One Boy from Kosovo Photographer: Cindy Karp Description When war drove twelve-year-old Edi and his family from their home in Kosovo, they fled across the Macedonian border to the Brazda refugee camp, a tent city that housed almost thirty thousand people. There the family shared a tent with more than twenty other people, with no kitchen, no running water, and no school for Edi to attend. Instead he helped out with the younger kids, played soccer with the other boys, and ran errands, such as waiting in the long lines for food and fresh water. Everybody was waiting in Brazda -- for news about relatives, for the war to end, for the day when they could finally go home again. What Was My Inspiration? Cindy arrived in Macedonia first. I came a few days later by plane, taxi, bus, and on a rainy night high in the mountains by foot over the Bulgaria- Macedonia border. Over the next four days, life with the Fejzullahs, a Kosovar Albanian family in the Brazda refugee camp 10 miles out of Skopje, would consume us. Cindy spoke a little Spanish and I remembered some German. But we were humbled by how well the Fejzullahs spoke English. That was how we began to communicate. Within a few hours, we also began to read their facial expressions, watching sadness suddenly well up, and interpret hand gestures that told of fear and frustration. By the evening meal, we were doing yoga together and telling jokes. Later, with coffee by candle light in the neighbor's tent, we listened to war stories. They shared all with us. These victims of war eat, sleep, shower, cry, laugh, and make agonizing and life-altering decisions in the most public of places a chaotic and crowded camp that was either unbearably hot or cold and unbelievably wet or parched but safe. At night, we settled into cots that were generously given up for us by others, who then slept on the floor. Despite the tight quarters (we slept inches from our hosts), the NATO planes flying overhead, and the fact that the nearest toilet was the equivalent of a few city blocks away, Cindy and I woke from one of the most peaceful nights of sleep we could remember. The war ended two days after we left Brazda. We learned that Edi and his family returned to Kosovo, although then, we did not know if their house was standing or their relatives alive. But one thing was as sure as the sun that rises over the Kosovar mountains: for the Fejzullahs, and for most of the refugee families we met, going home was a fierce and passionate obsession. Reviews "This book is a compassionate pictorial essay of this family's experiences. The text is straightforward, the photographs are eloquent and the book ends with hope as we picture Edi jumping into the arms of his long lost beloved uncle. A 2000 Parents' Choice Recommended winner." "Though the book tells a specific story, the empathy created between Edi and readers suggests a larger, global message: Refugees are not "others" but ourselves." "Marx's vivid writing style and Karp's eye-opening photographs will help young readers feel as if they are right there in the camp with Edi." "Without slogans or melodrama, author Trish Marx and photographer Cindy Karp demonstrate the virtue of using a tight focus to illuminate a larger event."
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