By Sadik Bejko
Memorie.al / A man told me: “You were the criminal of your life, the criminal of your family.” This was Tahir Mehmeti. In the Memaliaj Mine, he was the head of sector 250. Tahiri was a member of the People’s Assembly. Some said that he was also a “Hero of the People”. These did not matter to me. Not even for him. He was indistinguishable from the workers around him in appearance, clothing, and behavior. Tahir Mehmeti in that mining sector, where I was already working, after I had been kicked in the b.. by RTSH, from being an editor at Albanian Radio Television, he was the number one man. It was the One.
For about three weeks, I was working “as his employee”. The head of the sub-sector, a mining engineer with a higher education, put us to work for days and asked us to implement the plan. He was a technical supervisor. No power beyond the mine. Without political power, you could say, or in my case, he didn’t want to take responsibility. An order had been given for me by the state, to take me there deep and, deeper, so deep, that if possible I would never come out again. Who came before that order?!
But… those days I had become a boy. I had to leave the mine… with permission, just to pick up my newborn son from the maternity hospital in Tirana.
They were not giving me permission.
That bastard, the son who was born to me in Tirana, demanded that I, the father, take him out of the maternity ward together with his mother and settle them somewhere. But where?! As soon as they both left the maternity ward, they had nowhere to put their heads. My wife and I, before I was taken underground, lived in the “Valbona” hotel in Tirana. We didn’t have an apartment. On February 15, 1974, the woman gave birth to a son. Since January 20, 1974, I was pushing coal wagons underground in the Memaliaj mine. Now my son and wife were looking for a place to live. I could not give them shelter again, at that “Valbona” hotel.
A man, a father had no opportunity to give shelter to a navel, which took him by surprise with his arrival. More difficult days, you could not find. The woman in Tirana, in the maternity hospital, gives birth to the child, without the man nearby. The convicted father, without the right to wait, to enjoy the birth of his son…!
But the time had come for that navel to come into this world, to be born under the rain or under the sun. No one could cut his way.
And the baby boy was born.
The father of the underground received a telegram that he was born, came to the earth. I had to deal with his growth, with his growth. He didn’t want anyone else to know about this. They are not even giving me permission to leave my job.
They tell me that for this permit, I should contact Tahir Mehmet, the head of sector 250, where I worked. Tahiri didn’t accept me either. He didn’t want to meet me. I was told to follow him on his daily visit underground. As a boss, he inspected the most difficult workplaces, underground. I sewed it up.
Somewhere in a mine lava, I stopped.
“Tahir Mehmeti, – you have business with me, I told him. – I want to talk to you”. He was impressed by this statement, as if I gave him an order, and he stopped. We entered a pocket, one meter high and one meter wide. “Who are you”, he told me?
Tahiri was like me, in mining overalls, with a lamp on his forehead. Wet, sweaty. Coal drenched in the face. His eyes, which in the sun could have been brown or pale, the light of the lamp underground, made him completely washed out. It was in a hurry, I didn’t miss it. He asked me to speak quickly, to leave him to his work. It was wild in that face, which on earth seemed quite peaceful and without any particularity. As he was shouting at me: “What the hell are you doing to prevent me from my work”.
This boss Tahiri knew the workers of the sector one by one, by first and last name, and the workers knew him. The more experienced workers did not want to know that Tahiri the boss was going “to the front”, there underground. They didn’t even care. They did the work for themselves, for the money, for the family. Did not Tahiri come to their work, or whoever, and the greatest boss in the world was, the old workers did not see anything in their eyes. They did not make their work easier, nor did they improve it.
The mine was a lead on their shoulders. They would mine the lead or the stone or the earth, to extract the coal, to extract the livelihood of their children. That’s what he did for the boss or the director. To fart. To go to this. When they got into trouble, they argued with Tahir, as equals. “Let’s see… mother, Tahir”, – they, – “Wow… me too”, Tahiri replied. With whom they thus felt equal, they understood their boss. He had the task of inspecting, they had the task of making the plan. Each to his own.
There were times when the ceiling of the mine cracked and hung like a mouth over the miners’ heads. An open slobbering mouth, falling and stomping then, falling and stomping now. You would fit in that mouth. A plan had to be made. And the most experienced mining man, his feet trembled. A black, gaping mouth. Not alone in that workplace, objected the old miner. If you wanted…or go back where you came from. There is no other job, the brigadier told him. The miner in work clothes, with the tools on his shoulder, menacing like a front-line soldier, bumped into the door of the office of the boss, Tahir Mehmet, with his shoulders. “Except,” Tahiri yelled at him. – Where they told you to be a man, not to me”!
“You’re not asking for my job, you’re asking for my head. I don’t give my head. I don’t go. When I commit adultery with my mother, I go to that workplace”.
“To commit adultery with the mother”, he said, to have incest with the mother. It was the hardest thing for a man. But this also meant that the nerves of that man could no longer hold.
Tahiri replied: “You searched for the mine yourself, I didn’t call you. You’re a man, get to work, don’t lie to me…?! Except”. – “Be my mother, Tahir Mehmeti.” “Your mother, a little further on,” Tahiri replied.
That was the fight. After that each to his work.
Well, I had stopped Tahir on a lava path. “What you want from me”, he told me. I told him. “You have to get permission from ‘Dega’, then from me”.
The “branch” was the State Security, the police. At that time, families were taken to the mines and put in exile and under police control, every 12 hours. Without the right to leave, from the place of exile.
“I am not one of them, I have no business with ‘Dega’,” I told him. I am your worker. If it was for permission from ‘Dega’, I would say it. After work, on Sundays, on holidays, I can go wherever I want. I know that you know everything”.
“Here… – I took out the telegram from my chest. – You see this telegram, the state post office gave me… and I’m in trouble. I ask for leave for three or four days, here I get five days. I want permission not to be told; you were violently fired from work. The son who was born to me in Tirana, I will take him from there, take him to Gjirokastër, to the family of the woman’s mother. It’s my son. It’s my wife. Who will get me out of the hospital, from the maternity ward”?
Tahiri was stunned for a moment.
We were thousands of meters underground, in a pocket, just enough to move your arms and legs, no more.
“Why did you come here? Where did you work”?!
I told him where I had worked, that I had made a mistake and that’s why I now depended on him….. “and please, let me take my son and wife from the hospital. Everyone else points me to you.”
We were almost attached. In the spirit of each other. Tahiri was not looking at me as an enemy. He was seeing me as a person. That man with his head up, who didn’t care about anyone, that Tahiri who didn’t get a thorn in his eye, now both of his eyes have turned to jelly…!
He asked again: “Why are you here?! Why are you condemned”?! “I said: I was wrong.” “What mistake, who are you telling me?! The order for you is to put you in the blackest hole. Road from the state, from those all the way up”.
“Black hole,” I said? – Where is?! Any mother’s son out there, you go to that black hole, why not me? Man and son mother you, man and me. I have been working with you for so many days and I have not contradicted any of your orders. Why didn’t you tell me where that black hole is, so I can find it and atone for it?! And if I don’t pay the whole thing, I will work to raise my son, support the family, like all these workers you have. I’m not lazy at work.”
At the moment we were talking, we were in the lava, at the mouth of the mine, where the coal is extracted. Further black hole, there was none. I didn’t know that then.
“Chief Tahiri, in short, I am who I am. For family matters, I am asking for your permission.
Now he looked like an equal to me. He was not the deputy, he was not the chief. I had fallen on my knees…! I had told him that I’m wrong… I’m finished, I want to work, live like everyone else.
Suddenly he threw up, the place did not darken. With a broken face, he turned to me as if with a threat and said in a loud voice: “You were a criminal, a criminal of your life… you were a criminal of your family…”!
I waited in silence for this “verdict” that Tahir Mehmeti was giving me, thousands of meters underground. And he was totally convinced, about what he was telling me.
With rapture, with screams, as he ran away, I heard him say to me: “You have my permission. As much as you want. Finish work and come back. Tahir Mehmeti gave you permission…! Memorie.al
