The yarmulke on his head and the smile on his face Sunday afternoon symbolized how far Xhafer Voca had come in the past four months.
At a reception for about 65 local Kosovar refugees and their families at Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto, Voca got to eat a bagel with cream cheese, see the Torah removed from the ark and hear Rabbi Sheldon Lewis blow the shofar — all new sensations for the 48-year-old Muslim.
But the two hours of spirited dancing, singing and cross-cultural exchange between the ethnic Albanians and 30 Kol Emeth congregants couldn’t make Voca forget the horrors of the war he had lived through.
“I’m afraid to think about the things that have happened, the things that I’ve seen,” he said through a translator. “I don’t know why I made it out alive. Maybe only God knows why I’m alive.”
Voca, who arrived in Campbell six weeks ago with his wife and three children, lived in the region where much of the Serbian conflict started, which meant he saw a lot of dead bodies and many people killed. Choking up, he struggled to tell the tale of how Serb military men came to his house in Mitrovice one day and shoved him into the trunk of their car.
“For 3-1/2 hours I was in there [the trunk]. I didn’t know where they were taking me and I thought I might die,” Voca said. “They stopped and talked for a while, and I could hear them discussing if they should kill me, what they should do with me. Finally, they left me to go free and I went back home.”
That happened April 29. Five days later, Voca and his family drove to Pristina, where their car was seized. They paid off a Serbian official and escaped by train to Macedonia, where they endured 2-1/2 months in a grim relocation camp before moving to the United States.
On the train to Macedonia, Voca said 47 people were taken off and killed by the Serbs. “Every time I thought I was going to be the next choice,” he said.
Most of the South Bay refugees at Sunday’s reception had similar, harrowing stories to tell about being rounded up by Serbian forces, spending anxious hours, days and even weeks without knowing the whereabouts of relatives, and eventually leaving their homeland and their continent.
“The paramilitary came to our house and said, ‘OK, you have only two minutes to get out of your house,”‘ said 27-year-old Hatixhe Grbeshi, who was a lawyer in Kosovo. “Why? ‘Because you are not citizens. You are Albanians. You are nothing.’ We were very scared.
“Then they took us around the city, making us walk in a line,” she continued, speaking in clear English. “Instead of going straight to the train, they made us walk all around — just like animals — so the people in the buildings could see us. The Serbians in the buildings yelled things at us I cannot even repeat.
“Then in the train, I thought they were going to kill us. We were packed in, with no water, nothing. In one train, 18 people died, and we thought that could be us, too. In the train before us, they killed all of the men and let the women go on — I thought it might be the same story for us. Nobody spoke because we were so scared.”
Grbeshi, her husband, Naser, and their two daughters eventually made it to Macedonia, spending four days at the border before finally getting across and finding housing with friends. They now live in San Jose.
But Sunday was a time for rejoicing for the Muslim refugees. After a welcome speech in which Lewis taught the ethnic Albanians to say “shalom,” the festivities continued with food and beverages, dancing, singing and a brief tour of the synagogue — with one young refugee riding up and down the aisles of the sanctuary on his tricycle.
“It was a delightful afternoon with delightful people,” said congregant Margaret Kaplan of Palo Alto. “I did some very, very real Balkan dancing.”
There was also a rousing session in which the some of the teenage refugees sang, in their native tongue, one prideful song titled “My Name is Kosova” (the ethnic Albanians eschew the Serbian pronunciation of “Kosovo”) and a sad war song about how their country is now filled with blood and dead bodies that can’t be found in the snow.
Several Kol Emeth members responded by belting out “Hinei Ma Tov” and “Heiveinu Shalom Aleichem” — songs about the joys of peace and coming together — with the refugees boisterously joining in by clapping.
“Personally, I think of this in the context of all the hate crimes going on,” Lewis said. “This is our response. We’re going to do the exact opposite. We want to celebrate our differences…Some day, when you think about the history of this congregation, this is the kind of thing you’ll remember.”
Many of the refugees in attendance will remember it, too. For most of them, the event marked their first contact with Jews.
“They are so friendly. I like them. They are like us in some ways, in the same shoes,” Grbeshi said, alluding to both groups being the victims of genocide.
During the orientation session in the sanctuary, one refugee from Montenegro compared the biblical Jews’ flight from Egypt to the flight of his kin from Yugoslavia. “It reminds us because we also were leaving slavery to freedom,” he said. And as if to impress his hosts, he recounted a few facts he knew about Moses. “He is a prophet of ours, too,” he said.
“With all the worldwide problems between Jews and Muslims, this is a special opportunity to branch out and show our concern,” Lewis said. “Often in the past, even with regard to Russian Jews, our deeds were focused more on Jewish people, and that will always be a priority. But we have within us the desire to make our circle of concern that much larger.”
In that spirit, congregant Wendy Abraham spearheaded the event, along with synagogue’s social action committee. Abraham works with the San Jose branch of the International Rescue Committee, which has helped 28 Kosovar refugees settle in recent months and expects 40 more arrivals in the next six weeks.
Currently, about 100 Kosovar refugees live in the Bay Area, according to the International Rescue Committee.
About 50 of the recent arrivals attended Sunday’s reception. Many made it to the Bay Area in part through the sponsorship of Dean Berani, who emigrated from Kosovo and has lived in San Jose for 10 years. Others received help from Catholic Charities.
Many were placed in Campbell because there is a mosque in nearby Santa Clara. Most of them live in apartments, but many are struggling to learn English and find jobs. Only one family that came to the Bay Area has opted to return to Kosovo.
Grbeshi and her husband are two of the more fortunate refugees, having landed jobs. She is a translator (though only temporarily) and Naser, who ran a fruit and vegetable business, is working on computers at MecTek in Milpitas.
Betty Fellows, a member of Kol Emeth’s social action committee, said, “Any kind of help [community members could provide for the refugees] would be great. A lot of them just want the opportunity to meet Americans and get acclimated to U.S. society.”
One refugee shared an Albanian saying about how hard it is to find a good friend, adding that “we have found one today” at Kol Emeth.
“For us, it’s hard. We lost our loved ones, our wealth and our homes. I hope we haven’t lost our will to live,” he continued through a translator. “I believe gatherings like this and meeting you people help. You in this foreign country make us feel like we’re at home.”