Paul Polansky has spent many years among the Kosovo Gypsies—the "Roma"—and he has just returned from an internment camp in Macedonia where the Roma are kept as displaced persons. They cannot return to Kosovo because the Albanians are now committed to a program of ethnic cleansing, and the Gypsies are on the top of their list. The U.N. will not give the Roma refugee status, which would allow them to emigrate, because they are expected to return to their homeland. They cannot return to their homeland because they will be assassinated and disappeared. So, they are caught between the rock and the hardspot.
The irony is that the U.N. bombed Kosovo to prevent the Serbs from ethnically cleansing the Albanians, and now that the Albanians are back, they have the upper hand and are trying to get rid of everyone they detest. Someone must get the short end of the stick, and who better than the Gypsies?
We have stereotyped views of the Gypsy: traveling in wagons, playing violins, stealing chickens and children, "dirty Gypsies," "fortune-teller," "the Gypsies might get you," "be careful not to get gypped." Who are we kidding? The Romani have been living continually in stable communities in Eastern Europe since they arrived from Egypt nearly seven hundred years ago. In Kosovo, they still speak their native tongue. Certainly, they have different customs. Who doesn't? They are a literate and loving people, but they get a bad rap. And, at this moment, these people are getting extinguished.
Here is one of Paul's poems, called "My Brother":
After the Serbs/started going house to house/looking for Albanian boys, innocents they called terrorists,/my neighbor escaped to Macedonia.//Our families had lived/next door for generations./My neighbor and I/had gone to school together,/ played on the same/soccer team.//When he asked me/to hide his stereo,/TV, fridge,/I agreed.//When he left,/he gave me the keys/to his house./He called me his brother.//After the bombing/drove out the Serbs,/my Albanian neighbor came back.//I still had all his things,/but his house/had been burned.//He asked why/his house was destroyed/and mine wasn't.//I told him the truth./The KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) had robbed his home,/then burned it./They told me to say/the Serbs had done it.//A day later/he came to my house/with four men./All had pitchforks.//They told us/we were dirty Gypsies/who had looted, committed atrocities./They gave us twenty minutes/ to save our lives.//That's why my family today/struggles to survive in a UN camp,/and my neighbor/lives in comfort//in my home.
Many of Paul's poems are testimonies by survivors of the atrocities. Hungry, cold, sick, their homes abandoned, the Romani struggle for their lives. They are courageous and dignified, but they are caught in a crossfire between Serbian and Albanian prejudice. They suffered extensively under NATO's bombs because they live where no one else wants to live, under bridges, under high tension lines, near polluting power plants, in abandoned army barracks. When they do escape, they are repressed by state authorities in the countries where they seek refuge, and because they do not have refugee status, there is purposeful indifference to their plight by the United Nations and other relief organizations.
This situation is reflected in "Our First Death":
Like in Lety, (a death camp run by Czechs in W.W. II) the first death/was a baby.//Unlike in Lety, this one/did not starve to death.//Nor was it beaten, /or drowned in the latrines./Our baby died only because our doctor/refused to answer his cell phone./He had come all the way/from France/waving the banner of 'Medecins du Monde,' but didn't want to leave/his cocktail party that night.Not everyone is indifferent. Paul Polansky loves these people. Since 1990, he has lived in the Czech Republic and Kosovo, writing and devoting himself to human rights issues. In 1999, he became an advisor to the United Nation on Romani issues in Kosovo. He was asked by the officials to write an extensive survey and, while he was at it, to spy on the Roma. Instead, he became a spy for the Gypsies.
This year between May and July he was sent by the Society for Threatened People (based in Goettingen, Germany) to monitor the Romani communities in Kosovo and to report on the situation of the Kosovo Roma in UN collective centers in Macedonia. His report revealed the horrific situation, and his poems speak about this reality, like in "The Well":
They caught me in the marketplace/where my people used to sell clothes,/where Albanians now sell contraband./Four men threw me into the back seat/of a blue Lada, yelling, "We told you,/no more Gypsies in Prishtina."//As I was pushed down on the floor,/I felt the gun barrel in my left ear. It was so cold/I jerked just as someone pulled the trigger./Blood splattered the side of my face/from the wound in my shoulder./I collapsed, pretending to be dead...They threw me head-first into a well./I never reached the water./There were too many bodies./I lay crumpled up, almost unconscious/until the smell and sting of wet lime/brought me back to my senses.
To read Paul Polansky's book, Not a Refugee, is to have an accurate account of the plight of Kosovo Roma after the 1999 War. It is a work of the imagination based upon one man's empathy for fellow human beings having to suffer unimaginable hardships. It is not a pretty picture, but it is a true one.
This book can be ordered from Voice of Roma, P.O. Box 514, Sebastopol, CA 95473. The price is $15 + $2 per book for postage and handling. All income from the sale of this book will be donated to the Kosovo Roma.