'Never Love Only Our Own'.

• Author: Ullmann, Liv
• Position: The sorrow, and courage, of refugees - Brief Article

REFUGEES: WHO ARE THEY? The old woman with her bloody feet in worn-out sandals? The mother in fear? The crying child? How do we describe their importance in our lives? The media's description does not fit--they are described as a sad existence of running people, masses of scared people crossing a border. A little baby delivered from one stranger to the next, with the question, "Does anyone know whom this one belongs to?" The face of war and the faces of its victims are always nameless, and after a while we have seen them too often.

I think of my friends in Pristina, whom I visited one and a half years ago, and the sweet memory of sharing their life and their home-baked bread with honey in the morning. The father of the family took us around the city and the surroundings during our days there, and he told us his story of Kosovo. He said that when it explodes in Kosovo, then all is over. Now their house--their home--is gone, and they live under a tractor, eight of them.

Then I phone my friends in Belgrade who, the media tells me, are the enemies of my friends from Kosovo (although they were the ones who drove me there that day). And all they say is, "Our trees are in full bloom, and the heaven is clear. But we dread that, since we don't care to smell the flowers anymore and a clear sky is illuminating us from above."

I remember my visit to Albania; [it was] so hard for me then, a few years ago, to enter. Today, it is easier. Albania welcomes so many of the individual lives we call refugees. One farmer has 48 of them in his stable and a baby was just born. Albania is the poorest country in Europe, but their spontaneous solidarity contrasts with the official and individual complacency from other countries. ... I watch the stock market on CNN: the dollar is up; so is the Norwegian krona. The stocks for the industry of weapons are up 20 per cent; the price of human life is going down, but it is not noted on the stock market.

She is 12 years old and she lost her life 50 metres from the border. Her name was Zejnete. "Mama, please carry my rucksack for a while." Those were the last words Zejnete said. "She was suddenly running away from me", her mama said, "towards the border of Macedonia. On my first step after her, I found a landmine or it found me. And as I lay there in the dark, my four children cried, 'mama is dead, mama is dead.' And then I heard another explosion and a cry from Zejnete. I crawled to her and I held her, and that's when she...