February 2006, Mitrovica, Kosovo

By Rebecca Snavely

Leaving the heat of my little blue hatchback, I stamp my feet on the frozen ground. I wait outside the Mitrovica Magazine office on a crisp, bright, cold February day, a magazine designed to cross the physical bridge that divides this Kosovo city into Albanian and Serbian sides.

Besnik arrives, a slight man with dark hair and eyes, weighed down by an ever-present SLR digital camera slung across his shoulder. We greet each other in Albanian, and he asks in stilted English that I explain again what I want to do. And explain slowly.

I repeat my emailed request, that as a writer, I’d love for him, a photographer, to take me on a visual tour of the city. To show me places I might not see on my daily walks, as I barrel through the city with my eyes down, trying to find my way, not slip on the ice, and avoid eye contact with men in this nominally Muslim side of town.

We walk down the main street, slowly, Besnik pointing out the new cityscape. Everything I see, apartments, businesses, photocopy shops, was rebuilt after the buildings and homes had first been burned, then demolished by Serb forces in the war. When the war ended in 1999, Besnik returned home to Mitrovica as soon as it was safe to do so.

We stop on an island in the middle of the road, to replicate photos of the street in the exact place he had photographed then. We receive more stares than usual for our cameras, and cross the street to the relative safety of the sidewalk. With such narrow streets, cars park and have been known to drive on the sidewalks.

As we continue to walk, we meet Nexhmedin, a short man with a big stomach and great gap-toothed smile. On behalf of all Americans, I accept his enthusiasm and gratitude with his gift of a ballpoint pen that writes in four colors, and an invitation to his restaurant, Te Nexhuku, for tea (caj) and a late lunch. Our walking tour of the city is over before it started, and I follow Besnik and his friend down a narrow alley, the brick walls rising high above us, almost blocking the cold afternoon sun. Nexhmedin ushers us into the café through a nondescript glass door.

I settle into a booth opposite Besnik, who places his pack of cigarettes on the table between us. He lights up immediately, adding to the smoky air that is still so cold I leave on my down jacket and scarf.

Besnik explains that this is a local hangout, none of the internationals eat here. I order traditional black caj, served with plenty of sugar and lemon in a small curved glass. I look around, see men sipping tea and smoking cigarettes. The power is on, and the televisions are tuned to local programming. There are few lamps, and handmade curtains block out any light that might shine in from the narrow alley outside.

It’s a four-caj conversation for me, a beer for Besnik, and enough cigarettes for a day. The sun sets as Besnik and I sit for more than an hour. Snapping pictures of me and the cafe, Besnik shares his memories. Yet another lesson in how nothing turns out as I planned, and everything is better because of it.

In March of 1989, Milosevic began his work to end the autonomy and take control of Serbia’s small province, Kosovo. On the 27th, Besnik’s brother Bedri was killed in a protest against this new constitution. He was a civilian. Besnik shakes his head as he thinks back, his eyes wide as he shares his disbelief, years later. That day five civilians were killed by Milosevic’s Serbian police.

After his brother was killed, Besnik was recruited to the Serbian army in 1991. He refused, and at 18 had to live as an illegal in his own home, hiding for four years. He eventually found refuge in Germany to escape service. During his four years in Germany Besnik found work and volunteered using his photography skills to help the Kosovar Albanian cause.

He returned to Kosovo in 1999 as a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) soldier. Though his friends in Germany thought him crazy for coming back to a war zone, he knew he had to join the fight for his home, and was stationed on the border of Kosovo and Albania.

When NATO bombing ended the war in June of ’99, Besnik had to quickly transition from life as a fighter to that of a civilian. Thinking back to that time he looks at the table, his hands fiddling with his lighter, searching for the right words in English.

The first week back in Mitrovica he was too busy to think, his time consumed searching for his family and finding a place to live. But after that, he remembers sinking into a deep depression. After three weeks of sleeping, barely able to function, he walked downtown to buy some food, where he saw an old friend. She was handicapped and only had the use of one hand, with which she steered her automated wheelchair.

“She had nothing, yet she had so much joy and loved life.” Meeting her again, catching up on friends and family was Besnik’s first step toward living fully again, appreciating what he did have in the midst of what he missed.

“Now I want to tell you a story that even I cannot believe happened.” Besnik leans forward, hunched over his beer.

In 2001, Besnik went to a seminar in Macedonia for media personnel. Sponsored by the Nansen Academy, a Norwegian NGO stationed in Mitrovica, the seminar was for both Albanians and Serbs. One morning, as Besnik sat in the hotel restaurant, drinking his morning coffee with one of the Norwegians, they were approached by a Serbian man. Besnik didn’t think much of him, beyond the tension of sharing the room with a Serb. The Serbian man stood directly before Besnik. Unable to ignore him any longer, he looked up at the man, who asked Besnik if he had fought at a certain battle in the war. Yes, Besnik replied. As the Serb continued to question him, narrowing each question down to more and more detail, Besnik grew more curious, answering “yes” to each, but staying on guard, not sure what to expect.

The Serb and Besnik had been at the same battle where two Serbs and a Russian soldier were killed by KLA fighters. “It was only God who gave me the strength to remain calm as I had to sit and talk to a man who was my enemy only two years before.” After that initial conversation, they spent the next three nights of the conference talking and drinking together.

Besnik stills wonders how it happened, and is amazed that they had such a good time. If he had been aware that he would meet a Serbian soldier he had fought against, he would have never gone to Macedonia. Faced with the situation, he found the grace to deal with his emotions and fears.

As we walk out of the café and join the early evening foot traffic, Besnik points to a 10-year-old girl, half skipping toward us, holding on to the straps of her pink backpack. “That is why I fought in the war. That is why I am here. For children to live without fear.”

I hold his camera and scroll back through photos he has taken recently, from shots of his friends and the city to a French military ceremony. There are shots of soldiers standing at attention, flags waving in foggy air. There are pictures I would have erased had it been my camera: out of focus, overly grainy, or ones of me that I beg Besnik to erase. “Oh no,” he shakes his head at me, looking at one. “Never delete anything. You learn best from your mistakes.”

Having never before traveled overseas, Rebecca Snavely’s first trip to Kosovo, via Serbia, was the first stamp in a newly purchased passport. Rebecca lives in Los Angeles, and has since traveled to Japan, Ireland, and Orange County, California.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 | Email This Post

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