The city is registering each family that has taken in refugees and is supplying families with a 45-pound Red Cross package of flour, oil, milk and blankets to help. At the Selmani house, the 13 people crowded into three rooms are distant relatives who met two years ago at the funeral of Barhud Selmani's mother. Zaruye and Scherbum Elezkurtay and their three children remembered the apartment and headed there from Prizren when the NATO bombing began and Serb paramilitary forces forced out the Kosovars. She is waiting for her husband, Ilir, who left Yugoslavia two months ago to work in Germany. But 19 people were too many Even with fewer people, the families must eat in shifts and sleep on mattresses that cover almost every square foot of floor space.
Children are everywhere, tugging at curtains and knocking over a vase of plastic flowers.
Zaruye Elezkurtay spends much of the day out of the house with other refugee men milling around the Bar America, which has turned into a journalist hangout and therefore a hub of information. Older children spend most of the day outdoors, playing soccer or chasing the thousands of kids who are in the streets and yards of this small town. The babies stay inside with Behare Elezkurtay while Xhylsome and Barhud Selmani go to work at city hall. Dinner is usually soup, a cup of rice and some bread. And it's like cooking for an army.