In many cases, Yugoslav border guards stripped ethnic Albanians not only of their passports, drivers' licenses and identification cards, but of scraps of paper with phone numbers written on them. An older men he met in prison befriended him, and stood with his arm around the youth's shoulders as they waited outside the bank of 18 phones. Mulaj knows someone who knows someone who may know his uncle's phone number in Switzerland. They are waiting for the friend, so they can call and let someone know he is alive . The Red Cross averages 500 calls a day on its satellite phone banks in Kukes alone.
Every family reunification seems spiked with sadness about family members who are missing or dead.
Now they are trying to learn what happened to everyone else. They sent us to prison. Ramadan told them in passing that he had seen their house in ashes. But he did not mention the purple bruise the size of a dinner plate on his left buttock, where he had been whipped with chains wrapped in reeds. Nor did he tell them about the cousin he found by the roadside, shot through the heart.