By Shkëlqim ABAZI
Part Eighteen
SPAÇI
The Grave of the Living
Tirana, 2018
(My own memories and those of others)
Memorie.al / Now in old age, I feel obliged to tell my truth, as I lived it. To speak about the modest men who never boasted of their deeds, and about others whose mouths the regime sealed and buried them in nameless pits. In no case do I assume the monopoly of truth or pretend to the laurels for an event where I was accidentally present, although I strove with all my soul to help my friends somewhat, who tactfully 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.
Continues from the previous issue
“Marshallah to him, may God increase it for us, our house is full, the livestock have multiplied, molasses is flowing like a river, the cheese has turned into qymez (fresh cheese), may the enemy die, may the evil eye burst!” – the old woman supported me.
“Ishalla it goes and she hears you!” – I replied to her.
The old woman rummaged a bit and added: “Trouble was born for us with that secretary, old man.”
“With Zejnullah the spy, eh?! Hang the bag, he spends all day and night cursing Allah, the hoxha, and the Quran!”
“May he be revived as a ghoul, Jahrabi (Oh God)!” – the old woman cursed.
“He is a curse while alive, woman! God saw it, He pushed his cow, pushed his wife, pushed his sheep, his dogs died, his eggs hatched infertile, his daughter went astray! You want me to, eh?”
“God takes note and gives it to you where it hurts, old man!”
“Elham strafkurullah, the devil!”
“May he become a def (tambourine) and may the gypsies dance!” – the old woman echoed me.
“He can’t do anything to us, may he take our ills, may he take them!”
“May the fire of hell burn that devil!”
“Old woman, thanks be to Abbas Ali, our cow has milk, his has dried up, all summer we will slaughter chickens, and I will make jerky out of three goats, he was taken by the plague, God punished him, may he see the tip of his ear!”
“Marshallah to him, may God increase it for us!” – and she stirred the coals in the fireplace. I was saying these things while the old woman was talking to the angels.
“Oh old man?” – she turned to me.
“Lepe (Yes)!” – I answered.
“We need to have some amulets read, to bring the goods away from the evil eye, eh!”
“Don’t worry, I will go to the hoxha to read them for them!”
“Çap, çap” (Quickly, quickly)!
The next day, I got up and went to the hoxha of Vodica, he read about ten amulets for me, wrapped them in cloth, I paid him, and returned to the konak (dwelling). The old woman took them and checked their authenticity, she hung one on the cow, one on the calf, one on the donkey, one on the foal, one on the mare, one on the filly, one on the bride, one on Këzja, one in the sheep pen, one at the chicken coop, we protected them from the evil eye, eh!”
“And who is Këzja?” – I interrupted him.
“The son’s goat, I gave her the mother’s name when she was born, eh!”
“What happened next?”
“Nothing, a shit happened, eh! The granddaughter, whom we thought was asleep, heard our talks. The teacher separated my granddaughter and the secretary’s daughter in school, drew a board with chalk and gave them some sums. My little darling solved them quickly, the secretary’s daughter lagged. My granddaughter got a five, the secretary’s daughter a two. Then they started arguing; what are you and what am I; the lessons this way and the lessons that way, and my granddaughter burst out:
‘You are useless in school, you don’t know any lessons, but they keep you out of favoritism, as the secretary’s daughter.’
‘Go away, your kulak!’ – the secretary’s daughter retorted.
‘Oh, you clan of spies!’ – mine snapped back.
‘You don’t have Front membership cards!’ – the other insulted.
‘You have no luck!’ – mine replied, and the conversation turned to the cow. And she told her: – ‘Our cow is noble, it gives ten kilos, yours is dried up, Abbas Ali punished you, because you cursed everyone!’
‘The Party made you enemies!’
‘Not a stone will be left standing on a stone for you…!’
‘Long live the Party and Comrade Enver!’ – the secretary’s daughter replied.
‘You will have no prosperity with the cow, nor the sheep, nor the mare, nor the dogs, nor the people!’
The secretary’s daughter wailed and went straight home, to her father and mother. She recounted everything to them, meticulously, and the father jumped up:
‘The scoundrel taught her that, but you will pay me back with interest, oh, your brave kulak!’ He swore to me and mounted his mule mare and went to the Department of Internal Affairs, grabbed one and then another, and blackened my name. The town elders gathered in the village and put the handcuffs on me.
‘You are an enemy!’ – they told me.
‘Of Zejnullah, eh!’ – I replied to them.
‘No, of the Albanian Party of Labor!’
‘I don’t know the Party at all, eh!’ – I defended myself.
‘You don’t know it, but the Party knows you!’
‘It’s doing me a great honor, eh!’
‘We will show you the honor, where we are going!’
‘Where, eh?’
‘To jail!’
‘Why, have I seized the world with stones, eh?’
‘You have engaged in pulitikë (politics)!’
‘With Zejnullah, eh?’
‘No, with your old woman!’
‘I tell her whatever I want because she is mine, eh!’
‘We will shorten your tongue!’
‘You or him, eh!’ – and I saw Zejno smirking behind the fence.
‘Zejnullah is the Party here!’
‘This scoundrel, eh!?’
‘That’s how you see him, because you are an enemy of the people and the Party.’
‘Zejnullah told you, eh?’
‘Don’t you like him?’
‘Why should I like this pest who hasn’t left a sheepfold unrobbed and a person unsnitched on, eh!?’
‘He is loyal to the Party!’
‘Him? He is a lecher, eh!’
‘He implements the teachings of the Party!’
‘You are taking him under your protection, eh! May you go to the donkey’s hell (esfel) along with the entire Party, eh!’ The handcuffs quickly, he’s making politics with us too!
They tied me up and took me to the Berat Jail, where they served me up, from the smallest to Filat Muço. Five months of beatings, they brought my mother’s milk out through my nose:
‘You cursed the Party?’
‘Me, eh!?’
‘Yes, you! You insulted Enver?’
‘No, I don’t know him at all!’
‘You engaged in propaganda?’
‘Me, prupaganda, eh!?’
‘Yes, you!’
‘No, why, eh!’
‘Did you drink Raki (brandy)?’
‘Well, yes, I drank, eh!’
‘You even raised toasts, sir!’
‘I raised them, you bet, eh!’
‘And you supposedly wished him to become a scrub oak (shkoza)?’
‘I said that, eh!’
‘Now await the scrub oak club!’ And Bam on the back!
‘Wait, it doesn’t grow by itself if you don’t plant vines at its base, eh!’
‘Enemies say: may he become a scrub oak!’
‘I don’t know them!’
‘You know them, you know them!’
And Bam the club!
‘Tell us how many saboteurs you received and saw off at the sheepfold?’
‘Me, drivesantë (saboteurs), eh!?’
‘Yes, you!’
‘I haven’t even seen their mugs, eh!’
‘Maybe you haven’t seen their mugs, but you gave them bread and shelter! You were in Greece too, weren’t you?’
‘No, by God!’
‘But who brought the flock of sheep back from there?’
‘Me, eh!’
‘See, you were there!’
‘The Party gave me a decoration, eh!’
‘We will give you another decoration on the head!’
‘Why, what have I done, eh?’
‘You betrayed the Homeland and committed sabotage!’
‘Me, drivension (sabotage), eh!?’
‘You! You met the Greeks, they gave you a canteen with a transceiver radio inside, they also gave you a ‘Papastratos’ [cigarette pack], full of dollars!’
‘Oh Abbas Ali, they helped me bring the flock back, eh!’
‘After they recruited and instructed you well and good!’
‘Just Zejnullah’s talk, eh!’
The scrub oak club!
‘Tell us, did you talk to the hoxha?’
‘Who doesn’t talk to the hoxha in your district, eh!?’
‘They talk, but they don’t read amulets!’
‘That’s what he did with me too, he read the amulets for me and I left!’
‘What do the amulets say!’
‘How would I know how to read, eh!’
‘You know, you know!’
‘By Allah, if I know!’ The club!
‘What did the amulets write?’
‘Oh Abbas Ali, I don’t know Albanian!’
‘Maybe you don’t know Albanian, but you know Greek, Turkish, and Arabic like water!’
‘Tobe strafkurullah (God forbid)!’
‘So, was it Turkish?’
‘Turkish!’
‘You understood it!’
‘No!’
‘You’re trying to fool us!? You didn’t know it, huh!’ Bam the scrub oak club!
‘You shameless, godless, faithless scoundrels!’
‘Turkish?’
‘Please, I don’t understand, eh!’
‘Arabic?’
‘I don’t know, Allah is my witness!’
‘The roasted ones, the club on his back!’
‘For God’s sake, eh!?’
‘Turkish? Arabic?’
‘How would I know, poor me, I haven’t learned a single letter, eh!’
‘But you engaged in politics!’
‘What kind of wretched politics, eh!’
‘Note, he’s slandering the Party!’
‘May you and those who sent you to deal with me be buried in ink, eh!’
‘Agitation and propaganda, Article 731!’
They had destined me as a sacrifice, oh poor Likja! They brought me this piece of cloth. ‘Read it for us!’
With the indictment the investigators of the Berat Internal Affairs Branch had prepared for him, Likja should have ended up on the gallows.
“And they dressed me up and girded me, they shaved and scraped me, they put the black skullcap on me, they fitted me with handcuffs and sent me as a groom to the Kadi (Judge).
When I saw the prosecutor, whom I had hosted during the war with meat and raki, my heart warmed. But damn anyone who puts hope in the faithless! Because he got up, oh I beg you, he spoke and said, ‘not enemy’ and ‘not kulak,’ ‘not defendant’ and ‘not insidious,’ he spared no slander!
I replied to them too:
‘Slow down, oh prosecutor, I hosted you with bread during the war, eh!’
‘Defendant, to you I am Mr. Prosecutor, and it wasn’t you who hosted us with bread, but the people. Your bread was bitter!’
‘May it become poison, Jahrabi! The people had nothing for themselves, oh wretch!’
‘They truly didn’t, but that little bit they shared with us!’
‘What would they share, may the plague take you, I gave you a sack of bounty that you ate! The freedom-loving people have a big heart!’
‘You drank the blood of the poor.’
‘His heart was big, but his purse empty, though! If we hadn’t given you, you would have turned your hooves skyward and been forgotten in time, you and them!’
‘Defendant, you fed and sheltered saboteurs!’
‘What drivesantë are you talking about, eh?’
‘You hid Nezir Danushi in the sheepfold?’
‘I hosted Nezir, eh!’
‘You even gave him bread?’
‘Of course I did, eh!’
‘He was an escapee from the Berat prison!’
‘I had no business with the prison, I hosted him as a friend, eh!’
‘Please take note, Comrade Chairman!’ – he turned to the chairman.
‘Note that I hosted and saw you off too, eh!’
‘My job is different.’
‘Why should yours be different, eh?’
‘I am the Power, the Party, the Government!’
‘You weren’t at that time, eh! Besides, I treat my friends the same, I receive them, serve them, honor them, and entertain them with splendor!’
‘Even the enemies of the Party and Comrade Enver!’
‘Did I host Greeks or Serbs, eh?’
‘Yes, you did, you even exchanged rings with the Greeks.’
‘Me, eh!’
‘You entered Greece, under the pretext of bringing back the flock, they instructed you, took what they wanted, returned you with gifts and the entire flock.’
‘That’s why you decorated me, eh!’
‘We pretended to decorate you so we could unravel it. Now that we have exposed you, we will give you the final decoration…!’
‘You are lying, the party thanked me and rewarded me for bravery and defending the country’s assets.’
‘Comrade Chairman, observe the enemy, he is engaging in propaganda even in the courtroom. This bourgeois with moldy ideas is trying to drag others into the mud, but he carried out the hostile activity consciously.’ He pulled out the canteen, a ‘Papastratos’ pack, and a handful of amulets, showed them to the people as a sign from his mother:
‘Here are the propaganda materials with which the dangerous and insidious enemy engaged in agitation.’
‘May you be resurrected as a ghoul, you scoundrel!’
‘Mr. Chairman, this type is threatening us, pretending to be harmless and naive. But behind this facade hides the political scoundrel, he disguised himself as a shepherd but he is cunning, he started his hostile activity against the Party and Comrade Enver since the time of the war!’
‘He left no place without exposing tracts, even in Arabic and Turkish so the people wouldn’t understand.’
‘I don’t know Albanian, may death wash you away, eh!’
‘Here they are!’ – and he shook the amulets at the end of the poker. – ‘He had hung them on the door of the hut, in the chicken coop, on the necks of the sheep, the cow, the mare, the filly, the family members, down to the tail of the donkey and the foal. We have the defendant’s wife as a witness, who confirms it with her own mouth.’
‘Those are amulets against the evil eye, oh prosecutor!’
‘Did you hear, Comrade Chairman? For an ideal, they are counter-revolutionary tracts, written in a language indecipherable to simple people.’
‘Thank goodness you understood them, eh!’ Memorie.al
Continues in the next issue
