By Maksim Rakipaj
The tenth part
Memorie.al / Maksim Rakipaj, originally from Përmet, whose family had helped and supported the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War, after graduating from the Navy School in Vlora, in 1972 he was appointed an officer in the Merchant Navy, where he served with dedication until in 1977, on the “Durrësi” steamer, he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in political prison, as part of a “group”, which also included his colleague, Aladin Kapo, the son of Hysni Kapo’s brother. Family biography was also the reason for his punishment. After the end of the war, two of his uncles were sentenced to political prison, his grandfather was declared a kulak and in 1976, his father was expelled from the party. Maksi began serving his sentence in the Ballsh camp and in 1979, he was transferred to the Spaçi camp and then to the Qafë Bari camp. He was released on September 12, 1984, benefiting from a reduced sentence, from an amnesty. After being unemployed for a long time, with many hardships, he got a job as a miner in the Mzezet mine, he worked until 1991. After the 1991s, he started working in the administration of the Municipality of Durrës, he served until 1997 and after that, he returned to the Merchant Navy (the last captain of the transoceanic ship “Vlora”), until he left Albania for Italy, (illegally on a dinghy), where he currently lives for many years. Since the 90s, in addition to various jobs, Maksim Rakipaj has also devoted himself to writing, such as; poetry, prose, fiction or documentary, translations, etc., publishing several books, such as: ‘Prophet – Khalil Gibran’, (translation from English ‘Toena’ 2003), ’20 love poems and a song of sadness’, (translation from Spanish, ‘Toena’ 2003), ‘Alive after the shipwreck’, (published by ISKK, 2014), ‘Bukowski – poetry’, (translation from English, ‘ENEAS’, 2015), ‘Trilusa m’Tirône’, ( translation from Italian, ‘UEGEN’, 2015), ‘Anthology of Arabic-Persian Poetry’ (English translations, ‘UEGEN’, 2015), ‘The Complete Sonnets of Shakespeare’, (English translation, ‘ADA’ 2016′) , ‘Survivor’ (autobiographical novel, ‘2 East, 2 West’ 2018), ‘Nobelists – poetic anthology, (UEGEN 2019), ‘Hymn of happiness’ (‘JOZEF’ 2023), etc. From the creativity of Mr. Rakipaj, Memorie.al is publishing the book “Survivor”, (published in 2022 by “JOZEF” Publishing House in Durrës, directed by Mr. Aurel Kaçulini), where he has described his life chronologically, where the part the main one is that of serving the sentence in camps and prisons, as well as various characters, his co-sufferers that he met in the communist hell, etc.
Continues from last issue
Someone meets himself…!
In the Ballshi camp, there were some who had been part of the high nomenclature of the communist government and former high military officers. Some of them, I have mentioned before, but not all. One of them was Andon Sheti, the former head of the Albanian Military Intelligence, sentenced to 15 years in prison. When I asked him why he was punished, he answered: “For the decorations that were given to me before, for the services that I performed, risking my life”! When he first came to the camp, he looked like a corpse that could barely move; were the consequences of the investigation. It was said that during the investigation, he was brought to sleep in a coffin.
Andoni didn’t talk about his work before, only once I remember that he said: “When I remember some things now, I am ashamed of myself. I believed in my work, in my ideal, in the oath I had taken to serve the Motherland. Only now do I understand that I did not serve the Motherland, but a criminal sadist. You don’t know who Enver Hoxha is, but I can’t speak because they take my head off…”!
Save the best impressions for Andon. When I met him, he behaved well: he was a tall man, with blue eyes, smiling, wearing a military cap, made of good material. We called him; “Dad”, as Himara’s coastal residents calls their father. One day I was making coffee for Andon. Another ex-soldier, known as a command spy, approached me and said:
– “Make me a coffee too, Max, because you made it good.”
– “I don’t make coffee for anyone, even my coffee; Aladdin makes and serves it to me.”
– “Ooo, yes, I see you; you made coffee for Andoni, who is sitting like a pasha…”!
– “Leave ‘Daddy’ aside.” – I told him – When ‘Tata’ wants coffee and asks for it from me, it is a special honor for me. I’m sorry, you’re not Andon Sheti”!
Andon was pleased by my answer, but did not speak. The ex-soldier ran away like a madman.
One day in the Ballsh camp, I inadvertently witnessed an event that impressed me. I was going to the toilet; in the space in front of the toilets, there were several large sinks, where the convicts washed their clothes, by hand. A convict was washing his clothes by rubbing them with soap, those 15 ALL of the time. I knew him, he was in the morning, and they called him Pashk. He was one of the best chess players in the camp. The only one who had defeated Zoin, a chess player from Fieri? Easter spoke a little. We were not many friends together, but we knew each other and greeted each other with respect.
Andoni came out of the bathroom and said to Pashku, who was upside down over the sink, washing his clothes: “Can you give me your soap, so I can wash my hands a little?” Pashku raised his head and taking soap, unfinished, answered him, handing him the soap: “Take it and use it, Mr. Anton, if that’s enough for you, leave those hands!” Andon looked at him for a few moments and left, without taking the soap. When I left the toilet, Pasku was still washing the clothes. I asked him for the soap. He handed me the small piece he was using: “Take Max.”
– “Why did you do that to Andoni? I’m sorry I happened to you when you said that to him in the first place, because he is not a bad person. People have respect for Andon and your joke seemed too much…”?!
– “Two minutes until I’m done with the problems and we’ll talk.”
Easter was not late. We sat somewhere and he began: “I have been sentenced for escape, Max. I didn’t know about the secret agreement, Enver-Tito, to return one’s own fugitive to the other. I saw something, but I didn’t believe it. I went to the other side, in Yugoslavia, or better in Kosovo, they told me. The border guards went away without telling me, like here, like over the border. But the Yugoslavs, damn you, I know how, they got the news about me. The goose is started by anyone, the police and the civil, ask me. I was once caught. Two weeks in prison there, for crossing the border without permission and back, handcuffed, handed over to our side, at the border. The investigation was done in Tirana. It’s not worth reminding me of all that nonsense, you’re not related to me, whose agent you are, fairy tale like this!
After a month the investigator, a soldier comes to see me. He introduced himself to me: ‘I’m Anton Sheti, from Disclosures. I will ask some questions, of a military nature, about the places from which you set foot in Yugoslavia, about the military units and bases that you saw there, the movement of troops and military equipment… etc. He told me that the answers I would give would not affect my sentence, either for better or for worse. “No prison days, I can’t reduce them – he told me – or add them.” I answered our questions, one by one. I say that he was fed up with my answers. When it was over, you bought me a coffee and a cigarette and we were chatting. When he stood up, he said to me: ‘I felt sorry for you, because you seem like a very intelligent guy. Can you tell me why you wanted to betray the Motherland?!
‘No’, I waited, ‘I didn’t betray my country. And then, who am I, that I betrayed him…?! It’s not my homeland, a place where I don’t even dare to breathe, Mr. Anton! When Antoni slapped me in the face. My eyes widened, there were many beliefs…! That’s the soap job with Anton. I said too much, huh…?! Maybe you’re right, how long have you been driving him here in the camp, he seems like a tall man to me…”!
I also met Andon. He said the same words to me, like Easter. Besides, Andoni was shocked by this meeting. He had met the former Andon Sheti…!
Xhafer Shehu and others…
I understand that it is difficult to write the memories of a period when you did not keep a diary, when it was dangerous to keep a diary. When I attended the Navy school in Vlora, I kept a diary; even when I started work as an officer in the Merchant Navy, I continued my journal. Fortunately, a few months before the arrest, I cut him to pieces and threw him into the sea. It happened one night, when I had 24-hour duty on the ship, that night the port did not bring workers for the third shift and I after midnight, with the bottle of cognac in front of me, I started reading my diary, I went to the end. Without knowing it, I had begun to write the last notes, I remember them as if I wrote them now: “What if, by chance, this diary falls into someone else’s hands, and this other person is a spy?!
And I don’t have to complain, because the diary is itself a denunciation! It is not surprising, it can also happen: I am very careless! I have to take action, as soon as possible! Okay, so what measures? Throw it in the sea, raft”!…and as soon as I wrote the last word, I cut it into pieces and threw it into the sea. But anyway, I did not escape the prison. And in prison, it was not a good idea to keep a diary The prison we built was not the same as the prison he built, say Mandela, or Vaclav Havel, with all the conditions, radio, TV, press (even foreign), interviews with foreign journalists. Zyhdi Morava interviewed the president Czech Havel; as my friend Zyhdi told me, when the interview was over and he was having a drink with the host Havel, he said to Havel: – “The prison you built, Mr. Havel, cannot be compared to the Albanian political prisons”!
– “You are heroes”, – said Havel, – “only the Nazis, perhaps, come close to the Albanian communists in terms of cruelty”!
So did Nelson Mandela, 28 years in prison, in South Africa. But I haven’t tried Maliq, Burrell, Spaçi, etc. The late Xhemal Lile also spent 28 years in prison. They did not decorate Xhemal. They didn’t give him any prize. But the policemen of the “democratic” state beat him, bloodied him mercilessly and dragged him out of the hunger strike in 1995 in Durrës. He went on a hunger strike with several others, to sensitize public opinion and the “democratic” government, for the compensation of political convicts. A few years later, under the same conditions, another would burn himself alive, in the middle of Tirana.
Because it required a poor compensation, the little that the “honorable” parliamentarians themselves have designated for us. That is why I am writing these memories. So that our sufferings are not forgotten, because they were being forgotten, it is no wonder that they are repeated! They come to my mind, full of friends and acquaintances and as if they say to me: “Why don’t you write about me too”?! “What about me, did you forget me?” – it seems to me that I hear the voice of the good Xhafer Shehu, my neighbor, who after spending his whole life draining the swamps of Albania, on the verge of retirement was put in prison; the constant accusation of “agitation and propaganda, for undermining and overthrowing popular power”.
“What do I have to do with mines”, – said the desolate Xhafer, – “I only dried up the marshes”! In response to this “courage and insolence”, came the kicks and punches of the criminals Kopi Niko and Kapllan Shehu, when Xhafer Shehu did not even weigh 50 kilos. When he was released from prison, we often met together, in the 85s, onwards. When I asked him; “Hey Xhafe, what are you doing?!…he answered me with that humor of his: “What am I doing?! I deal with love! Yes, not with the love that you young people deal with, no, I deal with ‘did you get’, ‘did you get’ leeks, did you get meat tollon, and did you get bread”?! At his funeral, all of Shkozeti, Durrës, that he carried his coffin in his arms to the cemetery.
I will not forget you friends and friends of the prison, I may have even forgotten the name of some of them, and there were over 1000 of us in each prison! I’ll try to remember as much as I can…! But now shut up, I’m in the Ballsh camp, in ’78.
….Dr. Nuri Sollaku was called to communicate the fate of his brother, who was sentenced to be shot, with the group of oil engineers. There are many hopes that they spared his life. “Not that he is my brother”, said dr. Nuriu, “but he is a wonderful man, not even a fly has done him any harm in his life…”! Everyone sits and watches Dr. Nuri Sollaku, when he enters the camp. He clutches some old clothes to his chest, which from time to time smells. When he raises his head, his eyes look even bigger through the round lenses of his glasses. A teardrop appears. Only one…!
Barcoleta and tales with pepper
Last time, the prison brought a boy from Durrës, Bashkim D. He was a chemical officer of the Union; they sentenced him to 8 years, for agitation and propaganda, because of what he said about the Chinese. It is the height of absurdity; he was arrested when friendship with China was still in full bloom and convicted when that “unshakable friendship” had ended. Once upon a time, great China, as Enver Hoxha declared, would not recognize the borders of countries, to come to the aid of Albania, which alone was building socialism in Europe. Now, there were no longer “two lions”, as the rhapsodists sang: “Today the world has two lions / one Asia, one Europe”; or: “Enver Hoxha and Ma Ce Duni / are like bread and dough”…! The “lion” of Asia died two years ago, when he was still a “close comrade in arms” with the “lion” of Europe. We mourned a week in Albania for that “lion”!
Now, the “lion” of Gjirokastra says in his memoirs, about China and Mao, that they are, and have been, revisionists. When Enver, in a friendly, brotherly manner, once suggested to his Chinese comrades to put a bullet head in Teng Hsiao Ping, Mao replied: – “No, because people’s heads are not onion heads”! (But, some 60 million heads, not onions, had been snatched by Comrade Mao)
So stupid, was this Mao!? Like a little onion, sorry, people’s heads, there is China! The onion, after all, has a value, but the human head, what value does it have…!?
When I read the rants of “Dulla” (Enver), in “Notes on China”, I cringe. Even the head of Bashkim D., what is its value?! I’m going to spend a few years in prison, so that they come to their senses! You don’t remember the Union; he still laughs and tells jokes, and not only with Chinese people. I and those who associate with me love the Union, it keeps us alive. Someone tells me that Bashkimi has started hanging out with a certain Izet P., who has just returned from a “tour” as a dungeon spy. “Tell the Union to be careful, that I.P. is a dog son of a dog”. The union objects: “No”, he tells us, “I. he is not a spy, listen to me, he has not been in dungeons, as a spy, he has been on a special mission. But I can’t tell you without his permission. I’m going to meet him and then we’ll talk”!
What about this conversation?! This afternoon, when I’m with Aladdin, Bashkimi comes and tells us: “I talked to I., he told me that; I can tell you something, but only to Aladdin, not to Max”! I agree, the Aladdin skirt, will tell me everything. And indeed, after some hours, Aladdin comes and tells me everything that the Union has told him:
– “This I., after being a high school friend, with the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Agron Tafa. Agron sent for him to be taken from the camp and they met in his office in Tirana: “I called you for a problem that worries the Party. No, wait, please. Listen to me until the end… does it for fun of society that we had in high school. You don’t need to tell me, I know you don’t like communism and the Labor Party, but I’m asking you to help me. As a friend. To help, some good guys, that you know, you have them there in Ballsh. Who are they? One of them is Aladin Kapo. We will help them, right? Think about it. Tonight you will sleep in the “Dajti” hotel; you have your own room. You will find there, anything you will need: clothes, shoes, money, etc., answer me tomorrow. Aaa, accept immediately? Well done!
Listen to me carefully. Comrade Hysni Kapo, worried about the arrest of his nephew, goes straight to Comrade Enver. “I want to clarify my nephew’s case, comrade commander,” he told him. Kadri Hazbiu tells me that he and his friends have been arrested only because they are suspected of being involved with foreign agencies. To clarify this doubt; if it is true, I will kill him with my own hand… otherwise, I demand that he and his friends be released immediately’. Comrade Enver promised him that he will solve this problem. Manush charged Mufti, and he called me. So: Enveri, Manushi, you and I know this conversation.
Mehmeti and Kadriu, ABSOLUTELY NOT! This is the order I have from my friend Manush. Tomorrow, a Yugoslav economic delegation is coming to Tirana. The delegation also includes a UDB officer, his name is Franko, of Italian origin, who lives in Rijeka, Yugoslavia. Kadri’s suspicion is that Colonel Franko, who allegedly worked as an electrician at the Rijeka dock, recruited these boys when the ship “Durrësi” was there for repairs. Why did I choose you I., for this task?
For two reasons: first, you know Italian very well; second, confidentiality is maintained. Our Security officers are registered with the UDB…then Comrade Kadri would also find out, if I charged you with this task, any Security officer…! You will be Franco’s companion and translator. Go to the hotel now, rest, because tomorrow you have work. You have to get into Franco’s heart, break it down, and make him tell you the truth. Let’s get those boys out of prison, it’s a sin, they are good families”!
These were what you had shown Bashkimi, Aladdin. We age it for a long time. Too good to be true. The more we think about it, the more doubts we have. This whole tale collapses, if we prove that I. does not know Italian, otherwise how would he get along with Franco?! We all know Franko, the Rijeka dock electrician. I decided to ask Nikol Daka if this I. knew Italian, because I have seen them together several times. Nikola laughs when I ask him. “It is in lecture no. 2, he tells me, tomorrow I will give lecture no. 3.”!
So this is all a fairy tale. But why are they devising this game for us?! Of course, they are preparing a trap for us. Many important names are in the game: Hysni Kapo, Mehmet Shehu, Kadri Hazbiu, etc. Someone’s grave is being prepared. What do they have with us, they didn’t get enough, and that they gave us all these years in prison?! What should we do, how to get rid of this mess?! We have to open our eyes well; they kill you, in vain. The vampire said, for him, an onion head is worth more than a human head…! /Memorie.al
The next issue follows
