NOBODY embodies glamour like Rita Ora – but her beginnings could not have been
more different from the gilded lifestyle she now thrives on.
The singer, 24, who began her role as a judge on The Voice last night, spent
the first year of her life in a shabby flat in Kosovo before her parents
fled persecution and the rumblings of war and genocide.
Kosovo was then part of Yugoslavia and brutal dictator Slobodan Milosevic was
beginning his oppression of ethnic Albanians like Rita’s family.
Rita Sahatçiu — named after 1940s Hollywood siren Rita Hayworth — was born to
parents Besnik, now 53, and Vera, 50, in 1990, as seeds of a violent
conflict were being sown.
She spent the earliest part of her life in a nondescript apartment block in
the Dardania neighbourhood of Kosovan capital Pristina, where her
grandmother Besa, 75, still lives.
Besa, who has decorated the tiny flat with pictures of her granddaughter, told
how she and her husband Besim, a film director, spent hours on end with
“Rita Pita” as a baby.
Now she says she loves Rita’s songs and listens to them “non-stop”, saying: “I
love to turn the volume up so the whole building can hear.”
Their family was torn apart as pro-Serbian Milosovic rode a wave of hatred to
power, sacking 100,000 ethnic Albanian workers in Kosovo and unleashing
waves of violence that led to the Yugoslav Wars.
Besa, who speaks little English but visits her family in England every year,
said: “Because of the situation here in the late Eighties it got to be
dangerous.
“There were riots, uprisings and suppression by the government of the former
Yugoslavia. Kosovars wanted rights, like other Yugoslav republics.”
Full-scale war broke out in Kosovo itself in 1998 between Yugoslav forces and
ethnic Albanian independence fighters backed by Nato. Ten thousand people
were left dead.
Milosovic had also been responsible for the deportation of almost 750,000
Kosovo Albanians, as well as the murders of hundreds as part of a campaign
of genocide.
But by then Rita and her parents were safe, thanks to Besa and Besim, who
persuaded their son Besnik, Rita’s dad, to escape.
Besnik, who ran restaurants in Pristina, later told how the family’s lives had
become “intolerable”, adding: “Financially, we were OK. But we were not
free.”
Arriving in London, the Sahatçiu family shared a series of tiny flats as they
started from scratch, struggling to cope with life as refugees.
Their first home was a single room on the Old Brompton Road in Earls Court,
West London.
Mum Vera, who had been a doctor in Kosovo and spoke no English, spent six
years retraining in medicine by day while grafting as a waitress by night.
Meanwhile Besnik, who remembers the first years as “tough, but fun”,
crowbarred his way into the pub business, eventually buying the Queen’s Arms
in Kilburn, North West London.
He insists: “Despite the difficulties, we were young and we were free.”
Rita has different memories of those years. She said in 2013 of living with
the label “refugee”: “That word carries a lot of prejudice. But it also made
us determined to survive.
“When you put anyone into an alien environment, where other people aren’t
completely comfortable with them being there, they are automatically going
to be defensive.
“It’s the rule of the jungle, right?”
She also revealed how tension at home began to escalate when full-scale war
began in Kosovo in 1998, as her family at home were plunged in danger.
Rita, just seven at the time, has recalled: “I couldn’t figure it out. All the
arguments, all the tension — I knew it was coming from something. Like,
something wasn’t quite right.”
After Rita’s brother Don was born in 1998, the family moved to a cramped
council flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London. Rita and her older sister
Elena, now 26, shared a tiny bedroom, which they decorated with photos and
ticket stubs.
And in a nod to their history as watchmakers — the surname Sahatçiu means
“watchmaker” — Vera and Besnik hung clocks on every available wall space in
the flat. This history would also inspire Rita’s name when, aged 12, she was
accepted into London’s Sylvia Young Theatre School.
Besnik said if she was going to be a star, people should be able to pronounce
her name and added Ora, meaning “hour”, to her surname.
Scott Kinner, 32, who now lives in the family’s old flat after a council house
swap in 2012, told how Vera and Besnik’s pride in their daughter was clear.
He said: “When we moved in there were photos of Rita all over the living room.
There was even a disc of hers, labelled ‘Rita’s first No1, more to follow’.
She slept in the bedroom with Elena that is now my daughter’s room.
“It was covered with photos, modelling photos and childhood pictures. But
underneath the pictures, you should have seen the state of it. There were
holes in the wall and ceiling the size of an A4 sheet of paper.
“There was a crack down the wall too, and lots of damp. We had to get the
council to fix it.
“The whole house had marks in the walls where the family had hung up lots of
clocks.”
Scott went on: “Rita’s parents still live in the area — we helped them to move
— but they downsized because Rita has her own place and her sister travels
the world with her. It’s been about a year and a half since the family moved
out but Rita obviously hasn’t changed her details, because we still get some
of her mail delivered here.
“As you can imagine, her bank statements are a hell of a lot thicker than
ours.”
Rita’s career really took off in 2009, when a representative from rap mogul
Jay Z’s music company Roc Nation saw one of her shows and flew her to New
York to meet the boss.
Jay Z offered to sign her there and then, and after following his advice to be
“patient” she waited three years to release a debut song.
The gamble paid off, and in 2012 her career snowballed, with hit singles RIP,
How We Do (Party) and Hot Right Now all shooting to No1.
In 2013, a book written about the life of her grandad, Besim Sahatçiu, one of
Yugoslavia’s most famous movie directors, told how her success had fulfilled
his “last wish” for the talented youngster to reach the top.
Last year Rita also paid tribute to Besim, who died in 2005.
She described him as her “idol” and thanked him for making her the person who
was to become a pop star and now a television personality.
Posting a black and white snap of the director on Instagram, she wrote: “I
miss you grandad. I love you. You made me believe this was possible.
“You believed in me before I even did. Dam (sic) you were such a gangsta.
Don’t get into any trouble up there. Love Rita Pita.”
Besim, who was 70 when he died, had long been one of Kosovo’s most celebrated
citizens — but these days his memory has to share the spotlight with his
granddaughter.
Writers in the country have even described the Sahatçiu family as “a vein of
gold”.
Speaking after she returned to Pristina in 2012 to shoot a video for her
single Shine Ya Light, Rita said the support from her homeland was
staggering.
She explained: “The whole country was outside. I got off the plane and it was
like millions of heads.
“I couldn’t see the floor. I’m not even exaggerating.
“It was the most surreal experience I’ve ever had. It was more than a music
video — it was a moment in our history as Kosovo. It was a moment for people
to see us, how we live and our landscape.
“It was my duty to do my video there.”
