We are all Defeated!

AIM Skopje, May 7, 2001

For a few days already, with strange trepidation and fear, I thumb through newspapers and turn on the radio and television on with anxiety. They are swarming with "heavy armament" and "hundred-percent poison" and for weeks I have the feeling that I am reading texts that appeared in former Yugoslavia before its dissolution, at the time when journalists began drawing "generalstaff maps" of hatred according to which generals waged war afterwards. For days I am tortured by a curious personal defeat, I am reminded of some of my old texts, especially of a sentence published in 1995 which said that Macedonia was repeating all the mistakes made by the other newly established states in the Balkan, but with a few-year delay proving that history was a teacher nobody had ever learned anything from. I do not know where I got the wish to quote myself when journalism is not my sphere of activity - here I am mumbling my statement made a long time ago: "Macedonia is a hostage of its double illusion: the one cherished by ethnic Macedonians that this country exists only in order to stimulate and cultivate their historic and present glory, and the illusion of the Albanians who live here that they too can be "a state creating people and an important factor in the Balkan". Between these two illusions remains the inaudible voice of other ethnic groups and the impossibility to see the reality that in the Balkan everybody has become so unimportant that in world political maps they are all marked only as "twilight zone".

For days already I neither wish to read nor to write. Something from within is telling me that everything has already been written and read. In this space words have no meaning or are valuable only when they serve as "additional charge" for missiles that are falling on dilapidated inter-ethnic bridges in this tiny multiethnic state. I am increasingly nervously going through the papers and even the articles for AIM that I need to edit. I am carefully estimating them, not for fear that I might omit something "inflammable", but because I am aware that I am actually estimating my own angle of vision of this country.

I am going through the newspapers. I have finally read something I completely agree with: an article by Mirjana Najcevska published in Lobi weekly in Albanian language in which she states a short but all-inclusive conclusion - we are all, every one of us - defeated! Yes, the shots in Macedonia mark the defeat of the politicians, the defeat of the free-thinking people who until recently went from one round-table debate to another unproductively elaborating theories hiding within the narrow-minded nationalistic ambitions, the mind is also defeated of those who have spent years speculating without saying anything, but also the intellectual political elite of the world that proclaimed Macedonia a model in the Balkan how a multiethnic state is built although it knew that it was in fact a model how elections can most successfully be fixed and politics and criminalised business inextricably interlinked.

A long time ago I started comforting myself with small things such as the sincere and objective article of Najcevska. Comforted like that I dial the phone number of my friend in the village of Vakcince near Kumanovo which is for a few days now heavily shelled by Macedonian police and army. From there members of KLA shoot at helicopters of Macedonian army. But the moment I hear his voice I remain speechless: I do not know what to ask nor how to comfort him. As if sensing my confusion, he asks: "How is my lion!?" (meaning my son). I feel strangely feeble. Faces of his young children pass through my mind. "How are your children?" I ask. "They are in the cellar..." he says curtly as if not wishing to explain anything. "Is it true that KLA is holding you hostages?" I ask. "Oh, man, that's absurd...". "At least let your children come to me", I suggest. "You know", he says, "during these Balkan wars I have realised one thing: those who are deprived of their homes, their land - they are, in a sense, dead! I have seen plenty of such homeless 'deceased Balkanese' in the capitals of the West. That is why I have decided not to leave my home!" I realise that it is of no avail to try to persuade him. I ask him whether the population is informed about the ultimatum of the Macedonian army and police that they should leave their homes. He answers affirmatively and explains that ultimatum has but one goal - to make the civilians leave their homes in order to level the villages to the ground so the inhabitants will have no place to return to. I tell him that that is impossible and not to believe such stories. And he mentions "secret plans" he has learnt about according to which Macedonian armed forces wish to create a buffer-zone at the border with Kosovo by applying the military concept of "parched land". We finish the conversation without having said good-bye, because the phone line goes dead. I call again: his mobile phone does not answer. All I can do is hope that its battery has gone dead.

My telephone is persistently ringing. A foreign journalist asks me to explain how did the possibility suddenly arise of an interethnic war breaking out in Macedonia. "What sudden deterioration of interethnic relations are you talking about?" I reply angrily. "For ten years politicians in this country are toying with ethnic emotions", I say, "for ten years in daily politics interethnic relations have been the most profitable political business in which they make or lose political points". "For ten years", I say, "local politicians have deceived the people and international public about relaxed relations but in fact had only the good cooperation between local multiethnic political profiteers in mind". "Where did this conclusion come from that multiethnic relations in Macedonia have deteriorated!? How could have anybody believed that a multiethnic state can be constructed on a single-ethnic concept?!" The collegaue on the other side is silent. As if he cannot cope with the avalanche of my questions.

The minute I put down the phone, in a daily I notice a photograph of my former dear friend, one of the best Macedonian playwrights. I start reading his column titled "Kece" (the name of the traditional white cap of the Albanians). And as I read, I feel as if I were losing my grip. Until recently he was a "reference point" for everything decent in this space. And I arrive at the conclusion that everything has gone astray. Because he too writes about Albanian women who are just "machines for giving birth to children", about Albanians who do not wear "kece" on but in their heads. I begin to laugh and I feel terrible bitterness in my mouth. I remember the first shots in Macedonia on the day when the conflicts began in Tetovo, when my daughter with tears in her eyes asked me to explain what was happening and the moment when, in order to free her from fear of ethnic Macedonians who "want to kill us", I proposed that we visit my blood-brother, ethnic Macedonian in Prilep, the author of the article "Kece".

Stunned, I throw the newspaper and turn on the radio. I am listening to a statement of one of the deputy ministers, an Albanian, who addressed his citizens in fluent Macedonian. His statement has a completely different intonation and more moderate content than the one he had given to the media in Albanian the previous day which was full of ardent words that stirred up emotions. That is the source of our misfortune – I say to myself. There is too much hypocrisy in this small country. The Albanian political elite has never told its colleagues from the Macedonian ethnic block what is the lower limit of their demands under which they would not go, and the latter have never explained their people how they imagine their joint state with all those who are living in it. All politicians in Macedonia have three “editions” of political speeches - one for “their own”, one for “the other”, and the third, the most important one – for Western diplomats. Indeed, for the cunning local politicians it is not as important what the citizens of Macedonia think about them – especially for as long as they can fix the elections – as it is essential for them to make an impression on the international public of “modern politicians”. In this “competition” of Balkan “political schemers” and Western diplomats, the former have an unattainable advantage.

The bitterness in my mouth increases. I turn off the radio. I have turned the television set into a mute movable picture-book a long time ago – I turn on the sound only for children's shows. But suddenly I see the face of Prime Minister Georgievski on the screen. On the face covered with beard, it is impossible to discern any grimace. He is announcing the possibility of proclamation of the state of war in Macedonia and demands from the Albanians to finally declare “whose side they are on”. I have no strength to continue to listen to his “ingenious ideas”. President of Macedonia Boris Trajkovski supports his proposal. And suddenly I say to myself: the citizens who have such statesmen have no reason to worry about their future – because they have none! But I am comforted by the fact that those who seem to be concerned the most for the destiny of Macedonia at this moment are coming – Solana and Robertson!

I remain alone in the room again. The telephone rings. It has in the past days become the most terrible device I have in my home. I have received numerous messages by phone that announced my end, that I would be “definitely silenced”. I press the button that will link me to the person who dialed my number I do not know where from. I am relieved when I hear the voice of an acquaintance – an ethnic Macedonia. “Be careful”, he says. “There are speculations that you are on certain lists”. “I have been on all the lists for a long time...”, I say laughing. Then he tells me what he has learnt about various “secret” and other organisations which are formed to deal with the disobedient. In the past several days all kinds of (mis)information circle Macedonia, its skies are covered with clouds of chaotic information and there is noone who can discern speculations from the truth.

I finally manage to get on the phone a colleague from Kumanovo where the strained interethnic situation is on the verge of explosion. I ask him about the situation in his town. He says that the nights in Kumanovo are nightmarish. And in this town there are ethnic Macedonians, Albanians, Serbs, Romanies, Turks... I interrupt the conversation because my friend from the village of Vakcinci with whom I have not finished our previous conversation, calls me on the mobile phone. He wants to know whether Solana and Robertson have arrived in Skopje. I confirm and say that detonations can even be heard by phone. “For days we have been listening to nothing else but detonations and voices of starving and wounded domestic animals”, he answers. “We have already disciplined the children to be quiet, because nobody hears them cry anyway”, he adds ironically. After that I cannot ask him just anything. I wish him luck and tell him to take care of himself and the children. Everything becomes very distant, strange, obscure. I feel as if I am in the very womb of horror and inhumanity. I do not even notice my own “kids” who have come home from school. They are dripping wet. Heavy rain has started a long time ago.

KIM MEHMETI

(AIM)