Teen’s Diary Tells of Hard Life as a Refugee

School let out early in Pristina two days before the NATO bombings began. The teachers said goodbye. Some were crying.

“See you all soon,” Adelina Imeri told her instructors and classmates at the Hassan Pristina high school in Kosovo’s provincial capital.

“Yes, see you soon,” most replied.

No one dared suggest that the life they knew was drawing to a close. They didn’t want to say it because maybe it would come true, Adelina recalled. But superstition couldn’t freeze events. Everyone coming home from school, including 15-year-old Adelina, felt it, breathed it--this stifling dread among the ethnic Albanians.

She stopped at a kiosk and picked out a green leather notebook for $1.10. On March 22, she began her diary--what became a sampling of the fear, hopelessness and hunger suffered by Adelina, her family and her friends when their lives were shattered.

“The fear is increasing,” she wrote. “What will happen?”

Adelina’s journal, written in Albanian in her slightly tilted script, is direct. The observations are sharp and emotions often muted. This is also how she carries herself: simple, unadorned chestnut hair. She may occasionally wear a light shade of lipstick, but that’s rare. Adelina, whose father wouldn’t allow her to be photographed by a journalist, speaks in clipped sentences, never rambling. She wants to study medicine, perhaps become a pediatrician.

March 23, the day before the NATO attacks began, she wrote: “They are giving only two liters of milk to each customer. . . . Even the vegetable market is being emptied out. I met [friends] Arjeta and Arlinda at noon. They were going to Skopje to an uncle’s place. I was asked: ‘Where are you going?’ I’ve got nowhere to go. . . . The older people are whispering something between them. What are they saying?”

The opening NATO bombardment shook their entire building, a 15-story apartment tower near the Fountain of Ulpiana, a favorite meeting place for teenagers. Adelina’s family huddled together in their living room on the seventh floor. At 8:10 p.m. they heard the first blast. Half an hour later the power went out. Adelina counted a dozen explosions, two of them so close the windows rattled and the building swayed. She eventually fell asleep at dawn.

March 25: “Tired from previous night. . . . Dad bought groceries. I’m wondering whether to go to the fountain or not. Few people are on the streets. Some relatives of ours told us that robbing and burning of the houses and shops has started. . . . Dad is trying to calm us down, telling us NATO will not hit civilian areas. . . . This seems unreal.”

Adelina heard that one of her friends had left for Montenegro. People on her block were packing their cars and heading south toward the Macedonian border. She began spending more time playing with her 8-year-old brother, Arzenin. At least it helped distract her. The news reported the slayings of ethnic Albanian human rights lawyer Bajram Kelmendi and his two sons. Adelina curled up in bed with her clothes on.

March 26: “I heard one explosion I thought was going to demolish the building. . . . God, where did they hit this time?”

They left the apartment the next morning. Adelina’s father, a construction foreman who couldn’t get a job with Serbian contractors, found room for the family in a friend’s home in a neighborhood known as Sunny Hills. Surprisingly, the phone worked. Adelina tried to call friends. Many had already left Pristina. She watched people trudging toward the train station five miles from the center. But they were turned back by police for some reason. They felt safer on the first floor of the home. The basement--safer still--was allotted to a Serbian family in a government welfare program.

March 28: “Psychologically, we are prepared for the worst. The explosions are coming more.”

March 29: “I ran into two of my friends. They looked very pale and scared. They told me how they spent the terrible nights in the high-rises. I pass the time looking for food. . . . We are more scared hour by hour. . . . We can see the glowing explosions. They are like mushrooms of fire. We are scared the police or military will come for us.”

Yugoslav authorities claim most of the more than half a million Kosovo refugees fled NATO bombing raids and not reprisals from Serbian police and paramilitary units. Adelina’s family packed up because of both. They heard that Serbian police were clearing out nearby neighborhoods and moving in their direction. But the bombings also had them on edge. On the last day of March, Adelina, her parents and two brothers joined 17 others walking to the train station. Adelina’s family was too fearful of Serbian police to return to their apartment. They took only two changes of clothes each, a sack of bread and apples and about $250 in German marks. Adelina left behind everything but her diary.

They managed to find a place in the corridor of a train heading for the Macedonian border. They felt fortunate. Thousands of others were left behind, begging to be let on board. Police waved their guns at the crowd, and the train pulled away.

March 31: “I couldn’t stop crying. . . . In every station we passed, thousands of people were waiting to escape the Serbian massacres. . . . The train stopped in front of a military barracks. We waited there for at least one hour. The border was just 500 meters [yards] away. We were ordered to come out of the train and walk along the railway tracks. They said there were mines on either side. We were part of a stream of people. My dad estimated there were 10,000 people. We came to a place called Blace.”

Adelina’s family descended into a pit of misery along a swampy no-man’s land along the border. More than 35,000 ethnic Albanians were stranded there as Macedonian authorities balked at opening up their nation to the refugee tide. Adelina’s family scavenged a bit of nylon sheeting and fashioned a tent. And there they waited.

April 1-3: “The rain is falling. It seems fitting after what we’ve been through. We are trying to get some sleep leaning against each other’s backs. An aid group has started giving bread to people. It’s amazing to see all the hands reaching for bread.”

On April 4, they were allowed out and scrambled aboard a bus. Friends of Adelina’s father took them in at their three-room apartment in Skopje. That night she wrote: “All we wanted was hot water to wash and a bed to sleep. I wish to forget Blace if that’s possible.”

April 6: “It was strange to see shops full of things. . . . I thought I was dreaming after what I experienced in Pristina. It’s like we’re on a different planet. We see people and teenagers my age not being afraid of the police or being tortured.”

The next days were spent basking in common pleasures. Adelina registered for school and took long walks with Arbana, the 12-year-old daughter of their hosts. They ate ice cream. “Delicious,” raved Adelina in her diary. Adelina’s father spared some money so she could see a movie.

“Every day, I see more faces from Pristina and I hug them as if they were long-lost family,” she wrote April 10.

April 12: “First day at school. They were very nice to us. I still could not wait to finish. It was like something grabbed me around the throat and was strangling me. I could not follow the teaching. . . . I came back home depressed. Everyone understood that. I missed my friends.”

“I’m depressed again,” she wrote April 15. “I had some terrible dreams with people dressed in military uniforms with long beards and masks on their faces. They were trying to catch me. What does this dream say?”

April 19: “I can’t stop thinking of my old friends. I miss them terribly. Where are they?”

Adelina received a surprise present April 20 from her father: a new dress. It was her first new item of clothing since leaving Kosovo. “I was extremely happy!” she wrote.

Five days later, Adelina got another gift. In Skopje, she ran into four former classmates who had just been allowed to leave one of the refugee camps outside the city. They arranged to meet the following day.

April 26: “We walked and walked. We talked about the days we had in Pristina.”