It was to be Alma's home for nine days, with their host able to move around because he worked for the town's administration. Then came a sudden change - the Serbs put out word that it was safe to come out. Soon Alma, and thousands of other Albanians, found they were able to wander about, at least in the town centre. "The younger guys started to move freely, the police said you don't have to be afraid, so the people started to move freely. I went in a bar near to our house to meet my ex-boyfriend."
And came face to face with some Serbs. "In that bar it was very strange. There were Serbs but they talked Turkish or Albanian. They were trying to be polite, saying "Oh hi, where are you? But they were cheating."
Having gained the confidence of the Albanians, the Serb police, called MUP, short for Ministry of Interior, announced that a state shop in the town centre would sell sugar. By eight that morning a large queue stretched around the block, mostly young people sent by their families. "Then the MUP arrived. They just took everybody." Hours later, a few of the 300 captured were released, to spread the news. "My cousin, he had a bad heart, he was let go. He said they are taking the blood of the people. He told us they said to them if this number is not enough they will take more."
Worse was to come. The next day troops began to appear, paramilitaries in grey-patterned combat jackets never seen before, spreading through the Turkish quarter to hunt down lists of Albanians. "We heard somebody was banging at our door. He started to scream in Serbian language. I thought `Oh what is it now?' "
Rifle butts and boots began to crash against the wooden front door. Alma's brother and a 23-year-old cousin rushed upstairs, ready to leap onto a balcony and out onto the roof to take their chances. She stood on the stairs with her father. "We were so afraid. We were watching, thinking what is going to happen. Me and my father were waiting, ready to jump on the roof. My mother and the wife of the owner of the house were waiting downstairs. They could not jump on the roof."
The timbers of the door began to split open. "The soldier broke all that with guns and boots. He was swearing and saying `I'm going to kill you'. It was so, so scary. We didn't know what to do now. Are they going to shoot?" Then from outside came another voice, that of a Turkish neighbour. He urged the Serbs to stop. "He said `they are just women'," said Alma. "He said the owner is in a bar, here are only women."
The neighbour kept talking. "That guy helped us a lot when he said there are only women. The soldiers went away."
Alma's parents decided it was time to flee. The following day her father slipped away, knowing that arrest would mean certain death and probably torture too. They were not to see him again until after they got to Albania. Alma did not go to say goodbye. "I did not want to say that to him, it would be too sad." The rest of the family got up early. "We heard that people were getting to Albania by bus, and that if you were going to Albania they would not touch you."
For food, Alma crammed packets of crisps and a loaf of bread into her bag. There was one more problem. Her diaries, several volumes in plain black hard covers, are written in a code devised by Alma and her friend from Pec, with symbols replacing the letters of the alphabet. She considered the risk of the Serbs finding them and whether they would think she was a spy, but decided to take them anyway. "I wanted those diaries to stay with me, it's all my life in there."
Then there was the question of disguise, with the police now hunting for translators of the OSCE. And not just disguise. Her little radio had begun to relay stories of women and girls raped by the Serbian paramilitaries. Her hosts had heard of 20 girls having been raped from nearby Djakovo. She and her sister decided to make themselves look as unattractive as possible for the journey through Serb lines.
But looking different from the beaming picture on her OSCE pass - a copy of which was with the police - was not so hard for a girl who was by then half starved, and with her hair an oily mat. The Turkish host did them one more favour, driving them through the town, now crawling with Serb paramilitaries - the most feared of the security forces - to the bus station. If stopped by police, he would show his pass from the town hall, then say the people with him were his wife, son and two daughters, hoping they would check no further. In fact, they got to the bus station unchallenged, to find many others also getting on buses. And they had one more piece of luck. "The bus driver used to know our family. He had some connection with the Serbs, so for our sake he managed to take us very close to the border."
It was lucky because most buses had to stop at Zhur, a village taken over by the paramilitaries five kilometres from the border. Zhur had become one of several villages used by the Serbs as transit stations for several hundred ethnic Albanian prisoners. "They are keeping those hostages from Prizren, they are keeping them there so when they need them they go and take them," said Alma. "They are sending them everywhere they are needed. Somebody to work, if they need for blood, or if they need to dig graves."
Uppermost in the minds of the bus occupants was the fear of rape. There were only a few young men on the bus, and they, fearing arrest as suspected guerrillas, sat or lay together with the young women and small girls out of sight on the floor of the bus. The older women and men crowded on the seats to shield them from view from outside.
Then came the walk of several hundred metres past squads of Serbian soldiers to the border post at Morina. Once again the older people bunched together, trying to conceal the young women in their midst. A group of soldiers and paramilitaries looked on. These paramilitaries, hooligans given machine-guns whom NATO blames for some of the worst atrocities, frightened Alma the most. "Oh they are big, very big, very tall," she said. "Some have beards, long hair, or head scarves around them. They never ever smile. They were brought from Serbia, they are not locals."
The soldiers called out to the women, beckoning them over. "My mother said, `Don't look at them, don't look.' She tried to protect me and my sister. I was walking faster, faster, I don't turn my head, so nothing happened."
The final obstacle was the border itself, with refugees having to pass through a narrow customs channel. One-hundred metres away, along a strip of road that crossed no-man's land, was the Albanian frontier, with a flag of a twin-headed black eagle on a red background flapping from a long red and white striped pole. But first Alma had to get past a Serb border guard, who, she saw, was demanding people hand over their identity cards.
Her mother had a plan to distract him from examining Alma's card too closely. "My mother was in front of me, she gave money to the guard. So he took it, it was 30 deutschmarks. He took it in one hand with the identity card of me, but he was trying to hide the money at the same time, so he did not look at the card. He said `Go past'. The next girl, he did not even take her card." They moved a few steps. "There was another policeman in front. He said, `Everybody who is here go'."
Alma was interviewed on the border by a British TV crew, who were so impressed by her English that they offered her a translator's job on the spot. She now lives with her family in a rented house near the crew in the Albanian border town of Kukes, 20 kilometers away. She remains underweight, her jeans hang from her body. She has been in touch with her former boss in England, but has had no offer of help from the OSCE.
The head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, US diplomat William Walker, remains, with a scaled-down staff, in neighbouring Macedonia. He says he is certain Alma and others were hunted for their links with the OSCE, which Serb officials suspected of spying on them for the West. "Almost within hours of our leaving we heard that our people were being given special treatment," he told The Irish Times. "These people who were trying to bring peace and security in their province have been targeted. We have located about 600 of those we have left behind. One former employee, they made him eat his OSCE membership card, which is made of hard plastic."
Walker said the OSCE had hired staff on the understanding they would not be evacuated if the mission was to pull out, and he said the Serbs had forbidden the OSCE from taking their staff with them over the border.