Kosovo: One in a Million

Back in the spring of 1999, Ramadan Ilazi was among the nearly 1 million ethnic Albanians forced to flee Serb ruler Slobodan Milosevic's attempt to "cleanse" them from Kosovo. It was amid the endless lines of U.N.-issued tents in the Senokos camp in Macedonia that I first met this boy, known to his friends as Dani. As a reporter covering the Albanian exodus, I would talk to scores of refugees. But Dani, who was then 14 years old and looked no more than 10, would prove to be a one-in-a-million encounter.

The same mix of passion and purpose that made this undersized kid stand out in a dusty refugee camp eight years ago has a very different significance today. Dani embodies the frustrations and hopes of a generation of Kosovars eager for a way out not just from Serbia, but also from a dysfunctional tradition of top-down, tribal politics. At the age of 22, he has become the kind of man who can help Kosovo achieve the political maturity and ethnic comity it so badly needs. The question is whether he and those like him will get that chance.

That day when I first met him, Dani greeted me in choppy English that he'd learned largely from watching Hollywood movies on TV with his dad. He soon became my volunteer guide and interpreter in the camp. We spent long hours together, chronicling tragic stories of death and displacement. Though his English was a work in progress, we quickly found a way of communicating where to go, what to ask, and when it was time to politely decline another strong coffee and move on to the next tent. Dani took the task very seriously, telling me he believed my articles would bring help to his people. During breaks, hanging out with other kids and American volunteer doctors, Dani could be much less serious, talking up a storm with his toothy smile and contagious cackle.

Little by little, I began to ask about his situation. He had fled with his mother and three younger sisters from Ferizaj, a town of 70,000 located 25 miles (40 km) south of Kosovo's capital, Pristina. They moved from village to village in southern Kosovo before taking a train to the Macedonian border, and then an all-night bus to Senokos. When he brought me to his family's tent, his mother showed me one of the few keepsakes she'd managed to grab before fleeing: Dani's seventh-grade class photo. Her son, she told me proudly, was a star student.

Dani's father had been forced to stay behind to care for his own bed-ridden father. Rumors swirled in the camp about NATO bombs falling on Ferizaj and Serbian troops rounding up all of its men. When he finally spoke of his father, Dani turned away as he started to cry. I tried to comfort him, but we both realized the best course was to get back to visiting the tents — and the hardships — of others. When it was time to leave the camp for the final time, I told Dani to keep studying English, and I promised to write. Watching him wipe away tears, I figured this goodbye reminded him of the one two months earlier with his father. Less clear was why a reporter long used to meeting victims of misfortune suddenly felt like crying too.

Back in Rome, I received a letter from Dani saying, "I like to see you agin in the kamp." But after the war ended and refugees began returning home, a letter I mailed to him in Ferizaj came back undelivered. Just a month later, though, I would find out in the most unlikely way that Dani was indeed back home — and doing just fine. On Nov. 23, 1999, I stumbled upon this passage in an Associated Press article about President Bill Clinton's one-day visit to celebrate victory in Kosovo: "An eighth-grader, Ramadan Ilazi, introduced Clinton, making his first visit to Kosovo since the war ended in June. 'You promised that you will bring us to our homes safe. You kept your promise,' the boy said ... " In the silence of my office, I let out something between a gasp and a scream. Shocked as I was, somehow it all made sense. My young friend was indeed a one-in-a-million kid.

Two months later, I got an e-mail from Dani: "Now I vil tell you my life," he wrote. He'd returned to Ferizaj and was selling cigarettes to U.S. troops, who soon realized, as I had, that he'd make a great unofficial translator. It was thanks to his army friends — and his good grades in school — that Dani was picked to introduce Clinton in the President's only speech to the Kosovar people. But Dani's e-mail also revealed the best news of all: his father had survived the war, he wrote, "So my life was lucky."

In the years since then, though my attention and that of the world at large shifted away from his would-be nation's struggles, I never forgot Dani. A photo that I'd snapped of him holding his class picture in the tent in Macedonia still hung above my desk. In October, as the question of Kosovo's destiny became more and more acute, I tracked Dani down again, eager to know what had become of him and his homeland at this watershed moment in history. Stepping through the sliding glass doors at Pristina airport, I spotted that same giant smile I knew from eight years earlier, now with a little scruff of a goatee beneath it.

Burying the past
"Welcome to Kosovo," Dani said, once we were in his rickety red 1997 Volkswagen, heading toward Ferizaj. An early dusting of snow covered the foothills near Pristina, and Kosovo stood on the verge both of important elections and a potential declaration of nationhood. Since 1999, some of the best hopes of this 4,203 sq. mi. (10,887 sq km) territory have been on hold, as it remains legally a part of Serbia, while being administered by the U.N. The same ethnic divisions and territorial disputes that fueled the 1999 war still linger, as do the international differences on how to manage them. Upon arrival, however, I was more interested in the past eight years of Dani's life. On the living-room couch of the wood-paneled house where he lives with his parents and three sisters, everyone gathered around as we flipped through a photo album and the three-ring binder that holds all the diplomas and certificates he's earned. Here was the proof that his mother, Naile Ilazi, who never got past elementary school, had raised an ace student — and more. Dani had been a debate-team champion, traveled for brief stints on scholarships he'd won to study civics in the U.S., Slovenia and Bulgaria, and served two terms as high school class president. He'd also had a blast, working late nights in his teens at a local radio station and playing drums in a rock band.