checks. Once, when the police came checking the neighbourhood, everyone left, and they killed everyone they saw on the street. When the situation got worse, we decided to go to our children. That day, the police came to my neighbourhood around evening. We decided to leave. The police came and started shooting, so we thought we should leave. Jahir left with his family in his car. I left on foot and we decided to meet somewhere. My wife was also going to come with her car because she had had to get some food for the children. When we left, Jahir came across them and changed his direction. He didn\u2019t go by the Hospital. He escaped but I didn\u2019t see him. We were all organized. He went a completely different way. When I saw them, I escaped too. I went in some neighbourhood houses, from window to window, until I found a basement where I could hide. I met other citizens there because everyone had escaped when the police came. My wife was coming after us; she thought we had left already. She didn\u2019t know anything, so she encountered the police and they stopped her at the roundabout. According to her, when they saw her, they yelled out, \u201cEasy! It\u2019s a woman.\u201d They asked her where she was going, they took her car keys, and they let her go. She told them she was going to see her children first and then to work. So they told her she could go. We remained in that basement until 11 pm. My friend wasn\u2019t there. We thought he was somewhere else, and that my wife was with them. A young men came to the basement through another basement and I asked him \u201cIs my wife there?\u201d He said, \u201cNo, there\u2019s only uncle Jahir with his children.\u201d I was stunned. I didn\u2019t know where she\u2019d gone. Around 10 p.m. Jahir came there too. The moon was shining so brightly; the night was as bright as a day. Jahir and I were wondering what to do, and we decided to return home in the neighbourhood, without the children, just him and I. Jahir left his children at another house he owned near the neighbourhood. When we returned, my mother met me and asked me, \u201cWhere is your wife?\u201d Because she knew she was going to escape with us. I told her, \u201cI don\u2019t know. Where is the car?\u201d. She replied, \u201cShe left on her car.\u201d It was night. Where should I go? I went to my room, and I waited. I couldn\u2019t sleep all night because of the police patrols. We could see them through the window, going through the neighbourhood. The morning dawned. I woke up to go to my brother\u2019s house, near the Outpatient clinic. I thought, \u201cI\u2019ll go look for her, she must be there.\u201d She wasn\u2019t! In the meantime, I saw a group of people wearing white clothes and holding a white flag. I went to the yard, and I saw them saying, \u201cLet\u2019s make a group and go to them with a white flag.\u201d The white flag indicates\u2026<\/p>\n

R.B.: Surrender.<\/p>\n

S.D..:Surrender and permission to leave. The man who had been killed was one of those men\u2019s father-in-law, so they wanted to go and take him. He was even offering money to go with him. Nobody wanted to. It\u2019d be hard to go even if he was your own grandfather. So they decided to go. In the meantime, a police officer came on his car. He was the chief officer for that neighbourhood, and he asked me, \u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d I told him what had happened to me, and that I\u2019d heard the police had shot a woman in a car and killed her.\u201d That\u2019s what we heard. He said, \u201cNo, we did see a red car but no woman was killed. Where was she going?\u201d he asked. I told him, \u201cOur sons and daughters are in two different apartments in Dardania. We were going to meet there, to unite.\u201d I was with my car. He said, \u201cLook, I have to stop at the hospital, to provide them an ambulance to take the body. Get in your car and drive behind me.\u201d When we went to the entrance of the hospital, I stopped in the pavement. He said, \u201cWait here until I leave with my car.\u201d He was with the police car. There were many police officers there with tanks and everything, but I waited. When he came back, he told me, \u201cNow drive before me, because I don\u2019t know where you have to go, and I\u2019ll drive behind you.\u201d I can never forget that, that\u2019s what happened. When we went to the bridge, at the Bill Clinton square, where my cousin was living, I told him, \u201cthis is the apartment.\u201d \u201cOkay,\u201d he said, \u201cgo see if they\u2019re there and come back and tell me.\u201d When I opened the door, I saw my wife wasn\u2019t there. I didn\u2019t know what to do anymore. I was afraid the worst had happened. Then, I saw my sons from downstairs. My cousin came out and said, \u201cShe\u2019s here. She just went to the post office to ask about you. Her brother called her, and she\u2019s looking for you.\u201d I waited for her, and we reunited with our sons. Our daughters heard we were there, and came to see us in the afternoon. I told them, \u201cOkay, you stay there. Tomorrow we\u2019ll meet again.\u201d We spent that night there. We decided to go take our daughters and bring them at my cousin\u2019s around 11 am. My wife walked with our two sons in front, I walked behind them. When she went to the building, the police stopped her. They asked her, \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d She told them, and they said, \u201cNo one\u2019s here. Everyone has left.\u201d They had sent everyone to the train station. We didn\u2019t know anything. They had waited for 5-6 hours until the train arrived and then left for Bllace. All we knew was that they weren\u2019t with us anymore. My wife then went to her brother\u2019s to look for our daughters. We didn\u2019t know they had left by train. Morning dawned, and we didn\u2019t sleep all night. We didn\u2019t know anything. That night was awful. Everyone was worried for their children. Our sons were with us. When we woke up, we found out they had left by train because my uncle\u2019s son told us they had left to Bllace to, but we didn\u2019t know where they would stop. The people living in the same building as my uncle decided to collectively leave for Bllace and they found a bus to take them there. The bus would leave at 10 a.m. My wife went to Jahir\u2019s to take his son Artin, because Lorik wanted him to come with us. \u201cWe have to take Artin, we can\u2019t leave him here!\u201d So my wife went to take Lorik, Jahir\u2019s little son. They went on foot. When she went there, they didn\u2019t let Jahir meet my wife because he\u2019d be sad. His wife told her, \u201cRyve, I\u2019m glad you\u2019re here. I can\u2019t let Zafer come. Let\u2019s stay here with the kids.\u201d So she returned home. Can you imagine, at 2 p.m., on the same day, she went again with my son. Lorik told her, \u201cLet\u2019s try again. Uncle Jahir will let Artan come with us this time.\u201d They went there at 2 o\u2019clock. Then, his wife told him, \u201cZafer, go talk to her yourself or let me go with the kids.\u201d Do you understand? Jahir\u2019s wife told Jahir that. Jahir stayed with his mother. She was blind, he couldn\u2019t take her.<\/p>\n

R.B.: So they decided he would stay with his mother, while his child and kids left.<\/p>\n

S.D..:Yes, I left my parents here too. They dind\u2019t want to come. So, Jahir\u2019s children came. The bus to Bllace was going to leave at 3:15. The neighbourhood had organized it. At 12, another group took the bus. My car remained. I had an agreement with a Serbian neighbour whose house was next to mine. Before the war, he asked me to sell my car to him. I told him I\u2019d sell it to him for 8 thousand Marks. Now, when I saw I couldn\u2019t go by car, and we didn\u2019t have money, I called him and he arrived with his son-in-law. I told him, \u201cWe had a deal. The time has come. Here\u2019s the car. If I come back and you want to give it back to me, good. If not, it\u2019s fine. Here\u2019s the car. I\u2019m leaving anyway.\u201d He said, \u201cI have 2500 Marks here.\u201d I told him, \u201cThe car costed 8 thousand Marks, you can have it for 4 thousand. Because I can\u2019t sell it anymore.\u201d He gave me 2500 Marks. I was more comfortable with those 2500 Marks when we got on the bus because I had Jahir\u2019s children with me and mine too. They were 4 of them, we were 6. An experience I never forget is when we got out of the bus in Elez Han. We had to get off and walk to Bllace on the railroad. I saw the police breaking the doors of Albanians\u2019 houses, which we often see on TV too. Kicking them with their legs and rifles to get in and steal. They stopped us, asking \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d They knew very well where we were going. He said, \u201cYou can\u2019t go because it\u2019s mined. They\u2019ve put mines on the railroad.\u201d An officer, who was Romani because he knew Albanian, said \u201cuncle, you seem to be responsible of them. Be careful, it\u2019s mined.\u201d They didn\u2019t let us go. I gave him 100 Marks, and he let me go. When we went to the railroad, they stopped me first. I was holding Lorik and Artan by their hands, the rest were behind me. We started walking on the railroad. We could see some small holes where they\u2019d put mines on the ground, and he told me \u201cIt\u2019s up to you.\u201d We started walking. When the train approached, we slowly stepped on the sides where pedestrians wait, until the train left. We continued walking. When we arrived in Bllace, everyone tried to find their relatives, the ones who had gone there earlier. Two girls recognized me and said, \u201cUncle, are you Merketa\u2019s father?\u201d I replied, \u201cI\u2019m not. If I were, I\u2019d know where she is. I\u2019m not her father anymore.\u201d They said, \u201cCalm down, your daughter is here. That\u2019s why we\u2019re asking you because your daughters are here with their uncles. They haven\u2019t left yet.\u201d Someone else said, \u201cNo, they left this afternoon.\u201d They had left for Gostivar.<\/p>\n

R.B.: Weren\u2019t you in the camp in Stankovec?<\/p>\n

S.D..:No, we weren\u2019t yet in Stankovec. I\u2019ll tell you now. When I got on the bus at 3 o\u2019clock, it was raining. We had to sleep there that night. We decided to leave in the morning. Some people went to apply for an asylum. I went to see what was going on. Further away there was a hill that led to the road. I saw a police officer and I told him about my situation. Some people managed to cross that hill. As soon as you\u2019d get past the road barrier, you were okay. So, I got my sons, my cousin gave me his sons too, and I slowly walked until I approached the police. I gave them some money, and they let me go. Can you imagine, when we passed the border, everyone else pushed and passed too. Everyone! I just signalled to my wife to come up, and they came. It was 3:15 o\u2019clock. When we passed, they got us in buses. They kept us in the busses for eight hours, under the sun. Eight hours! Until evening, around 9. We didn\u2019t know why, but they had started setting up the camp in Stankovec, waiting to see if they\u2019d let us in. We set off on buses, 8 buses, from Bllace to Gostivar. We didn\u2019t know anything. No one would tell us anything. Someone said they were taking us to Greece, someone to Turkey, someone to America. When someone mentioned America, Jahir\u2019s wife started crying, saying \u201cWhat did I do? Why didn\u2019t I stay? They will take me to America and I\u2019ll get lost with my children, while my husband\u2019s here.\u201d I told her that we were all together. On the outskirts of Gostivar, I remember it so well, a group of people stopped the buses. I saw it myself. They stopped us at 9, saying, \u201cWe\u2019ll take them.\u201d Not just us, I\u2019m talking about eight buses! There were eight buses. They took over. The police asked, \u201cWho\u2019s going to look after them?\u201d They said, \u201cWe will. The people of Gostivar will shelter them in our houses.\u201d Before the imam called the morning prayer, they took all of us to the mosque. It was around 3 or 4 in the morning. They took us to mosques, and provided food to whoever needed it. The following day they asked us where we wanted to go. I remember I went to find out where my daughters were. I had my sister\u2019s phone number in Germany, so I went and called her. I went to the post office. she had tried to call me a few times, and asked me where I was. When I told her I was in Gostivar, she said \u201cDon\u2019t go anywhere. Your girls are there.\u201d She told me my daughters were there because we didn\u2019t know anything at all. She told me, \u201cDon\u2019t hurry. Stay there and look for the girls because they\u2019re in Gostivar, in a village.\u201d We felt more calm now, and we reunited with the girls.<\/p>\n

R.B.: How did you find the girls? Who helped you?<\/p>\n

S.D..:People in Gostivar.<\/p>\n

R.B.: They had kept records.<\/p>\n

S.D..:They had kept records of the refugees. They wrote down everyone\u2019s names. When we went there, we found them. There was no space there for us. I went with my wife and children in Nresne.<\/p>\n

R.B.: Where is that?<\/p>\n

S.D..:Nresna is… Prespe, sorry. They called us because there were too many people here. They gave us a house in… I forgot the name of the village. We stayed in that house until June 10. We had food. Then some activities started in Gostivar, for those who wanted to integrate, and send kids to school to help them get away from that trauma. My cousins were there. We were an entire community there. We used to go out together in Gostivar. Debresh was the name of the village. Later one day I met Rita\u2019s grandfather, Rrustem Berisha, my colleague, and we stayed together for two months straight. I also remembered when they asked us if anyone wanted to seek asylum.<\/p>\n

R.B.: Right, to go to America and other countries.<\/p>\n

S.D..:Yeah, you could seek an asylum for America or anywhere else. We applied but we didn\u2019t get an answer. Two months later, a team came to interview us, to listen to our story, and what we were planning to do, whether we wanted to go to America or somewhere else. We were listed to go to Canada, because my cousin who was living there applied for us. Afterwards, a foreigner came to see us with a young man from Prishtina who translated for him. I told him my entire story. In the end, the one conducting the interview told me, according to the interpreter, \u201cUncle Sebush,\u201d \u2013 the young men called me uncle because it turned out we were acquaintanceS.D..:my wife and his mother had worked together in the Paediatrics, so he committed to my case, and said, \u201cUncle Sebush, he loved the fact that you told him the real story, everything you said so far, you didn\u2019t lie about being tortured or something else happening to you. You told him straightforwardly that you escaped and the problems you had. He\u2019s asking you to wait and in two months or so you\u2019ll be in Canada.\u201d By June, the negotiations started, there were rumours we would return to Kosovo\u2026 And the NATO troops entered in Kosovo. So, I returned on June 6. My son returned earlier with Jahir. Jahir waited for him in Skopje. My oldest son went back with Jahir\u2019s kids. My wife and I returned on the 6th.<\/p>\n

R.B.: What do you remember about Prishtina when you came back after the war?<\/p>\n

S.D..:When I came back to Prishtina, it was quiet as the grave. My parents had suffered I lot. They\u2019d come to our house, they\u2019d ask about us, and asked for money. But it\u2019s in the past now. We came back with a lot of struggles; we came back to poverty. I forgot to tell you about our application for asylum in Canada. They looked for us after we returned to Prishtina. When one of my uncles went to apply for family reunion, because his wife and son went abroad, they went to apply at the Canadian Embassy. They asked my uncle about us when they saw we had the same last name. And, my youngest uncle told them, \u201cNo, they\u2019ve returned to Kosovo. They\u2019re not going abroad anymore.\u201d He didn\u2019t have a bad intention, he just told them, \u201cthey don\u2019t have to. They\u2019ve returned.\u201d I don\u2019t know if it was a mistake or not but I\u2019m happy we didn\u2019t go to Canada.<\/p>\n

R.B.: You\u2019re happy you didn\u2019t go to Canada?<\/p>\n

S.D..:For my age, yes. I\u2019m not talking on behalf of my children. Maybe it would have been better for them if we\u2019d gone.<\/p>\n

R.B.: Can you tell me about your relationship with the host family?<\/p>\n

S.D..:It wasn\u2019t easy, but it wasn\u2019t difficult either. When we went to get bread \u2013 we were enrolled to get bread \u2013 my wife used to go. There were a couple of houses in the yard. The imam\u2019s son gave me his house. He lived abroad, so I lived there alone with my family. I used to do some garden work. He used to help us with some produce. But when my wife would go to get the bread, he would tell me \u201cWhy don\u2019t you go to take the bread? How come you let your wife do it? It\u2019s a strange village.\u201d I told him, \u201cIt\u2019s not a strange village. It\u2019s our village!\u201d I worked and I used to plough the fields. If I may tell you a funny story\u2026<\/p>\n

R.B.: Of course.<\/p>\n

S.D..:My youngest son used to hang out with their boys. They had a horse and used it to work the land. He used to go with them. The horse even stepped on him once. When he would come back in the evening, they would always bring something, and I\u2019d tell my family, \u201cLorik is working like a cow all day for us, and we just eat.\u201d They supported us a lot, especially the families. I have many friends in Gostivar. Rrustem Berisha, my friend from work, lived nearby too. Two months went like twenty days.<\/p>\n

R.B.: Was it easier once you reunited with your friend?<\/p>\n

S.D..:Much, much easier. There were 3-4 friends from work there, including my cousins. So it was easier to pass the time with them. Sometimes we\u2019d cry, sometimes we\u2019d play. If you think about what other people lost, our situation was much better. I\u2019d like to share another problem I had while I lived in the imam\u2019s neighbourhood. The five houses were surrounded by walls. He had a very fierce dog. He would let it off his chains at 8 p.m. to wander around the yard. My friends would call me to go out in Tetovo in the evenings. Once, we went there with three of my friends at daylight. One of them told me, \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what way to go so that the dog can\u2019t see you.\u201d When we returned, I remember we climbed the wall at the gate, and I didn\u2019t see where the dog was. I climbed the wall and jumped on the dog! And that\u2019s when the dog got scared of me, he was the one running away now. He never ran after me again. We became friends. So, in general, we had a good time with that family. The war was over, we returned here. I\u2019ve visited them. I\u2019ve invited them here. They came, all of them to see us. They brought us everything for the house when they came to visit us. And I took them on a journey to see Kosovo. They stayed for two days. We should never forget that. My parents aren\u2019t alive anymore, but we still stay in touch.<\/p>\n

R.B.: With the new generation.<\/p>\n

S.D..:They took great care of us.<\/p>\n

R.B.: Thank you very much!<\/p>\n

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Interviewer: Rita Berisha Interviewee: Sebush Demaku R.B.: Hi! Thank you very much for sharing with us your war story. Can you first tell us where you were at the time, who were you with, what were you doing? Where were you working? S.D..:At the time, I was working in the Institute. I started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1564"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1566,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions\/1566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}