Anna Di Lellio

Anna Di Lellio

A UN Administrator in Kosovo Whose Husband Was At Work in the World Trade Centre

By Mark Tran
Wednesday September 11, 2002

As a few other New Yorkers who after September 11 moved as far as they could from ground zero, I found my own safe haven: Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. The most secular of all the Islamic countries, Kosovo is so pro-American that September 11 is marked as a day of mourning as much as the fourth of July has become a day of rejoicing. The funny thing is that I did not go to Kosovo after the attack, but one day before it all happened, to start my work in the UN administration.

That Tuesday morning I had found an email from my husband Sam, who customarily works in Connecticut, telling me that he would be spending the whole week in the New York office, tower No 7 of the World Trade Centre.

The news hit me in the early afternoon. I don't remember what I felt. I just went numb. I remember that I frantically called Sam's office in Stamford, hoping to find him there. I reached his answering machine. I called his cell phone; no line available.

I called our friends Larry and Emily. Nothing. I then dialled Sam's parents in Texas. Maybe he had contacted them, I thought. But they knew nothing, and were so disturbingly calm, thinking he was in his Connecticut office, that I did not have the courage to tell them the truth.

I finally reached a TV set and watched the Albanian language news. I don't remember how long I stared at the sickening images without understanding a word of what was said. I managed to find a BBC broadcast, but in a surprising surge of patriotism, I felt that I had to turn to CNN. I wanted to hear an American accent.

I called again a few numbers in New York, but no luck. Then I tried my in-laws in Texas once more. It was 6pm, midday New York time. Sam had called; he was all right. I rushed to an internet terminal, and read Sam's brief email: "I am OK."

That was it for me. All of a sudden I felt uninterested in the news. My friend Pranvera, a tough Albanian girl who survived both Serb apartheid and violence, took me home with her. She looked as pained as I did. In the car, we listened to a local radio station called Urban FM, which was playing a running commentary on the events of the day. "Americans will bomb Afghanistan, inshallah," said a young and excitable host. Only in Muslim Kosovo. I laughed for the first time that day.

For weeks after September 11, I could not look at the women wearing scarves - very few indeed in the street of Pristina. I could not drive by the local Saudi Arabian relief centre. I felt a powerful surge of hatred any time I saw even the smallest symbol of Islam. I was surprised and upset at my reaction, but could not control it.

This has changed. I still feel very sick when I read that the international media interviewed the spokesman for Hamas in his home immediately after yet another vile terrorist attack on Israeli civilians. But on the other hand, I am getting used to the mullah's call to prayers.

I even miss it when I am not in Kosovo. I am no more interested in eviscerating Islam than before the rise of the new terrorism. Living in Kosovo has mercifully shielded me from both the pietistic debates on the positive value of Islam or the blood-thirsty blabbing of racist commentators, all abundantly played by western media.

What I do feel is a sense of powerlessness against the changes which are potentially lethal for our civilisation. But I see the major threats coming from ourselves, rather than the east. I find deeply unsettling both the ascendance of George Bush and his puppeteers to the US government, and the mix of self-serving hypocrisy and incompetence prevailing in European governments.

I don't like it that the two nations whose citizenship I hold, Italy and the US, have leased their institutions to a couple of families. With defenders like W and Berlusconi, largely unchecked by a sycophantic media, who needs Bin Laden to destroy culture, personal freedom, respect for other human beings, integrity, and the rule of law - all the things that make our lives worthwhile?