Memorie.al / The fate of a family and their escape from dictatorial Albania filled the front pages of Western newspapers of the time. Isabela Islami, whom everyone called Bela, her brother Klement, and sister Zamira, are three individuals who left a mark on the history of the years of Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship and his successor, Ramiz Alia.
Bela and the others were in the prime of their youth. They lived in Tirana. Their parents hailed from families that opposed the regime and had suffered the consequences of the dictatorship and class struggle. But with time, the old wounds caused by state police repression seemed to have closed. Like all Albanian families, they led a modest life: the parents worked, while the children went to school – at least until high school. Due to their “biographical problems,” they were denied the right to university studies.
The Story Begins with Their Brother, Klement
In 1975, at age 19, Klement was a senior at the “Petro Nini Luarasi” high school in Tirana. One April day, among friends, he had the “wrong” idea to make a joke against the regime. Almost all the children of the high-ranking party leadership – the “Blloku” children – studied there. For “revolutionary vigilance,” as the universal surveillance was called, it was natural for types like Klement to be under constant watch.
Klement was handcuffed in class, before the eyes of his peers. During the investigation, despite being just a boy, he did not escape physical and psychological torture. However, the judges – perhaps out of mercy or the realization they were sentencing an innocent – did not send him to the Spaç mine camp (a place Dante would have described as Hell). Instead, he had “luck”: he was confined for three years in the Elbasan Psychiatric Hospital.
In Elbasan, patients were tortured in “scientific” ways, experimented on with various sedative doses and electroshock therapy. When he was released in 1978, weakened and exhausted, he joined his family, who no longer lived in Tirana. Because of him, they had been declared “undesirable” and interned in the village of Çermë in Lushnjë. Çermë was a “Gulag” where the regime isolated opponents. They lived in a shack and worked as laborers from dawn till dusk for a pittance.
The Dream of Escape
For years, Klement worked in agriculture alongside his sisters and parents, enduring humiliation and the fact that they could not leave the village even for a medical visit without permission. They were consoled by the thought that their 8-year internment would eventually end. When it finally did, their request to return to Tirana was denied indefinitely.
For over a year, Klement tried to convince his sisters to escape. At first, Bela and Zamira thought it was madness. But Klement insisted their fate was in their own hands. Their elderly father supported the idea; their mother, who had herself, experienced political prison, hesitated only out of fear that they might be caught, but eventually agreed.
The Impossible Border
Escaping by land was nearly impossible due to checkpoints, the “forbidden zone” (20km from the border), and the vigilance of local villagers. There was also the Kloni – a 3-meter-high barbed-wire fence. Touching the wires tripped an electric alarm in the border post. Parallel to it was the “soft belt,” a 4-meter strip of tilled earth designed to catch footprints.
“We will go by sea,” Klement told his sisters. “We are all strong swimmers.” They chose Saranda, the southernmost city. From school maps, they knew Corfu was about 10km away. If they reached Ksamil, the distance dropped to 2-3km, but Ksamil was a restricted military zone.
August 1, 1984: The Long Swim
They chose August 1984, calculating that the Los Angeles Olympics would distract the guards. Having been “de jure” released from internment, they obtained permission for a short holiday. Their father saw them off at the village square with only a wave to avoid suspicion.
In Saranda, they found a small rocky bay known as “Pllakat.” At 9:30 PM, after the powerful coastal searchlight went off (they had timed its intervals), the three siblings hugged and entered the sea. Bela was 30, Klement 28, and Zamira 27. Under the moonlight, they swam toward the lights of Corfu. Bela swam in the middle, with the others on either side to encourage her.
In the open sea, powerful currents separated them – a variable they hadn’t foreseen. They stayed in touch through vocal calls, shouting a long “Ooooo!” to locate one another. As dawn approached, exhaustion turned their heads to lead and their eyelids to stone. Bela began to hallucinate, seeing a man with a dog walking on water.
Tragedy and Freedom
At 9:00 AM on August 2, 1984, an exhausted Bela approached an anchored yacht. The owner, an Italian, pulled her aboard. Minutes later, they found Zamira, half-dead and nearly drowning. But Klement was gone.
The yacht and port authorities searched for hours, then days. The sisters screamed his name, hoping he had just fallen asleep or was too weak to shout. But Klement – who had survived prison, the asylum, and internment – could not survive the final challenge. The sea never gave up his body.
The Aftermath
While the Western press hailed their heroism, official Albania remained silent. In December 1984, the sisters gained political asylum in the USA and settled in Detroit. Once they mastered English, they joined the Voice of America (VOA) Albanian section. Their voices became the “Voice of Freedom” for Albanians back home.
Two months after the escape, the regime retaliated by interning their elderly parents in the remote mountains of Puka. Every evening at 6:00 PM, the parents would lock their shack and huddle around a radio to hear their daughters’ voices on VOA. Their father died in internment in 1988. Their mother finally reached America in 1990, just as the regime was collapsing.
Legacy
Bela Islami returned to Albania in 1993 as a journalist accompanying former US President Jimmy Carter. Zamira, however, has never found the strength to return to the land of her trauma. Every August 2, the family celebrates their freedom and mourns the brother who gave his life for it./Memorie.al
