On the night NATO started its bombing campaign in Serbia, in the town of Peja, in eastern Kosovo, Shehrije Selmanaj and her five children were in their beds with their clothes on. The Serbian army, which had killed her husband, a KLA soldier, just four months before, had surrounded the town. Shehrije was expecting to get her family out of their home at a moment's notice. That same night the Serb army started shelling the town and they lay awake all night in fear. After the third night, the Serb army arrived at her home.
As her family was pushed out on to the streets, she tried to hold on to her children and keep them together. But a soldier separated them and put her youngest four children on a bus. As they hit her about the head, she held out money and bribed her way into travelling in a car with her eldest daughter. But when she drove out of town, she realised the bus had taken her children in a different direction. She was convinced she would never see them again.
Now, two weeks later, Shehrije and her children are together again, sitting in a bare room in the home of an elderly Albanian couple. Shehrije had ended up in Montenegro and the children had been brought to Kukes. After one week apart, with the help of a brother in Austria and a friend in the town of Schkodra, the family was reunited. Now, like 7,000 others of the 10,000 refugees based in the town of Kchkodra, in northeastern Albania, they have been taken into the home of local Albanians. Although the people of Schkodra, like most Albanians, are desperately poor, they are glad to show solidarity with Kosovans.
The miracle that brought Shehrije's family together was Albanian television and international radio. Every day Albanian television has been broadcasting the names of those missing and their relatives who are trying to find them. While television programming maintains an upbeat note by frequently showing Kosovans in traditional costume singing and dancing, along the bottom of the screen run the names of thousands of missing Kosovans. The international committee of the Red Cross in Tirana is also playing an important role in reuniting the families. After the provision of food, shelter and sanitation, it has been compiling registers of names and tracing people by cross-checking registers in refugee centres and local government offices. In a field on the outskirts of Durres, a Kosovan family sits huddled in a pile of blankets. They have just arrived from Kukes, having driven, 43 people together on the back of a tractor, halfway through Albania. Barely discernible in the melee of children and blankets is the badly bruised and cut face of a woman. One eye is closed and the other has a dirty patch over it.
A more elderly woman sitting beside her speaks up. "This is my sister-in-law. They tried to kill her. They killed her little boy, who was three, and four women. They beat us all".
Sitting cross-legged on a blanket in Shkodra a frail, tiny man recounts his story, which mirrors that of so many others. Ram Adem Mataj, who is 57, arrived in Albania three days ago. He left Kosovo by foot, walking for six days through the mountains, carrying his elderly mother-in-law on his back. They finally made it to Qafa Prushit, near Kukes. Shortly before he left his village in the Decan district he heard of many atrocities in surrounding villages. In Gec, the village imam and his two sons were executed in their home.
In another village, Qerimit, a man he knew was killed, along with seven others. And in the village of Gjarq he heard from local people how 30 men and women were tied together and set alight.