We arrive to Kosovska Mitrovica, its Serb part, at 4 p.m. It is peaceful on the bridge that divides the city in two parts. A lot of people in the streets, especially the young ones. Kosovska Mitrovica is the only urban community in Kosovo where the Serb language is still spoken. There is no water and phone lines have been down since the previous day. I sit in a bar with several young men. In two hours they are supposed to head to the bridge: "Our shift. We will not give up this part of Serb Kosovo without struggle. I was expelled from Pec and this friend of mine is from Prizren. None of my friends have run away to Serbia. We are all here, every day by the bridge. We are determined to defend our city from the mob that cannot think about anything else but their pathological hatred of Serbs. If they expel us from this part of Mitrovica, then the rest of the Ibar valley to the north will also fall. The French soldiers do not support us. They destroyed the TV repeater, so that we cannot watch Serbian TV any more. On the other hand, many French officers try to help us discretely: they see that we are the victims here.
"In general terms, the most honest part of foreigners in Kosovo are soldiers. They are daily exposed to significant danger. The worst are UN officials, members of numerous humanitarian organizations etc. It is unclear what their actual role in the province is. I am convinced that most of them have come here, to my country, with dishonorable intentions. Albanians have seriously wounded and killed several French soldiers, so that no love is wasted between them. Thus, the Albanians unintentionally help us. They behave arrogantly, triumphantly and stupidly."
What is the appropriate reaction? Should I keep quiet, as many friends have advised me? Fine. I try English. An Albanian does not understand me. Then I pretend to be an Englishman who speaks a bit of Serb. The taxi driver responds: "Why do all of you foreigners only learn Serb? How come none of you learn some Albanian?"
A short walk through the city. Streets are crowded. One can frequently hear shots from guns and automatic rifles. I can't hear a single Serb word in the street. A lot of construction is going on. Shops are full of goods, everything twice or thrice as expensive as in Serbia. About a third of goods originate in Serbia. The city appears dirty, neglected, without open spaces and parks.
I go to see a Serb exhibition with Veselin Radojevic, a painter! Veselin goes to a store after checking out the exhibits with me. He does not return for two hours. All of us are worried, but no one dares to say it. We are simply mute. Mitra Reljic speaks first: "Do you think something could have happened to him? Three days ago they murdered a Serb like that. Someone recognized him in the street, they dragged him behind a building and shot him to death." Mitra explains how she visits a shop located about two hundred meters from her apartment. "That requires special precautions". She prepares like a real secret agent. First, she goes to the left, then pauses, then to the right. If the owners are on their own, they talk in the Serb language, of course. They have known each other for years. However, if other Albanians are inside the store, they use pantomime: "They protect me and I protect them. Unfortunately, such examples are very rare".
In the midst of a European city with, according to a UN estimate, 400,000 inhabitants, 99 percent of them Albanians, on 48 meters square in the University Village, Serb poet Darinka Jevric, with assistance from literature professor Mitra Reljic, has founded the Serb cultural center "Ikonos". Serbs in Kosovo, in Pristina, live as if under house arrest. How does one visit the cultural center? Only with escort of NATO soldiers.
Mitra Reljic talks about 98 Serb pupils in Pristina. They share the fate of their parents. They have been locked up in their apartments for months. As a Serb poet once wrote: "As in the midst of a Christian catacomb, outside persecution never stops".
The first activity of the Serb cultural center was to set up an exhibition in the gallery "Ikonos". Darinka explains with child-like enthusiasm: "Objects collected and displayed in this gallery are striking and unique. They are photographs, books, children's shoes, letters, toys and paintings thrown by Albanians from Serb apartments and houses on the street or a refuse dump." She collected them with her friends and gave them the dignity of exhibition objects. In a daily life I object to unnecessary, pathetic language. However, today I am severely tempted to break that rule. I believe that the reader would not object, since any one visiting Kosovo these days soon realizes what is needed for such an apparently small cultural undertaking. Enormous strength and courage, even madness. Standing in front of these exhibits I feel as in front of holy icons in a church. I read excerpts from a diary of a Serb girl form Pristina.
"I do not dare go out to the hallway. I do not even think about opening the door or speaking in the Serb language."
Is this girl still alive? A Serb Anna Frank? The very existence of that humble exhibition speaks volumes about spite and protest. We do exist in spite of terror and exodus. Darinka: "To Albanians terror, plunder and murders and to us books, paintings and spirituality". As every exhibition, this one also has a guest book. The poet pulls out some pieces of paper so that I can write something too. I see that she was visited the previous day by Mira Aleckovic [a Serb poet], Draginja Aleckovic, Duska Vrhovac, Nada Petrovic, Radoslav Zlatanovic, Vladimir Jaglicic, Slobodan Stojanovic...
Darinka Jevric, a poet, the founder of the Serb cultural center, was recently expelled from her apartment in the district of Pristina known as Kupusiste. Unlike most of expelled Serbs who headed for Serbia, Darinka lives as a refugee in her own city, in the University Village: "I plan to establish a Serb library and a gallery. Seven Russian soldiers came to carry books from my apartment. They are wonderful people. A British patrol saw them and they demanded to see their documents, as if the Russians were criminals and not people trying to save books. The Russians helped me on their own initiative. Pristina is in the British sector. The British refused to help me save the books. They said that that was not within the scope of their duties. Then, the Russians came to help."
"I forbid you to die elsewhere," says Darinka in one of her poems.
Mitra Reljic says that the Albanians burned down a collection of books in Russian. That collection was the biggest and best of all at the Pristina University. I have not heard in Berlin about that most recent Albanian "achievement". I can only imagine what German media would write if, God forbid, Serbs did something like that.(...)