‘What’s the matter, Miloš? What are you doing, sitting in the corner there, saying nothing? Are you brooding? Or are you writing?’
He straightened the small board, his writing surface, balancing it on his knees. His back hurt, and his eyes were burning. How many of these kinds of letters had he written in his life? With each one of them, he had made another enemy, and none of them had ever achieved anything. This one, he hoped, would be his last.
‘You’re ruining your eyes, Miloš. Light a candle. Do you hear me?’
He ran his fingers over the letterhead, on the fine, heavyweight paper, unscrewed the top of his fountain pen and began to write.
Dear Secretary of State, esteemed Dr Božović,
Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Miloš Valetić, I am seventy-two years old and, with my wife, I have returned a few weeks ago to our homeland, Kosovo. We are part of the EUfinanced returnee programme. We ended up in Talinovac, in a ruin without running water or electricity, and partly without walls, windows or doors. In my desperate plight I am turning to you as a fellow Serbian.
He bent forward to blow off the paper some dirt that had fallen from the crumbling ceiling, and continued.
I have been on the road a lot over the past weeks: I visited the town hall in Ferizaj, the Ministry of Works and Social Services in Priština and the High Commission of the UN Transitional Government. Everyone works in beautiful offices, and the car parks outside are filled with brand-new limousines, but it would appear that nobody has any money for the most urgent repairs to this building of ours. They say that the local authority has spent its funds, the ministry can only advise and the UN Transitional Government is not responsible for refugee affairs. All I am trying to do is to present the facts on the ground, to describe the situation and to suppress my anger and disappointment. But I cannot hide the fact that I feel helpless, powerless and abandoned.
‘Miloš, take a blanket and go outside. Sit down in the light. Did you hear me, Miloš? I’ll make you some tea. It’ll do you good.’
Before I decided to turn to you, esteemed Dr Božović, I tried contacting the man who ran information meetings at the refugee centre in Avala. The leaflet handed out at these events referred to ‘Jonathan Spajić, Programme Coordinator’. The small print mentions an agency called Step Forward, acting on behalf of the Serbian State Chancellery for the Affairs of Kosovo.
The telephone number and the web page for this agency are no longer available. My assumption that the agency no longer exists was neither confirmed nor denied by your office, the State Chancellery for the Affairs of Kosovo. My questions concerning Mr Spajić and the cooperation with that agency remain unanswered, and were presumably never passed on to you.
‘Miloš, I thought there was still some water left in the bucket, but I was obviously mistaken. You’ll get your tea when we get back from fetching the water, OK? Are you keeping an eye on the clock? We shouldn’t leave it too late.’
So my first step was to approach the Kosovan Albanian authorities. Searching the internet for somebody to talk to, I came across the following information on the website of the Ministry of Work and Social Services: it mentioned a ‘Representative for Real Estate’, who had been advising local authorities on the matters of returnees and refugees. His name? Jonathan Spajić. I was shocked: it seems the governments of Serbia and Kosovo engage the services of one and the same man to deal with returnee and refugee affairs.
I don’t want to cook up any conspiracy theories, or blame others for something I have instigated myself. I let myself get carried away by something that had taken years to get out of my head: to return to my homeland one day, and to start all over again as a Serb living in Kosovo. I let myself be tempted by the idea that a dream could become a reality, and refused to see that, of course, nobody had any interest in fulfilling the wish of an old man. In reality, we are being used to push through Serbian demands in Kosovo. But I did not think it possible that the indifference inside the ministerial bureaucracy would be so immense that returnees were not even granted a proper roof over their heads.
Three questions remain. First: what has become of the money the EU made available for our house in Talinovac? Second: why was there no security for our property – as stipulated in the statutes – to guard against vandalism and looting prior to our arrival? And third: what role does Mr Jonathan Spajić play in all this? Is he a mediator between the governments of Serbia and Kosovo? To what end? Why did his name disappear from the website of the Kosovan Albanian ministry soon after I made my enquiry?
I can testify in front of any inquiry in Priština, Belgrade or Brussels to the fact that the returnee programme is not being properly implemented, and I can support my testimony with pictures of our house in Talinovac. I want to stress, however, that this letter should not be seen as a threat or as an attempt to have any individual made a scapegoat. At risk of stating the obvious, this is meant to be a wake-up call to improve the lot of future Serbian returnees.
Esteemed Dr Božović, I will never forget how you came to Avala with a lorry full of schoolbooks and other educational materials. Maybe you remember: I was the old man who burst into tears in front of the cameras – I was so overwhelmed by your gesture. I am convinced that if there is anyone who can clear up this scandal, it is you.
I wish you luck and persistence, and place myself at your disposal as far as my strength allows it. I thank you for taking the time to read these lines.
Yours faithfully,
Miloš Valetić
He screwed the top back onto the fountain pen, blew on the ink and waited for it to dry. He folded the sheets, put them into the envelope and placed it in the folder. He then put the folder in the leather suitcase containing all the valuables that remained in their possession after their flight. At the bottom of the case, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, lay the icon, the White Angel of Mileševa, which had hung over the sideboard in the living room – back when they still had a life.
He shut the suitcase and pushed it into its hiding place, the hole in the wall. Tomorrow he would go down to the post office and find the address of the State Chancellery in Belgrade.
‘Don’t make such a face, Miloš.’ Ljubinka stroked his cheek. ‘You’ve cut the cardboard strips. They’ll make it much easier to carry the bucket. It’s those little things that are important, Miloš. And now let’s go, we’ve got a long walk ahead of us, and I don’t want to be struggling in the dark.’