It is the story that has shaped Granit Xhaka and fuelled the fires that rage inside him. The details are savage, barely comprehensible, and it is a wonder that the Arsenal midfielder can articulate them. Then again, like his father, Ragip – who spent three and a half years as a political prisoner in Yugoslavia – Xhaka is not a man who runs or hides.
“As far as I know, his first few months in jail were OK,” Xhaka says. “But then the beatings started.”
Xhaka Sr’s crime had been to take part in demonstrations against the communist central government in Belgrade. It was 1986 and he was a 22-year-old student at the university of Pristina in Kosovo, which was then an autonomous province in Yugoslavia. He would be arrested and summarily given a six-year sentence. Xhaka Sr shared a cell with four other men and he would be let out once every day – for 10 minutes.
“As his son, the story is something that touches me very deeply – it is really, really in my heart,” Xhaka says. “To describe my dad properly, you have to appreciate the full depth of it. It’s so tragic. I sometimes ask him: ‘Tell it to me again,’ but I still don’t think he has revealed all of it. There have always been silent moments where I’ve felt he has swallowed something and not spilled out the truth. Maybe it
Quinton Coples Jersey was just too much and he wanted to spare his kids all the grief.
“He was a proud Kosovarian and he thought they had a right to exist. He was standing up for their rights and they were basic democratic rights –necessities, such as being able to vote. It was not only him. There were other people arrested, including his uncle, who had been jailed a number of years earlier. He got 15 years. It was strictly political. My dad
http://www.officialbaseballcardinalsstore.com/Adam_Wainwright_Jersey was asking: ‘Why aren’t we democrats here? We deserve to be democrats. We deserve to be heard.’”
To understand Xhaka is to understand his family; how they have suffered, how they have pulled together and worked tirelessly in order to overcome.
His guiding principles are loyalty and respect. When he commits to something or someone, he does so with body and soul – just like his father and just like his mother, Eli.
“One of the most revealing details about my parents is that they only got together three months before my dad’s arrest,” Xhaka says. “I have such an incredible respect for my mother. I have never heard of a woman being together with a man for three months – at that young age – and then waiting for him for three and a half years. My mother is just an incredible person.
“One of the strange things is we don’t know why my dad was released early from his sentence but he was let go at the same time as his uncle. None of the family knew about it until they turned up on the doorstep. My feeling is that they took a pact to go along with the prison rules, keeping their mouths shut and never causing any problems. This is why they released them because they thought: ‘There’s no problem with them any more.’ But I’m not sure about that.”
Xhaka’s parents knew that they needed a fresh start and, in 1990, they emigrated to Switzerland. Their first son, Taulant, would be born in Basel in 1991,
Ryan Hewitt Jersey with Granit following 18 months later. Taulant is now the key midfielder for the Swiss
http://www.officialgrizzliestore.com/authentic-3-allen-iverson-jersey.html side Basel.
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