If nothing seems remarkable about the cozy scene, consider that as recently as June, Bejtullahu [pronounced BAYtuh-LAhoo], an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, was huddled with her family in an apartment in the provincial capital of Pristina, all but certain she would either be executed by Serbian paramilitary soldiers or hit by stray NATO bombs. Even after NATO peacekeeping troops entered the province last June and Serb forces exited, leaving up to 10,000 people dead and 1.2 million displaced, the ethnic violence continued. Bread and milk remained scarce. And with schools still closed, straight-A student Bejtullahu had no idea when, or even if, she would return to the classroom.
During the long, bleak winter months the high point of many a day was Hamill's e-mail. Matched up by a Bay Area peace worker, Bejtullahu and Finney, as she calls him, had struck up a correspondence rife with her vivid accounts of life under fire. With Bejtullahu's permission, Hamill wrote seven pieces about her experiences for National Public Radio's Morning Edition. To prevent reprisals, she was identified only as Adona. The opening piece began with Hamill speaking of letters "that would change the way I look at the world." Then a female voice read from Adona's first e-mail:
Hello Finnegan. I am glad you wrote to me so soon. About my English, I have learned it through the movies, school, special classes, etcetera, but mostly from TV. I can speak Serbian as well, Spanish and understand a bit of Turkish.
She continued, just as matter-of-factly:
You never know what will happen to you. One night, last week, I think, we were all surrounded by police and armed forces, and if it wasn't for the [international] observers, God knows how many victims there would be.
Now, thanks in part to Hamill's radio reports, Bejtullahu and three other Kosovar teenagers will spend the next 10 months living with Bay Area families and attending St. Mary's College High School in Berkeley. "I definitely like it better here," says Bejtullahu. "It is so new and clean." Decked out in a blue tank top and black stretch pants, she is already fitting in. "The other day," she laughs, "I was at the high school with Finney, and someone came up to me and asked for directions."
Not all American sights stir delight. When Bejtullahu sees a homeless woman crouched on the sidewalk begging for money, she tells Hamill that "even during the war, we didn't have many homeless people—except when they're made to leave the country, of course." And during a school tour with her Kosovar friends, the two boys and two girls froze when they encountered police drilling in SWAT uniforms. "It was bad timing," says Gretchen Carlson, 51, a former teacher who is Bejtullahu's American "mom." "They were kind of quiet."
Bejtullahu's journey to Berkeley began last October when she and a group of Serbian, Macedonian and Albanian teenagers who call themselves "PostPessimists"—"We are not pessimists, but we are not optimists yet," explains Bejtullahu—impressed Marek Zelazkiewicz, a visiting Bay Area peace activist. "These kids were saying things that adults weren't," recalls Zelazkiewicz, who heard plenty on that trip about intractable ethnic hatreds. "They wanted peace and cooperation. Kujtesa [pronounced kwee-TESsa] also told me she hoped someday to go to school in the States."
When Zelazkiewicz returned to California, he gave the students' e-mail addresses to young members of Berkeley's First Congregational Church. Hamill, a junior who was editor of his high school newspaper and a hockey player, e-mailed Bejtullahu on Jan. 17, the day they were paired. She responded within 24 hours and soon was confiding: I must tell you it is scary sometimes.
Hamill told her his parents had separated and that he lived with his father, Michael, 51, a quality supervisor for Safeway. Bejtullahu wrote that her mother was a physician, her father an engineer; her brother Egëzom is 9, her sister Geta, 19. Some of her e-mails were charmingly girlish. You don't know how I am longing to go to a party, on a trip or anywhere, she confided as violence escalated in late January.
Other messages sounded all too grown-up. In early February she wrote, I really don't want to end up raped.... You don't know how lucky you are to have a normal life. After air strikes began, and Serbian troops entered Kosovo in March, Bejtullahu wrote of massacres, blackouts and water shortages:
At the moment I am writing to you just from my balcony, I can see people running with suitcases and I can hear some gunshots. A village just a few hundred meters from my home is all surrounded.
Days later, she added:
Right now, I am trying to keep myself as calm as possible. My younger brother...is sleeping now. I wish I will not have to stop his dreams. He is just a child.
When Bejtullahu was unable to send e-mail, Hamill reached her by phone. After no one picked up in early April, he says, "I thought the worst." A few weeks later, when he got an answer, he learned that she and her family had been forced from their apartment by Serbian soldiers. Unable to cross into Macedonia, they made their way back home.
While Hamill shared their story with NPR listeners, Zelazkiewicz raised money to bring the four teenagers to the U.S. When they touched down in San Francisco on Aug. 25, Hamill was on hand to give Bejtullahu a big bouquet of flowers and a hug. "He's cool," Bejtullahu said to TV cameras. "I like the red hair." Hamill returns the compliment: "She's pretty. She has a great sense of humor and is kind of quirky and funny." Both maintain there is no romance—at least not yet. Far more important is that Bejtullahu can say, "I'm getting a chance at a better life."
Jill Smolowe
Ken Baker in Berkeley
- Contributors:
- Ken Baker.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
