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Or more like the henna tattoo version of him, because there in front of me stood a large
imposing statue of the forty-second president. In gold. Probably not solid gold, but you
never know. I made an illegal U-turn to ask a local about the statue. I met more than a local,
though—I met a new friend.
Eleonora could have been any Western woman in any Western city. She was in her
forties, wearing blue jeans and a fashionable blazer. The only thing that set her apart was
the colorful hijab she wore on her head. She crossed her arms and looked up at the statue
with me. She explained why Bill Clinton was standing there, “Usually our statues are for
dead heroes, but Mr. Clinton helped our people a lot.”
As we began to walk down the street, she explained to me, “Thanks to him and the oth-
ers, we are in freedom now. We are independent now for five years.”
Like Edis, Eleonora couldn't have been far from my age, and yet she had experienced
so much—the horrors of war and the pride in the independence that followed. We walked
through the heart of Pristina, the rain subsiding. As we walked she pointed out the different
parts of her city to me, offering up the history of her country and her people—ethnic Slavs
who had converted to Islam under Ottoman rule. As she spoke, I was reminded, again, of
why I was making this journey. It was for these moments—these random encounters on
rainy afternoons. I was not only meeting someone new, but also getting to know an entire
people, and their history.
Eleonora took me to a local mosque, where we sat down inside. Like Edis in Sarajevo,
she also had her own story of war.
Her voice grew quiet as she told me: “My family, they were taken by the Serbian forces
. . . police actually . . . and they sent them to Lartse. It is the border between Macedonia
and Kosovo. My family, they were sent away on trains.”
Her eyes began to glaze over, as though she were watching the terrible scene unfold in
front of us.
Finally, I asked, “Where were they sent to?”
Her face grew dark, her pain heavy and palpable, like humidity. She spoke in a strained
whisper as though it was too hard to say, “To the camps.”
She looked at me, life burning in her eyes once again, “It is something that nobody wants
to happen again. Not here, nowhere else.”
I was ashamed for all of us. That at the sunset of the twentieth century, there could still
be concentration camps in Europe. Never forget, they said after World War II, and yet less
than fifty years later, we had to learn the same lesson again.
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