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Hamdi and Lindita Bajrami of East Manchester Township became the proud parents of a newborn baby boy the morning of Dec. 1.
They were happy Salih Maligi was healthy at 7 pounds, 15 ounces and 19 inches long, but they also felt blessed that he was born in the United States - making him the first American citizen in their family.
“I'm pretty sure he's going to feel the freedom,” Hamdi Bajrami said.
Just five years ago, Bajrami didn't know if he would be alive today, much less adding to his family and looking toward a future in York County.
The ongoing conflict between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Bajrami's homeland of Kosovo escalated dramatically in January 1999, sending thousands into hiding. As Albanians, Bajrami and his family were caught in the middle, and, at times, Bajrami thought he might die in his pursuit of freedom.
Fleeing the fighting
About a week after 45 ethnic Albanians were slain outside a nearby village Jan. 15, 1999, Bajrami, who is now 30, moved his family from their home in Medevec to his father-in-law's home in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, where they would be safer. The two cities are about 19 miles away, he said.
The next day, he ventured back to the village to
“I was just there, waiting any minute to get killed,” he said.
Then, in March 1999, the NATO decided to bomb Yugoslavia and the Serbian forces in Kosovo in an attempt to force them to withdraw from the province.
Bajrami said bombs fell day and night, and the Serbian troops went into hiding. Bajrami escaped and walked more than 50 miles to the border, hoping to pass into Macedonia, where he would be safe. Albanian refugee camps had been set up there because Macedonia was not involved in the conflict.
Bajrami walked for two days and two nights, with no food or water, to get to the border. There, he said, he was forced to give a border guard all his money - 120 deutschmarks - and all his travel documents, including his passport.
He walked another two hours before a bus picked him up. He said the transport was filled with refugees, like himself, and they were headed for a camp. Along the way, they stopped at a diner in Tetovo being used as a place to eat and sleep, where he and the others spent the night.
In the morning, Macedonian residents arrived and offered their homes to the refugees. Bajrami said he refused to go with them. His only goal was to find his family.
Bajrami said he walked through the streets of Tetovo, and remembers feeling guilty because he heard music coming from restaurants. He wanted to share that music with his family and didn't know if he would ever see them again.
Hope renewed
Recalling that day, Bajrami shook his head and rubbed his face. Then he sighed, looked up, and continued telling his story.
He said he doesn't know why, but, at the time, he got some cigarettes and walked to a bridge, sat down and smoked.
He doesn't remember exactly how long he was there, but, at some point, he looked up and saw a familiar face. The man standing over him was a friend of his family, and the two men embraced.
Bajrami asked if the man knew anything about Lindita and the children. The man smiled and told Bajrami his family was doing fine in a refugee camp called Stenkovec 1, about 80 miles away outside of Skopje. He was elated, but didn't know how to get to his family. He had no money and the only item of worth that he had left was his wedding band.
He said he offered the ring to a taxi driver in exchange for a ride to the refugee camp, but the driver refused. However, another driver, who heard Bajrami's plea, gave him the ride for free, he said.
Bajrami got to the camp - but there were 75,000 people living there. He said he just started walking around, talking to everyone, asking if they had seen his family and if they knew where he could find them. Someone eventually pointed him in the right direction and he reached his family's tent around midnight. But he didn't go in. He was afraid they wouldn't be there, he said.
He waited outside until morning, and around 5 a.m. May 1, 1999, his wife emerged from the tent, shocked to see her husband sitting there. His children - Albion, now 8, and Albulena, now 7 - were in the tent, too, he said. He had beaten the odds and found his family. But, what he didn't know was that they were on the verge of being separated again.
Getting out of Eastern Europe
Soon after the reunion, Lindita Bajrami told her husband she and the children were on a list of refugees to fly to the United States. The flight was set to leave in four days.
Hamdi Bajrami said he wanted his family to be safe, but, after months of searching, he decided they weren't going to be separated again. He told the authorities that if he couldn't go with his wife and children, then no one would be going. He said he was relieved when they made room for him on the plane.
They flew to the United States and landed at Fort Dix, N.J., on May 8, 1999. They had no money, no jobs and didn't know how to speak English, Bajrami said.
They spent the next month and a half in a New Jersey camp with about 24,000 other refugees. Eventually, they were sponsored by Glenn and Hattie Lehigh of Manchester Township. Glenn Lehigh is chairman of the Interchurch Refugee Resettlement Committee, a group of six churches in York County that sponsors refugee families.
Hattie Lehigh said she and her husband found an apartment for the family in York and got Bajrami a job at Herculite Co. in Emigsville.
When Bajrami started working the night shift, he had to quit taking his English classes. He completed 16 hours of lessons and learned the rest by listening to his coworkers and watching television, he said.
But just as they were putting down roots in York County, the Bajramis decided to go home to Kosovo in December 1999. Glenn Lehigh said he worried Kosovo wasn't safe enough for the family to return.
Back to Kosovo
Bajrami said it's hard for him to explain why he and his family returned to a war-torn country. But, he said, they wanted to go home.
He said Kosovo wasn't always plagued by war and had been just “perfect” before the Serb crackdown. Besides, the conflict had ended. The troops had withdrawn. They felt that it was safe to return, he said.
They left the United States impulsively, he said, without getting their travel documents in order. They didn't think they'd have to come back.
When the Bajramis arrived in Kosovo, they found their home had been turned into rubble. There was no telephone service, no radio, no working banks and no jobs. Conditions were still tense between Serbs and Albanians, even in the presence of NATO peacekeeping troops, he said.
Three days after their plane touched down in Kosovo, Bajrami said he realized his mistake and wanted to return to the United States.
Hattie Lehigh said she remembers getting calls from Bajrami at 4 a.m., pleading for her help in getting him and his family back to America.
She said she's not sure Bajrami could've made the process much easier on himself, even if he had gotten all his travel documents in order before leaving.
She explained that the first time Bajrami traveled to the United States, he had refugee status, but the second time, he had to follow the same procedures that all other immigrants did and be approved by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (now known as the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).
That process was hindered several times as he tried to get documents from Kosovo to the United States, despite a defunct postal service.
Bajrami said he had to send mail via military units stationed nearby, and, after months of working, he learned his travel documents - which consisted of a letter and two photographs of himself - were waiting for him at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
He said he scraped together enough money to get there, only to discover that the documents had been lost or stolen.
“I kind of lost all my hopes (at that point),” he said.
But he had kept in contact with the Lehighs and York County Coroner Barry Bloss, who were still working to get Bajrami and his family back to Pennsylvania.
Bloss rented some of his properties to refugees that the Lehighs sponsored. He became involved with the Bajrami family when he rented a property to Bajrami's in-laws, who had previously made the trip to the United States with him, Glenn Lehigh said. Through that connection, Bloss became close to the entire Bajrami family and wanted to help them.
Together, they managed to get Bajrami a travel letter through the Immigration and Naturalization Services. However, the document was only good for seven days and Bajrami quickly had to decide whether to leave his family in Kosovo, and risk being separated from them for an unknown amount of time, or stay with them in a country with no jobs, no banks and an uncertain future.
He decided to risk everything and fly to the United States on Dec. 9, 2000. He vowed to never stop working to get the rest of his family back too. “I'm gonna do whatever it takes,” he remembered saying.
He did - with help from the Lehighs, Bloss and U.S. Rep. Todd Platts.
Bloss said Platts was instrumental in turning the wheels that enabled Bajrami's family to come back to York County. Bob Reilly, Platts' deputy chief of staff, said that, because of Privacy Act of 1974 requirements, he could not confirm or deny whether Platts assisted in bringing Bajrami's family to the United States.
Bajrami said about three weeks later, around the end of December 2000, his family had their travel documents. Friends and family members contributed money to pay for their plane tickets, and on April 7, 2001, Bajrami's family arrived in York County.
They were here to stay.
Back in the U.S.A. - and home
“I'm glad I'm here with my family,” Bajrami said, surrounded by his children and wife in their East Manchester Township apartment last month.
He has a full-time job and one part-time job. His wife works the night shift, so he can watch their children.
Although their schedules sound hectic, he said, it's better than what their relatives, who still live in Kosovo, go through every day.
“My dream was to visit. I never thought I could live here,” he said. “The United States, for me, is a special country.”
He misses Kosovo, but he knows they have a better life here, he said. He hopes to bring the rest of his family - which includes his parents and at least eight others - here too, but travel between Kosovo and the United States has become much more difficult since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he said.
In October 2001, Bajrami met with soldiers in York County who were about to ship out for a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, to tell them how their presence improved life in Kosovo.
Right now, Bajrami is looking to the future and has high hopes for his new son.
“He could grow up to be president,” he said.
TIMELINE
·1989-99 - Kosovo Albanians rebel against Serbian rule after Kosovo loses its right to govern itself in 1989. A decade of violence follows.
·Jan. 15, 1999 - Forty-five ethnic Albanians are slain outside Racak, spurring international efforts for a peace settlement.
·Jan. 24, 1999 - Hamdi Bajrami moves his wife and children, all ethnic Albanians, to Kosovo's capital of Pristina to be safe from Serbian troops.
·Jan. 25, 1999 - Bajrami is trapped in his home village of Medevec when invading troops block the roads. He is separated from his family.
·March 1999 - NATO bombs Yugoslavia, focusing on Kosovo and Serbia.
·End of April 1999 - Bajrami escapes and walks to Macedonia.
·May 1, 1999 - Bajrami is reunited with his wife and children at a refugee camp in Macedonia.
·May 8, 1999 - The family flies to America with other refugees.
·June 3, 1999 - Then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accepts an international peace plan, agreeing to pull his troops out of Kosovo.
·Dec. 14, 1999 - Bajrami and his family return to Kosovo, only to discover their home destroyed.
·Dec. 9-10, 2000 - Bajrami travels to the United States and begins to arrange for his family to join him.
·April 7, 2001 - The Bajrami family is reunited in York County.
·Dec. 1, 2003 - Salih Maligi is born at York Hospital.
Sources: Hamdi Bajrami, http://www.kosovodaily.com and BBC News
