Roza and the Refugees of Kosovo

As comfortable as the accommodations were in Skopje, the surrounding countryside told a different tale. A fresh dusting of snow softened, but couldn’t quite erase, the gaping holes and skeletons of houses that dotted the landscape. Burned cars, tanks, shells, fragments of bombs, all littered the space in between. They were all slivers of the silent, haunting emptiness that surrounded the now abandoned villages. Traces of real life, of toys and worn shoes and pieces of broken furniture, littered the landscape, reminding us that not so long ago, these shadowy, near-empty places had been filled with families and life and laughing children.

Most areas remained without electricity and heat. To generate a bit of warmth in this cold and snowy climate, the people who remained, even tiny kids, set a match to piles of garbage on the side of the road and huddled around the fire, oblivious to the danger as they rubbed their hands together over the roaring flames.

On my first full day, I toured the camps and clinics where IRC worked. The Kosovo refugees lived in UN-sponsored camps that barely provided adequate shelter, especially in this bitter cold. In our clinics, the staff reported that upper respiratory infections (URIs) were the primary complaints. Luckily, those were easily treated with antibiotics. The freezing temperatures actually kept down the numbers of communicable and waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, so often found in the crowded camp environments. Just as in Sudan, food was provided by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), but here, a family member had to brace the winds and cold each day to collect rations from the designated site in the camp.

At Shuto-Orizari, one of the UN camps just outside of Skopje, over one thousand Kosovan refugees lived in ramshackle huts that were connected to one another in long rows, like old army barracks. Rickety slices of old wood served as doors. Each family had one or two rooms. Blankets covered the entrance to the living area, a poor attempt to block the cold winds that whistled though the shelters. Each entryway housed the kitchen area, really just an open fire over which a pot of water always stood boiling. The water would be used for food preparation and coffee, and what was left would be used for washing—people, clothes, and dishes—usually in that order. Sometimes clothes and underwear could be seen in the pot as they were swirled about with a long stick. Latrines and showers were housed outside in a separate area. To shower or just urinate, refugees had to brace the cold and snow. Not many showers were taken that winter.

The clinic in this camp was housed in a converted cargo container with just enough space to hold two desks and an old filing cabinet, which stored the drugs available for treatment. In this bitter cold, an electric heater filled the small space with warmth. The staff here, an IRC doctor and nurse, saw an average of eighty patients per day. Because of the bitterly cold air, patients waiting to be seen tried to crowd into the room to wait their turn. Those who couldn’t squeeze in huddled outside.

One of the refugees I became friendly with was Roza, a 46-year-old woman whose stooped shoulders and deeply furrowed brow gave her the appearance of someone much older. Her ruddy skin hung loosely over the broad planes and hard angles of her face. Her eyes were a flat gray, the color of a sidewalk in winter. She wore a moth-eaten sweater over an old dress cinched at her thick waist—the last remnant of the rich life she’d once lived. Heavy stockings covered her legs and a woolen kerchief tied in back covered her head. Although she’d once lived a secure middle-class life in Kosovo, she now shared two small rooms with her husband, four sons and their wives, and three grandchildren. They slept on pads on the floor, curled into one another for heat. In these close quarters, they shared repeated respiratory infections, all of which were easily treated at our clinic, but with one or another always sniffling and coughing, it was a never-ending cycle of sickness.

Although Roza lived a life of crushing poverty, she was certain that this month or maybe the next, her dream of returning to her once comfortable existence would be realized. “Come in out of the cold,” she beckoned me one icy winter day. Glad to be out of the biting winds, I accepted her offer, rubbing my hands together over her pot of boiling water.

In perfect English, she introduced herself and her family, and insisted that I stay for tea. Before I’d had a chance to answer, she ushered me to a floor pillow in the corner of the main room. As I settled myself in, she told me of her own childhood and her life, as if we’d known each other longer than the few minutes it had been. She’d led a charmed life, she said. She’d learned English at a private boarding school and had married at age nineteen. She smiled, a sudden sparkle lighting up her eyes; even her skin seemed to glow as she spoke.

“I was beautiful,” she said proudly, tidying the spray of hair that spilled from under her scarf. “You might not see it now, but I was, and my husband—he was a handsome man. Oh, we were something to see.” She reached for a framed photo of herself and her husband smiling shyly into the camera. She wore a fitted black dress, her husband a shiny suit, and they stood together in the fashion of photos at the time—sour expressions in place of smiles. “We were serious about our future even then.” She nodded her head, remembering that moment and those days when anything seemed possible.

She and her husband had built a successful construction business and a happy, healthy family; her life was safe and sheltered and carefree. Then Kosovo’s Serbs increased their almost decadelong campaign of brutal violence against the Albanian majority and ethnic tensions erupted into war in her native land. The NATO bombing campaign of 1999, designed to end the war, actually for a time allowed the Serbs to increase their atrocities under cover of NATO bombs. As members of another tortured ethnic group, the Roma, Roza and her family were forced to flee Kosovo or risk certain death at the hands of their own countrymen, some of them their own neighbors. They fled to Macedonia and were sheltered in Shuto-Orizari camp for what they thought would be a short stay. Weeks turned into months and months into years. When I met her, she and her family had been refugees for almost three years.

Although the UN had begun repatriation of Kosovan refugees in late 1999, many—Roza and her family among them—remained in Macedonia, terrified of what they had endured and witnessed, and rightly concerned that it could all happen again. “People we’d thought of as friends turned on us. Who can say that things have changed, that we will be safe?” She shook her head and answered her own question. “I won’t go back. Not yet.”

They remained in a state of limbo inside the camp, hoping to go home, but still anxious and fearful of the dangers that lurked there. They had learned that their house had been destroyed and their business was gone, stolen by people they’d once trusted. Despite the presence of an international peacekeeping force, the tensions and danger in Kosovo remained.

Not long after meeting Roza, I learned that the UN planned to close these camps and repatriate the remaining Kosovan refugees.

“What have you heard?” she asked me one day. I shared what little I knew and reassured her that as long as she remained here, we would provide health care and that we would advocate for the Kosovan refugees with the UN.

The UN, however, was firm: the camps must be closed; the refugees would be returned home.

Roza’s smile disappeared when I delivered the latest news, and she clutched her kerchief’s knot, now tied tightly under her chin. She loosened the tie, her fingers fumbling there for a moment. “They will force us out?” she asked, her voice cracking. As miserable as this place was, it had been a safe place to stay. I didn’t know how to answer her question. It seemed unlikely, but I was in no position to make promises. She adjusted her scarf and bent back to her pot, intent on swirling the clothes in the soapy water. She was tired and fearful, and yet, despite her continued hardships, she remained a gracious hostess, for whenever I turned up on her doorstep, always without warning, since there was no phone or way to communicate with her, a feast of sweet tea, pastries, and candies, likely borrowed and begged from neighbors in the camp, would appear as though I had been expected.

“Come in, come in, you must have tea with us,” she invariably said, as though I’d been a long-cherished friend. She never asked for anything aside from a promise of safety, something I could never guarantee.