When I asked Lasgush, with tearful eyes he told me: “How can I come to Poradec and not meet Qania, not see him with my own eyes, not hear his voice…”?!
Memorie.al / Qani had studied geological engineering in Leningrad for three years, but he abandoned it because his passion was literature. He returned to Albania and completed his four-year studies in Albanian Language and Literature (which he so much desired) in two years. When I was appointed an English teacher in Korça, Qani was sent to work in the deep areas of Mokra, in Velçan and Osnat, where he was monitored and spied on by the school director and the Sigurimi operative of the area. He would summarize the miserable state of the socialist village in a few words, saying that; “Now there are more little Lulas in the village than in Migjeni’s time.”
And so came the year 1968, when the so-called “revolutionization of the school” began with a great bang. From now on, everything would be included in the triangle; “Learning, work, tempering,” everything would be crossed by the bright “red thread” of socialism, everything would be painted with red paint, not only the slogans, t1he pioneer corners, but also the teachers, these educators of the new generation, who had to be “red commissars,” of the life-giving light of the Party.
Now the teacher would turn into a robot of the programmatic speeches of Enver Hoxha and other sycophants. And precisely at this critical moment, Qani Çollaku acted, because he, born and raised in a family of patriots, being a true intellectual, immediately understood that the pickaxe and the rifle, which they would use as symbols in class hours, were nothing but weapons that would kill and destroy from the foundations, all the effort and sweat, that entire generations of teachers had poured, for education in Albania.
Therefore, in the article addressed to the newspaper “Zëri i Popullit” (The Voice of the People) “Artisan Fighters of Art,” he presented his own views. The article was never published, and yet, Qani Çollaku was arrested and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment, raising such accusations against him in court, such as;
“He wrote to make the people rise up,” “the accused is connected to foreign espionage” (alluding to Soviet espionage), they even called him a “little Dubcek,” and further they mentioned the name of the poet Anna Akhmatova, as if all the evils of humanity had come from her.
As always, the infallible people of the Sigurimi were precise in hitting the mark, hitting the best, the wisest, the bravest. And one of them was Qani Çollaku, the brother of the “People’s Hero,” Reshit Çollaku and the brave martyr, Muharrem Çollaku.
And this was not done without purpose, let all the other teachers and intellectuals learn, that as long as a member of the Çollaku family is not spared, one could guess what could happen to others, in a word, let the suffering become a lesson, let’s sow fear and terror, so that no one would dare to raise their head.
Nexhmije Hoxha in her book “Betrayed Friendship,” explains to us in a devious way, that a letter from Mehmet Shehu addressed to Enver Hoxha, sank Qani Çollaku and here is its content:
“Qani Çollaku’s ‘article’ is a wild, unbridled and open attack against the party line in art and literature and against the Party itself. Qani Çollaku is a known enemy of the Party. He was a teacher, he was unmasked and removed from his job as a teacher in Berat, but now he is a teacher again in Pogradec! It is said that he cast a vote against the Front, in the last elections.
I think that, using this material, we should gather the teachers of Pogradec, unmask him completely and take him to court (with closed doors), because with this material, he will get up to 15 years in prison, or we should intern him in the farm of Lushnja, where he will work with a pickaxe. He is extraordinarily vile! (And as the people say: “He, who digs a pit for another, falls into it himself.”)
Qani’s trial was held in Korça, in May 1968. In the first days of June, I met Lasgush in Tirana and asked him if he had heard about Qani’s conviction. “Yes,” he told me, and continued in a low voice, because at that time even the walls had ears: “How can I come to Poradec and not meet Qania, not see him with my own eyes, not hear his voice…”?! And Lasgush’s eyes filled with tears.
After he finished his sentence and got out of prison, Qani was again him, the first Qani: calm, soft-spoken, smiling; he had changed in only one thing: when he went out on the streets, he did not mix with anyone, but always walked alone, he did not tell anything about the years of prison, he only called it a joke; “The University.” And he was so big-hearted and broad-spirited that he forgave even the people who testified against him in court.
As soon as he got out of prison, he learned English and Italian. He was assigned to do ordinary jobs in construction and later as a warehouse keeper for stones and bricks. Once he had made a request, to be returned to the profession of a teacher, which he loved very much. In the summer, Kudret Kokoshi, the uncle of Myzejen, Reshit’s eternal fiancée, also came to Pogradec. Kudret was a patriot, poet, and literary critic, translator, who had spent twenty years in prison and was left in the shadows.
Qani would invite Kudret and Lasgush for dinner, so that all three could be on the poetic heights. Kudret Kokoshi hoped that a better day would come, so he gave his manuscripts, translations and some others, written with beautiful handwriting, to Qani, hoping that he could live to see the time, to bring them to light.
If Qani could face many waves of life, near him was always Tixhja, a wise, intelligent, dedicated wife. But in 1982, Tixhja, Qani’s wife, became seriously ill and had a heart operation, I have before my eyes how worried and anxious he was, in those days when her life hung by a thread.
But, suddenly, in the summer of 1983, Nafija, Lasgush’s wife, died, on the night dawning on August 4 at midnight, after Qani had calmed down and laid Lasgush down to sleep, up in his tower, we two sat on the porch of that house and it was the first time that Qani told me about the communist prison of Spaç, not so much about the tortures, the hard work, the barbed wire, the dogs, the policemen, but we talked about the poets, writers, painters, artists, who were inside the prisons of Albania.
Valbona, Qani’s only daughter, was born while her father was in prison, and when he got out of prison, she was in the first grade of elementary school, together with my daughter, in the same class and desk. In the spring of 1984, Qani became ill, the doctors could not determine the diagnosis, he continued like this for two or three months from one hospital to another, finally in Tirana for surgery.
The operation confirmed the diagnosis: pancreatic cancer. Qani passed away on November 24, 1984, at dawn. His mother, Minja, mourned him: “Son, oh son, you left me as if from a bullet”! Because the Çollaku family has always left this life from a bullet.
At the funeral, Qani was accompanied by a large crowd of people, although a former political prisoner was being buried, but the Çollaku family had a very large circle of relatives and friends. Something has remained in my mind from that so sad Sunday afternoon, as the sun was almost setting: while they were taking the coffin out of the black car, my eye caught a large-bodied Kurbat (a Roma in the Korça dialect), who was crying with large tears, the tears dripping on the ground, making holes in the dust of the cemetery. It was the beginning of winter.
The communist revenge continued they did not want to give Valbona a right to higher education; the authorities answered her persistence; that the same fate awaited her. Tixhja, her mother, could no longer cope with life, she did not live to enjoy the 90s, when Valbona completed her studies and has now created a happy family.
On November 24 of each year, is the anniversary of the day when the Pogradec native Qani Çollaku closed his eyes forever. The time we lived in can be called the time of unparalleled deafness and muteness, and yet in this time lived people who knew how to strongly oppose the red violence with the manly strength of their intellect; one of them was Qani Çollaku. He has been honored with the titles: “Teacher of the People” and “Honorary Citizen of the Korça County”. Memorie.al
