Aeneas in Kosovo
We were exhausted by the war. One way or another, every single person in Kosovo was in pain. People were struggling to survive after the war, to overcome trauma and terror.
In Prishtina, Kosovo’s capital city, there was an effort to cover up the tracks of the war – speedily, almost forcefully, as if whitewashing it away. Everyone covered it up: the internationals who were governing us, the warlords who were hustling after money, the politicians, and the businessmen – all of them . . . But beyond, in the villages of Kosovo, the people who had suffered the most were still opening and closing graves, still healing their wounds, still searching for their missing . . .
In 2006 in Kosovo, there were still thousands of people who were missing. Their relatives and friends, as well as the general public, often protested in front of the parliament building, demanding that their fate be investigated. As time went by, fewer and fewer people joined the demonstrations. In the end, it was just the immediate family who remained: the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers . . . The war had still not ended for them, nor is it over now for about two thousand other families in Kosovo, almost 20 years later.
In 2005 and 2006, I was involved with other artists in a theater project concerned with the missing, the audience for which was largely their living relatives. We traveled all over Kosovo to places where there were people who were still unaccounted for. This was a life-changing experience, one of those “eye- opening” moments after which a person starts to see life differently.
At one of the meetings for the project, a man was telling us about the trauma he and his family had experienced, and he used this old adage to explain: “The gravestone is placed by the head of the deceased, but the weight of that stone is borne by the living forever.” The gravestone is perhaps the most apt metaphor for the cruelty of war and the suffering afterwards.
The play, “Enea i plagosur” (Aeneas Wounded), which I wrote in 2006, includes some of the stories that were told, as well as the atmosphere of grief and trauma I observed among the families. I dedicated this play entirely to the missing and to their loved ones who have suffered and continue to do so. The play was written as part of a theater project called Enea 06, done jointly with the Canadian director, Michael Devine.
~ Jeton Neziraj, Prishtina, 2019
Translated by Alexandra Channner