UNMIK ON AIR
1st
April 2003
MICHEL
TABIB
Michele Tabib: Rule number one: the ID should
always hang on your neck. That way no one will mix you up for a local. Not that
it is very important but we should try and stay within our own circle. How many
times have I heard our ladies say: I thought you were Albanian” that seems
difficult to believe. Appearances do differ a little. I never separate from my
ID. I went as far as to sleep with it. Now I have started taking it off when I
go to bed but I do find it difficult to separate myself from it, as if it were
a part of my soul. A tattoo on my forehead would be better
Michele Tabib, a French author, reading an excerpt from his
book: “the little girl who wanted to know all the languages”- just published in
Kosovo, both in French and Albanian.
His book is a collection made out of 5 stories that focus on
an international worker who has arrived in Kosovo, and is trying to figure out
his way through the local-international human relations. Mr. Tabib says that
his book is based mainly on his own experiences and- unlike many other books
that try to find the roots of the conflict or explain political tensions- his
stories are human stories dealing with the relationship between the Kosovan
population and the “internationals”. Michel Tabib:
Michele Tabib: The purpose is not just to make
another book. It’s to make a book here and try to create a debate between
Albanian and internationals. That’s the reason for the translation.
Michele Tabib: I can say that for the
internationals, I met a lot of them, I am involved in their community and from
time to time a feel a little uncomfortable about their behavior. Too much
arrogance, too much that makes me uncomfortable. And on the other side, I do
not feel that Albanians are very open to see that, I felt a kind of wall
Michele Tabib: It’s difficult for Albanians to
open the doors, and it is difficult for internationals to, also, be able to
understand the Albanian culture, the Albanian behavior. And this is what I try
to denounce, that’s all.
Tabib’s book is named after a little girl who has left a deep impression on the author. At the time when he met her she was 10 years old and living in Laplje Selo. For him, she was the symbol of a person’s willingness to communicate with other people:
Michele Tabib: When I met this girl she was 10
years old and she touched me very deeply. Well, she was ten years old and she
tried to speak French, English and different languages. All this emotion I got
from her is her attitude means: OK, I try to be open and I try to learn most
languages as possible, just to go to communicate with people and try to
understand different people. It’s why I took this title as the main title of
the book.
500 copies were printed
for the first edition of the book and the author hopes that it will see a
second and maybe even a third edition. The book has been printed both in French
and Albanian and- on the author’s insistence it was first published in kosovo.
Michele Tabib: It’s planed to be published in
France, I think it will be ready in the next two months. But first, as I said
before, I wanted to first present it here because it’s a work I’ve done in
Kosovo and I want to present it, this work. To the Albanian people and not to just
take something, to go back to my country and say: “OK. I wrote this and nothing
in Kosovo. Talking in France about Kosovo, you can also talk about Kosovo in
Kosovo.
And we end todays program with Michele Tabib reading an excerpt from his newly published book “The little girl who wanted to know all the languages”.
Michele Tabib: And finally the kosovars appear.
Kosovar Serb, Kosovar Albanian, Kosovar Roma etc. the battle of Kosovo Polje in
1389- a beautiful time mark for over seven centuries and an alibi for
oppression massacres, ethnic cleansing. And suddenly NATO decided to intervene.
Were there more deaths than in Srebrenica, or was it more dramatic than in
Sarajevo! Did Milosevic become a bigger tyrant? For the first time it is up to
our politicians and soldiers to decide. There will be a war, this time it will
be fought against the fourth military power in the world. We will not search
for other reasons, we will go there to liberate a nation from oppression and
massacres, but, most of all, to bring peace and civilization to the center of
Europe.
So we bomb. We win. We
set up provisionally. Then nothing. No one writes about it any more. Not in Le
Monde, not in Liberation, besides some minor articles we forgot about Kosovo.
Why did I decide to come
here.