Not a fairy tale, but… First chapter, first story: Women Bridging Borders

09 Feb Not a fairy tale, but… First chapter, first story: Women Bridging Borders

Text: Dejana Cvetković
Voiceover: Marija Drndić

Vjosa Dobruna: Women Bridging Borders

Albanian women in Kosovo during the 1990s were under dual oppression from the state and patriarchy. At a time when nationalism shaped daily life, women in Kosovo and throughout the region who did not recognize national divisions organized themselves to help other women and oppose the war. In doing so, they exposed themselves to the risk of being declared traitors. Under the regime at that time, Albanians were expelled from public institutions, and women were forced to take their children to parallel schools and health facilities organized in private houses and buildings, often far from the city. Life for women in Kosovo during those years was devastating, recalls Vjosa Dobruna, who worked as a pediatric neuropsychiatrist during that period.

“In the public sphere, you weren’t allowed to use the Albanian language, only Serbian. When children were born, nurses would write down Albanian names in Cyrillic. I told them that if the child is Serbian, write in Cyrillic, and if Albanian, in Latin script. One must not erase someone’s identity in the very first month of their life. I pointed out that this was against the Constitution of Yugoslavia. I worked until August 15, 1990, when heavily armed men came for me at 8:20 in the morning to throw me out of work as a terrorist. I asked why and since when police throw doctors out of work; they were furious. I told them I would stay until the end of working hours,” stated Vjosa.

Every day, Vjosa would put on makeup, put on a dress, and go to work. They banned her from approaching the building closer than one hundred meters. In the explanation for her dismissal, they wrote that she had failed to show up for work. Due to injuries inflicted on her by the police, she underwent surgery twice. They confiscated her apartment, and she and her sister returned to live with their parents.

For the next two years, she began working at the “Mother Teresa” health institution, within which she opened the Center for the Protection of Women and Children for prevention and treatment. Together with women from the region, she established four centers in the former Yugoslavia—in Pančevo, Zagreb, Tuzla, and Pristina—and they named them “Women’s Bridges Beyond Borders.”

“The attitude of society at that time was that it was not the time to deal with women’s rights while the entire nation was under repression. Women, especially from rural areas, were not aware of their rights or what domestic violence was. When we explained it to them and conducted research, it turned out that more than half had experienced violence. We also provided support to women who survived wartime sexual violence. The police didn’t want to deal with it; they didn’t believe the women. The only ones who worked with raped women were us women, and a small number of us at that, due to stigma and various pressures. They told us they were sexually harassed in the presence of family members; that was the pattern. A war strategy to use the female body for humiliation,” says Vjosa.

In the late eighties, before she was thrown out of work, Vjosa obtained her master’s degree in Zagreb, where she met peace activists from the region in 1989. At conferences they organized, she met Lepa Mlađenović, Staša Zajović, Rada Borić, and Đurđa Knežević.

“We talked about what was happening in our territories; we joked and laughed together. When they started with maps in restaurants, we took a napkin and drew borders with lipstick. We didn’t realize that there would really be a war,” says Vjosa.

Vjosa states that during the war tensions, she went to Belgrade, even though it wasn’t easy to travel from Pristina at the time. She participated in protests organized by Women in Black (Žene u Crnom) against the regime of that time.

“We were idealistic and thought we would prevent the war. I won’t forget when Lepa, Nadežda, and another activist came to see me in Pristina at the time when my apartment was taken away and when I was living with my parents. My dad, who was a Belgrade student, had a custom of buying 10 or 20 liters of red wine whenever one of us started our studies. When I didn’t show up for an exam, he never asked ‘why,’ but would say, ‘Daddy’s darling, that wine of yours is becoming an antique.’ When I graduated, there were demonstrations in 1981 (sic/translator’s note: text says 1991, but context suggests 1981 demonstrations, or graduation was earlier). When the girls came to my place, I had already gotten my master’s, and dad said, ‘I still have Vjosa’s wine.’ Then we drank that wine, which had ‘aged.’ Mom was worried because there were Serbs in the building, that they might wonder who these Serbian women coming over were, or what Albanians would say: ‘Vjosa has Serbs in the house,'” says Vjosa.

Vjosa adds that her friends from the region visited her later as well, when she was a refugee in Macedonia due to the war, and that this friendship lasts to this day. She says that even though they sometimes don’t see each other for a year or longer, she always feels closeness with them.

“I don’t remember everything we talked about then, nor everything we did, but I remember that feeling of acceptance that fills me. That helped me not to think of Serbs as all the same and that everyone is against me because I am a Kosovar Albanian. That feeling of solidarity and care has never left me,” says Vjosa.