Word: dani
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...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...
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...