As Miradija describes it, the processing of new arrivals to Macedonia was extremely slow, and the refugees who were allowed through were primarily those so sick that they passed out and needed to be carried across the border for medical care. "My daughter got sick from being outside wet two nights," she says, gesturing to Burbuqa. "She fainted. So my two sons and I grabbed her and went across the border. My husband was left with my other daughter and his mother." Burbuqa recovered, but during that four-day period, 40 others died on the border.

Miradija's story is typical of those of thousands of refugees. She has no idea where her husband and daughter are now, or how they are going to be reunited. The Macedonian police are not allowing people to leave the camps, not even to buy soap or shampoo in the nearby town of Tetova. There are no telephones in the camp, and the Red Cross has yet to develop a system so families can locate each other.

Away from the group, another woman sits separately with her three young daughters, as if associating with the other women might mean surrendering to an indefinite future in the camp. Her 7-year-old daughter, Iliriana, who is dressed brightly in a yellow shirt and blue leggings, tells me why her father is not with them. "We were driving out of Kosovo, but the police told us to give up the car, so we had to go on foot. He got sick," she says, and now he is in the hospital in Tetova.

Although her children look well scrubbed, Iliriana's mother complains that she cannot get out of the camp to buy soap for them. But it appears that her real obsession is getting out of the camp. She asks if a journalist can sneak her family out past the Macedonian police guards so that they can get to the home of a distant cousin in the country. Asked whether she will try to take her husband with them, she says that she believes he is "in bad health and won't be able to manage."

Paula Silverman, a pediatrician with Mercy Corps International who is here doing a medical assessment, says that the children in the camp appear to be much more resilient than their parents, and that most of her patients have been adults who are dehydrated or in shock. But the toll on some of the children here is clear. A woman named Myrvete, dressed in a heavy blond fisherman's vest, was deported by train from Pristina with her four children. While she talks with the group, her youngest, a dark-haired 6-year-old boy, lays with his head in her lap. He has become clingy and insecure, she explains: "He won't sleep alone. All night, he chokes me, clinging to me." Another child, one of her 11-year-old twin daughters, has had nightmares. Last night, the girl tells me, she dreamed that her family went back to their house in Pristina, but the police were there and forced them to leave.

Like their parents, the children cling to what they can. A 7-year-old girl, Edona, whose long golden hair is pulled back, tells me that she and her 6-year-old brother, Arbon, are here with their father and grandmother. They have another brother, Edona tells me, a 1-year-old who is physically handicapped. The Macedonian police allowed him to cross the border with their mother, but held Edona and Arbon behind.

Edona shows me her Barbie doll and her brother's shiny truck. "I did not manage to get all my things," she says.

A young man, Bekim Llalloshi, has only his cousin here -- they were separated from his mother, father, brother and sister once they reached Macedonia and were put on buses to different camps. Bekim sits in front of his tent neatly dressed in a sweater and khaki pants, reading an English-language book left behind by a journalist. He seems amazingly calm given the uncertainty of his life -- but he says that reading and working are what keep him calm. Perhaps it is these things, or his youth, that have also instilled him with a surprising sense of optimism. Surveying the camp, the 24-year-old architecture student seems to see what it could become. "The kids could use a playground here," he says, "and a theater."
salon.com | April 13, 1999

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