By Shkëlqim ABAZI
Part twenty-six
S P A Ç
The Grave of the Living
Tirana, 2018
(My memories and those of others)
Memorie.al /Now in my old age, I feel obliged 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, burying them in nameless pits. In no case do I presume to usurp the monopoly on truth or claim the laurels for an event where I was accidentally present, even though I desperately tried to help my friends, who tactfully and kindly deterred me: “Brother, open your eyes… don’t get involved… you only have two months and a little more 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 months after, until I was released. Nevertheless, everything I saw and heard during those three days; I would not want to take to the grave.
Continued from the previous issue
“Based on the Latin American aphorism: ‘Honor can be lost, but never won,’ [Ermenji] was a thorn in [Enver’s] side; he envied Ermenji, especially after his brilliance in the war and after it, because he allegedly undermined the name of the ‘Great’ proletarian leader, and thus had to be eliminated without mercy.
As for Sadik Premtja, the stubborn pragmatist and fanatical confrere, consistent in the Marxist ideology that he did not abandon until his death, he was known as a central figure of Albanian communism, a theoretician and a brave man, qualities that raised the ire of the ‘number one’ and jeopardized his career; therefore ‘Xhepi’ (Sadik Premtja’s nickname), cynical and cunning, had to be eliminated without hesitation.
While he disposed of his comrade-antagonists during the war or immediately after, with assassinations and fabricated tricks and ridiculous trials, he poisoned some of the escapees through counter-intelligence or fabricated ‘accidents’ where they had secured asylum; he threatened and neutralized others and silenced them by eliminating relatives in the homeland; he sowed discord, introduced division, and incited phobia with subversive methods, until he took out of the game the remaining part of the political emigration.
Again, the two aforementioned enemies did not give up and did not cease their fight against Enver even when he reached his political zenith. The ‘arrogant ones’ terrorized him, each from his own position, and attacked him with arguments until they ruined his peace. Therefore, he spared no expense; he hired agents of the UDB and the KGB, who applied successful Dzerzhinsky methods, as in the case of Trotsky, even borrowing from the CIA of Allen Dulles, although they hated him as an imperialist; he sent dozens of delegations with specialized and amateur personnel, financed real and charlatan detectives with gold, sent students, writers, artists, and various exponents from Albania, Kosovo, and Albanian-speaking territories under the guise of escapees, with a fixed mission: to eliminate the ‘Professor’ and ‘Xhepi’.
But the attempts failed, exposed by the targets or the people close to them. As the projects were delayed in being finalized, he became obsessed with the phobia of elimination; fear, hatred, and panic increased in progression with the failures and turned into a nightmare; he was ready to destroy Albania, just to see the corpses of his enemies displayed in museum stands.
And he used every means, from special and separate directorates in the Ministry of Foreign and Internal Affairs, to the multiplication of embassy personnel with intelligence service specialists…!
In prison, I met failures from the contingent of ‘silent heroes,’ sent specifically on a mission, but they wouldn’t talk because they were terrified of the price with which they had to atone for their failure (a part of them paid with their heads from the very first moment; whoever escaped the bullet left their bones in prisons, so today I don’t know if any exemplar from this mole-like species survives, and even if they are alive, they will undoubtedly be eternal wrecks.) ‘Marrok’ belonged to this category.
‘Marrok’
I dwelled on him, conditioned by the special, perhaps unique, character of the rare specimen, the survivor from the failed counter-intelligence species who had a miserable end. I couldn’t form a friendship with ‘Marrok.’ Except for Tomor, no one succeeded. But at least I can be listed among the people he respected or happened to speak to when he was plunged into total muteness.
Based on the way he served his prison sentence, it can be said completely that he was a loner. He ate alone: When the majority had finished eating, he would sit down. He played alone: He admired chess, but also played backgammon and dominoes.
When ‘Marrok’ played, one would say a Shakespearean spectacle unfolded. He set the board on the bed, or outside in the yard, or wherever his mind told him, lined up the pieces, made a move with white, sat on the opposite side and played black, then got up, pondered for a few moments until he made the move for the other side, got up again, went outside and deliberately delayed before playing the piece on the opposing side; when he returned, he moved the correct piece.
This ritual took up his whole day; sometimes the curfew would catch him without finishing the game. As soon as the game ended, the racket would begin. The imaginary rivals would quarrel with vulgar language, and the fight lasted until the ‘loser’ accepted the result. To resolve the dispute, the referee intervened. ‘Marrok’ started giving advice with the seriousness of an impartial judge and in a fatherly tone:
‘Don’t spoil your mouths with your friend, my dears, today you won, tomorrow the other one. But you must study, man, study, do you understand or not? Theory, my dears, theory!’ He would conclude the didactic advice and take the chess literature, sinking into it for hours. The same thing happened when he played dominoes.
He walked alone: In every season – winter, spring, summer, autumn, snow, rain, wind, storm, or scorching heat – he didn’t care, he continued his wandering, with his arms crossed over his chest or behind his back, as if they were tied, and he walked with his head bowed, his chin touching the hollow of his larynx.
Alone, he talked to himself. But he never realized he was off his rocker. The bipolar mind imagined a second person next to him and never stopped talking, but even when he wasn’t babbling, he ground his teeth fiercely.
He slept alone:”
“In a space reserved specifically for him, an unusual differentiation for prison conditions, seventy centimeters on one side, and as much on the other, was his privilege. Furthermore, when an unsocial individual tried to benefit a little more than he was entitled to, they would taunt them: ‘He became ‘Marrok’ now.’
They left him the corners because he refused neighbors. When it happened that someone was placed near him, he would take his mattress and spread it wherever his mind told him, in the middle of the yard, by the bathroom door, on the hearths of the private kitchen, in front of the collective kitchen; he even lifted the bed plank and slept soundly, for all the world’s pleasures, even on the roof of the food depot.
Woe to anyone who criticized him!
If you made this mistake, you would hear a stream of curses, because except for Tomor, no one escaped his fury, neither convict, soldier, nor even operatives or camp leaders.
At first glance, he was crude, nasty, difficult, quarrelsome, and chaotic, but he did not represent active aggression. Apart from the flood of insults with filthy words and some harmless threats, he was not violent.
He was lunar (mentally unstable/bipolar); there were periods when he talked and talked, even in his sleep, then for a time, he would sink into total silence. They would take him to the prison hospital in Tirana, treat him for a few months, but he would do the same things when they brought him back. I never saw him change his behavior; even solitary confinement had no effect; once he was out, he would continue the same old tune. However irresponsible, he had one remedy: Tomor.
When I first noticed this, I was stunned and asked what made him special in ‘Marrok’s’ eyes?! Initially, he didn’t want to tell me, but one day when he had to calm him down, I asked again:
‘I don’t understand, what connects you to ‘Marrok’?’
‘The prison!’
‘We are all in prison, my friend!’
‘We are, but we are not the same!’ he cut me short.
‘Of course, but many of us don’t deserve prison!’
‘Maybe, but everyone has their flaws!’
‘Even ‘Marrok’?’
‘More than anyone!’
As soon as he heard his name mentioned, ‘Marrok’ approached and pulled Tomor aside, while I returned to my books. After some time, Tomor invited me:
‘Have you established embassies with Brazil?’ I teased him, because coffee was the most unavailable product.
‘Dhori invited us!’ he cut in and left.
I followed him to the kitchen, where four men from Korçë and two others were sitting on some bricks blackened with soot. Andon Vanko was roasting coffee in a tin can, and Stavri Qirko was dividing it into some small teacups.
‘Have you found Marco Polo’s treasure?’ I teased again.
‘Dhori’s family visited him!’ explained Ndonkë the tailor.
‘I’m glad they were well, may you be with them soon!’ I wished Gërnjoti, in the capacity of the host, although he had been given twenty-five years after escaping from Burrel prison in sixty-seven.
We made the wish as a custom; after all, who doesn’t dream of freedom, and hope dies last!
‘Amen!’ the others echoed me.
‘You’ve laid out coffee, you jerk, and you didn’t give me any!’ ‘Marrok’ appeared out of nowhere.
‘Come and drink it, man!’ invited Gaqo Menkshi.
‘Go away, you ass-clown, I didn’t ask for your coffee!’ ‘Marrok’ insulted him.
Although from the same neighborhood and with old acquaintance, they hated each other precisely because of neighborhood squabbles.
‘Come on, kiddo!’ Andon Treska tried to calm him.
‘I don’t want any from you either, you stinking a…hole!’ and he burst into curses that no pen could write. Stavri offered him a cup, but he grabbed it and emptied it onto his face:
‘Not from you either, you mule-face!’ and continued cursing.
‘What’s wrong with you, man?’ Dhori intervened.
‘You, you jerk, you’ve screwed me over and you’re drinking my coffee with this disgusting-one and this cow-head here!’ He pointed sometimes at Gaqo, sometimes at Stavri, cursing and swearing.
‘Get out before you drive us crazy!’ Dhori flared up. ‘I invite you for coffee, and you insult my friends! Go break your neck, you ‘Xhepi’!’
‘Marrok’ shook as if in an electric shock, his nostrils flared like a tiger’s snout when preparing to jump on its prey, he spun around himself two or three times, shook his head, stomped his heels like foals digging the ground, and yellow as saffron, he turned to his fellow citizens with the filthiest jargon.
The insults now poured like a hail of cannonballs onto the walls of the besieged fortress:
‘Who are you, you bastards, to give me advice?’ – etc., etc., and he turned to Dhori: – ‘don’t preen yourself, you sh*t-bag, I gave you candy when you were this small! Or I’ll break those teeth of yours, which look like the jaw of Gole’s horse!’ He rolled up his sleeves, pulled out two forearms like iron bars, and clenched his fists like Boboshticë onions, lunging at Dhori.
The absolute boxing champion backed away and gave way, but Andon Vanko, rushed to his father’s defense, and in his anger, could have hit him:
‘Hey ‘Xhepi’ of sh*t, what’s wrong with my dad?’
But Tomor skillfully removed him, said something, and ‘Marrok’ left as suddenly as he had arrived.
‘Leave those books and let’s go out for a coffee!’
The effective intervention reminded me of the first time. After we parted with the men from Korçë, I asked him:
‘How did you manage to neutralize him?’
‘I simply isolated him, until he calmed down.’
‘Strange, he didn’t spare the patriots anything, but he followed you like a lamb.’
‘That’s just the way he is!’
‘I was impressed by this ‘Marrok’ situation…’ I wanted to conclude.
‘Brother, we are all a little ‘Marrok,’ me, you, and the others!’ Tomor added thoughtfully.
‘Maybe!’ I affirmed, just to say something.
‘No question about it! He’s not as crazy as we think; if you find his wires (his sensitive spot), he’ll become a bridge for you.’
‘It was about those wires that I was talking about, how did you find them?’ and I returned to the topic again.
‘How can I tell you, we spent a few days in solitary confinement and…!’
‘Oh come on, many have done solitary confinement with him… and he doesn’t pay them any mind!’
‘True, but they didn’t know how to touch his chords!’ he breathed as if he was about to take off to jump over the fence. ‘Don’t forget, he wasn’t always Marrok either, but life is a struggle!’ he let slip unintentionally.”
“I would be curious to know what he must have been like under normal conditions.”
“More normal than the normal ones and more than many normal people you know!”
“How so?”
“He was a Foreign Intelligence officer.”
“Him?!”
“It’s unbelievable when you see him in this state, but it is true,” he scanned me from beneath his bushy eyebrows and emphasized, perhaps to be believed: “It is more than accurate!”
“And what’s with that fixation? As soon as he hears ‘Xhepi’ (Sadik Premtja), he buzzes as if a hornets’ nest has stung him; does this relate to some issue the people from Korçë know about?” I returned to the topic that interested me.
“No, it’s a different story. But ultimately, it is organically linked to the first one.”
“To whom?”
“To what we talked about! It is precisely because of that reason that he gets so agitated!”
“What are you talking about?!”
“About ‘Xhepi,’ of course!” He narrowed his eyes and continued: “Enver Hoxha has two enemies left who make him tremble, because he is a mouse that dances when the cat is absent, but as soon as he smells them, he runs for the hole.”
“Oh-u-ah, who can count his enemies! Every time they dwindle, he invents others to raise the tension!”
“That’s accurate, but these two play the role of the cat for him.”
“How should I understand that?”
“He hasn’t left any opponent undestroyed, with fabricated and manipulated trials…!”
“We know that!” I interrupted him.
“Certainly! But he couldn’t catch them all, because they left the country and continue their lives abroad.”
“We know this too!”
“No doubt! But my uncle, as an opponent, and Sadik Premtja, as his former comrade, ruined his peace.”
“Man, what are you saying? Why would he care about the diaspora!? He has wiped them out, in due course!”
“That’s what you think, but the facts speak otherwise.”
“What facts are you talking about?” I countered.
“About those dozens of agents he has sent to France, time after time! Have you heard what the returnees say?”
“Of course I have heard!”
“Have you spoken with Ahmet Nivica?”
“I have spoken!”
“He knows a lot, but the day will come when we will hear even more!”
“God willing! But I don’t understand what this has to do with ‘Marrok’?” I interrupted.
“Precisely there is where his downfall begins!”
“For what reason?”
“He was sent specifically to eliminate ‘Xhepi’!”
“He couldn’t do it?”
“He didn’t want to. It’s better to say he self-deconspired!”
“And afterwards?” My curiosity increased.
“Afterwards? He ended up a postal package, with you and me!”
“How, how?!”
“He was one of the most capable agents, perhaps too smart to be one!”
“I don’t understand you?”
“You won’t understand!” He fell silent again.
I tried to penetrate the complicated labyrinths of modern spy networks, but I got badly tangled. No matter how much I strained my mind, what I heard seemed too complicated to swallow. If someone else had told me, I wouldn’t have believed it, but my friend’s seriousness left no room for doubt. Memorie.al
Continues in the next issue
