Second Part
Lura Limani: You spoke about your father a little and you told us that you did not know where your father was for seven years, because he was in jail. Can you tell us a little more about what happened after the Second World War ended and after the death of Shaban Polluzha, specifically [what happened] to your father?
Enver Topilla: After I was born in 1946, in 1946 my father was imprisoned. I was a child, he was sentenced twenty year as political prisoner. A group of people was sentenced, eight persons were sentenced to death, I don’t know exactly, my father was part [of this group], but he was a very strong orator, he was educated for that time, and so he was sentenced twenty years. He was released, it seems to me, after eleven months according to their words. They sent him through an expedited trial, they sent him into isolation for more than two years, they sent him into isolation without a court hearing. And, when they built the prison of Pristina, I remember I thought myself quite big when I was four, five years, I went with my paternal uncle and saw that they carried bricks in boxes hanging from their necks, [boxes] completely full, without an elevator, without a lift, without anything… and they, the prisoners, built the prison.
To be comprehensive…I grew up mostly at my maternal uncles’ in Polluzha. In Polluzha they burned all the houses. And I went and spent more time there because my mother had no husband. My paternal uncle respected my mother very much even without my father and brother. And all our houses were burned in Polluzha, we had houses… he was well off. Shaban Polluzha did not go to war because he was poor, but he wanted everyone to have equally… everyone to have freedom, to have honor because he wasn’t a poor man, he had enough land, but everything was taken from him.
And I remember very well when my father comes back, only once did I go to visit him as a child. The same happened to him, to the professor {addresses his son}, this one, Faton. He came after 17 months, came to prison in Ferizaj, and I ask my wife, “Can the boy speak?” And the boy sticks his hand through the bars and touches my face {touches his face}, supposedly to say, “Why don’t you ask me instead than ask mother?” the same happened also to me.
But they gave my father an injection in the arm, it is not more important who gave it to him, I don’t want to label people… [he was from] our side, to poison him. And a very damaged piece stays in this arm {touches the arm} and it must, it made him very angry in front of the house, but he survived. And he needs a doctor, it was a certain Manevski the Macedonians said he did the operation, he took off a whole piece of flesh and he definitely removed that piece of my father and saved him from the craziness of that suffering. From then on he had no rights, he had no right to vote, he couldn’t vote for the Socialist League, mother did not vote, I also did not vote since my mother and my father never voted.
He was very well-read, I mean, educated. At the time there was a lack of education amongst people and many times, he participated in the blood feuds reconciliation, in the mediations, every time. Even though, when a patriotic song was sung in a wedding, he would be called in [by the police], “Have you been there? What did they sing? What was going on?” (smiles). Every time tortures…he was not even once defeated in life (cries). And if I consider his circumstances, they hurt my soul many times.
For example, if I replied just once, perhaps coarsely or not even coarsely, but just in the same manner as I was addressed, [this person] knew what could happen to one, what could happen to me. For this reason, then, I took him to many reconciliation meetings, I am young but these are the traditions, that for the 54 year of my life, in my life, if he came or went out one hundred times, I never waited sitting, I never waited sitting. Every time, even when we exhumed the bones of Fadil [Fazli] Grajçevci[1] with friends and comrades, all the time we also organized, we waited, we helped in the reconciliation of blood feuds and everything else. Thank God that the great man of this nation, Anton Çetta,[2] took the initiative and ended the killing in Kosovo even though they still happen. But he has done a job that neither war nor peace could, they could not solve the issue that was solved in the reconciliation campaign.
Afterwards, after the war I also took this initiative, because Skukrije Gashi did this, we held training, she was a director of mediation. Together with Americans, we also helped a lot, and we began reconcile everything that was bad before the war and during the war. For this reason, there are many things, which I’m saying again. I cannot focus on dates much because of my illness, which is…and once more I have to say that [my father] evaded those conversations because he knew I would never be at peace. My children are the same, they tell it as it is. Everything that is too much hurts one deeply inside even if it said by whomever, let alone if I said it.
Lura Limani: You mentioned that although you were living in Pristina and worked, in a way you were “undesirable.” When did you begin to work for the Ilegalja,[3] and can you tell us something more specific about the situation before you went to jail and after?
Enver Topilla: Yes, look, I told you that I was in the Yugoslav army when I was 22, and only because my mother was offended, there’s testimonies I mentioned people, only because my Albanian mother was cursed I took a blade, and they could do what they wanted, I stabbed a Serb with the blade of a rifle. And, in addition, they could not punish me because I am… I was not sworn in. Before the oath, there, it would have not been legal to punish me. And we agreed with all the friends that when we’d get out of the army, on that day we would buy white plis,[4] and they took only me in the morning, in Mostar, Trebinje, with a white plis and they promised me, the military superiors, “Your day will never come,” that day that I was let go from…20 years old.
But, these were…at the time the activities were very difficult, I keep saying, humans don’t know how to think differently, one for seven-eight years, just when … when one stopped thinking, it was not about killing, about mistakes, corruption, but [the fight] against Slavic rule, against injustices. Everyone hated injustice, with all their soul, and I always hated it, any time they wanted a meeting after work, I was sent because I had a job, before going to the Yugoslav army.
I always opposed injustice, I was always tortured, I was always interrogated, my apartment was always broken into in ’69. The Absorbers Factory gave me an apartment because I was skilled. At the time, the organizations distributed apartments, and every time I went [away] for five or six months I had to change the lock because they had broken into during my absence, the State Service Security. And I don’t know what needs more to be said, I never voted as people do, because my dad had been taken away the right to vote by the Socialist League at the time. My mother, as the child of Shaban, did not go to vote because of her father. And I because of my father and mother, [I swear] on my soul I never voted as a Yugoslav.
And our activities never stopped, they never stopped neither on my [maternal] uncles’ [side], nor on this other side [of the family] but there were a few more serious activities. It was not possible for everyone to be an activist. Even I could not after my father, the family suffered and was spent. Even the guests who came to us, had to come at night, to come at night. In one case, when they released me from prison, they called me to the police station in ’83, and I did not go. I did not want to go, they called me three times and they took me by force. When I arrived, a commander of the station, an Albanian, rummaged my pockets and said, “Who are you not to come?” I said, “I did my time, what do you want with me?” He talked to me very well, I never forgot. He said, “You are escorting people, they come to see you at night, but you are escorting them through corn fields, you are not escorting them in the street,” he said, “and you are accompanying people. We know everybody who comes, and who came. Three types of people came: one to see what happened, the second to see what you are still thinking, and the third how you were screwed,” he said, “what they did to you in prison.” And here, since he said all these words, I had to be active every time.
Lura Limani: Can you tell us a little about your work and your experience of the 1990s, after you worked at Feronikel, after being released from prison?
Enver Topilla: Yes.
Lura Limani: What happened afterwards?
Enver Topilla: After suffering in jail, I remained nine months without a job, and I had six children. I got a job through an application, I did not know anyone and I had a job for six months and half. After six months and a half, a director of the cadres, an Albanian, [who had] a characteristic signature, also wrote to the Municipal Committee of Drenas, “This man has gotten a permanent contract,” because a permanent contract was done after six months. He said, “If you want to, you can take measures, the responsibility is yours.” And in two hours, in two hours they tell someone, “Take the decision to send him home.” He says, “No, because I do not know anything bad [that he did], he has to support a family. Fire me too!” But now, they took three people, that was an organization of about one thousand workers, twenty people did nothing but gossiped, and were paid by the Slavic government. Mistakes of the time. And they took me, and I went home smiling, the whole rreth[5] was crying. Because they fired me from my job, they were all crying.
Then I went, I remained without a job. One organization accepted me in Skenderaj, I did not want to become a burden for anybody. They easily accepted me in the Bardh Kombinat, now KEK – electro… whatever KEK is.[6] And after I started my job, everyone was interrogated, and they were in a very difficult situation, they could have been sent to jail. “Why did you accept him?” I smiled, I said, “Here I am, there is no need [to bother] them.” They sentenced me for weapons [possession], they punished me for not sending my children to military training, they punished me five more times, for about one month, one month and a half, for 25-26 days, but five times I was sentenced afterwards, [in] four workplaces. After they accepted me, the fifth place that accepted me at the Heating Plant of the kombinat, KEK used to be called a kombinat. And I worked 18 years, six years and a half I was on an enforced leave, they fired me, again everyone… until the Kosovo Liberation Army was organized. Afterwards, I was fired from work and they gave me half salary.
I was head worker at a company, the head of a place, and when the KLA started, I joined, I joined the first day.
Lura Limani: What years were they?
Enver Topilla: It was the year 1998, the year 1998 when the Kosovo Liberation Army began, and I did not have anyone to send to Albania to get me weapons, because usually we can’t do much about it, we were armed from Albania. And I bought arms with 1500 DM, Adem Nika and I, in our poverty, Adem Nika is the director of Kosova Siguron. Even my brother, at the time I did not have money, he bought it, and he is a KLA fighter and a medical invalid, Sejdi Topilla, my brother. He bought me a weapon, he said, “Whether you go out or not,” as a soldier, “it’s there.”
In one case, in Verbovc, at the house of Tafë Rukiqi, Tafa and Ajet Rukiqi, who were political prisoners, we were friends, and with Fehmi Ladrovci’s satellite phone – Fehmi Ladrovci was caught, his brother is now an Ambassador in Albania Ramiz (smiles). Fehmi…and with his telephone, it was 18 DM a minute, and after 40 minutes, I reported at the house of Tafë Rukiqi. Ramiz connected me directly to Brussels, I reported where the NATO [bombs] fell, I reported. Not because I say so, but there were twenty witnesses, I can recount whomever you’d like. And I tried to spare Feronikel with all my soul after seven…because I felt sorry for Feronikel, which is a well-known factory. And after one week NATO hit Feronikel with 34 bombs, I could not completely spare it.
I needed to report how many people had been killed, where the Yugoslav army was. Only in my village of about 200 houses, there were 14 police and army checkpoints, the village of Shkabë, in Glladnasella, former Glladnasella, where 73 were killed. This is why I had to join with my entire family, and fight that war, and go through that suffering. Meanwhile, as I said about work, I was never able to have a stable job, every time maybe despite my age I had to cut bricks and sell them to support the children. My father was unemployed, sick, and I had to support my children, and so on…
Lura Limani: After 1998, you joined the KLA. Can you tell us a little about the time of war and I suppose, especially when you went with your son to the mountain?
Enver Topilla: The village as a village [in itself], now, it has more soldiers, but had you asked me, if I was a factor… the whole Albanian nation was in the war, everyone is a war veteran, I’m speaking for myself now. I don’t like to differentiate them like this. Because even the mother who gave away her bread, and the one who sheltered children, and even the man who was never separated from his family, and the one who knew he’d be killed, they never gave up. And because the Albanian nation was very small and many became soldiers, it would have been better had we done like in France, make them all soldiers, war veterans I mean, veterans. The Yugoslav system was very bad, and if a woman cleaned somebody’s shoes or a pair of socks, they wrote down that she helped the army. Our Albanians worked for the struggle, from the academic to the farmer.
The war started in our place… it first started in Likoshan. The Xhemaj family was murdered, 11 people. They resisted from all the sides, they came… but over there… they weren’t prepared enough because you don’t just go to war, you need to prepare maybe for three years to fight one hour, or five hours… not to just go like that, as people think. And in a condolences visit a boy was killed at a transformer station, Abdullah Nika was his name. There was a big crowd in the village, when the helicopters and the airplanes and everything else started, I went directly to our village to see what is going on. And, they took two boys, one from Qirez, one from Baks and they took them, one was selling cigarettes, and one was putting up a fence. And they brought them to Likoshan, and the police tied them to a pole there and shot them. We were watching from a house, they started shooting at us, shooting heavily. We returned home, and then after a very short time it started in Prekaz.
Adem Jashari’s family, Adem Jashari with Hamëz… even when the independent unions were dismissed, because Hamëz worked in the ammunition factory in Skenderaj, he was an accountant. Hamëz was the greatest activist for the workers and Albanians rights. Adem Jashari’s brother, Hamëz and Adem. Their father was a teacher, my father and their father… I mean, both Hamëz’s and Adem’s maternal uncles, th Geci of Lausha, their uncles are from the same place. My father is a close relative of theirs, very close.
And Adem was attacked many times, but he never surrendered, he didn’t give up. Adem’s family was murdered that way the second day. Together with this professor [his son] I went there again on the second day, and we had a tractor, which was later taken from us, they damaged it. And I had to go to Prekaz, and the people of Prekaz themselves came to Ngojfile, we call it Prellovc here, Mikushica, and they didn’t let me go there, because it was impossible for a man to get through alive to Prekaz from all the heavy weaponry there. Prekaz is very strange, I am not saying everything there is good, but it has… that land grows brave men.
And in ’81, on May 13, “Army Day” … “The Yugoslav Police Day,” there was Tahir Meha fighting in Prekaz…Tahir Meha.[7] Tahir Meha is a friend of my [paternal] uncle, he married his daughter… my cousin. I was in isolation in Lipjan, when… Tahir Meha was fighting. Those battles happened then rarely, but we were lucky that we had engineers, Fehmi Lladrovci, he was our commander, graduated in Croatia. He got very upset on one occasion, “Why did you buy the weapon if you are poor? I would have made one for you.” He had a sniper gun, 17 thousand Deutsche Marks worth. He had a good 12.6 sniper gun. And he sent me a magazine with 30 bullets as a present. And again, when the newspapers wrote that I was a participant, on the day that the great Fehmi had fallen, I was very ill in my spinal cord, another case with 30 bullets was sent to me as a present by Sabit Geci, who is now on trial. Sabit and the Geci of Llausha, my father’s maternal uncles, and Adem Jashari’s and Hamëz’s maternal uncles, [both] from Llausha.
The battles were very difficult, the family suffered a lot, the Yugoslav army was very tough. But Albanians, I say, the day that Fehmi was murdered, I am speaking based on facts, I can prove it… seven of us were stuck in a place when Zhevzhet Zeka was murdered, and grenade fell on him and left nothing of him. We were 115 meters air distance and we sang a song, a song that I had never heard before, we started, “Tuk le dilli, preron hana, zhuj Selmon, se boll bon nana”[8] (smiles). And not a soul could be heard, but we were stuck in mud, a lot of mud and our clothes were stuck in a canal, in the ditch. We were suffering more from wood stumps than from bullets. And half of us were hurt, and seven others, I wasn’t injured… we were stuck there, we didn’t know which way to go.
Lura Limani: When was this, were you…?
Enver Topilla: This was on the 22nd of September 1998.
Lura Limani: In what village were you?
Enver Topilla: In Shkabë, in Glladnasellë.
Lura Limani: In Shkabë. Were you staying at home, or elsewhere?
Enver Topilla: I don’t know where the places were.
Lura Limani: I mean, not like… during the war, during the fighting… when you were not fighting, were you at home?
Enver Topilla: No, there was no way you could stay home. You were in the mountains. But I didn’t move because… it was very interesting, some things happened without any knowledge. Because if you walked ahead, the bullet would strike you each time, because the land was geodetically measured, their weapons reached far. They used to shoot like this and you’d be twirling {moves his hand in circle} around them, we were always on the move. At night they didn’t move, although there were 14 checkpoints in my, their village, we used to always sleep in our home, as burned as it was. We tried to cook to survive and then in the morning we went out to the mountains, always those mountains there. Sometimes you just stopped, stayed, you did not know what was happening because they killed our animals as well, they damaged, they burned our cereal, everything. The animals left [inc.] because even animals would not stay on their own. Interestingly, we were watching everything from a close distance.
Civilians moved, civilians suffered the most. Because many people were killed in front of them, as my father was, my first cousins and all of them. And they were killed… now imagine a village with 200 homes, 78 killed, it is not a game, 48 people killed in one go. There is a big shortcoming in us, that when we are liberated we aren’t as we should be because these [things] are not mentioned anywhere. It’s not a loss to mark anniversaries for people who have saved the country… but now I don’t know, I don’t understand people.
Lura Limani: Where were you when the war ended?
Enver Topilla: When the war ended I was in the village. When the war started I was in the village, and when the war ended I was in the village. We didn’t have… I was twice in Çyçavica, we had a very difficult situation with Ilaz Lladrovci and other two persons who were there, we were stuck in, it’s called Behadell of Gradica, so many came and shot at us while we were crossing the field. In Dibrans of Gradica, there was a field on which more than thirty mines arrived from Qirez were concentrated, and there at once my face got hot and with God’s will, the earth was wet, the field was wet and it sank very deep and all the mud {lifts his hands} and I fell over. He said, “Oh, did it get you?” I started to laugh and I said, “No, no, I got away once more.” Until we crossed at least around seventy meters, we had five mines on one side, one on that side {points with his hands}, and yet we survived.
Lura Limani: What happened… how did you find out that the war was over?
Enver Topilla: Well, we were following, we were. We had our radio connection as well, the scouts had also pocket radios. People are very interesting, when we wanted to have a smoke, we would find notebooks somewhere, we would boil the notebooks. Those lines [ink] would fall, and then we would cut them to make, to roll a smoke, we would find a way when we wanted to do it. We were saving radio batteries very well, we would put them in boiling water, heat them, prepare them and finally we would listen to the radio. We were always informed, I am telling you, I can name you 15 people who can witness the use of Fehmi Lladrovci’s phone from Verbovc, I reported where NATO should strike. I couldn’t save Feronikel, for seven days 32… 34 bombs were dropped on it, I reported because we knew each time where it was going, what was going.
And on the last day, unlike others, when the police and the military were gone, my 19-year-old sister’s son Fitim Gashi, even a song is sung about him… no Mentor Gashi, a song is sung about him (smiles) and it goes, “I won’t let it be without going and striking them,” and according to the commander, he’s my friend Hysni Shabani, he says, “Enver, the boy fired 72 machine gun shells on them.” They killed him and threw him in a well. It was a seven or nine fathoms deep well, where they threw him on the last day in Kjemë, on June 16, I think.
Lura Limani: What happened after the war, when the war ended and everyone withdrew? What have you done precisely?
Enver Topilla: Parties are a new thing among Albanians, parties don’t like Albanians, parties have become a business. The whole nation was in the Democratic Party, in the Democratic League, they were everywhere… we weren’t happy with them either, people would join any party out there, just to get away from Socialist League and from the Communist League. We accepted whatever you thought, I don’t want to be here although I was never a Communist, I never voted Socialists, I don’t want only to suffer, the people, the nation suffered.
But after the war then they started… the war too, was done in three ways, as I was told by those in prison. There were some people – we say “For God’s spirit and will,” the folk proverb that we use – some had been in war to cover the mistakes of their families. Some had done things after the war, they became soldiers to usurp and loot, and made mistakes. And people and war come in three forms, which we had not known.
I will even go back to a part above, but no, it’s not earlier, it’s later, when we went out to an election rally. I had been proposed as a candidate to City Council and we went to Komoran, those people started coming, saying what were they going to do, how they were going to work, and I had never heard such thing, I had never taken part in such meeting, and suddenly it was my turn to do this. “Truly, I don’t know what they are saying, I am with them as well, and I will truly work with all my heart for these people, independently of the political party or religion.” And they voted mostly for the honest words that I said.
Now we are [talking about] after the war, great aid started arriving. On one occasion, when things changed, I mean, after the war, I was a delegate with Shaban Shala in Prizren. Shaban Shala the general, he passed away, he was sentenced on political grounds. And, Hashim Thaçi,[9] with many of his friends, was there, everyone was there. We chose the Movement, we transformed it into the Party of Progress, Bardhyl Mahmuti was named the President of the Party of Progress. Then after a very short period of time, the Democratic Party of Kosovo was founded.
I was a member of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, but again, I am talking independently of the party, as a person with no support – no matter what party they’re in, it won’t make a difference – and I was officially named the President of the Municipality and Vice-President of the Party subsection. So the aid started coming in, and Canadian KFOR with a guy named Wilson came, and he respected me, my authenticity, so much, and he phoned officials in Switzerland, and they sent one million Deutsche Marks, Switzerland sent it for the reconstruction of 73 houses of the fifth category[10] in my village. It was the first time that a village was going to have all construction done in the same category, in fact the fourth category, because the fifth one [means the house was] burned – four to one. And, those people helped me with all their heart.
The association of political prisoners started bringing clothes by trucks and my late wife, she did not let them enter my yard because all the houses were burned down. Instead, she told them, “Take them where the point [of distribution] is, distribute them to the people.” And they told her, “These are dedicated to this person.” She insisted, “You can take them away from the yard, because he is busy and he cannot, we cannot leave things in the yard without his permission, without taking them to the spot and share them with the people.” And a commission was formed, I had Milazim… Karaçica is his name, a guy who knew people very well, he helped me a lot and he divided [the aid] based on [people’s] financial conditions. I never even got close, nor did I know what came or what didn’t come, because I wasn’t, I couldn’t think when seeing people in that state.
Their cars from abroad arrived at some point, and they made money, they enforced the three percent [tax][11] and they made money, and made everything. Often I couldn’t help them, I’d say, “Take a bag of flour or something,” since these are not helping empty the truck or else.
Once, on one occasion, in Pristina, the political prisoners stood up at a meeting of the Assembly and said, “We received one thousand and two hundred liters of oil.” They said, “We are going to see where is the police.” And I was pushed, because I am very tough when injustice is made. I said, “Give me a break, in my village about ten thousand liters of oil were brought, and you’re saying one thousand and two hundred liters were brought for not such a big association, shame on you!” You know, I am expressing myself in the most banal way. And people are to be helped wholeheartedly, but I was too overwhelmed because I dealt with many deaths.
After they murdered my father, they threw him in a well, we had to take them out, we couldn’t bury them. They took him and threw him into a well. And, four or five months later, they came and took him out, I organized the funeral, I dealt with bodies, with foreign delegations, with people. I may have torn it maybe, as we were taking him out from our trenches, because the bodies had been thrown in reeds, together, I tore the body, when I held on to the belt it broke in two, because five or six months had passed. And during the whole time, my biggest hardship was to organize the anniversary [commemoration], the heads of the villages and their entourages helped me. Many foreign delegations and people had come to help, for seven years I marked the anniversaries for 215 in the best way possible, and after seven years no one else marked it any more. Because people who haven’t suffered at all are appointed [to political posts], just for the sake of becoming rich.
[1] Fazli Grajçevci (1935-1964) was a teacher from Drenica who died in prison from torture.
[2] Anton Çetta (1920-1995), folklore scholar.
[3] Ilegalja (Illegals) is an umbrella term that includes the Albanian militant groups who organized against the Yugoslav regime under Tito.
[4] Traditional white felt conic cap, differs from region to region, distinctively Albanian.
[5] Rreth (circle) is the social circle, includes not only the family but also the people with whom an individual is incontact. The opinion of the rreth is crucial in defining one’s reputation.
[6] KEK is the abbreviation for the Kosovo Energy Corporation, the main utility company.
[7] Tahir Meha (1943-1981) was killed in the siege of his house together with his father Nebih, when he refused to turn himself to the police.
[8] “As the sun rises, and the moon goes down, hush Selmon, mother cries enough for both.”
[9] Hashim Thaçi (1968-) was the political leader of the KLA. After the war he founded the Democratic Party of Kosovo and became Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs.
[10] Degree of destruction, where five is the complete destruction of the house.
[11] “Three Percent Fund” – The Kosovo Republic Fund launched in 1992 by Bukoshi Government in exile. The fund was financed by Albanians in the Diaspora and in Kosovo, who contributed by paying three percent of their monthly wages into the Republic of Kosovo’s accounts.