"What's he saying?"
"Now he's swearing at his sister."
Another few short sentences. We understand only the static of the Motorola and the word "bula".
No translation. "Our guys" are answering so that the other side will be sure to understand them.
Then silence.
"When you curse their father, they shut up right away!" says one of the four men in combat fatigues almost triumphantly, as if he has found the right solution to a difficult problem.
A frightening similarity and collective association to "Pretty Village, Pretty Flame" and the tunnel from the movie that comes to mind as a result of the Motorola dialog is swept aside by the sound of a jeep. Two men with berets stop and silently get out of their vehicle. After looking at their documents and a quick search, the police allow them to pass and they continue on the road to Pristina. Checking our reporters' documentation takes a lot longer.
"How come you just let them pass through but for us you have to call the commander?" we ask almost defiantly.
"Well, 'cause you're not Albanians," respond the policemen.
For Serbs this is the end of the road. Even though...
"You can go, too, if you want but they're waiting just behind those hills, in Orlane. There's 'bout a thousand five hundred. The UCK." [Albanian acronym for the KLA]
The words of the policeman, who has spent almost a month on patrol with his colleagues at the checkpoint in the village of Tulare, force us to look behind our backs. Toward Pristina and the last checkpoint of the Serbian police in the village of Medevac, only two kilometers from Tulare. And some twenty kilometers from Medvedja, in which some people are already putting on the coffee that Thaci promised he would drink in Serbia.
Until twenty days ago, at the mention of the Kosovo Albanian leader the Serbs of Medvedja would just defiantly glare at the hills that separated them from Kosovo. In the direction of the road which Albanians from Medvedja took during the bombing and afterwards with all their household possessions and large families "to visit relatives". In the direction of the same road that these "visitors" are taking to return to Medvedja. They come and then return to Kosovo. Day after day. "An advance guard," they say in Medvedja.
Marketplace: "We were just getting used to them not being here and then they started coming back," says Mirko Zugic, a 23 year-old young man of Montenegrin descent from the nearby village of Gajtan.
"To visit." Now he watches them returning.
"Every day there are more and more of them," says Mirko, while gazing at the muddy streets of Medvedja overcrowded with people through the haze of cigarette smoke. It's Thursday, market day.
"On Thursdays there are really quite a few of them. They are brought here by Albanian taxi drivers who charge 20 [German] Marks per person from Pristina to Medvedja. They gather here in the marketplace. Supposedly, they come here to check on the houses they left behind," he explains.
"The man who exchanged house with us did not come to our house but we have seen him in Medvedja," says Slobodan Radojcic, who fled from Kosovo Polje with his wife and two children in June of this year. He exchanged houses with an Albanian from Medvedja, signed a contract, had it notarized by an attorney, agreed to give each other their respective belongings from their houses. Slobodan helped the Albanian to move out; the latter promised he would bring their belongings but never did. And Slobodan cannot go fetch them. All of his belongings, he said, are still there. There is little comfort in the fact that other Serbs who exchanged houses met with the same fate.
"And why is that Albanian coming to Medvedja if he has no property here?" we ask.
Slobodan offers a "significant" look in response.
Here in the marketplace someone might say that there are no differences among people. The stubborn ones are persistent in their claim that the only distinction is between the sellers and buyers. Nevertheless, it doesn't take much effort to recognize an Albanian in Medvedja. Or a Serb. The former chiefly wear berets instead of the traditional Albanian headwear and they walk in pairs, like on the promenade. They stand in disciplined fashion on the bridge. When they shake hands, they do so by standing close together and acting as if they were whispering. The Serbs shake hands "at a distance". They laugh, talk aloud and avidly observe what is going on around them. They look at the Albanians without trepidation whereas the Albanians keep their gaze focused in front of them.
Don't hear anything: "You can recognize them by the way they look, man, " 30 year-old Srdjan explains laconically. Two of those "pointed out" on the bridge greet us with cordial smile. Sahet Sahiti, aged 31, and Ismet Hajradinovic, two years his senior. Unemployed, locals. They haven't had any problems. They don't know anyone who has left. They know some of those who are coming back. "They are checking on their houses," they say with a typical "soft" accent.
While we are trying to start up a conversation, an old man approaches Sahet. He shakes hands with a whisper and after the response of his younger compatriot "puts on" a smile.
"I am completely incapacitated," responds the old man before we have had a chance to ask him anything. His name is Alija Rohanovic, he is 68 years old, he is from Tupale, an exclusively Albanian village immediately above Medvedja. He tries to leave but we stop him with a barrage of questions.
"I don't hear anything," he tries to evade us.
"Will Kosovo be returned to the Serbs?" we ask.
"Returned to where? There is nowhere to return it, neither here nor there. It's no good. Before we had brotherhood and unity, now nothing is good," he explains with the obligatory addition: "I don't hear anything."
"And why did the Albanians leave from here?" we ask.
Sahet jumps to his aid.
"He doesn't hear very well. I see he is speaking wrongly because he does not hear," he says in place of Alija.
After that "reminder" all three answer that life is good for them here, the only problem is that there is no work and that the Albanians left for Kosovo probably because there is no work in Medvedja.
Desert: "Economic reasons". Dzafar Beic, an employee of the state security service, who came here a few months ago from Pristina, agrees. A native of the Medvedja region, he left an apartment and all his belongings in Pristina. They are now being used by an Albanian. Without permission from the owner. The service, says Dzafar, does not allow statements to be given without permission of one's commander. Not a problem.
"Does the police check who these people who are now returning are and where they've been? What if they were in the KLA?" we ask.
The unauthorized state security employee has no answer.
The whole town of Medvedja is talking about Dzafar, who is an ethnic Albanian. Serbs say among themselves, with alarm, that in addition to Beic, there is one other Albanian who works in the service. They say that there are no Albanians among the police and official sources confirm this. The former head of the liaison office in the department of defense was also an Albanian. Shortly before the war he and his family also moved to Pristina.
For those who have not forgotten how, years ago, the Albanians moved to Medvedja, the new wave of Albanian "returnees" is something of a sign for alarm.
The Serbs in Medvedja, it seems, are increasingly frightened even of their own. They know where they stand with the Albanians.
Serbian "policies" have turned Medvedja into a desert, they say. At one time, this was a good-sized town with 35,000 residents. According to Slobodan Draskovic, the president of Medvedja municipality, where the Socialist Party of Serbia is in power. King Alexander gave Medvedja the status of a town back in 1921. Today, with a total municipal area of 520 square kilometers, in the town itself and the thirty odd surrounding villages there aren't half that many people.
In three exclusively Albanian villages - Tupale, Grbavce and Svirce - many houses remained empty after the war. In Sijarina, a village where Albanians are in majority, a continuation of the town of Sijarinska Banja [spa], some ten kilometers from Medvedja, the location of a police checkpoint until just recently, only elderly people remain. Right next to the mosque in Sijarina, in a house of almost 1,000 square meters, Hatem Demirovic, a 70 year-old man, lives alone with his wife. The sons for whom he built this house are in Switzerland. He has not slept peacefully ever since the police took down the checkpoint.
"At any moment some kind of chase may come along," says Hatem.