By Teki and Memisha Gjonzeneli – Tragjasi
Memorie.al / On August 5, 2014, we were able to rebury our beloved parents in their homeland, Tragjasi. With great delay, since on August 5, 1990, we emigrated from our homeland to the Blessed States of America, to escape the endless suffering that we had experienced in our homeland. I, Teki, finally managed to throw a punch and, on the grave of my beloved mother, because when she surrendered her white and suffering soul, on April 15, 1982, I was not near her, as I was serving my sentence in the communist prison of Ballshi, for my political ideas and beliefs.
I remember it like it was yesterday, that where I was, in the communist hell, that night I had a dream that shocked me beyond measure: It felt as if the telephone connection with my mother had been cut off. I believe in dreams and that is why I immediately sent my mother a telegram.
After receiving no response, the next day I sent another telegram, but again no response. In response to the third telegram, I was told: “The person you are looking for has died. At the end of the telegram, the sender was indicated: Posta”.
With the telegram in my hands that were shaking endlessly, I could not bear the pain and screamed like a child. Much later, I found out that this response had been returned by the honorable Lady, the wife of the late Leka Kruta, who worked at the post office.
My mother’s death occurred when I had only been out of the infernal labyrinths of the State Security, where I had suffered for 5 months under the inhumane interrogator, a horror that I believe poisoned and hastened the death of my beloved and suffering mother.
In the situation I found myself in, my fellow prisoners, Safa Çeloaliaj and Dilaver Çeloaliaj, within a few minutes spread a blanket at the end of the planked shed, where Faik Margaritari was sitting, an elderly prisoner in his eighties, a friend of my family, but more unfortunate than me, who hugged me and after wiping away two tears, lit a cigarette and said to me:
– “Boy, be strong”! After a moment of silence and taking it to heart, he continued:
– “They sentenced me to 25 years without any fault, then they shot my son, while the other son died from suffering and lack of medicine, in Spaç prison and as if all these horrors were not enough, they also shot my son-in-law: Sezai Çeloaliaj and still I am patient and I am becoming strong”.
Thus began my fellow sufferers, to come and console me, there on the blanket spread on the ground, throwing me a cigarette and each telling his story.
One told me; “I was in Burrel with your father”, another told me; “I am a friend of Murat”, our brother who was suffering in Spaç prison and surprisingly, unlike the others, he gave me two cigarettes: one for me and one for our brother Murat, since he had nowhere to find him and console him too, for the death of his mother.
Then Sherif Merdani came crying, that famous singer, “Sherua”, as we called him, with whom I had also been a soldier in the labor department in Dushk-Lushnje. He, crying with me, told me: “Yes, on a blanket, in prison, he waited for cigarettes for my father, as did your brother and my friend, Murat. It was June 29, 1976, I will never forget that day. If one day the files of the communist dictatorship are opened, the drama of your family will shock the Albanians”!
Our family friend, Pipi Konomi, came with a friend of his: a tall, straight-bodied man, who shook my hand and said: – “Men don’t cry”! I was surprised when Uncle Faiku told me that he was the communist Andon Sheti from Vunoi, Vlora. Suffering and prison had softened the heart of this communist…!
Thus, those I mentioned and many others consoled me for the death of my good mother.
The next day I sent a letter to Finland, my wife, interned in the village of Tragjas, whom I instructed to keep the children close and to endure the pain, as she had learned to endure the pain when their father had been shot, when their uncle had escaped, and when their family had been interned.
At the end of that letter, I wrote an elegy for my mother:
“Since my mother died,
With a sea of sorrows,
With prisons and exiles,
That brave little heart”!
We were introduced to communism as children and from then on we understood that that system, from the golden spoon it promised, would lead the people to eat with a wooden spoon! It was December 24, 1944, when two partisans came to our house, in the “Skelë” neighborhood, by the sea, and arrested our father. We, four brothers, still children, ran from behind our father crying, but the soulless communists pushed us with hatred, with the muzzles of their rifles, exclaiming: – “The ballista’s backs”!
Words that we could not understand at that time…! We can never forget our beloved mother, who, even while crying and cursing, gathered us around her like eagles, telling us that our father would return soon, perhaps she, our mother, also believed that he, our father, would truly return. But our father returned home after ten years, when we, in suffering and misery, had already grown up…!
This evil followed us all our lives. After our father, our brother Qamili, jumped into the sea off the coast of Saranda and swam to Corfu. Then Memishahu, at the age of 16, ended up in prison. After Memishahu, it was Murat’s turn, who suffered in communist prisons for over 18 years of his life, and the last one was me, Tekiu…!
Finlanda, Tekiu’s wife, tells the day of his arrest like this: “After the arrest of Tekiu of Vlora, 5 State Security officers, led by the famous Xhebro Shalari…! They would search the house of the “enemy of the people”, already arrested, but they would also terrorize a defenseless woman and children, – the eldest only 14 years old…!
On their way out, Xhebro Shalari, addresses Finlanda, with the pride of a criminal: – “Where is Tekiu?” And she, as a true Albanian woman, answered him: – “Every time Tekiu came to Vlora, we would go out on the steps and wait for him. Would he return, or would he be arrested? Now that you have taken him, we have nothing more to wait for. You have reduced our suffering, she added with a manly attitude…”!
Since December 24, 1944, our family had suffered and experienced the inhuman communist ordeal. Perhaps even the grave will not heal the spiritual suffering, but we were separated from the physical suffering, 24 years ago, precisely on August 5, 1990, when we left our homeland, which had made us suffer so much, with a burning heart. That day I had boarded the ferry accompanied by three or four friends, among them also Professor Bejkush Birçe, who honored me, even coming to my mother’s reburial…!
As the ferry departed, I cast my longing eyes on the shores of the Adriatic, my beloved homeland, but my thoughts were interrupted by Finland, my wife, and my son Fatmiri, then 11 years old, who said to me: – “Do you have the strength to start life over again”? My answer was: “Yes”!
– “Then,” they told me in unison, “we will enjoy life and from now on, no one will dare to discriminate against us or insult us, like the communists of Tragjas.” Life under the communist dictatorship taught us how to endure physical and spiritual pain. Only 15 people attended my father’s funeral…!
When I got out of prison, a good man from the “Llonxhë” neighborhood where my mother lived invited me for a coffee and said: “I was here, sitting, when your mother was escorted from this neighborhood, to eternity, with only 7 people. In the end there was Beshiri, the gravedigger, but he was also stopped by a member of the People’s Council, because the woman being escorted was the widow of a ballista, and a woman who had only given birth to enemies of the people, whom the party had imprisoned…”!
An entire family, cruelly sentenced: Father, Muhamet Gjonzeneli (1907 – 1978) sentenced to 30 years in prison, Qamili, the eldest son, escaped abroad, Tekiu sentenced to 8 years in prison, Memishahu sentenced to 6 years in prison, Murat Gjonzeneli sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Mrs. (1908 – 1982), the mother of four convicted sons, that heroic woman who had spent her entire life behind prison doors and who had washed the streets of Albania with tears, helping her sons in prisons and camps in any way she could, cried for her husband with tears of sorrow:
“Poor Muhamet,
But evil has not separated you,
No sister, nor brother,
Neither tribe nor kin, cries for you.”
To understand the pain of this mother, for those who did not live through that time, we explain that Muhamet, like many others at that time, was a man abandoned by his closest people, by his tribe and friendship, because he was an “enemy of the people”! Even in eternity, that heavy man was accompanied by a handful of people.
On August 5, 2014, we, the children of those suffering parents, managed to rebury our parents in their birthplace, in Tragjas, in the mud that had given birth to them, raised them and suffered endlessly, next to their relatives and loved ones from whom they had been separated in life and perhaps God would unite them in that life. Memorie.al
