Vlora

June 2021 — Prishtinë

Albanian:

“Çka o kon interesant, se po m’dridhet trupi n’këtë moment, ni student, në të tretin kat, n’friz o hi, e ka heke frizin prej rrymës”

“My body is shivering as I speak, a student, on the tenth floor, stayed in the freezer, Sorry, I have goosebumps”

Audio Transcript [ENGLISH]

My body is shivering as I speak, a student, on the tenth floor, stayed in the freezer,

Sorry, I have goosebumps

He was left alone in the apartment, without eating or drinking, for two weeks,

That was a difficult moment because he had opened the door and had heard us talk and move and said “Just give me some bread, please, I’m dying”

Then what we did, me and my neighbor from the fifteenth floor, the whole time, we were sneaking, it was such a difficult time, to just feed that man,

But couldn’t he get out of there?

Edonen, then I made Edona, I told Edone “Edone, you are younger,” I was older, I didn’t want others to see me.

Is Edona your sister?

No, Edona was my neighbor, she was more versatile, she wasn’t scared, she would go out,

I had another sister who wasn’t afraid, Valentina, but I couldn’t let her out because she was so lively and her voice was so loud, I told her “I cannot let you out” because she would laugh, you know she was a child, what does a child know, she maybe didn’t even know how to feel about, she just didn’t know, as simple as that.

Below is the a creative, non-fiction vignette written by Erjona Gashi about Vlora’s interview.

For Vlora, the days bled into each other as she began detailing her experience. She said she didn’t know why some memories clung to her, but she knew they refused to be forgotten. She started her story with the table they ate at because she said that table saved her life.

“It was Eid-Al-Fitr,” she said, her voice distant but firm. “I remember because I wanted to bake a cake.”

The war was already breaking through Kosova, but in places far from her, places she couldn’t see. On TV, Kosova looked like a country in another part of the world, distant, unreal. She thought it might stay that way. She was eighteen. She wanted to bake a cake. She had just sat down to eat with her family when the door flung open.

Paramilitary police. Masks. She saw their eyes were red and assumed not from exhaustion or sorrow, but something feral, like rage. “The rest of their faces didn’t matter – she said.” “It was the eyes that I still remember.”

Vlora couldn’t look at them for long out of fear.

They didn’t speak much. They just commanded us to leave.

There was no time for packing. No time for saying goodbye to a home that still smelled like spices and sugar and soft bread. A second later, they were in the street.

Life, Vlora recalls, somehow, went on. Survival became a habit. Streets became homes. The mountains became shelter. They ate meals outside, under the open sky, not around a table, but in meadows, abandoned backyards, or patches of dirt. Things that once belonged to the inside like warm food, lively conversations, and prayer, now were public. Witnessed by strangers in passing. Exposed.

Vlora said she didn’t know why she remembered everything in flashes. Not always in order. But she knew she still vividly remembered the grief of losing it all.

Listen to the archive here if you’d like to learn more.