“I stopped at the edge of the cliff and took the stream downstream, but; ‘Stop! Turn around, or I’ll shoot you’!” roared the soldier from the bodyguard and…”/ The sad story of the former Spaç prisoner, Shkëlqim Abazi, from Berat

By Shkëlqim ABAZI

Part fifteen

                                                                SPAC

                                             The Grave of the Living

Tirana, 2018

(My memories and those of others)

Memorie.al / Now in my old age, I feel it is my duty to tell my truth, just as I lived it. To speak of the modest men who never boasted of their deeds and of others whose mouths the regime sealed and buried them in nameless pits. In no case do I take it upon myself to usurp the monopoly of truth or to claim laurels for an event where I was a random witness, even though I tried with all my heart to help my friends, who politely and kindly avoided me: “Brother, open your eyes… don’t get involved… you only have two months and a little left!” A worry that clung to me like an amulet, from the morning of May 21, 22, and 23, 1974, and even followed me in the following months until I was released. Nevertheless, everything I saw and heard those three days, I would not want to take to the grave.

                                          Continued from the previous

We tossed a heap of bujashka (slag/earth) into the cauldron and headed toward the exit. Ten meters further, we exchanged words with the blasters who were touring the work fronts, bent under the weight of clay and dynamite, preparing the blasts for the next shift…!

It was beginning to dawn.

“We made it through today too!” Jemini spoke to the darkness.

“I feel dead tired,” I complained.

“Brother, we’re all like that, but keep going until the bell rings!” he encouraged me.

Without pausing the grinding of stones on the trimoza’s (dumping area) tin sheets, metallic sounds came from the end of the stream, as if rising from a deep well, piercing the darkness from the narrow passage, moving over the hill, and dispersing across the slopes. It was the camp’s bell, a large-caliber bronze shell casing hung on a pole in front of the kitchen. The bronze clang transmitted its ripped notes like an electric current, the echoes of which got entangled in the barbed wire thorns and circled the hill.

The darkness shivered, the air trembled, and the stars froze in the firmament. The whine of the bell and the bronze resonance scared an owl that took flight and confusedly darted toward the abandoned galleries. Some camp birds took to the air and disappeared into the imprisoned bushes. They also woke the soldiers in the watchtowers, reminding them of the duty they were fed wheat bread for:

“Stop! S-t-o-p, or I will shoot!” their chorus boomed.

“Hoo-hoo, tweet-tweet,” the hooting of the owl and the clamor of the birds responded to the threat.

“Stop! S-t-o-p, or I will shoot!” the soldiers repeated, but the owl had already found shelter in its own prison, while the birds settled in the prison shrubs, without crossing the “no entry” signs, leaving the soldiers’ rifles cocked.

Before the bronze echo had faded, the whistles began: “fiu-friu.” The shouts of Malua mixed with them: “First shift, get up,” together they crossed the barbed wire fence and slammed into the nearby plateau, where they woke a rooster, who returned with: “ki-ki-ri-ki.”

“Fiu-friu,” “first shift, get up,” “ki-ki-ri-ki” boomed the mouth of Gurth-Spaç.

“Pa-pa-pa, what an excellent tenor!” Esat Kala was enchanted by the prison’s morning symphony.

“Who, the rooster?”

“No, the crier!”

“What are you saying? He tears your ears with his raspy tone!”

“You have no ear for music, my friend!”

He could make even the dead buried in the imprisoned graves groan with that screeching voice; I imagine the free deceased beyond the hill must also stir in their sleep when they hear these whinnies.

To the whistling of the whistles, the bronze resonance, Malua’s shouts, and the rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doos, were added the soldiers’ yells and the rattling of stones on the trimoza’s tin sheets, making the valley roar.

“Oh God, how these resonances, thunderclaps, whistles, screams, howls, cries, cracks, lightning, volleys, curses, mishaps, collapses, ruins, roars, groans, pains, bursts, murders, destruction, death, have eaten away at our lives!” Esati complained.

“Indeed, they never left us!” I echoed him.

“What are you saying?”

“I repeated what you said, they have clung to us all our lives!”

“And beyond!”

“There’s more?”

“In the afterlife?”

“And after that?”

“The Party knows!”

“Which Party, you troubled man?”

“The Party of Labour, which leaves no mountain uncracked and no sea undried!” Esati clenched his fist to his forehead and embodied the devoted communist.

“Ready-to!” I mocked.

“In the name of the Party and Comrade Enver, always ready!” he completed.

“And in the name of… the people, who took our freedom!”

“You better zip your mouth, sir, or you’ll invoke Article 731 of the Penal Code of the People’s Repub…”

“Of China?”

“Of Socialist Albania…!”

Meanwhile, the contest between the rooster and the crier escalated immensely.

“Where were we, Esat?”

“Sh-sh-sh-t, listen to what Malua is saying and how the rooster is responding!”

“I can’t, my eyes are shut, and my head is throbbing.”

“Be quiet, I told you, the prison has ears…”

“The prison does, but the government is deaf!”

“Will you close your beak, or…?” Esati pretended to be angry and moved away. Morning landscape, five o’clock. We would wait two more hours.

“Two hours?” “Oh-uh-ah, we don’t need the clock,” Arshini would say, and Esati: “The Party knows,” because in fact, the clock face had been replaced with a cannon shell casing, and the spring with Malua’s shouting, while the Party stuffed us with clangings, whistles, whinnies, intertwined with prison dreams and extinguished hopes, sprinkled with the stench of tight rags, the smell of farts and prison filth, fouling everything like a sewer channel.

Foot traffic began below the rock pile.

Steam and gases, imprisoned in the underground entrails, erupted from the mouth of the gallery, stretching over the Spaçian wasteland like a gigantic chimney. As the imprisoned wind tried to snatch and scatter them, unable to push them beyond the enclosure, the vapor mass was drawn back like a horse pulled by a lasso, whirling around the imaginary pivot without breaking free, while the gasp brought it back to the mouth where it originated. I gathered the fur coat, damp from the vapors, put it on and huddled behind the corner of the barrack, where the monotonous snores of the policeman, penetrating the cracks of the ill-fitting boards, lulled me.

My eyes shut.

I was lost in the boundless void.

Meanwhile, a ripped mouth with jackal-like teeth and giant eyes the size of the gallery’s perimeter suddenly appeared before me and roared:

“Oh-oh-oh, you won’t escape me this time!”

“Who are you, sir?”

“Me? Polyphemus!”

“Ah, I thought you were the prosecutor!”

“Ha-ha-ha, prosecutor!? I am more than that, I am the Roar!”

“Greetings, Mr. Roar!” I extended my hand.

“You should be furious! He withdrew his hairy paw. Why are you withdrawing?”

“I don’t trust anyone on earth!”

“I am underground!”

“Beautiful, I have you close!”

“Sir, I am a politician!” I boasted, hoping to impress him.

“Marvelous, one less enemy!” he widened his giant eye and gnashed his fangs.

“Mr. Polyphemus, I didn’t come here myself, they forced me into prison!” I complained, trembling.

“What are you telling me!? I’ve been in darkness for thousands of years, worse than in prison!”

“It’s not my fault.”

“You gouged out my eyeball!”

“Oh-oh-oh, an old story!” I wanted to confuse him.

“The past is not forgotten!”

“That’s right, it’s not forgotten!”

He snorted and created a powerful vortex. “You thought I was blind, huh?”

I was silent, he added: “The optician treated me quite well!” The glassy eye enlarged to the size of the gallery entrance.

“I’m glad to hear it!”

“You shouldn’t be glad at all, because I will devour you!”

“Why are you crossing with me?”

“You are Odysseus’s great-grandson!”

“Ha-ha-ha, you are mistaken, Mr. Polyphemus, his great-grandson is Odhiseu!” “Get up!” I tried to defend myself.

“But are you a Balkan native?” he asked suddenly.

“Undoubtedly, but Albanian!”

“I have a score to settle with you Epirotes!”

“Settle it with the communists, they owe us both!”

“Which ones?”

“That evil seed, they ruined your cave, and they put us underground!”

“They are my race, you blind man,” and he ripped his mouth open wide.

I shrank behind the cliff-ravine, searching for a ram to hide under its belly, but there was only wilderness. Wilderness and… Wilderness.

Only the two of us, me and Polyphemus.

“Get up, the shift is here!”

“No, no, no…!”

“Come, we are leaving!”

“Please, please…” and I stretched my hands toward the cyclops.

“Why are you flailing like that, you big head? Gather the goats; you are pulling out my mustache, brother!” The hairs, reinforced with rock dust, nearly whipped my ear.

“Get up, now!” the shout pierced my eardrum.

I looked through the cracks in the boards, but the policeman had fled, while the gallery, as wide as Polyphemus’s cave, was steaming with whitish vapors.

I walked dizzily toward the main road.

“How are you men,” someone greeted, “good day,” another replied.

“It’s day!?”

“Morning, hello!”

“I thought it was night!”

“May God protect you and may you return healthy,” familiar and unfamiliar people greeted.

“Watch out for Polyphemus, friends, he looked hungry!” I advised them, but the line continued toward the caves, ignoring me, while others descended the slope.

I hung confusedly onto the tuff stairs.

I was exhausted down to the bone. My boots weighed like gallery cannonballs, while cicadas buzzed in my ears, and my eyelids hung like bags of pus.

I sleepwalked through the gate and reached the dormitory, where I collapsed onto the straw mattress without washing, without eating anything, without even undressing, and sank into the lightless abyss. Dazed, I didn’t hear the clatter or the trak-trak of the clogs on the cement, nor the crier’s shouts when he called lunch.

The first shift had returned, and they had eaten lunch.

“Get up, it’s evening, you won’t even have time for the toilet!” Nuni shook me.

“What happened, you Beast!?” I looked at him wide-eyed.

“A team from the Central Committee has come for an experience, regarding you, sir?”

“What are you saying?” I leaned on my side, my eyes swollen.

“I told you, my dear, books are superfluous in prison!”

“Books?” I instinctively put my hand under the pillow, touched the book, and calmed down.

“Go piss, you are stinking up the mattress!” He put on his clogs and added: “It seems you cost me a cell today!”

“Why, did they give the signal for the roll call!?” I asked, stunned.

“No, brother, they were going to get you!”

I lay down on the mattress. Petrit Hoxha, the dormitory manager, was waking those who had been overcome by sleep.

“Are you up, son?” he looked at me with pity.

“Reluctantly, old man!”

“Well, prison has these things!” and he moved on.

I jumped up, put on my sandals, and headed toward the latrines, where I almost collided with Zaka.

“Are you up, Zaka’s naughty boy?” I didn’t answer him.

“Where are you going, now?” for the second time.

“To the bathroom, where else?”

“You are staggering, sir, you will meet the soldier!”

“Stop joking, I was on the third shift!”

“The blind wolf comes out on the path by itself; put a bullet in your cheeks and fifteen days of leave, what a bargain!”

“I am tired, my friend!”

“Turn back, so that your bad luck follows you!” he grabbed my elbow and pushed me toward the barrack. “This way, now!” I stopped at the edge of the slope, where I almost leaped over the barbershop and took the downhill path.

“Stop! R-right turn, or I will shoot!” the soldier roared from the guard post.

“Damn it, what does he want with me? Does he think I’m a civilian because I’m shaved? We are the same age, right!?”

“Open your eyes, contemporary, I am a political prisoner!”

“S-t-o-p, or I will shoot!” the soldier repeated for the second time.

Zaka grabbed me by the sleeve and pushed me toward the latrine. “Brr, brrrr, brrrrr…Bram, brr-rr-um, berr-rrr-dam.”

I huddled in the latrine-shelter.

Brr-rr, prr-rromb, prr-rrumb, pfff-fff…!

“He’s shooting, huh!” The smell of excrement brought my guts to my throat. “Hold your hand, man!” Brr, brr-rr, brrrrr…Bram, brr-rram, berr-rrr-dam.

“Is that the smell of gunpowder?”

Brr, brr-rr, pfff-fff…Bram, brr-rram, berr-rrr-dam.

“Be careful, contemporary, you will kill others!”

Krr brr-rr, pfff-fff…Bram, brr-rram, berr-rrr-dam.

“Even if you hate me because I didn’t join the army with you, what’s wrong with prrr-rr-dumb, prr-rrdumb, pfff-fff…! What does gunpowder smell like?”

Prr brr-rr, pfff-fff…! Bram, brr-rram, berr-rrr-dam. Gunpowder or shit?

Brr, brr-rr, pfff-fff…Bram, brr-rram, berr-rrr-dam.

“You killed us, man!”

“A person isn’t killed by a fart, you rascal?” a voice came from the adjacent stall.

“No!” I replied.

“The pig needs a bullet, damn you!” the invisible one continued.

“Undoubtedly!” I confirmed.

“I only have farts!” brr-rr-rr-rram, brrump, brromp, pfff, pufff. “The soldier is shooting…”

“I caught a bad cold! My stomach is bothering me, mate!”

“What did you say?” I asked anxiously.

“I have bad pleurisy, I’m getting old right now!” “Ah, ah-hh!”

A head wrapped in a turban appeared in the adjacent stall, took a few steps with pants around his ankles, and returned to the enclosure he came from.

“Oh God, I died!” brr-rr-rram, brr-rromb, pfff, puff! “Oh, my mother!”

“Did he kill you?” I asked worriedly.

“He ground me up, man!”

“I apologize; he was aiming for me because I didn’t wait to join the army!”

“A pity, man, you are still young!” Memorie.al

                                                   Continued in the next issue