“When the party secretary told me: ‘Why are you going to the city? Your comrades are harvesting wheat in the [voluntary] action, where the Party and Comrade Enver call them, while you wander about; they are fighting in Vietnam,’ I…”/ Reflections of the writer from Vlora.

Memorie.al / I were a student and were in the village for the long summer holidays. In this case, the word “holidays” is useless, because in the village, since its creation, they have never known what holidays are. My father sent me to the city (Vlorë) for some errands and gave me permission to stay for two or three days at the beach. I set off from home and, after an hour of walking, I arrived at the center of the locality.

Sitting on a curb between the road and the only social club there, I waited for a car. Suddenly, a middle-aged man accompanied by two younger males, with an extremely military and fierce demeanor, came and stood over me.

It was the secretary of the bureau of the united cooperative, a discharged officer whom the Party had brought from Tirana to “revolutionize” and develop the village. For this purpose, he had been granted unlimited power.

“What are you doing here? Where are you from? Where are you going?…” – he asked with pure arrogance, without even waiting for me to return an answer.

And again, he asked me:

“How old are you, you lazybones?”

“Twenty,” I managed to answer.

“You insolent brat, we were younger than that when we were fighting tooth and nail against Hitler and the traitors…! Why are you sitting here? What are you doing here?”

I found a moment to tell him that I was waiting for a car to go to the city.

“Why are you going to the city? Do you know where your comrades are? They are harvesting wheat, they are hoeing corn…! They are in the [voluntary] action, where the Party and Comrade Enver call them, while you wander about! Do you know that your comrades in ‘Veitnam’ (he said Veitnam and not Vietnam) are giving their lives in the war against fierce American imperialism? It is written all over your face that you are a piece of a lazybones. But, surely, you also have ‘cabbage in your head’ [subversive thoughts]. You have bourgeois thoughts. And what is this book you have?” – and he snatched the book from my hand.

It was a novel by Dumas, in French, which I had taken with me to read during those two or three days I would spend at the beach. While I was overcome by fear and weakness, he looked the book over and under, and since he could not read it, he asked me in full rage:

“It’s not in Albanian?! What devil’s language is this?”

“French,” I barely uttered the single word.

“You don’t like Albanian? You like the language of the bourgeoisie. You should be arrested right on the spot. Wait; let me see your pants?”

At that time, in the cities, there were a few reckless youths who followed the fashion of the day; when the groups of “revolutionary youth” caught them, they would rip and tear their trousers [if they were bell-bottoms]. One of the companions whispered in his ear that my pants were not fashionable (they truly weren’t).

“Comrade R., they are not bourgeois breeches,” he reported.

And so, quite by chance, I escaped physical abuse right there in the middle of the road. However, the psychological and spiritual violation had already been fully committed.

“Whose son are you?” the secretary asked like a madman.

When I told him my father’s name, his face soured and he said:

“Hmph, your father was wealthy. Due to the Party’s generosity, he escaped being labeled a kulak. But we know well that he is ‘dissatisfied.’ He has ‘stains on his biography.’ And you will walk in his footsteps. But if you wag your tail, the Party will cut off your head, just like all the enemies.”

“Kulak,” “dissatisfied,” “stains on the biography,” “reactionary,” “class enemy,” “bourgeois,” “enemy contingent,” “liberal”… O God, what terrifying terms! They froze your heart with fear.

While I was trying to pull myself together, I watched the secretary walk away with a nervous and furious gait. Yet, I remained wounded.

I had not long ago read Chekhov’s “Ward No. 6.” I hadn’t quite understood Gromov then. But in those moments, I felt completely like Gromov.

And so, from the time I was twenty, my life began to be haunted. From then on, even the most precious thing – my homeland – began to darken for me. It was ruled by a handful of ignorant but all-powerful men. They surrounded my homeland with barbed wire and made its inhabitants miserable, stuffing them into bunkers.

I felt homeless.

And then I decided to escape, to run as far as possible from my country-turned-prison. Or I would kill myself. But what would happen to my relatives after my escape (it mattered little if I survived, was caught, or killed at the border)? An endless calvary of suffering and persecution awaited them. And so, I did not leave. But I didn’t kill myself either. Certainly, I wasn’t that brave.

And for decades, I remained in the midst of violence, persecution, and spiritual desolation. The ignorant, the crippled [morally], the bullies, and the cruel were everywhere: above my head, before my eyes, behind my back, to my left and my right. They controlled everything about me: my movements, my clothes, my haircut, my food, my speech, my thoughts, and my dreams. The fierce dictatorship had absolute control over my entire being and life.

It bloodied and mangled my youth, my energy, my talent…! It killed my loves…! It imprisoned my thoughts, my feelings, and my soul. To save what I had left, I decided to flee that asphyxiating and murderous reality and hide in the world of books. It was the only escape left to me.

Thus, I found shelter in the reality full of air and light of Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Balzac, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekhov, Yesenin, Migjeni, Kadare, Jakov Xoxa, Hugo, Maupassant, Stendhal, London, Galsworthy, Sholokhov, and others./Memorie.al