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Qendrese Halili
I am Qëndresë. My name is a word that means resistance in Albanian—also perseverance and stamina. It is not a child’s name, a feminine one, or that of a flower. Nevertheless, the beauty and the mea...ver maisI am Qëndresë. My name is a word that means resistance in Albanian—also perseverance and stamina. It is not a child’s name, a feminine one, or that of a flower. Nevertheless, the beauty and the meaning of my name exceed that of a flower’s name. It has achieved its independence! I was born in the most beautiful place in the world: Ferizaj, Kosovo!
In addition to my being born, a time of hope for my family and for Kosovo was also born, even though my name is Qëndresë and not Hope. The house where my father and his father before him were born has resisted all wars, all thunder, and all earthquakes, and that same resistance is what my father hoped I would inherit. I am Qëndresë! Qëndresë! How could I not love my name? It is neither a feminine name nor that of a flower. The name is ancient but born to a child.
Oh, my, childhood, I thought I had concealed you in a diary. I thought I had escaped you. Maybe I thought so because I was unlike the children of the free world—without fear and war. My childhood is a grief for which there is no forgetting or escaping.
No one is capable of escaping his or her childhood! On the contrary, people escape from all ages, and they hide in the ones that should have been most beautiful—those of their childhood—but not me. I cannot escape and hide out in my childhood. My childhood was war-torn, blood-filled, violent, sorrowful, fearful, murderous, hateful, and uncertain. It was full of tears, sadness, and anxiety. All of my childhood would be heavy, far too heavy, even for the world’s shoulders.
Nevertheless, my childhood has something surprisingly special, despite all of the sufferings that have yet to be—and who knows when they shall be—revealed to you. You, who have not been born and I have not birthed yet, will have something special: the diary of my childhood, which I have yet to complete, and which I will never complete; the diary of my childhood, which never grew; the diary of flowers, which never bloomed; the diary of hopes, which were never realized; the diary of all of my peers, whose childhoods, like mine, were stolen from the war and whose lives were taken as well.
I am only twenty-six years old today, and I still need to create a new childhood—a different childhood from the one I suffered. Where can I do so? How? With what words, hopes, and dreams? They’re not enough! My twenty-six years of life lack the first ten! War lived the ten years that I lost. War took my first ten steps and not my feet. Yet it often feels like I am an elderly woman of war, telling stories of the sufferings of a childhood never lived. We are the next children in line. We are the children of war!ver menos