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‘Democracy’ no longer a forbidden word to PTC man

By MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@TheCitizenNews.com

This year, the patriotic fanfare associated with the upcoming July 4 holiday will mean much more to Peachtree City resident Milaim Hoti and his family.

Hoti, 31, and several of his family members have recently become U.S. citizens and their naturalization has marked the end of one journey and the beginning of another.

The Hoti family lived in the village of Gjilan, Kosova, in what was formerly known as Yugoslavia. For much of Milaim’s life, the country was ravaged by war.

“As a kid we were told to not say things like ‘democracy,’” said Hoti, who added that under the occupation of Serbia, the country felt shut down, as there was no communication or information.

When things got really bad, Hoti and his father, Tahir, moved to some property out in the woods. Though the other members of his family would join them at times, there were stretches where they would be separated, never knowing if the others were safe or not.

While in the woods, the only times Hoti felt truly safe were when the U.S. would bomb Serbian strongholds. Hoti also recalled seeing a U.S. plane engaged in combat go down.

While acting as a lookout in the woods, Hoti got separated from a group when Serbian soldiers advanced on their area. He avoided capture and returned to the family’s home by crawling along a fence.

“My only thought was to try and get back with my family,” said Hoti. “If we die, we would all die together.”

After arriving back home, Hoti’s entire neighborhood was told to leave their homes within 30 minutes. They were told not to take any money or valuables out of their homes.

“I remember turning back towards our house and seeing it on fire,” recalled Hoti, who had hooked up a car to a tractor and towed his mother, Hazbje, and seven younger family members away. It was a day Hoti will never forget, especially because it was his birthday, April 14, 1999.

There were three tractors full of people driving through places that were full of Serbs and while there was no physical violence occurring, Hoti and his family and friends were cursed at and yelled at. They were stopped several miles into their journey in a place called Kllot. Hoti was taken out of the vehicle and asked if he had any guns or weapons on him. He stated that he did not but was still taken behind a barricade of sandbags by the soldiers.

“I thought, ‘There’s no other day for me,’ that I would be killed that day,” said Hoti.

He was interrogated further by the men who played a savage game of good cop/bad cop. One would say, “Let’s just kill him,” while the other would say, “No.”

All the while, another soldier would point what Hoti believed was an unloaded pistol around. They told him to go back to his vehicle and Hoti then feared the worst, that he would be shot while his back was turned.

“All the blood fell to my knees,” said Hoti. “I thought they would shoot me, claiming I had tried to run away.”

The caravan was allowed to travel on but they were stopped twice more, each time by gangs demanding any valuables they had. The group gave up what they had to the first gang, a group called the Tigers, but had nothing to give to the second group afterwards.

“There were two men and one with a long beard had a gun. When we told him we had nothing, he threatened to kill us all,” Hoti recalled. “I said even if you kill us, there will still be no money.” The man fired the gun into the air, scaring everyone, but the group was allowed to move on.

When they reached Macedonia, the group was once again stopped by Serbs and this time they were only left with the clothes on their backs. They were forced to walk on the train tracks and eventually came to a refugee camp.

Hoti said that people at the camp were using plastic bags to make places for their children to sleep but that many of the thousands upon thousands of people at the camp were desperate for food and water, sometimes even taking water out of their children’s hands to give themselves something to drink.

After staying overnight in the cold, the refugees were loaded onto buses and taken to a large camp that was run by the Red Cross.

At first, the conditions were not very good. There was a lot of illness and hundreds of people shared small living areas. There was not a lot of food and the condition of the water was very poor.

Hoti said that the conditions improved within a week but many people were forced to sleep 11 people in tents that were roughly 10 feet by 10 feet.

Hoti acted as a volunteer while at the camp, where he and his family stayed for roughly three weeks. Eventually, signs went up stating that they were no longer safe there and telling the people to seek refuge in other countries.

Hoti and his family, still reluctant to leave the only country they had ever known, chose America over Australia, feeling Australia was too far away from their home.

After having their blood drawn and shots administered, the family flew into New York City.

No one in the family spoke English and they had no idea where they were going. A translator who spoke Croatian did not do much to lift the family’s low spirits or ease their trepidation, telling them that they would soon be living in the streets and that nobody would keep them.

The flight from New York to Atlanta was a rough one with most of the family crying. Had someone offered it to them, Hoti feels that most of them would have gone back to sleeping in the makeshift tents rather than stay in America.

Upon landing in Atlanta, the family met Peachtree City residents Barry and Gerry Carolan-Tolbert, their sponsors, and another translator.

“We didn’t know what a sponsor was but Gerry told us she would take care of us until we got settled,” said Hoti. “One of us asked if we would be able to go back to Kosova and she told us, ‘Yes, but you won’t want to.’”

The Carolan-Tolberts took the Hoti family back to their home in Peachtree City, and had made a large sign welcoming their new friends. The family had something to eat, a shower and they all got their own rooms to sleep in.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciated them for doing that,” said Hoti, who also expressed his thanks to everyone in Peachtree City who helped them, including George Smith, who helped acclimate the family to their new lives in America, and many people from Holy Trinity Catholic Church, who provided them with food and rent for the first few months while the family got on their feet.

Hoti and four of his siblings soon found work at Hoshizaki in Peachtree City and eventually the family paid back their airfare, which totaled well over $10,000.

Hoti and his brother, Lulzim, have worked their way up in the company with Hoti working as an inventor, doing some programming and staff support, while Lulzim serves as a manager.

The family moved out of the house they were renting on New Year’s Eve of 2002 and within six months had purchased another house in the same neighborhood.

The process of adjusting to their new life took a lot of hard work for Hoti and the rest of his family. Hoti worked full-time at Hoshizaki and would take English as a Second Language classes at a local church for three hours a night afterwards and then he would go home and study with CDs. Within six months he had learned to speak English well and began to serve as a translator for other Albanians.

He also began to enjoy some of the recreation that Peachtree City has to offer, working out at a gym and meeting his girlfriend, Robin Dumas; he also played soccer and traveled to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

“Our lives have been changed dramatically,” said Hoti. “It is unbelievable, where we were to where we are today.”

Today Hoti and his brother, sisters and cousins are full-fledged American citizens. Hoti and two of his cousins had their naturalization ceremony last Thursday afternoon in Atlanta.

Thirty-seven people from 18 different countries took the oath of allegiance at the ceremony and then received their certificates of citizenship, posing for proud family members and friends taking pictures in the audience.

“You have all been on a journey long in time and distance,” Dwight Faulkner, Assistant District Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, told the new citizens. “Tell your story to your children and your grandchildren. It is the story of our country.”

Hoti is proud to be an American, often finding himself at a loss for words at how fortunate he feels to be truly free.

“It feels amazing to be able to walk out your door and know that you will be safe,” he said, adding that he will never take anything for granted.

Hoti has also not forgotten Kosova and the loved ones that still live there. He visited Kosova four years ago and continues to send money to support family members, including a sister and his sister-in-law’s family who reside there.

“Up to this point his heart has been divided between the two countries,” said Dumas. “Now, he can feel that he is truly a part of both.”

Hoti’s first act as a citizen of the United States was to recite the Pledge of Allegiance along with the 36 other new citizens at last week’s ceremony. The words that they spoke filled the room with a sense of patriotic pride that few people ever truly experience.

The new citizens of America will look at the flags that wave in the coming days and know that a new chapter of their lives is just beginning and that thousands of more stories begin every day in this country that they can now truly call home.