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By Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Staff Photographer When the first images of the refugees fleeing Kosovo moved across the wire, I tried to imagine the uncertainty, the cold, the terror. I wanted to understand the complex history that could create the deep hatred that drove them from their homes. I hoped to learn more about the personal stories behind the sea of disoriented faces flooding Macedonia and Albania. I finally got my opportunity. During a two-week trip to northern Macedonia in May 1999, I met mothers desperate for information about their sons and daughters and elderly men so overwhelmed they could barely talk. I met families who wanted to share their few scraps of food with me. I will never forget Sherife Maloku, the matriarch of the Maloku clan, tucking me in after she and her family opened up their tent to me for a night. In her rapid Albanian she told me not to be afraid and to call for her if I needed anything. In another place and another time, it could have been a normal motherly gesture. It was just one of the startling ways that I saw refugees carve out a semblance of normalcy in their extraordinary circumstances. I tried to capture that spirit in the pictures that follow.
An Enduring Spirit: Part two An Enduring Spirit: Part three
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