By Shkëlqim Abazi
Part Twenty-Eight
Memorie.al / I were born on December 23, 1951, in the black month of a black time, under the blackest communist regime. On September 23, 1968, the sadistic chief interrogator, Llambi Gegeni, the ignorant investigator Shyqyri Çoku, and the cruel prosecutor Thoma Tutulani, mutilated me at the Internal Affairs Branch in Shkodër. They split my head, blinded one eye, deafened one ear, and after breaking several of my ribs, half of my molars, and the thumb of my left hand, they sent me to court on October 23, 1968. There, the wretched Faik Minarolli gave me a ten-year political prison sentence. After they cut my sentence in half because I was still a minor, a sixteen-year-old, they sent me to the political camp of Reps on November 23, 1968. From there, on September 23, 1970, I was transferred to the Spaç camp, where on May 23, 1973, during the revolt of the political prisoners; four martyrs were sentenced to death and executed by firing squad: Pal Zefi, Skënder Daja, Hajri Pashaj, and Dervish Bejko.
On June 23, 2013, the Democratic Party lost the elections, a perfectly normal process in the democracy we aspire to have. But on October 23, 2013, the General Director of the “Renaissance” Government issued order No. 2203, dated 23.10.2013, for the “Dismissal from duty of a police employee.” So, Divine Providence intertwined with the neo-communist “Renaissance” Providence, and precisely on the 23rd, I was replaced, no more and no less, by a former State Security operative from Burrel Prison. What could be more telling than that?! The former political prisoner is replaced by his former persecutor!
The Author
SHKËLQIM ABAZI
R E P S I
(The Forced Labor Camp)
Memoir
These wandering types would dissolve like salt in water, appearing one moment in camps, the next in the isolation cells of the Internal Affairs Branches. Just like salt, they left behind the trail of their filth, which was not hard to spot. From the pale color of his face, I immediately figured that he must have just returned from some macabre “service,” where he had surely dug someone’s grave, tricking them into confessing to fabricate crimes, or had served as a false witness against someone. Hatred was boiling inside me, but I tried to avoid him.
“Sali Nela, get lost! I haven’t seen your face, but I know your deeds well! There’s no prisoner who doesn’t know your filth and your villainy! So get away from me or you’ll curse the day you were born!” I threatened him, and my mind was racing for a solution.
“Oh-h, I’ve dealt with plenty of chumps like you!” he emboldened himself. “You think you’re going to scare me?” With one hand, he continued to caress my cheek, while with the other, he began to masturbate. “I’m not used to scabby crows like you, you bitch! I want partridge meat! My little birds come to me first, and then to others!” And he continued to masturbate.
As my brain searched for a way out, as if in a hazy vision, the cocky figure of Muharrem Dyli appeared before me, with his arms crossed over his chest. In the depths of my skull, his words thundered: “This is a jungle, my friend…. if he provokes you, kill him first, because if you don’t, he’ll do it to you… listen to your brother!”
I made my decision. I emptied the shovel of dirt into the pit. With the speed of lightning, I raised it high, and then brought it down on the head of the person masturbating on top of me with all my might. A dull thud, like the muffled echo of a sack of bran being beaten with a stick, was followed by a sharp shriek that echoed throughout the entire laboratory space. The hit man collapsed backward onto the pile of fresh dirt, writhing, as I continued to strike and strike blindly.
The sound of metal clanging on gravel mixed with the screams and leaped over the high dome of the building, and the echo returned to me, multiplied. My ears were ringing from these overwhelming noises, which perhaps incited my animal instinct. My eyes blurred, and I continued to strike, hitting only air. From the position I was in, it was impossible for me to hit accurately because the length of the handle was limited. I tried to get out of the pit, but it was too deep; I couldn’t reach the top. So I extended my arm further until, by the sound, I could tell it must be hitting a human body.
Anger had eclipsed the orbits of my brain, my feelings were numb, and my logic didn’t work. Suddenly, from a self-defender, I had turned into a predator, instinctively and unconsciously ready to tear apart any similar being that came before me in a fight for survival. Whenever I remember those moments, I envision the human and the beast, the similarities and differences between them. The conclusion is a bit confusing to me: the dividing line between one state and the other is not all that clear; only reason makes the difference. Strip a man of his logic and you automatically get the cruelest animal.
In the analysis that I’ve tried to make of this case, I have managed to find the invisible sides of human character, or the human beastliness. Incite this vice in the man-beast, stimulate the primitive self, and you have created a modern Cain. These methods are used to instrumentalize people, to incite them to a state of savagery against each other. To a civilized person, as the most mentally perfect being, but also the most spiritually manipulable, juxtapose reason with unreason, and in a way, you have injected them with a drug, you have induced savagery, and unexpectedly turned them into an anthropophagus.
This explains the fact of how they incite strangers, how they force a soldier in a trench to become a murderous instrument; to hate with all their soul and strength the opponent in the next trench across from them, without knowing at all who they are or what they are like? Without ever personally clashing, without ever exchanging a mutual insult, without ever having individual contradictions. In the end, without a drop of human compassion, without the most minimal sense of mercy, they pierce each other’s bodies with the sharp tip of a bayonet, as if they were mannequins.
Again, to explain this phenomenon, the deficiency of intellect or the most prominent vice of the man-beast comes to my aid. It is enough to stimulate negative synergy in an individual and you have eclipsed their logic! Touch their sick ego, and you have transformed a reasonable human being into the wildest subject, into a Minotaur with explosive dangerousness, who undoubtedly deserves to be eliminated from the face of the earth. Under the impetus of these murderous instincts, the man-beast eliminates his own kind, brother kills brother, father kills son, mother kills her child, wife kills husband and vice versa, and this thousand-headed medusa even feels proud of the triumph over its kind, as if fulfilling a divine, almost sacred obligation. This is how Cains are born!
The sharp shrieks, accompanied by the piercing screams of the fallen man, attracted the attention of others in the nearby halls. They, startled, rushed inside and were talking loudly. But I couldn’t understand anything they were saying. A shadow approached me, extending its hand, but I couldn’t make out who it was. I grabbed the outstretched hand, pulled myself up, and with the help of my knees resting on the side walls of the pit, I managed to get out. As soon as I reached the surface, I grabbed the first handle my hand found and brought it down on the prone man who was still screaming. The tool happened to be a pickaxe with a sharp check.
When the tip of the pickaxe was pointed at his face, the person covered in blood, lying at my feet, squinted his eyes. Oh, God, what a pair of bulging eyes, torn apart by terror, yet at the same time full of hatred and pleading until supplication! A toidho, the eyes of an ox waiting to be slaughtered. Never again in my life have I come across such a sparkle. Those glassy eyes, terrorized to the point of horror, stopped me for a moment, with the pickaxe in the air. But under the impetus of animal instinct, I brought it down on that disfigured face, without a hint of remorse. The disgust mixed with resentment had locked all the doors of my reason, blind rage and the unprecedented insult had made me lose all logic.
The pickaxe slammed and sank completely! Then the sound of shattering glass pierced my brain. “I cracked his skull!” I screamed, satiated with my crime, then opened my hands and let go of the handle that until that moment, I had been gripping frantically. “Lift him up, put him somewhere, with his body straight!” someone ordered. “In a coffin, that’s where that scumbag belongs! Better yet, bury the carcass in this pit I dug! Cover him so he doesn’t stink up the world!” I thought I had spoken, but I had only been thinking to myself.
Under my feet, a bloody body writhed as if they were turning a slaughtered lamb on its side to blow air into its skin and strip it more easily. But the lamb was alive! It was still thrashing and hadn’t given up its soul yet! The screams continued to fill the dome. Anyway, he had survived. In the final moment, someone had shoved me, the pickaxe had deviated and had plunged into a wooden crate, from which came the sound of breaking glass. Undoubtedly, some sanitary equipment had been martyred instead of the pederast. The victim escaped final elimination unscathed, and I also escaped a certain re-sentencing. I have not been able to find out who the double savior was even after forty-three years. But in any case, I would have committed that crime like a true cannibal, without any pangs of conscience.
And I did commit it! In those moments, I was completely convinced that I was taking the most righteous action. My consciousness was not functioning. They grabbed me by the arms and led me somewhere. Who they were and where they were going, I didn’t know. I was stumbling along like a sleepwalker, following the demons that had taken over me. Somewhere, they threw me on a log bench. In front of me, an endless void. A kind of blood-colored curtain, stretched by I don’t know what invisible hand, crimsoned my vision. Maybe, it was really blood! But it was so, so much! An entire sea, a globe, even a whole red sky and galaxy! Never before had I seen so much blood! Blood everywhere, flowing and flowing from cosmic holes.
I remembered myself as a child, with my childish and adolescent fights that usually ended with a slap in the face, or at most a speck of blood under my nose. As if through a fog, my gaze was absorbed by a distant and unreachable red fire, a kind of ray projected onto a gigantic screen. The feeling that all this was unfolding on a canvas of an abstract scene, in a theater of the absurd, and that it had no connection to me, overwhelmed me. I broke down out of breath, exhausted and completely apathetic. My eyes were burning from the distant flame that came from the ethereal screen, while in my ears, screams and shrieks buzzed relentlessly, as if they were signals from the afterlife.
They shook me by the shoulders. My whole body trembled, as if an electric current had passed through me. Under the effect of the electroshock, I opened my eyes. And what did I see! I was on the bench in Qazim’s smithy! The fire was not a figment of my imagination, but real! Qazim’s forge was blazing, while Qazim himself and the others were sitting thoughtfully, as if numb. Look, Qazim’s pipe was sparkling and smoking! So, they were real people, with flesh and bones, not movie actors. Someone handed me a lit cigarette and put it to my lips. I inhaled it greedily, my lungs filled with smoke. Smoke against smoke! “Jee-hee-jee”! Poison against poison! About two months earlier, I had quit smoking, but the moment I inhaled it, it was as if I had smoked my last one five minutes ago. That cigarette, taken greedily in those dramatic moments, brought me back to reality, but it would remain a prolonged habit that would follow me even to this day, as I write these notes.
Someone took off a coat and threw it over my shoulders: “It’s very cold in the cell, wear this, you’ll need it! You won’t last a month in the isolation cell with just a canvas jacket!” “Isolation cell?” I spoke deliriously. “Yes, what else are you expecting? A medal?!” The man who spoke took off his moccasins and wool socks came to me and, after pulling off my filthy rags and laces, said: “Put these on, you’re only in rags!” I let him do it, without understanding what was happening. I was dazed; I still hadn’t become aware of what I had done, nor what awaited me after this.
Another person handed me a pouch of tobacco, but whom? I didn’t register it. I was completely unable to distinguish the faces of my fellow sufferers. “Put this pouch in your pocket, you’ll need it there!” he said and shoved the small pouch into the pocket of my jacket. Another person did the same. After taking a handful of tobacco from the box, along with a booklet of papers, he poured it into a leather pouch that they handed him: “Take this too, you never know; if they keep you for a month, you’ll lose your mind without tobacco!” “In the isolation cell?! Oh God!” The actions of my fellow sufferers reminded me that I would soon end up in a cell.
It was my first punishment; I had never experienced it before. The lack of experience, combined with the psychological terror of the unknown that awaited me, sobered me up. I thought about the hours, the days, the month, and then, about the re-sentencing… and my heart trembled. “Oh, Great God! What has happened to me, the wretched one?!” I had heard them say: “Here, they’ll sentence you for nothing, two, even three times! They’re just waiting to add punishment on top of punishment!” But for what?! For whom should they add to my torment! For a vile pederast? Oh God!
A thunderous voice pulled me out of this confusion I was sinking into: “Good job, my friend, what you did to that dog! That pederast deserved it a long time ago! But you should have called us, friend, you’re still young!” “What I have done, I wonder?!” I still couldn’t clear my head, neither about what I had done nor about what awaited me. “It looks like they’ve arrived now!” someone added. “They’re going to tie you up, but don’t give in, hold your ground! In the end, we’ve all been through these troubles!” “What’s done is done; you’ve gotten yourself into trouble! You’re neither the first nor the last!” another one chimed in. “Only the first day is a little bitter, later you’ll have others! Calm down, friend, they’re coming!”
Meanwhile, a noisy hum of raised voices was approaching, getting closer and closer. A crowd of police officers rushed into the smithy; one of them broke away and approached me: “Prisoner, was it you who caused this commotion?!” “You animal, did you try to kill someone?!” another one pushed me. “Grab him, Ndrec, let’s tie him up, and teach him how to kill a person!” Ndreca approached me with a bundle of wire in his hand. The other three grabbed me by the arms and turned me to face the wall.
“Come on, hey, shouldn’t we tie him up here? We even have Qazim’s pliers to tighten it perfectly!” The one who spoke reached over the workbench. “What are you doing, friend?! My tools are for working, not for tying people!” Qazim Vula, who until that moment had not clearly understood what was happening due to his hearing impairment, intervened. “Frrok, get the criminal out of here!” ordered the one who must have been in charge. They seized me roughly, by the arms and thighs, almost dragging me in the air, so much so that my feet didn’t even touch the ground. Dragging me like that, they headed towards the door of the two camps.
This show of force sobered me up; I became aware of the consequences. When I saw them heading towards the entrance, I thought I had escaped the torture of being tied to the pole: “Well, that’s half the bad news; they’ll just beat me up and then put me in the isolation cell!” I consoled myself. But I was wrong. As we approached the gate, they stopped and laid me face down. They twisted my hands behind my back and pressed my face into the mud melted by the studs of their shoes. Something sharp cut into my wrists, the stinging pain shot to my heart.
“Jak, tighten it to zero, so this little one learns how to kill a person. The weight of several bodies and the studs of their boots were almost squeezing the life out of me.” “Ndrec, what did this one do?!” I recognized the voice of Mark “the red-mustache,” as we prisoners called him, because of his yellow mustaches that he twisted with care. Mark “the red-mustache” was considered the best policeman; at least he wasn’t violent with the prisoners. “Mark, look at this scoundrel, he tried to kill Sala, man!” Ndreca replied. “Which Sala? Oh, that piece of, that wretch, the pederast? “Mark expressed surprise. “You tied him up for that one?!”
“Yes, friend, don’t you know he’s a friend of the operative, hey?!” the other one replied. “Yes, I know that well enough! But I also know he’s an immoral man, friend! What a mess he has caused, men!” “Come on, Mark, get out of here, and let us do our job!” With my face in the mud, I heard the footsteps of Mark “the red-mustache” move away, while the others finished tying me up, lifted me to my feet, and turned me toward the electric pole, under the guard post.
They gave me a kick in the behind, which was followed by a second one and a sudden shove in the back. My legs got tangled up with each other. Stumbling, I flew towards the pole like a feather and would surely have suffered serious injuries if I hadn’t made a superhuman effort before the fatal collision. I bruised my arm a little. My head was saved, but my shoulder suffered. A terrifying pain stabbed me in the heart. It seems my collarbone was cracked. I fell unconscious onto a bush of wild roses. I was lost in the ether.
At that time, unaware of the further actions they took with my body, I didn’t understand what happened. Later, when I came to, I figured it out. They had crucified me to the pole, just as I had collapsed, and abandoned me to the mercy of the downpour. My fellow sufferers would tell me more when I got out of the isolation cell. They had watched the scene from the top of the hill, where every detail looked like it was in the palm of their hand. I can’t say exactly how long I must have been lying there. But I felt a cold gush of water, mixed with needle-like droplets that pricked my skin, splash against my face. My jaws were trembling, and my teeth were chattering incessantly.
The downpour and rain beat me relentlessly. The strong currents of the Fan Valley would sweep and spin the waves of water over my body in their mad fury. The cold would turn the droplets into ice spikes that gave a stinging sensation like the flicks of a whip. The position I was in, collapsed against the pole, doubled the torture. I couldn’t move my arms, or my legs, or any part of my body. From the piercing pains, I managed to figure out that they had tied me in three places: at my shoulders below the neck, at my hands at the waist, and below the knees, at my shins. A shiver seized every cell of my body; I felt the cold sink in and reach my marrow.
The fur coat that my friends had put on me just before the police grabbed me became the first shield against the water, which was unable to penetrate my skin. More than half of the workday had passed. I realized this when I saw the vertical guards of the soldiers’ platoon, who were replacing each other at the guard posts. In prisons, they didn’t allow watches to measure time. It was as if they wanted to tell us: “For you, the clock has stopped! Your time is measured in years and decades!” The notion of “hour and time” had often become an object of mockery between the prisoners and the police.
On one occasion in Spaç, my friend Esat Kalaj, referring to the watch as an object and time as a notion, bitterly mocked the harshest but also the most ignorant policeman in the political prisons, Preng Rrapi. “The hour has passed, friend!” policeman Ndreca had complained. “What time is it, Ndrec?” the other one had asked him. “It’s just past twelve and a fraction!” the first one replied. “Indeed, it’s late!” the one who had asked sighed. “Prisoners, get moving, it’s almost time for dinner!” Preng Rrapi ordered loudly, with the swagger of a fool.
“We don’t need time, we need life!” Esat Kala had retorted. “Friend, we have the hour, you only have the handcuffs!” Prenga threatened him, and with his index finger, he tapped the glass of a worthless watch tied to his wrist with a strip of paper. “Enjoy it, you have the hour left, but we have time at our disposal!” Esati had retorted, alluding to the future that he hoped belonged to us and our ideas. “To the cells with you, friend! You’re mocking me!” Captain Prenga threatened him, and Esati ended up in isolation for a month.
In the absence of a watch, the prisoners had invented some original methods that, in conditions of freedom, could not be imagined because they would be useless to anyone. During the summer months, when the day was sunny, the prisoners’ watch was very simple; a stick stuck in the middle of a circle similar to a watch face, and the entire curved line was divided into twelve equal parts, each corresponding to a number. They had gained so much skill in this craft that at any time of a sunny day, by following the movement of the stick’s shadow, they could tell you the exact time, even the minute, if you asked them. The solar clock of the prison could be compared, for its accuracy, to the London standard.
I was present on one occasion when the jeweler from Durrës, Fran Shiroka, won a bet with some free engineers. After ten “Superatlantic” and “Pobieda” watches were checked, each of them was several seconds fast or slow, while Fran’s stick was precise, infallible to the second. The prize of two packs of “Partizan” cigarettes was truly symbolic, but well-deserved.
The prisoners in the jails also had other allies, who over the years had become both watches and inseparable friends. These, depending on the case, could be animals, birds, or even reptiles: such as the lame horse of Bedeni of Kavaja, the wounded stork of the Thumana drainage canals, the swallow of Burrel, the seagull of Skrofotina, but the most typical, the one who would go down in the history of Albanian “prisonology,” as the first anti-communist dog, “Tartarini,” the puppy of Spaç, who in the revolt of May 21, 1973, ended up being sentenced to death by firing squad.
But depending on the place, the ally could also be a lizard, a frog, or a mouse, etc. These allies had become so close to their prisoner friends, as a result of the love and devotion with which the latter treated them, that every day they would wait at a specific time to accompany them, from the camp to work and vice versa.
Perhaps when it’s my turn, I can mention them, just like those on cloudy and winter days when the weather was stormy. The prisoners would orient themselves through the actions of the military platoons. We would follow the guards attentively when they replaced each other at the guard posts. When it was cold, the soldiers were changed every four hours, while when it was very, very frosty, every two hours./Memorie.al
