{"id":2156,"date":"2023-01-30T22:23:22","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T22:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/?p=2156"},"modified":"2023-01-30T22:23:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T22:23:22","slug":"elvira-osmani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/elvira-osmani\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Elvira Osmani"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The interviewer: Good evening. Let\u2019s start the story with when the situation started to worsen; where you were, who you were with, how old you were, and whatever you can remember regarding that period.
\nElvira Osmani: I was 22 years old. I was working in an institution where I now work as a nurse. We worked in shifts \u2013 24 hours work and 3 off days. The war at Jasharaj had already started. It was Tuesday and I was going to work. I was getting ready to go to work without analyzing the situation much \u2013 it was like all that was happening in a place far away from Prishtina. I agree when people claim that the war in Prishtina started much later because it\u2019s true. I got ready, I got my uniform on, ironed it, and went off to work. I got out of the house at 8 so that I could be there by 9. My mother got outside and asked me \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d \u2013 I told her I was going to work \u2013 \u201cwhat are you thinking, it\u2019s wartime, where are you going\u201d. I told her I had to because people were sick and I had to do my job… I went to work. I was in the neighborhood of Emshir. When I arrived in Santeja I didn\u2019t see a single person. That silence would eat you from inside. You could hear the leaves from that terrible silence. I went to work with a feeling of fear but I didn\u2019t know why I was scared. I went to work and then the director gathered the whole staff in a meeting. He told us that we needed to go back home and it was the end of that day. He gave us our wages and told us to go home. He told us that they had to stay there with the patients but we had to return to our families because you never knew what would happen from time to time. I returned home. I was in a relationship with Driton. That was 2 days before the NATO bombings. Driton came to ask me to leave with him for Macedonia. In fact, he asked his grandfather to come to my house and ask me about it, although we were together for a short period of time. But, I told him no, because my mother raised me and educated me up to that day and I wouldn\u2019t want her to feel too much pain at the same time \u2013 the war and me. If we were destined to be together we would meet after the war, if not, we would both go on our separate ways. I decided to stay home. My uncle told my mother that night that we had to leave for the village where my grandfather was born, where he lived \u2013 a mountainous village in the municipality of Kamenica \u2013 the following day. We, the children, had never visited that village, not even our parents had. We then set off. We set off from Emshir to the bus station \u2013 my uncles, my cousins, too many young people, and kids of different ages. I was the oldest, I was 22 years old. They were all younger with the exception of my father\u2019s cousins who were older than me \u2013 but the oldest there was 25 years old. We got on a bus to Gjilan. We all got ready as we would go on vacations. We packed our bags and would even put perfume on. We also took our toothpaste and toothbrush… my mother told us to hurry. We had some refugees from Drenica in our neighborhood. Close to the textile mills the Serbian Forces were located. Also, at the cantonment of Adem Jashari \u2013 they heard there were some refugees and decided to check them up and maltreat them. Until then, for a whole week, every day, I walked by Ulpiana and Kurriz. I had make-up on, red lips, and got dressed in order for the Serbians to believe I was Serbian so that I could go get food for my family. The police were close to Kurriz \u2013 their police headquarters were located there. They thought I was a Serbian and they would greet me. I would greet them back. I wasn\u2019t even scared and I didn\u2019t know how to feel scared. I was too young perhaps and I didn\u2019t think much about it because the situation was risky. So, we decided to go to the village. We got on a bus. There were different people on the bus: policemen and militaries, Albanians and Serbians. All had chosen to travel from Prishtina to Gjilan and the villages around. When we arrived at Dheu i Bardhe, some buses had their stop there, since the bus was full of people… we were forced to leave, we weren\u2019t travelling of our own will. They didn\u2019t know where we were heading, so they got us off the bus. All of us \u2013 the youth, girls, and boys \u2013 at Dheu i Bardhe. They made us line up and the Military Police Forces told us to get our bags. We got our bags and they checked them. They joked around about our perfumes, and toothpaste \u2013 \u201care you going on vacation or what is going on\u201d, they said \u2013 they offended us as much as they could. They held us there for around 45 or 30 minutes. They ordered us to get back on the bus. We got on the bus and headed to Gjilan. We stopped at the bus station in Gjilan just before it got dark. I don\u2019t know what time it was. The city was all quiet. No one was seen walking, it was only us in line, a small line \u2013 our families only. There were also some paramilitaries’ trucks and they threw bottles, and beers, and cussed, shouted and patrolled the city. We took the first turn on our right after we walked out of the station. We walked down and turned right to a family. That was a well-known family. We entered their yard even if we didn\u2019t know where we were going. We were trying to survive because it was dark and we were all young girls and boys. When we got there we found out that the householder was politically persecuted and was imprisoned several times. Although my uncle insisted for us to leave, they didn\u2019t let us go. We spent the night there and ate dinner. They supported us emotionally. We left in the morning. We woke up, ate breakfast, and my uncle decided for us to leave. They insisted we stayed because they were scared something would happen to us. They were scared about us, the young girls and boys and they wanted us to stay. But, my uncle said no because they already had their own trouble and if they came and saw us there, they would execute him and his whole family. We decided to go to the village. We went to our village. The bombings had already started. Life in the village was like a different world. Beautiful nature, fresh air, children ate a lot, and nothing was missing. My father\u2019s uncle lived in that village, he was 80 years old and he had livestock. It was a big change for us. Children would ask for chocolate spread, jams… but we didn\u2019t have such stuff there. They then got used to cheese, cream, and peppers. We then forgot why we got there, it felt like a great holiday. It was only during the night that we heard the bombings. It was scary but on the other hand, you felt safe because you knew someone powerful was shooting. We felt secure. The U\u00c7K Forces started coming around those villages and they were persecuted by the Serbian Forces. We had to leave that village. We went to another village \u2013 to my father\u2019s aunt. She was married. That was a village in the territory of Kosovo, known as Breznica, but it is within a municipality of Serbia. But, it is in the territory of Kosovo. We went there. We adapted to that village although there were too many guests there. Too many unknown people. The whole neighborhood, and their relatives, respected us so much that they invited us to lunches and dinners. We stayed there for a couple of days, I am not sure how many. A night before we left the village the Serbian Forces started looking for refugees in their houses because somebody had told them that there are some refugees in that village. We had to leave once again, all of us, and go back to Prishtina. The war wasn\u2019t over yet but we got back to our house. We didn\u2019t have problems along to road, it was easy…
\nThe interviewer: Did you walk or did you take the bus?
\nElvira Osmani: No we took the bus from Gjilan to… I don\u2019t know how we got to Gjilan from that village…
\nThe interviewer: Okay.
\nElvira Osmani: But, we took the bus from Gjilan to Prishtina. It was three days before NATO entered the country when we arrived at the bus station. It was before the war was over. We returned to our neighborhood during the war. When we arrived at the station we saw the grass had grown \u2013 it was 2 meters high. Everything had died. We got to our house, put down the roller shutters, and put on some thick green curtains because we had to stay quiet. The police were staying at the cotton factory, in front of us, and they walked around the yards during the night. Then NATO entered the country. The agreement had been reached and NATO bombings began. We didn\u2019t have any information about it. We didn\u2019t know what was going on we just heard the shouts \u2013 the submachine guns from the police were heard \u2013 they were checking on the yards. We wondered what was happening. We were waiting for them to enter ours, too, but it didn\u2019t happen. That lasted for 3 to 4 hours and then it calmed down. We didn\u2019t know what happened. My uncle turned the radio on and we then found out it was KFOR who liberated the country. The war ended and my uncle told us to go and welcome them. English KFOR had taken a lot of candies, different ones in many bags, as well as chocolates, and lollipops. Children were all over the tanks. They got emotional when they saw us as such. We then returned back home and English KFOR decided to stay at the cotton factory. After two weeks, they went to every house in the neighborhood, along with two authorized people, and asked us if we were lacking a thing or if we had any health problems; anything they could do for us. They also asked for the ones who were able to work and what our qualifications were. 70% of the youth in our neighborhood were employed in KFOR. I started working as a nurse. They had the medical battalion and you had to help them. There wasn\u2019t much to do; you had to treat some cuts and interpret at some cases because people with different trauma types came there and had different requests \u2013 such as food, clothing, psychological treatment, and other problems. We worked as interpreters… some of us would help in the kitchen and we got adapted to that job quickly. We got back to reality.
\nThe interviewer: What do you remember from the first time when you went to other neighborhoods in Prishtina? What caught your attention? You mentioned the grass earlier, but what about the other neighborhoods?
\nElvira Osmani: I don\u2019t remember the other neighborhoods much. I can only remember the day we left Prishtina. It was absolute silence when I went to work that day because the city was almost empty, with the exception of the neighborhood I lived in. They still didn\u2019t cast us out. That was the neighborhood with a bigger number of refugees. They didn\u2019t cast people out. But, at Santeja, they forced them out because the Serbian police were located there. The silence was terrible, it felt like war. But, when you\u2019re young you don\u2019t know much. I forgot to mention that the people who were still in Prishtina were issued some Identification cards from the Serbian Police. They made us go and give them our personal details. The cards were pink and green. I don\u2019t remember exactly what they were but I remember that they mentioned that the ones who got a green identification card were part of the execution list. Most of the youth, boys, were issued those green cards. The others who got pink cards were adults about whom they didn\u2019t care much. You had to write your name, surname, age, birth date, and the place you lived. They pretended they had to give us those identification cards so that we could move freely \u2013 if they\u2019d stopped me in the streets and I didn\u2019t have that card they could arrest me. That was actually false because I was 22, and I already had an ID. In addition, we had Serbian IDs. Of course, they wouldn\u2019t tell us exactly what they meant by them, but we were issued with those cards to get executed. That was a form for them to know the exact number of the inhabitants in the city \u2013 to know where they lived and to know their age \u2013 so they could misuse the information.
\nThe interviewer: Thank you very much![\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The interviewer: Good evening. Let\u2019s start the story with when the situation started to worsen; where you were, who you were with, how old you were, and whatever you can remember regarding that period. Elvira Osmani: I was 22 years old. I was working in an institution where I now work as a nurse. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156"}],"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=2156"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2164,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions\/2164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofrefugees-ks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}