The 49 Albanian men and boys held prisoner and living in a squalid dark room beneath the main house in the Yugoslav army base camp do not look dangerous; they simply look terrified and filthy. They crouch beneath the outside staircase of the house until one of the soldiers barks a command at them. They wash dishes, clean the outhouse and latrines, sweep the floors, or carry buckets of water from a well.
It is difficult to watch them scurry around, painful to witness the fear that is apparent in their eyes, uncomfortable to see such an absence of dignity where grown men who once had jobs and families are now living as prisoners.
It is also strange that the soldiers seem blind to the way they are treating these men. Many of these soldiers have displayed kindness and intelligence; but to them the Albanians seem less than human, and the normal basic respect one would show vanishes.
David, the Israeli volunteer soldier who has brought me here, has at a particular moment misplaced his knife, a large steel hunting-type knife that hangs sheathed from his mesh belt. Someone has taken it, he insists. He goes to the doorway in front of the room downstairs and shouts in Serbian that someone there must have his knife. If it is not returned. . . he makes the motion of holding his automatic rifle toward them and makes rat-a-tat-rat sounds imitating gunfire.
It is apparent to me that he is just being dramatic, but the fact is that he has just told 49 Albanians who have been kept in captivity for more than a month, and probably treated with at least some physical brutality, that he is going to kill them if they don't return his knife. David then stomps off.
About 10 minutes later, an older man with grey hair and a grey beard emerges from the cellar. He is carrying a bent kitchen knife, and he walks slowly toward the house quietly calling "Dahveed?" I later learn the old man is nick-named "professor", and I surmise he is a senior spokesman, the one prevailed upon to deal with the soldiers in tense situations.
He is bringing this sad little knife to David, asking: "Is this your knife David? Is this it? This is all we have."
Even David seems embarrassed and says: "No, forget it."
The encounter is disconcerting, and evidence of how close to death these prisoners feel. The mercurial nature of the soldiers, who are consuming enormous quantities of alcohol, is an uncertain terror in itself; one moment all can be well, the next moment, in an alcohol-infused fury, life could end.
The unit captain, a blond-haired tall man who exudes charisma and authority, is now fairly intoxicated. Through David, who speaks English and is acting as interpreter, the captain shouts:
"You want to speak to the schiptars? (derogatory Serb term for Albanians) You can! Ask them anything! They are free to speak!"
We walk over to the second house in the three-house compound, where a young man is herding a few cows. He is brought inside the house, told to sit down in one of the chairs surrounding a round table in an otherwise unfurnished room, and the captain begins telling him that he is free to tell me whatever he wants.
Besim Hasanaj and I look at each other and for a moment it almost seems like we are both going to laugh. The notion that he, surrounded by soldiers with guns, is able to speak freely is absurd.
Instead, we stick to safe topics. Besim is 26 years old, and learned to speak English while studying computer programming. He has large brown eyes, and a brown curl that falls onto his forehead.
"I am one of six brothers and sisters, four of them are in Sweden," he says. He and his younger brother are here. They were taken from their village of Srbica on April 27th during a round-up of all the males in the area. He does not know where his mother and father are. He does not know where his wife is; he has heard that in the week after capture she gave birth to their son.
Suddenly this casual chat over Turkish coffee and bread is interrupted by the sound of automatic rifle fire. It is very close. David and a few others bolt from their chairs and run from the house, and there is a good bit of shouting. Albanians snipers have emerged from the adjacent forest and are attacking the other house in the compound. Everyone grabs their Kalashnikovs and heads over the hill, leaving Besim, myself and one soldier guarding this house.
This room we are sitting in is brick and concrete. Sandbags, which are said to be good defence against bullets, fill the open window, letting just a peek of sun in. We are as safe as we are going to be, and now at least Besim and I can talk.
"You can see everything for yourself, you can see how we look," says Besim.
It is true. Like the others, Besim is thin. Unlike the others, he seems to be trying to stay clean, although his hair is oily and matted and his Adidas running pants are flecked with dirt. His smooth skin has a faint yellow tint, and the whites of his eyes are yellowish.
He is sick, he says. It is a stomach infection, because there seems to be something wrong with the water. The others are sick too. There are respiratory infections and dysentery. There is no medicine at all, and there is not enough food. All of them are sleeping in the small room underneath the house.
"They burned down the houses and they took all of us," he says. "I am not in the KLA. My father was police chief in 1981, so maybe that made my family suspicious."
He begins to cry. He cannot talk anymore. Later, as the afternoon fades into evening, there is something of a celebration afoot. The soldiers turned back the sniper attack, and no one was killed.
Maxim (23) killed his first man yesterday. He killed a KLA sniper with the very first bullet he has ever fired. Now Maxim is playing chef, cooking dinner for the rest, bent over a pink plastic bucket, cutting meat off a cow bone.
Victor, a blonde man with a goofy smile and a rounded nose, is carrying around a large tin of pickles. Someone else is cooking rice. The mood is so ebullient that David even hands a slice of kiebasy (a kind of sausage) to the Albanian who is sweeping the floor.
Plans are made. Tomorrow, the soldiers will lay land mines around the compound. They will again consider "cleaning" KLA members out of a tunnel in the area.
At one point during my conversation with Besim Hasanaj, the captain announced somewhat grandly that he might free the prisoners in a few days. There was no way to judge the veracity of the statement.
Two days later, I heard that a group of Albanian prisoners turned up at the border at Blace in Macedonia. I can only pray that Besim was among them.
A Week in Kosovo continues tomorrow