The Devil Couldn't Break Me (2 page)

Early Memories of Conflict

It was 1980. I was very small, only weeks old, when we moved from a place called Skopje, now the capital of Macedonia and as a consequence remember nothing about where I was born. Looking back in the history books as I do from time to time, I figure it must have been a very nice place to live because throughout the ages, no end of different tribes, races and people have wanted to invade and conquer what is a clearly a very pleasant part of the world. The Romans, Dardanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Byzantines, Ottoman Turks, Austrians and the Serbs, just to name a few have all wanted to rule this part of the globe where the summers are long, hot and humid and the winters, although very cold are relatively short.

The cultural mix has always been very diverse and from as early as the 15
th
Century, Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Jews and Roman Catholics have resided in close proximity to each other and for the most part lived in relative harmony. And yet, looking back in those books and from the information we have at hand on the Internet these days, there always seems to be some sort of conflict in the region whether peaceful or otherwise. I don't remember leaving Skopje because of conflict and yet I now know my parents were looking for a better world for their only child, me - their daughter Laura. My mother and father told me that my name meant
the gift
because at one point they suspected having a child was never going to happen as my poor Nani had suffered fifteen miscarriages. You are my little gift Laura, she would tell me over and over again. Not that they used my name often, Agi (my father) would call me
locki
which translates to darling and my Nani (mother) would call me
ciki
which was roughly the same but from a mother's perspective.

We lived in rented accommodation in Skopje and although my father was a well-respected Doctor, work always appeared difficult to come by and my early childhood was not what you might expect of a doctor's daughter. We didn't have a car or holidays to exotic places, nor were there dance classes or horse riding lessons and the other trappings of what could normally be funded from a typical GPs salary. That was because Agi was out of work more than he was in work because Nani used to say,
“He can't keep his big mouth shut, he wants to fix the world.”

Agi was what I would kindly call outspoken and very opinionated, but for all the right reasons. He thought nothing of speaking out for people's rights and freedom of expression and the right to worship whatever god they believed in or to speak any language they chose to speak in, nor was he afraid to voice those opinions in local bars and cafés and on odd occasions pick up a flag or join in a protest march no matter what the ethnicity of the majority of the marchers. If my father thought the protest was a just cause then he would be there. It wasn't altogether unusual for the marchers to be attacked by the opponents throwing sticks and rocks. On one such occasion my father was felled by a half brick and knocked unconscious. My mother begged him to take a back seat and not to go any more. I remember my father being very subdued for some time, not very talkative and somewhat different. He still went on an odd march or protest but respected my mother's wishes and voiced most of his opinions in the local bars.

But as a result, poor Agi (and his family) suffered, as various managers of surgeries and practices dispensed with his services blaming budgets and cuts or a shortage of patients, which was never the case. My father knew exactly why he was unemployed so often,
politics
he would say, not cuts or budgets but
politics
. And although Agi became angry occasionally, not once can I recollect him complaining or sulking. He would busy himself with some job in the house. in particular the garden, which he loved and move on, searching for a new position in the job he adored. Helping others was always my father's first consideration in everything he did whether it was in a Doctor's surgery or in the middle of a street during a protest march.

He was the strong silent type but not in a cold way and he had big dark eyes that would pull you in like a magnet. The ladies would likely describe him as handsome, with thick dark hair and a rich olive skin and when he decided to tell me a funny story he would have me laughing until the tears ran down my cheeks. He never talked too much when in the company of others, especially strangers, but from an early age I realised that when he did have something to say it was always worth listening to and the tone of his voice was, and still is, like music to my ears. He was my true hero, the man I looked up to above all others and although we didn't have much I felt like the luckiest little girl in the world to have him as my father.

So when he announced one day that we were moving house, to his brother's place in a town called Veliki Trnovac, in Serbia, my mother helped him pack our meagre possessions and we were driven the short distance to our new village passing the towns of Bujkovci, Tabanovce and Nesalce and Uncle Demir met us and greeted us with a big smile at the entrance of his large farm. I was once asked to describe Uncle Demir and without hesitation I answered ‘John Wayne.' He needs no other introduction, a big strong bear of a man with a permanent smile and yet a slight air of mystery.

Those early months were full of happy memories and I discovered that father and my uncle were building us a house, our own house just a few hundred metres away from his in the middle of town. I was so excited at the prospect of having a new house and a bedroom of my own.

I was about five or six years old at this time and life was a joy as I played with my cousins and the other children in the village and upon returning home, was showered with love by my two sets of parents, Nani and Agi and my Uncle Demir, who I called Uncle Axhi and Auntie Naxhia who I called Xhixhi. I always had the impression that Auntie Naxhia was very proud of me and never wasted an opportunity to show me off in town or to take me shopping to buy me clothes or the latest shoes. She was totally different to my mother who even to this day reminds me of a very young Elizabeth Taylor. Nani had beautiful dark hair, brown eyes with natural long eyelashes; she was outgoing and had a smile that would warm up any room she walked into. Auntie Naxhia was almost the opposite, she always covered herself when she went out and whereas Nani always took a pride in her appearance and her figure, Auntie Naxhia was always at her most comfortable pottering around the kitchen, cooking and baking. It was the perfect combination, I had two wonderful Nani's and life couldn't have been better especially when my mother got a job as a teacher at the local school. Now we had a little more money too, and there would be treats and special days out and an occasional visit to an elegant restaurant.

I didn't sense it at the time but there was a simmering tension in the house. There was nothing sinister, I think it was just a case of too many adults in one house and my uncle and auntie needed their privacy. So we moved into what was an unfinished house with no windows and no doors and still my father had no work despite his qualifications so he was unable to afford the critical repairs and refurbishment. At this time I think I first started to realise that life in general wasn't altogether fair. I had friends with doctor fathers and they lived in nice (finished) houses and their fathers had cars and worked more hours than was healthy for them. I remember questioning Agi about this but he never really gave me a straight answer. Even as a small girl I sensed that some of the people in town and the surrounding area treated us differently, but nevertheless we got on with life as was my parents way and as always they made me feel I was the centre of the world. I helped Nani carry the water (we had no running water) from a well on the outskirts of town when she finished teaching. I looked forward to this daily task, treating it as a big game. We walked to the well holding hands and talked about Nani's day at school and Agi, and what new work he was doing in the house, then we filled the plastic Jerry cans, turned around and headed back home. They were so heavy and we had to stop to rest our arms every fifty metres. It was hard work especially when there was ice on the ground and on one occasion I slipped and fell into an open drain and plunged head first into a metre of icy water. Nani scooped me up and wrapped me in her big warm coat and carried me all the way home.

It was mid-winter and times were hard. I remember the extreme cold and because we had no heating and no doors or windows, the wind that whistled through the house seemed to cut me in two. We slept on the floor too as there was no money for real beds until much later. It didn't matter much as I thought bedtime was great fun. Nani had made huge home-made quilts which were stuffed with old rags, clothing and small pieces of sponge and rolled away in the corner of the room during the day. At nights Agi would lay them flat on the floor and I had the job to punch out the lumps and try and make the quilts one big, flat, soft mattress, a job that I took great pride in. Looking back on those times, I realise that it must have been hard for my parents and yet Nani and Agi always had a smile or a laugh and a joke and even in those circumstances I always had a positive outlook on life and knew that things would almost certainly change. And change they did as Agi announced several weeks later he'd finally found a position in a medical practice in another village.

The only trouble was that it was several kilometres away in the mountains and by now the snow was nearly a metre deep and we had no car and he had to walk to work. I cried a lot waiting for him to return each evening especially when it was snowing hard because I remembered one of my friends mothers saying that the snow was always worse in the mountains and I convinced myself that he would fall down and never be found.

It was around this time that I first went to school and discovered I was a Muslim. I knew this already of course but it really hit home when I started receiving religious instruction from the Imam and the other teachers. The town of Veliki Trnovac was mostly Muslim but my early memories of practising our faith prior to school was an odd visit to the Mosque with my parents for religious festivals such as Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr. Agi didn't go to the mosque on a regular basis nor did he pray five times a day. I always got the impression he thought it was all rather time consuming and although he believed in God and stuck to the cultural traditions, when others trooped off to the mosque for prayers, Agi was always busy with other things. I wouldn't describe my mother as over religious either, for example she never covered herself up or dressed the way some of the other Muslim women did, she was more comfortable applying her make-up and following the latest western fashions, a typical glamorous Turkish woman.

I loved school and studied hard and of course mother was one of the teachers. I embraced Islam and loved the religious teachings of the Quran. My first memories were of love and peace and goodwill to others and to always show respect for the elderly. It was all very spiritual and pleasantly comforting to me.

When I was a little older some of the children were learning the Quran in Arabic. I was very competitive and wanted to do likewise. When I got home I told my father what I wanted to do and he looked at me curiously and asked why. I had no other answer than to tell him I felt that it was the right thing to do. He shrugged his shoulders and said if I really wanted to learn the Quran in Arabic he wouldn't stand in my way. That was always my father's way, live and let live, say what you want to say in the language of your choosing. And so I started classes and eventually became the Imam's assistant.

With Nani at the school I learned quickly. I absorbed the Quran studies like a sponge and enjoyed it immensely. I was near the top of the class in most subjects and was determined to be one of the best students in this new study too. I'd sit on the porch outside studying until it got too dark to see my books and then I'd lie down on a mat and watch the stars for hours. The stars and the vastness of the universe always fascinated me and I'd try to comprehend how all the stars and planets came into being. One of my teachers said that one star was the equivalent of a grain of sand on the beach and most stars that we could see were dead because the light from them took so long to reach us. Shooting stars were dying stars and I'd get a real thrill on the odd occasion I'd see one. Now and again I would see the vapour trail from a far off aeroplane and I'd wonder where it was going and which airport it had taken off from. I was at peace with the world lying on a padded mat watching the stars and sometimes I'd relax so much I'd fall asleep and Agi would have to carry me to bed.

But the bad news never seemed to be far away however and Nani lost her job. I remember her telling my father that she'd been asked to leave to make way for someone else. I couldn't understand this, everyone loved my mother, she was undoubtedly one of the more popular teachers in the school and many of my friends were devastated when she told them she wouldn't be teaching them again. When I asked Agi why she was no longer at the school he said something about politics and stormed out of the house. I also noticed at that time that things were changing and certain children were calling other children names and in some cases physically assaulting them. What was happening? School was such a wonderful place to be so why were these people trying to spoil it?

Even as a small girl I was more than aware that things were changing. The atmosphere in Veliki Trnovac had changed too and although I found it difficult to describe why, it was no longer the place I'd grown up in and there was a distinctive mistrust of people but especially authority and while I had never had a bad experience with a policeman or a soldier, whenever I saw one I wanted to turn around and run in the other direction.

I also sensed a change in my parents and walked in on many discussions where they suddenly stopped talking and I knew something wasn't right because this wasn't my parent's way. My parents were always so open with me and even at ten or eleven years old I was made to feel like an adult and very much part of anything that went on. I knew about the politics at Nani's old school and the problems in Agi's medical practice. They shared everything with me but this was so very different, not like them at all. I would lie awake in bed for many hours wondering why they were being so secretive.