Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Valbona and Daut Beqiri now live in an apartment in Santa Clara.
Taking Root
Although all that they know is in Kosovo, the Beqiris say they are in America to stay
By Kara Chalmers
Valbona Beqiri, 21, brought a worn Newsweek, dated April 12, 1999, from her bedroom. She had come across the magazine in her son's doctor's office a couple of months ago and kept it. She turns to a photograph of a Kosovar man and his daughter, both crying, at a refugee camp in Macedonia and says, "My uncle, my mother's brother."
Another photograph shows a long line of people waiting to get into the camps. "My friend," she says, pointing to one young man in the line.
Beqiri was there, too. She was even on the evening news one night last April. Her friend in Macedonia said she watched her.
She studies the map in the magazine and points to her home, Caganik, in Kosovo, near the border of Macedonia. It's about 30 minutes from Kosovo's capital city of Pristina. "Like Santa Clara and San Jose," Beqiri said, smiling because her English is getting better.
Valbona Beqiri and her husband Daut, 27, might be young, but they have already lived lifetimes.
"They were high-school sweethearts," said family friend Judith Lawrenson. "Imagine what they've been through."
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Sandy Sifferman says goodbye to Daut after a visit in the Beqiri's apartment in Santa Clara.
The Beqiris, with their then 3-year-old son, Durim, and their families, fled war-ravaged Kosovo in April 1999, when they were bombed out of their homes. Valbona was four months pregnant and walked 20 hours in snow and freezing rain to the Macedonian camp, where the family would be safe. Valbona's 5-year-old sister and 7-year-old brother walked right alongside her.
At the camp, Valbona, then 20, spied a 6-year-old boy who was crying because he was lost. Amid the thousands of Kosovar refugees, he was separated from his parents. Valbona picked him up and kept him with her for three days, until his parents found him.
"She was pregnant and we were living in the tents," said Daut about his wife, through a translator. "There were no buildings, nothing, and it was cold sometimes and it was rainy often."
The Beqiris stayed at the camp for two months. They, like many families in the camps, were asked where they would like to move, so they filled out applications for Germany and Switzerland where two of Daut's brothers live. They also filled one out for the United States. A few weeks later, they found out that the private, nonprofit organization Catholic Charities, which helps people of all faiths, would send them to America.
The Beqiris flew out of Macedonia and into New York City. With the little English they had learned in school, they managed to find their connecting flights, first to Chicago and then to San Jose, where a welcoming crew of about a dozen Sacred Heart parishioners from Saratoga met them with a sign that said Welcome to America, in Albanian. A few days later, Valbona lost her baby. She turned 21 while she was in the hospital on July 10.
Daut Beqiri is helping build new homes across from Saratoga High School.
Photograph by Sebastian Widmann
When they arrived, exhausted, they had nothing except the clothes they were wearing, one disposable diaper, some papers and a few dog-eared photographs. The couple lost all of their wedding photographs in the war, but Valbona carried a picture of her father and Daut's father.
Today, they are completely self-sufficient. Daut works in construction, helping to build the new homes across the street from Saratoga High School. Daut's supervisor, Ken Ray, says Daut has a great work ethic and has given him several raises so far.
Valbona goes to school three days a week to learn English from Saratogan Rita Thorakos at Buchser Middle School in Santa Clara, during the few hours that her son is in school.
The family lives in a subsidized housing complex in Santa Clara. They pay $550 each month for the modest one-bedroom home where everything is in its place. Durim sleeps under a Mickey Mouse comforter each night, in the same room as his parents. His recent school photograph hangs high on the wall with the other framed pictures, out of reach of 4-year-old hands. On the kitchen wall hangs what looks like a Budweiser beer box flattened out to display the words "Welcome to California." A video, Terminator Two, rests on top of the VCR. Two months ago, after about nine tries, Daut received his driver's license. Now he drives everywhere.
"They're the classic refugee story, really," Lawrenson said. "This is what you hope will happen."
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Durim enjoys romping in the family's apartment in Santa Clara.
Volunteers from Sacred Heart Church helped the Beqiris get through the first few months here, and some help out to this day. One, who wishs to be unnamed, gave them a gray 1984 Peugeot.
The Beqiris, as refugees, are permitted to work here, and they will never be asked to leave. They say they are here to stay.
"Life is nice here," Valbona said, through the translator. But that doesn't mean it is always easy. The Beqiris work hard and stick to a strict budget. They have never been to San Francisco, or to a California beach. They are quick to say they like America and they have made some friends here. But Kosovo is where their life was, and it is where their families and most of their friends are now.
"It's too bad in Kosovo," said Valbona, and that seems to say it all. In Kosovo, there are no jobs and no money, according to Daut. And there, the rules seemed unfair--for Albanians, anyway.
What he likes the best is the freedom in America. In Kosovo, before he left, Serbian police would arrest people for no reason, he says. In America, if you live honestly, you are allowed to live your life, he said.
The Beqiris arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs. The flowers and stuffed animals were gifts from the members of Sacred Heart Church who greeted them at the airport.
The Beqiris' home was destroyed in the war. Some of their best friends were killed. They watched children die right in front of their eyes, images Valbona says she thinks about it all the time. When they arrived in America, they had no idea where their families members were or if they were alive. They could not telephone them since their families were still in the Macedonian camp.
"There is nothing waiting for us over there," Daut said through the translator. "No house, everything is destroyed, no jobs."
Today, the Beqiris know where their families are. On July 7 of last year, their families went back to Kosovo. Valbona wishes she could bring her parents and her five siblings here. Daut, the youngest in his family, left his parents, four brothers and two sisters. They talk to their families once, maybe twice a month. Their phone bill is about $100.
Part of the reason the Beqiris will stay in America is because Durim, who is severely hearing impaired, might be a candidate for a cochlear implant, an ear surgery that may help him regain some of his hearing.
Durim, who just turned four in May, is being evaluated at the Children's Hospital in Oakland. While his doctors say there is a chance he may never speak, he is learning sign language at Oster Elementary School in Campbell. His parents are trying to learn, too. Their problem is how to fit signing classes into their busy schedules. Durim is only in school for four hours each day.
"Now we need to get people once again involved with this," said Sandy Sifferman, a Sacred Heart volunteer. "We have to have people come and babysit on Thursday evenings while they go to two hours of signing. Besides going to English school, now they need to go to signing school."
Photographs by Kathy De La Torre
Saratogan Sandy Sifferman helps adjust Durim's hearing aid while she visits the Beqiris in their apartment.
Sifferman, Lawrenson and Katrina Manou are the three co-chairs of the parish outreach committee at Sacred Heart Church, which organized the Beqiris' move to America. In March 1999, they approached Father Al Larkin at Sacred Heart in Saratoga about "adopting" a refugee family. Larkin was supportive.
"We were all sort of waiting for the hand of fate to come down and put us together, is how we look at it," Lawrenson said. "Catholic Charities is the most wonderful organization. I had no idea, I didn't know the half of what Catholic Charities did. They're amazing."
The three women met with a Catholic Charities representative, who said to find about 15 volunteers and assign tasks. The three women found well over the 15 volunteers. "We met in the library at Sacred Heart School and people just said, I'll do this part of it, I'll do that part of it," Lawrenson said. One part was setting up the apartment, one was finding furniture. Other parts were buying clothing, food or connecting phone lines. Each committee member was responsible for one part of the project.
Two days before the Beqiris arrived, the parishioners first found out the size of the family, and how old the family members were. "We were scrambling, literally 20 hours a day, for two days," Lawrenson said.
Sacred Heart had a limited right of refusal, Sifferman said. The church could have turned away a family that was too big. They also could have turned down a family that was not Catholic and the Beqiris are Muslim.
"We didn't even think twice about it," Lawrenson said. "We just said, 'sure,'"
Photographs by Kathy De La Torre
Don Sifferman visits with Valbona and Daut Beqiri. Although the Siffermans committed to six months of support for the family as part of Sacred Heart parish, they have continued to be friends with the Beqiris.
The volunteers found enough furniture, clothing and toys to fill the small two-bedroom apartment in Campbell that the Beqiris lived in for their first six months here. Sacred Heart paid their rent and utilities.
"All donated, every stick of it, donated," Lawrenson said.
Those first few weeks, the transportation committee proved to be one of the more important ones, Lawrenson said, since the Beqiris' days were filled with appointments. They had to find a school for Durim; Daut had to find a job; they went to the Department of Motor Vehicles for identification cards, and of course Valbona spent a long time in the hospital. After she lost her baby, she was in the hospital for about eight days, and then was in bed for a couple weeks.
During that time, a group of teens from Sacred Heart, including Sifferman's son Jonathan, 15, helped out with babysitting for Durim. They would take Durim out of the apartment so that Valbona could rest, Sifferman said.
Catholic Charities' rule is that parishes are responsible for their sponsored families for only six months. But some of the volunteers from Sacred Heart have stayed involved with the Beqiris--the Siffermans especially.
Don Sifferman often stops by Daut's construction site in Saratoga to help him look through the mail, in case there is anything confusing. The Siffermans help with arranging some of Durim's medical appointments because of the Beqiris' language barrier.
For the Siffermans and other Sacred Heart families, the Beqiris are no longer people they are taking care of. They are friends.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
