To Learn in Freedom, Without Fear
Photography by Mark Johann

Four teenagers from Kosovo find a safe haven in a Lasallian school in California

Kujtesa Bejtullahu, sent the e-mail messages below from war-torn Kosovo, to Berkeley, California, bringing the conflict home to America.

February 1999

"I don't even know how many people get killed anymore. You just see them in the memorial pages of newspapers. I really don't want to end up raped, with no parts of body, like the massacred ones. I wish nobody in the whole universe would have to go through what we are. You don't know how lucky you are to have a normal life."

March 1999

"I'm writing to you from my balcony. I can see people running with suitcases and I can hear gunshots. A village just a few hundred meters from my home is all surrounded. I have prepared my bag with the necessary things. The past few days there have been many new tanks and soldiers coming inside Kosovo. Yesterday a part of my town was surrounded and there were shootings happening."

March 1999

"As long as I have electricity, I will continue writing to you. Right now I am trying to keep myself as calm as possible. My younger brother, who is nine, is sleeping now. I wish I will not have to stop his dreams."

Americans who listened to National Public Radio were transfixed by the reading on-air of these e-mails being sent by a sixteen-year-old girl in Kosovo to a sixteen-year-old boy in Berkeley, California. "Adona" was the girl's name – a pseudonym she invented for her protection. "I never take my ID card with me when I go out, because if I'm stopped by the police or somebody similar to them, I just start talking in Serbian and avoid trouble." Adona's voice came through clearly in her e-mails. She was frightened but brave, thoughtful and deliberate – and definitely a teenager: "I love listening to Rolling Stones, Sade, Jewel, and R.E.M., my favorite. You don't know how I am longing to go to a party, on a trip or anywhere."

Her voice emerged out of the chaos of the former Yugoslavia, amid conflicts that many Americans found confusing. The news reports were of wars within wars, of enmities based on nationality, politics, ethnicity, and religion, of neighbors killing neighbors, of whole cities being "ethnically cleansed." Centuries-old feuds and modern ambitions combined and clashed, and for ordinary people caught in the middle, the results were often horrifying. The climax came in April, with NATO air raids intended to keep Slobodan Milosevic's forces from occupying Kosovo. After the bombing stopped, NATO peacekeeping troops arrived. In the summer and fall of 1999, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and shattered families streamed back to Kosovo, to face an uncertain political and economic future.

But what of "Adona"?

She was in an unexpected place – sitting in a classroom at Saint Mary's College High School in Berkeley, California, taking notes and answering questions like any other high school senior. She was safe, and able once again to use her real name: Kujtesa Bejtullahu. With Kujtesa were three friends and companions, one girl, Grese Sefaj, and two boys, Erëblir Kadriu and Ligrid Begolli. All are natives of Pristina, the capital city of Kosovo. In the scheme of racial, ethnic, and religious classification so crucially important in the Balkans, they are Albanians of Muslim heritage. All had been active in Pristina as part of an international affiliation of youth groups working for tolerance and peace.

But there was no peace in Kosovo in 1999. Erëblir and his family fled to Macedonia in April and returned to Pristina only in July; Kujtesa and her family tried several times to leave Kosovo but found the borders closed, and they ended up moving from house to house while hiding out in Pristina; Grese and her family got out safely and on their return found that their home had been burned down. How did these young people, workers for peace and victims of violence, suddenly become seniors at a Lasallian high school in Berkeley?

Ligrid, pictured as he shelves books at the school library, says, “Saint Mary's gave us a great experience of the American culture and wayof life. I will never forget how nice thepeople there were to us.” He hopes to pursue his interests in computer science, engineering, and economics at an American university.

Help Comes from California

It happened through an ecumenical network of concerned people in the San Francisco Bay Area, starting with Kujtesa's e-pen-pal, who spread the word through his youth group at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley. Church members created the Kosovar Refugee Student Support Project (KRSSP). Fundraising appeals were issued, local families were asked if they could host a foreign student, and schools were contacted to see if they had seats available. By August there was no longer open war in Kosovo, but the educational system available to Kujtesa and others like her was in ruins. This was not by accident, says Erëblir: "If you want to destroy a nation, take away its education. This is what they tried to do. Our schools were closed more and more, suppressed more and more for years. We had to make schools ourselves, in a room in someone's house, with some old books."

Miraculously presented with the opportunity to continue their education in America, the four teenagers and their families said yes. With the aid of the World Educational Services Foundation in Oakland, one-year student visas were secured, and the Kosovars arrived in Berkeley in late August, somewhat dazed from the whirlwind of events. Saint Mary's College High School was part of the network of concerned Berkeleyans. The parent of a Saint Mary's High student who is a member of the First Congregational Church had alerted the high school administration to the urgent need, and Brother Edmond Larouche, President of the high school, says the community was moved to help: "We saw it as a crucial moment in these students' lives, a fragile moment, after they had gone through so much horror, and we wanted to make this opportunity work for them." Saint Mary's was one of three high schools the students visited. Director of Admissions Lawrence Puck was waiting to welcome them. He says, "When they came to the Saint Mary's campus, their eyes got wide. They loved it at first sight, and we agreed to accept them."

The publicity generated by the airing of Kujtesa's e-mails had helped the KRSSP's project, but celebrity had its drawbacks. "The kids were being pursued by reporters and cameras, and our first job was to protect them from all that," says Puck. As Grese recalls, "Mr. Puck's office was always and from the beginning a safe place. The cameras and microphones were not allowed there." Puck continues, "Our second task was to get them placed academically, since there were no transcripts, no academic records. All of that had been destroyed or lost back in Pristina. They took placement tests, and all four were admitted as seniors."

A Whole New World

It was a different world that Saint Mary's opened to the four new students. "They loved our campus," says Puck, "but later they told me that when they first saw the big cross standing in the middle of it, they got a little nervous." Such a reaction is understandable in teenagers coming from a region where religious intolerance, in combination with ethnic and national divisions, has been a cause of oppression, violence and death. Ligrid was impressed by the diversity of the Saint Mary's student body. "We don't see this at home. Different races and different beliefs, all together, studying together, getting along. It's really inspiring, the kind of thing we hope for one day back home."

Marek Zelazwiekcwz, a driving force behind the KRSSP, is originally from Poland and knows well the part of the world from which the four had come. "Here are four bright kids raised in a Communist educational system that despises all religion. They are culturally of Muslim heritage, but not practicing Muslims. Here in California they were sponsored by a Protestant church and educated by a Catholic high school, and two of them lived with Jewish host families. It was an extraordinary ecumenical effort. I hope it has given them a new perspective on what religion can mean."

One concept these four already understood well was the importance of human rights and civil rights. Their youth group in Pristina was recognized by the United Nations in 1999 for its efforts to build bridges toward peace in the Balkans by bringing together young people of different backgrounds and encouraging them to examine their prejudices. This youth group is called the PostPessimists. When asked about the curious name, Kujtesa says, with a wry smile that makes her seem older than her age: "It signals that we are beyond pessimism. But we are not yet at optimism. The PostPessimist motto is this: If we can't be friends, at least let's not be enemies." During their year at Saint Mary's, the four continued their PostPessimist work, giving presentations at schools and churches to raise awareness and to raise funds.

The vibrant cultural and intellectual scene near UC Berkeley appealed to the students from Kosovo, who enjoyed the city's international flavor and global outlook. Here, Grese (left)) and Erëblir (right) check out the shops on Telegraph Avenue. Theymanaged to flee from Kosovo with their families before coming to the United States.However, Grese returned to find her home burned down.

Mainly, however, they did what every high school student has to do: They studied hard. Erëblir appreciates the American approach to education: "At home, there are fourteen subjects, all compulsory, and no electives. Here we have seven subjects, some of them electives. So there's more choice, more interest. And at Saint Mary's we have lab equipment, tools, and the opportunity to do experiments. At home we had so little. For science, just textbooks, and many of them old."

They also soaked up the American high school rituals of football games and dances, things they had only seen in movies – movies they credit for teaching them most of their English in Kosovo. With all their work on campus and off, their senior year sped by. Erëblir says, "It was wonderful. We learned a lot at Saint Mary's. Besides knowledge, we also learned some important things about life. I am grateful to the school, faculty, and students." Ligrid agrees: "It was one of the best years I ever lived." Soon the KRSSP could post the good news on its Website: "On June 4, 2000, all four students graduated from Saint Mary's College High School. Erëblir Kadriu graduated cum laude and Kujtesa Bejtullahu graduated summa cum laude. Considering that none of the four had ever lived or taken course-work in an English-speaking country, we think this is amazing."

Hope Amid Uncertainty

The students' visas expired in June and all returned to Kosovo to see their families and friends. "The best part," says Erëblir, "is that we could enjoy each other's company in freedom, without fear." But education remains their priority and enough support was found for them to return to the United States on new student visas for the 2000-2001 school year. Marek Zelazwiekcwz, who says "the students have become our friends," continues to coordinate the ecumenical effort. He reports happily that Christ the King parish in Pleasant Hill, California, "has picked up the baton in this relay." Both Erëblir and Ligrid live with host families in the parish and study at Diablo Valley College, a community college in Concord, while searching for funding to continue their studies at four-year institutions.

Various American colleges and universities accepted the students, but only Kujtesa secured enough scholarship funding to enroll in the university of her choice. State and federal governmental financial aid programs are only available to American citizens and permanent residents, so international students must depend on financial aid provided by the schools to which they are admitted. Kujtesa is at Stanford University, studying international relations and thinking of a career in journalism. Erëblir is studying psychology while he pursues his interest in documentary filmmaking. Ligrid is concentrating on computer science and planning a career in engineering. As of this writing, Grese is at work in Massachusetts trying to earn money for college and planning to apply for refugee status.

These four young people brought the reality of a distant and horrifying war home to the Lasallian community at Saint Mary's College High School. And the high school opened new paths for them in the way that Lasallians have traditionally done for young people in need, through education. Brother Edmond Larouche says, "We wanted to make it possible for them to continue their education, and I think we succeeded. They all earned Saint Mary's diplomas, and those diplomas have given them access to the American educational system."

About the future of Kosovo and the troubled area of the world from which they come, the students take a measured view. Erëblir expresses their shared feeling when he says, "Maybe things are going slowly, but they are moving surely. It will take time until the pains of the people will be healed. Nevertheless, the roots of tolerance, respect, and understanding have started to dominate the region. We live with the hope that our future is better than our past and our present." The Kosovar graduates of Saint Mary's College High School are victims of war. But they are determined not to let hope become a casualty.

Ligrid was also impressed by the diversity of the Saint Mary's student body."We don't see this at home, different races and different beliefs, all together, studying together, getting along. It's really inspiring,the kind of thing we hope for one day back home."

Kujtesa and Ligrid at work on a computer at Saint Mary's High. Kujtesa was able to enroll at Stanford University on a scholarship, while her three friends are still seeking the financial assistance they need to continue their collegiate educations in the United States.

Question:

As you read this article, what other thoughts, people or stories came to mind? Please share your ideas with us (email signs@dlsi.org); we will publish responses in future issues of Signs of Faith.