NOT A REFUGEE
May 2000. Isolated on the shores of Lake Pretor in Macedonia, 500 Kosovo Roma adults and children, are languishing in a children's summer camp facility. Undernourished and homeless for one year, they have not been contacted by anyone but the Macedonian police for months. Yet the arrival of one man is enough to bring all 500 of them out into the hallways and staircases of the building, applauding, cheering and calling his name. That man is Paul Polansky.
Paul's approach to supporting these people is one of love. Without this, all humanitarian aid is useless. Money, technology, and warehouses full of things are no substitute for the love, compassion, and understanding that Paul brought to his daily living with the Kosovo Roma in their time of need, a need that was above all emotional and spiritual as well as material. These people were not numbers or bureaucratic problems to him, but real human beings with names, hearts, families, love, intellects, flaws and talents. And it is therefore appropriate that, as with his writing on the Roma survivors of the Lety concentration camp, it is not the factual account which reaches publication first, worthy as that account is, but the poetic, emotional record of this series of events.
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.
I prayed to my dear, deceased mother, to all mulos, that these men wouldn't see from where the blood was oozing. When we arrived, they dragged me out by my feet. My head crashed on the ground, bouncing over several stones.
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.
ALL COPS LOVE HAMBURGERS
All cops love hamburgers.
That's why they spend so much time on duty
devouring America's favorite dish.
All cops love hamburgers,
especially UN police in Kosovo
who sneaked off in the middle of the night
to get another snack,
leaving our camp unprotected.
All cops love hamburgers.
That's why UN police didn't have time
to take to the hospital
a woman giving birth,
a baby dying of pneumonia.
All cops love hamburgers, especially cheeseburgers, smothered in onions, tomatoes, pickles, lettuce, mustard, and maybe even a little fresh garlic
to keep the criminals away.
THE PIGEON MAN
showed me the photos of his pets in prison.
After being sentenced for stabbing a man, his pigeons had followed him there, too.
Now they had found him in our camp four weeks after the KLA burned his home and coop.
He had five different kinds.
The bird that amazed me the most
was the brown one that made barrel rolls
just above the roof tops, like the NATO jet that strafed his sister's home, killing all her children.
According to his Gypsy tradition, his nieces and nephews were now stars in the sky waiting for him.
On earth, he still had his pigeons who fluttered above as he led them to their new pen in a pine grove.
"Don't step in their shit,'
he told me, ignoring the possibility of land mines,
"or you'll get hooked on them for life."
I know he was talking about his pigeons, but he could have been talking about how I got hooked
on his people.
FOREWORD
I am a Rom from Kosovo, a place we Roma long for, but can no longer call home.
Paul Polansky's poems in Not A Refugee vividly capture the Romani tight-wire act of trying to survive the crossfire between:
• Serbian and Albanian prejudice
• NATO's horrific bombing campaign
• the violent repression by state authorities in the countries where Roma have sought refuge
• purposeful indifference to their plight by the United Nations and humanitarian organizations
This collection is a rare work of art in which the Romani daily struggle for survival and dignity is uniquely depicted and brought to life. These poems give to the reader a window onto the real situation in Kosovo.
During NATO's "humanitarian" bombings and the aftermath, thousands of Roma lost their jobs, property, possessions and loved ones. Under the eyes of the occupying UN troops, Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) forces and triumphant Albanians exacted a vengeful campaign of abduction, torture, rape and assassination against the Roma. After the war, more than 14,000 Romani homes were burned by Albanians and hundreds more occupied. The consummation of this campaign was the accelerated expulsion of the Roma from Kosovo.
Today, thousands of Roma languish in squalid displaced persons camps in the very Western European nations that imposed sanctions against Yugoslavia and supported the NATO war effort. After having exacerbated the hostile environment in Kosovo, Western European countries are denying them visas, permanent refugee status and/or political asylum. Worst of all, many Roma are being deported to Kosovo where they face the possibility of kidnaping, torture and death.
During my recent visit to displaced persons camps in Skopje, Macedonia, I found myself less than an hour away from the border with Kosovo - my home - and yet I could not even consider going there. I felt further from home than ever before. I had hoped to recover a portrait of my dead older sister, but that was impossible. Had I stepped foot inside Kosovo, my dark skin color could have been a death sentence.
As I write this, I find it difficult to articulate the overwhelming shock and horror of what I witnessed of my people imprisoned in UNHCR camps. Paul Polansky's work gives voice to that which is impossible for me to express. His courage and dedication to the Roma of Kosovo is immeasurable. When a board member of Voice of Roma recently delivered humanitarian aid to Romani exiles in Macedonia, the people chanted "POLANSKY, POLANSKY"! Let this stand as a testimonial to what Paul's voice and poetry means to the Roma of Kosovo.
Sani Rifati
President, Voice of Roma
Sebastopol, California
POETRY/ROMA (GYPSIES)
PAUL POLANSKY