By SAMI REPISHTI
Part Seven
Sami Repishti: – “In Albania, the communist crime of the past has not been documented or punished; the ‘spiritual cleansing,’ the conscious confession, and the denunciation of ordinary communist criminals has not taken place!” –
‘In the Shadow of Rozafa’
Memorie.al / During the ‘30s and ‘40s of the last century, with the descent of the unstoppable fascist and communist storm over Europe, and sooner or later over the entire world, “fate” seized the Albanian nation by the throat. Like all young people, I found myself at a crossroads where a stand had to be taken, even at the risk of one’s life. At that time, I said “no” to the dictatorship, and I took the road that had no end, a sailor in a wide sea, without shores. The rebel act that almost killed me, liberated me at the same time. I am an eyewitness of life in the fascist and communist hell in Albania, not as a “politician,” a “personality” of Albanian macro-politics, but as a student, as a young man who became aware of his role, in that time and in that place, out of love for the fatherland and the desire for freedom; simply, as a young man with a pronounced sensibility, faithful to himself, to a life with dignity.
Continued from the previous issue
VIII
In these days of confusion, a piece of hopeful news spread like lightning. In a tract distributed by the “Balli Kombëtar” Organization, it was said that; at the beginning of August 1943, a joint meeting of the representatives of the two opposing camps of the resistance against the occupier, had concluded in an agreement (later known as the Mukje Agreement). According to the published text, the resistance forces were uniting in a common front, in the war against the occupier, and the tomorrow of Albania, which was sought to be ethnic, promised to be free and democratic. Most of my friends and I were enthused by this political development, and we hoped that the “Agreement” would be respected by all. Others, usually known by the name “communists,” were more reserved. Their two-year propaganda had presented them as the only element representing the resistance, and this put them in a difficult position.
Their comments, accompanied by a forced smile, were “the details must be seen,” or “we are waiting for instructions from the center.” This wait was not long! A week later, a tract from the National Liberation [front] rejected the “Agreement,” heavily unmasked the other side, branding them as “collaborators of the occupier,” unreservedly opposed the idea of “Ethnic Albania,” and demanded from its members to launch an attack against the “Ballists.” The gap opened by the “communists” was now unclosable. The march toward the clash passed the last obstacle. Without any doubt, the communist ideology with its social program had gained superiority over the national spirit; as a result, the interests of the country had been subjected to the imperative of taking power by force, and the establishment of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
For “us” others, this stance was unforgivable, and a fatal blow to our efforts for understanding. The news confirming the presence of political and organizational “instructors” of the Yugoslav Communist Party increased our agony more and more every day. From the experience of my association with the “communists,” I understood that such fanaticism presented great dangers, not excluding physical attacks against us, their “enemies.” In their mentality, an opponent today was a permanent opponent. Compromise in thoughts was “treason,” and action that did not follow their line of thought was “desertion.” As soon as this line was set, nothing remained but putting the “machinery” into action, full mobilization to destroy morally and politically, and finally, to physically eliminate the “enemy.” The words of the former delegate from the “center,” in our student meeting, began to come to life: “any thought or action that advances the Party line and our struggle is permitted.”
Disturbed by these stances, I decided to conduct my conversation in a friendlier environment. I sought out my cousin of the same age, with whom I had debated many times. Intelligent, idealistic by nature, and always polite, he was the best partner for a debate. We met. I told him how I felt those days and my fear for the further development of events, after the breaking of the “Agreement.” I expressed the conviction that the “Agreement” was a sound basis for rapprochement and coordination of actions until the liberation of the country, that the demand for an “Ethnic Albania” was reasonable and aimed at repairing, after the war, the damages that European diplomacy had brought to our country, and that the union of lost lands was a patriotic duty for everyone. My cousin’s reaction shocked me! Not only did he reject my thesis, which he called “the reactionary spirit of Mukje,” but he insisted on the need for a revolutionary force to solve, once and for all, the problems of our people oppressed “by the bourgeoisie,” and the placement of our country side by side with the new internationalist world, which was being born under the leadership of comrades Tito and Stalin…!
I did not interrupt him. He continued to speak, flushed in the face, with a fire I had not seen before. Again, to my surprise, he spoke about the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the severity and the need to sharpen it to mercilessly suppress the resistance of the “overthrown classes.” “When I pronounce these words,” he continued, “it seems as if I crush them with my feet, I destroy them once and for all. Only the thought of their suppression inspires me, lifts me up, makes me feel that I am something, an instrument for a function, something necessary that the time requires, the country requires, the process of history requires… an element that had to play a role in this process. There is no more uplifting feeling than the conviction that you are ‘someone’ and especially, when I believe that you are in the vanguard of the historical process. To accelerate the rhythm of time, to accelerate the evolution of society, the arrival of the dawn… of better days for all… is there anything else more noble or more inspiring?” I smiled involuntarily. I had no inclination for mockery at that moment. He frightened me with his words.
During my stay in Florence, my cousin had lived a semi-illegal life, tasked by “comrades” to collect suitable books for the education of the “communist” youth, a clandestine library, a service he had performed with passion. Everything had been secret, everything away from the sunlight. Immersed day and night in this activity which, for him, had become the very goal of life, he had entered the tracks of another life, which was justified by illegal work in service of the “communist” cause. Every day lived in this abnormality had strengthened the conviction in him that he lived a new reality, in truth, the only reality he knew and had embraced with passion…! Sitting at the table across from each other, two young men, two cousins who loved each other like brothers, we looked at each other with suspicion, as if we were facing a stranger.
After a relatively long silence, he broke it with a question: “How do you think this people will be liberated once and for all?” I did not answer. In my mind at that moment passed the strong impressions his words left on me and the internal fear that, in front of me, I had my cousin held prisoner in the web of communist propaganda slogans. He was no longer the intelligent student ready for open-minded debates that I knew during our years of shared youth. We were the same age! Before me was a propaganda machine. How much did he believe the “logic” he presented to me? I believe fully! Before me was the cousin who had chosen a path inconceivable for me, but logical and even more, imperative for him. I was convinced that he believed in the justice of his cause, as well as in the methods chosen for the service of the embraced cause.
In front of me stood a young fanatic, transformed by the power of his convictions, unable to listen to criticism or to discuss the justice of the chosen path. I could not stay in silence any longer. He wanted an answer; I desired to speak, to establish contact with this cousin, who seemed to me as if he moved further away every day. Trying to maintain composure and to express myself without passion, I began to explain my conviction that the treatment of the national problem, by him and his comrades, had suffered a disregard in favor of social problems. The Italian occupation was the logical conclusion of European political machinations at the expense of our country and it had been these machinations that reduced our country so much. This was the spirit with which we had grown up together, in our schools with national tradition, and it was this spirit that had thrown both of us into the streets of the city, since the first demonstrations of April 1939.
Projects for social reforms were something new for us, not the essence of our thoughts, but a need that arose from our dedication to building a “New Albania.” The war against the occupier and the freedom of Albania remained again at the head of the duties we had undertaken. Moving on to international events, I pointed out that the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition was an alliance imposed by the needs of the war against the Axis forces, and despite the diametrically opposed systems of the allies, an admirable degree of cooperation and mutual aid had been reached before the common enemy, and I posed the question: why was such cooperation impossible in Albania? He was not moved! I spoke to him with a pleading tone, expressing the fear that our relations had worsened to the point that we did not understand each other, and that we found ourselves in front of each other “like two strangers!”
He interrupted me: “The alliance you speak of,” – he told me, – “is a necessary political opportunism in today’s war against the Axis. It is a tactic of our proletarian camp. But we do not forget that the final liberation war is ahead of us. The triumphant march of the international proletariat is unstoppable. Our strategy does not change. With the end of the war, we will take the initiative, we will decide the time and place of the clash. For this, we prepare every day.” Not a word about Albania, or about the war against the occupier. I asked him how it was possible to speak about a future that they, the “communists,” would forge themselves, “in the time and place” chosen by them, without considering that in Albania other political forces also exist? He cut me short: “The victory is ours, and there is no force that stops us. As for the ‘other forces,’ we will crush them!”
-This is your struggle for a better place? – I asked him with anger. – “Yes! – he said resolutely. – The harsh struggle, with blood or without blood, but which ensures us the power first, and later, the final victory.” – Which victory? – “Of our Communist Party, of the proletariat, of the working class.” – Without the freely expressed will of the local population? – “That comes later… with the development of a new democracy, not bourgeois, of the proletarian democracy, led by our working class…”!
For every minute that passed, our conversation became more like two monologues than an understandable dialogue. His phraseology sounded foreign, completely foreign, something from a world inconceivable to me. Again, not a word about the freedom of the country, about the war against the occupier. Clearly, our separation was complete, and I saw no way of rapprochement with the cousin and the close companion of my life! I stood up, wished him a good day, but without shaking his hand. He did not move from his place, seeing me off with a smile where contempt was not hidden and which closed any possibility for further debates.
Only two days later, under the darkness of the night, my cousin entered my house with a quick step, this time unannounced. Without waiting for our question, he explained: “The fascist police are following me. I left the house. Can I spend the night here, with you?” Father was moved! Despite the pathological hatred he nurtured for “atheist communists,” “Yes,” he said, “stay here until you find a safe refuge!” He calmed down. We did not exchange any thoughts, except for the usual conversation in a family circle. After dinner, wishing “good night”!, everyone went to bed. It must have been after twelve midnight, when a sudden raid of the house by the fascist police shook the sleep and the quiet of the night in our house. Before they entered inside the house, they smashed the large entrance door with the bed of a military truck, from which about thirty military and Italian police descended, accompanied by an Albanian-speaking spy.
My mother, with rare courage, took the cousin by the arm and, from the back door, passed him through the garden, from where he left into the darkness. With the entry of the military, the family gathered in one room. The strangers lined us up with our backs to the wall. Parents and children followed with fear the movements of that band of fascists, who overturned everything, in search of something they could not find. We heard the dirty insults and the curses of the armed fascists. Two of them stood guard with weapons in hand before us. For more than an hour, in nightgowns, we waited for the conclusion of the “operation.” An officer grabbed my father by the arm, pushed him with force into the other room, closed the door, and began to shout. Father’s voice was not heard, but it was understood from the shouts of the officer that he was beating him without pause. Later, father returned deeply shaken. For an elderly Muslim cleric, such treatment was more than could be carried on one’s back.
Mother and the children looked at him with fear and pain. After a detailed search, the officer gave the signal, and everyone left. We were again free to speak. The parents embraced us, and we wished each other good night. But in their room, the light was not extinguished. They did not sleep anymore. That night, in the early hours of the morning, mother woke us with her screams. We ran. In bed lay father, half-paralyzed. The doctor told us that he had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, caused by tension. A few days later, my father died!
Since the occupation of April 7th, father lived tortured by the dilemma posed to him those days as a parent, between the patriotic duty of the war against the Italian occupiers on one side, and the fear caused by the spread of communist ideas in our country and their activity, on the other. As a cleric without doubts, he repeated with conviction: “I want to die before the communists win!” Nevertheless, when my “communist” cousin sought refuge in his house, he accepted him! During the years of the fascist occupation, my father, now an old parent experienced in my activity a dream of his own, inseparable from the daily fear of losing his son, a fatherly fear that did not allow him to enjoy a good day for four years in a row. Now fate wanted him to fall victim to fascism, for the act of self-sacrifice. Often I thought what he would say, if he could speak today about the manner of his death.
As I knew him, I am convinced that he would not curse the bad fate he suffered, and in case of repetition, he would not have acted differently. Certainly, he would not have provoked such a death; but when fate required it, he accepted it without hesitation. After the burial of father, I felt a great void in my heart. His loss, the painful sight of mother, and the responsibility of the family proved to be very heavy for my inexperienced shoulders. Alone, lying on a sofa and with eyes fixed on the ceiling of the room, I waited for the approach of night from the window opened on that late September evening. Without noticing at all, I felt a deep, irrepressible need for music. Despite the shame I felt for this need that night, and which I tried to hide, the sounds of light music, after the funeral, sounded like a divine hymn for my scorched heart. Music… like the language of the gods, when silence torments us.
For several years, father and son had forged a connection based on love and respect. Intimidated by the religious conservatism of father, but attracted by his persistence and steadfastness in his convictions, I did not manage to believe like him, without conditions and to accept without reservation every religious lesson he gave me in the evening, at home. He was worried! Nevertheless, I was educated by daily experiences to accept that it was completely natural for individuals to hold unshakable convictions in fundamental principles, the basis of their thought and action, as well as to defend them with the necessary courage, regardless of the opposite opinions embraced by the majority. This was also the difficult position of the clerics of our country, in the years of the war and the growth of atheist influence in society. My father left behind a priceless legacy. The immediate acceptance of the request for “refuge” by the persecuted cousin, despite his convictions as a cleric of the uncompromising struggle against materialistic atheism, showed the mental framework that guided his acts in life.
His religious respect for the sanctity of human life pushed him to risk himself and the family to save a young man with communist convictions. Moreover, he was also traditional. The “guest” knocks at the door, seeks help and finds refuge, because “it is our custom” to be hospitable! It was this concept accepted without hesitation that raised father to the level of embracing sacrifice, for the sake of a principle he accepted a priori. His gesture made me understand also the essence of the strength of tradition in Albanian society, for centuries in a row, in a place where authority and the law imposed by it had been missing. Tradition, this voluntary acceptance of the mores and customs of our ancestors in our daily life, without written rules, this code of folk culture and the stances held in different situations, has played a main role in the social cohesion of our country, as long as the created balance was not broken by “foreign” interventions, whether in the form of invasions, or with forced exposures to influences coming from “outside,” and diametrically opposed to those of our country.
The folk expression that “the foreigner has ruined us” was appropriate! The next day, for the sake of father’s memory, I went to the mosque for the Bajram prayer. The religious ceremony moved me even more, because this time it was not he who led it; it was a young imam. I do not remember anything from his sermon, nor did I have the desire to listen with attention. My mind was at home, with the family that was mourning. But the rhythm of the prayer, with the bowing and rising, made me feel part of the group all around me. Lined up next to each other, the long rows of believers moved with a solemn rhythm, and reminded me at that moment of the beauty of the field in summer and the bowing of the stalks of ripe wheat under the breeze of the light wind that blows, and the wheat fields look as if they were sea waves. At that moment, I saw the believers who prayed simple worshippers of the Creator who filled the places of worship, bowing before the altar, as if they were drawn by a life-giving and irresistible source. “They,” I thought, the believers, are happy in their simplicity…! / Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
