By Filip Guraziu
The seventh part
Continues from last issue
New Year’s apples
Memorie.al / An episode that Erina (the girl) told me, after her return from a tourist visit to Cuba, reminded me of the lack of apples in Albania at the end of the 70s. Among other things, from “socialist Cuba”, the girl told me about a random conversation with some elderly Cubans who, when they realized that the girl was Albanian, immediately said: “Albania? How, how, cognac Skenderbeu y manzanas” (‘Albania? Yes, yes, ‘Skënderbeu: apple’ cognac). Albania, at that time, was already known in Cuba, only from the export of cognac and apples…!
In October 1975 (Justi and I), we announced our engagement and in the atmosphere of enthusiasm of that period, with our company, we planned the celebration of the New Year, 1976 at my house, in Shkodër.
A week before the turn of the year, we agreed with the participants about the organization of the banquet. Each couple undertook the preparation of a type of food, which they combined with others (as per our opinion), while I, as the organizer, also undertook the supply of drinks and fruits.
The most difficult problem was the provision of fruit, which was lacking at that time. A few days before the night of the banquet, I became interested in the possibility of going to the market for the apples that the state usually sells on the occasion of the New Year’s holiday.
Through a friend of mine, whose father worked as a driver in the commerce Company, Shkodër, I was informed that on December 31, the state had ordered the shooting of apples in the market for sale.
I immediately went to Sam’s (the fruit and vegetable seller in the area near my house) and got confirmation that on Wednesday, December 31, at 7.30, the sale of apples starts in her store.
On Wednesday, December 31, in the dead of the long winter night, around 5:00, I took the first turn at Sam’s store. I had thick ears, because it was very cold. After a while, others started coming in line. The closer the opening time of the store got, the longer the queue…!
Idle conversations, barcaletas, endless discussions about sports and about the “useless ignominy” that the American imperialists and the Soviet revisionists are spreading in the world… time passed.
It was 7:00 a.m., the salesman came and started setting up the work environment for the sale of apples, with which the store had been supplied the night before. At 7:30 a.m., the sales counter was opened, and they told me that the sale was starting, but we were surprised, because the sale of apples at the counter did not start!
Through the windows, we found that the door behind the store was systematically opened, and people entered the store buying apples, without queuing. I justified the saleswoman to some extent; perhaps, I reasoned, those who shopped endlessly were the “personalities” of the time, and Sam could not do otherwise!
But the number of people without queues was never ending…! I started to worry, are we running out of apples from the store, from the sale without a queue? Lucky for us, we were waiting in line since 5:00 p.m., we were left with nothing!
My tension had increased due to the injustice, at the moment I decided: I waited for the weighing of the apples for the customer without queuing, from the back door, and as soon as the saleswoman turned her back on me and handed over the apples to be weighed, I put both hands inside the counter, took out the scale.
I had blocked the sale! When the seller came back and didn’t find the scales, he appeared awake, and addressed me with a high voice: – Well done, that you took the scales, because this kind of sale was no longer going on!
He quickly turned back, shot them out without a row and bolted from inside the door! Just like that the regular sale started.
“That day, I can never forget, I was ‘very happy’; I finally bought the apples, for the New Year, 1976”!
Exemption from work in education
The initial enthusiasm for the Chinese model, of the road to building socialism, was followed by the “ideological cooling” of 1971. This situation required the introduction of the “enlightened minds” of the Albanian Marxist-Seleninist philosophy and for this purpose, a very “ideologically elevated” group, gathered around the Albanian “Leader of Math”, wrote works after works, which were translated into many languages of the world and distributed for free to “the oppressed proletarians of the capitalist world”!
A study that was extremely successful, so much so that even Enver himself arrived with enthusiasm, was the work of friend Foto Çami (professor of Materialist Philosophy at the State University of Tirana), entitled: “Development of the class struggle in socialism”.
I remember that in order to honor Comrade Foto to the maximum, for that “extraordinary” study, Comrade Enver, when he mentioned Foto Çami, did not use the expression “comrade Foto”, but only the word “Professor”!
However, at the time of the “love with the Chinese brothers”, the Albanian communists learned that a very dangerous virus, called “bureaucracy”, attacked in a special way the intellectuals, who stayed in the office, studied, and that preventive therapy, what saved me from that virus was the transfer from the office to the production base.
So, for “the worst”, the great professor, Foto Çam, was transferred to the position of the First Secretary of the Party, in Kruja, with the order to implement in practice the theory of class war, which he had broken down theoretically, so good beautiful, in his work.
I don’t know how, but the transfer of the “professor” to Kruja, at that time, gave me a bad feeling, and time proved that I was not wrong…!
Before the end of the 1974-1975 school year, I found out (indirectly, from a friend who had contacts in the Party Committee, Shkodër) that a list of 150 names of teachers with “bad” political biographies was being prepared, for exclusion from education.
It occurred to me that I would also be on that list, but when I didn’t know how to take care of myself, what did I do? To be done, what to be done, I thought, and I didn’t bother myself so much…!
Before the beginning of the New Year, school year 1975-1976, we found out that, in Kruja, the “professor”, friend Foto, for the practical application of his theory on the development of the class war, had dismissed many teachers from education. ..!
In that period, Shkodra was satisfied only with transfers, to more distant areas, from the city, of the politically affected element. I moved to Kaçë – Naraç School. (Words circulated that Comrade Prokop Murra, the First Secretary in Shkodër, had not followed the practice of the “professor”, for the exclusion of teachers from Education)
I spent two years working at the Kaçë – Naraç School. Waking up at 5.00, leaving home at 5.30, leaving by bus at 5.45, getting off the bus at 7.00, arriving at school (walking) at 7.40, starting class at 8.00.
So was the return in the afternoon, to Shkodër.
I was happy with my work and my friends, I got married and started my family, but one day, at the beginning of 1977, I was honestly “worried”, I received the news that the “professor”, friend Foto, had been transferred to work in Shkodër! I guessed how my work was going too…!
On July 30, 1977, we had great joy in the family; we had a daughter, Livie! On August 16, 1977, we had great sadness in the family; I was fired with a political motive from my job in Education!
I remember that, while waiting in line, to receive the order of leave from education, in the Executive Committee of the District, I joined the teacher, the late Gjergj Abati, he had also received a letter of presentation.
One after the other, we entered the relevant office, where the secretary of the Committee, Angjelin Kola, communicated to us the leave from work, with a political motive, and at the same time, handed us a letter stating where we had started our new work. I was a worker at the Druni Combine in Shkodër.
The punishment they gave us was very severe, but we tried to hold our own, especially in front of others, with some optimistic jokes and headed to a coffee shop.
I was psychologically and physically prepared to cope with any situation, but I had a hard time communicating my punishment to my family, and it seems that the late Gjergj Abati understood my situation because suddenly they said: “Filip, today you are coming to bread in your house”, and immediately broke away from me, bought two bottles of wine.
We went home, where my mother and Justin (my wife) were waiting for us impatiently, and they talked, as if with gas, I communicated to them the order to leave with a political motive, as a sad event, but that there was a kind of solution…and, that God does it well, and without waiting for an answer, I continued: “Make us good pancakes, because you’ve got a vein, let’s get through this day as easily as possible”.
We had lunch together, we drank wine, we tried to create an atmosphere…, but in the interior of our souls the worry of the future weighed down, because the experience of life under the communist dictatorship had taught us that often punishments of a political nature could not be stopped….
For the bad luck of Livia, the baby who was only two weeks old, her daily food was not nana’s milk, but yogurt with rice juice… (The consequence of the strong psychic shock interrupted nana’s milk of Livy)
On September 1, I started working in the box assembly department, in Druni Combine, Shkodër. The church decided not to return home, without exceeding the work rate, to receive at least 200 (old) ALL for day.
For this reason, in the initial period, in order to reach the target, I stayed behind the working hours, but for my bad luck, after two months, the rate increased by 20%, which demoralized me.
During those days, in a conversation with a friend of mine in the field of sports, the well-known athlete Pjetër Ujka, who worked at the Druni Combine, I received the proposal to change the work sector; from the assembly of crates to cutting bodies, for paper production, for cement bags.
I accepted immediately, because I also liked the fact that the work would be done in the third shift…! There were three workers, one would bring the bodies, with physical push (with arms), and to the band saw and the other two would cut them with a saw.
Due to my lack of experience in working with saws, I preferred the porter’s work that is, bringing the bodies closer together. We started work at around 9:00 p.m., worked without a single minute of rest and at a high pace and completed the task for 4 hours, so that, around 01:00 a.m., the next day, we were asleep.
On the occasion of the qualification exams for the company’s electricians, I also participated. Theoretically, I was well prepared from university physics, but I also had the experience of practical application thanks to teaching in education, which influenced the commission, which gave me the fourth category as an electrician!
My goal, new to work, was to work as an electrician. I tried to find a job as an electrician in the company where I worked, but to no avail. The year of working in the body dismemberment sector passed, and one day, I took the initiative and asked for a meeting with the “professor”, friend Foto Çami, who continued to be the first Secretary of the Party Committee in Shkodër.
Thanks to the late Zydi Hasan, his personal secretary, the meeting took place the next day, in the “professor’s” office. I had taken with me the big basketball bag, filled to the brim with sports newspapers, where it was written about my merits, on the basketball court, and as soon as I entered the office, the “professor” asked me:
– “What do you have in that bag”?!
– I have the “People’s Sports” newspapers, which testify to my merits in the basketball field, which is my answer.
– “Leave them where they are, because I am aware of your merits, friend Zydi has given me complete information…”!
And it continued… (Leaving no time for me to start applying for employment as an electrician)
– “With these results that you have achieved in your life, you deserve to return to education, but what can I do to the opinion”?!
He thought for a few seconds and turned to his secretary:
– “Comrade Zydi, with my order, Filipi should start working as an accountant in the finance sector, because it suits him, as he has a degree in mathematics”! That was the end of the meeting.
Ironically, the “professor” who had ordered the leave of absence from work in teacher education, for political reasons, changed the course of my life that day. I started working as a sector accountant, in Bushat Agricultural Enterprise. Memorie.al
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