By Shkëlqim ABAZI
Part forty-three
S P A Ç
The Grave of the Living
Tirana, 2018
(My memories and those of others)
Memorie.al /Now in my old age, I feel obliged to tell my truth, just as I lived it. To speak of the modest men, who never boasted of their deeds and of others whose mouths the regime sealed, burying them in nameless pits? In no case do I presume to usurp the monopoly on truth or claim the laurels for an event where I was accidentally present, even though I desperately tried to help my friends, who tactfully and kindly deterred me: “Brother, open your eyes… don’t get involved… you only have two months and a little more left!” A worry that clung to me like an amulet, from the morning of May 21, 22, and 23, 1974, and even followed me in the months after, until I was released. Nevertheless, everything I saw and heard during those three days; I would not want to take to the grave.
Continued from the previous issue
“The day, the week, or the month when the prison-bus brought or took so-and-so?” they would ask one another: “Do you remember this or that event that happened the day, the week, the month when the prison-bus brought or took so-and-so?” And the answers would also refer to the prison-bus: “Of course, I remember X or Y who died, arrived, or left Burrel prison, the prison hospital, or firifistun (a generalized term for a terrible place), on the day, the week, and the month when the prison-bus brought (or took) so-and-so!”
The prison-bus would suddenly appear, unload, load, and then return before nightfall. God forbid, if night caught it! The regulation would be violated; “Regarding the movement of convicts from one place of sentence serving to another,” which explicitly commanded specific measures. After a bombastic introduction that amazed one with its linguistic clarity and the precision of the rules for the care that service personnel were required to show in strictly fulfilling them…, I will quote specifically what was written:
“Under the far-sighted leadership of the Party and in implementation of the wise orientations of Comrade Enver, as well as following the valuable example and advice of Comrade Stalin, who commands: ‘Man is the most precious capital…’, since our aim is not the physical elimination of convicts, but the struggle against the feudal-bourgeois mentality carried by individuals; popular justice, based on the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Albania, prohibits physical and psychological mistreatment.
We truly punish the criminal act, according to the weight of the fault, but in the meantime, we charge the organs of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to work to return the individual, rehabilitated, to the bosom of socialist society, worthy of family and society. Quite the opposite occurred in the despotic regime of Zog, where the person was punished for what they represented. With some so-called democratic sophistry, a pseudo-Ministry of Justice gave rights to the exploitative classes, the beys and aghas, and through some miserable little lawyers, supposedly guardians of the law, they emptied the pockets of the poor to fill their own, skinning the people seven times over.
The Party suppressed this miserable ‘phantom ministry’ and cleansed the courts of the devil’s little lawyers, making the respected figure of the people’s judge, who delivers justice for all…! For these reasons, the use of any form of violence and pressure is categorically prohibited; depositions obtained outside the conditions stipulated in the Criminal Procedure are illegal, etc., etc., etc…”!
Then it continued:
“As regards the policies practiced in the re-education departments and, in general, the penitentiary policies applied by the People’s Republic of Albania, we command: The transport of convicts is strictly prohibited using unsafe, unsuitable vehicles, and those lacking sanitary-hygienic conditions. Movement at night is prohibited for any reason and under any circumstance; if this occurs due to factors beyond the control of the People’s Police employees, the vehicle must proceed to the nearest town to shelter its cargo.
The receiving authorities have a legal obligation to provide them with optimal conditions, shelter, food, and accommodation; in case of non-compliance with this provision, the responsible parties shall be brought before the law. etc., 5- etc., 6- etc. Then further, – Note: ‘The movement of convicts must necessarily be done under the escort of People’s Police forces to enable faster circulation,’ etc., etc., endlessly.
Naturally, the rattling prison-bus was nowhere mentioned, nor the handcuffs, nor the rubber baton, nor the sack over the head, nor…, nor…! When I first read this regulation, I thought of the pleasant privilege granted to us, the “warm hand” that caressed our heads, and the gratitude we should reserve for the indulgent leaders who worried and lost sleep over our future and that of our families…, etc., etc., but the gasp of the prison-bus and the howls of the police pack dispelled my dream…!
As soon as the prison-bus passed the gate and unloaded the unfortunate individuals who had suffered terribly (hequr të zitë e ullirit – lit: seen the black of the olive), the Shkodra expression came to mind: “For what I hear, lucky me, for what I see, poor me.” The self-hearse (auto-varri – a play on auto-burgu) with its endless troubles came to mind, and I turned to the pages hung on the emulation stand, spat on them, and cursed: “Shame, to mock human personality like this!”
Naturally, this happened during the first days, because later… I wouldn’t even look at the communist rags. The material with which the iron monster filled its guts was human goods, but simultaneously it also transmitted the news. It picked up the goods inside the barbed wires to dispatch them to some others, because the whole of Albania was woven with thread (implying surveillance), but also telephony functions through the network of wires, even though they are copper or steel and prickly with thorns, the news is transmitted the same way.
An arrest would happen at the most extreme corner of the homeland-prison; the news would arrive in the “prison-city”, before the village or neighborhood of the unfortunate victim. But it often happened that it preceded the arrest; thus, through the “infra waves” of the “prison-radio,” it reached the future victim, before the prosecutors and investigators! It so happened that a candidate would hear it and wait with derision, even daring to joke and deliberately deny it as untrue, but the moment the news was updated, the wretch who had scoffed at the pre-announcement fell into depression, suffered psychological trauma, and descended into dementia.
Nevertheless, the news sailed in the ether, where it could hang suspended for a short time, but finally it would take its course and turn out more accurate than the most accurate; the pre-destined, the next victim, would be publicly handcuffed, publicly lynched, publicly condemned, and privately executed, or locked in the dark cells of the lunatic asylums, abandoned to the mercy of merciless fate.
The Stalinist practice of the galetë and the bullet, which the Soviet Socialist Republics first applied, yielded its bitter fruits in Socialist Albania right from the start, thanks to the fanatical disciples who surpassed the master. Although it was implemented in a microscopic country, in terms of territorial extent, compared to the infinite surface of intercontinental Russia, and over a population the size of an average Russian city, across the national space, where everyone knew each other’s teeth and molars, it gave impressive effects.
The communists settled scores with the old ones and invented new enemies, imitating Father Stalin, who would fill their chests with all the medals and orders awarded by the Presidium of the Congress of Soviets to personalities marked for the slaughterhouse, and at the next congress, he would keep them on his right, only to then cut off the heads he had caressed in the socialist vise. Enver implemented this method with considerable elegance; he flattered the egos of his “comrades,” awarded them medals, gave them posts, and made them feel more important than they were, supposedly believing boundlessly in their devotion, and after a month or two, he would sever the heads he had caressed.
The unfortunate victims did not want to accept what was happening to them, and just like La Fontaine’s donkey when the wolves were tearing him apart, they sacrificed themselves with the conviction that they were making the sublime sacrifice for the triumph of the revolution. So they died with the idea that they were serving the cause to which they dedicated their lives. Whoever remained stuck their head in the sand and waited for the storm to pass. They joined the chorus and scattered tons of filth and insults upon their former comrade-in-ideals, and when they ended up in the same positions, they dreamed just like the first ones. Nevertheless, the selection continued.
The eliminated ones increased, and the blood slurry was spilling from the trough of the socialist guillotine. Meanwhile, the number of those who realized the dead end they had collectively entered was also growing, but unprepared and incapable of changing the course because, feeling all mutually guilty and stained with the blood of the innocent, they did not dare to oppose it. They offered their necks like a goat to the butcher and waited for the sacrifice, possibly with less pain and fanfare, hoping that their families would not suffer the damage of their predecessors.
However, time shattered the dreams; former members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania, former “People’s Heroes” and “Silent Heroes,” former Stakhanovite innovators, former…, etc., were mown down by the scythe and ended up in anonymous graves, while their family members grew old in the marshes of Myzeqe.
The one who shook off his sleep was late…! It was too difficult to abandon the swamp of imaginary deeds and the lullabies in the old cradle. Just like a ruminant animal that brings back the food of the day, the nostalgics would rewind the reel and relive the stale events as fresh, losing themselves in the smoke of the years, and heading towards the “Gate of St. Peter,” either by committing suicide or being eliminated by their former comrades. Then the program continued with their heirs, who were awaited by prison, internment, and persecution, by their own idols.
The expected calamities circulated from outside-in and vice-versa, on the “infra waves of the prison radio.” With the passing of the years, the range of the news grew, and along with it, the quality, while the believers who took it for granted also multiplied. Thus, the more cunning ones exploited the circumstances to escape punishment, daring to flee, or sacrificing friends and friends of friends, or self-denouncing and self-sacrificing. But the majority clung to the naive hope that their turn would never come. Nevertheless, it approached coaxingly, instantly fulfilling the Berat curse “May I see you as a groom in Xhika’s cart,” which meant: “You will end up in prison”!
But they knew a lot, and the curse took macabre forms, exceeding even the most unrestrained imagination of the unfortunate dreamer, thus coinciding with the prophecy: “May Xhika take you to Parangua,” which translated to: “May you end up in the nameless pit”! And the unfortunates ended up in firing ranges with a bullet in the back of the head, while their corpses were conserved in hydrochloric acid. I have seen fearsome former government officials, getting out of the prison-bus door, even though they had “made the sun and the rain” and had emptied reservoirs of venom upon the nation’s elite, invoking pity as they walked head-down, just like grotesque scarecrows. Others had seen more, and those after me would see much, much more…!
The unwritten slogans, but fixed in the collective memory: “May I see you as a groom in Xhika’s cart”! Or “May Xhika takes you to Parangua,” the base system brought to life in practice. From the “belly of the self-hearse”, would emerge former iron ministers, former applauding deputies, former dogmatic party members, former sadistic interrogators, former judges of all levels, former ordinary and general prosecutors, who had fired the last bullet upon the nation’s elite, upon the signatories of Independence who bore the burden of building the first State, upon former ministers, former deputies, former military personnel, and humble and devout clerics, professors with titles and degrees from the most renowned universities, scientists, philosophers, writers, poets, historians, doctors, engineers, down to workers and peasants, and even women and minors, etc., but also upon the sans-culottes of the proletarian revolution.
Enver’s Cerberuses would exit, head-down, from the guts of the “modern Trojan horse” and end up in the cell rooms, among the victims of their own madness…! Afterwards, others would descend, and the thread would stretch until the fall of the cursed system they themselves projected and built. Xhika’s prison-cart, without Xhika, the rickety wreck, the rough cart, the wagon of raw meat, the state’s prison-bus, Noah’s ark on wheels without Noah inside, continued to arrive at the same time intervals, perhaps more frequently…!
Intermezzo
(The last stork left!)
The good ones are leaving, and the infidels remain! It seems that we, the forgotten of the “onion age”, have been destined by the Almighty God to remind the living born in that cursed time and those who came after, of those who left and leave without return! “Pano is gone, friend!” – Fiqiri Muhaj, my old friend from the prisons, informed me.
“Which Pano are you talking about?” – I interrupted him without letting him explain, because over in Greece, where changing names became a fashion among Albanian Muslims, I had happened to know about a dozen Panos.
“The Gr-e-at Pano!” – the ‘a’ was extended so much that it almost tore the receiver and stung my ear. “The Great Pano of the football has left us for years, Fiqo!” – I wanted to clarify, perhaps as a football fan, he had erred, and old age and sclerosis were doing their work.
“The one with the ball was Great, but I was talking about our Great one, the last lyricist!” The phone was stuck to my ear, like a relic of times I can’t remember. Pano Taçi, the prisoners’ friend, the only stork breathing on our soil, had departed. “No, did he leave too”?!
“He died, brother! He is being buried today at the hour…”! I froze, my breath cut off. When I looked at the clock, it was too late. By any means, I couldn’t reach Tirana. Head bowed, I headed towards the kiosk where I read, I don’t know under what title: “Today, on 13, 06, 2012, he passed away at the age of eighty-something…!” “Damn, that’s a lot!”
I bought a handful of newspapers and sat down at the first café. I opened the one my hand caught; on the inner pages, I found a dry notice, as if speaking of some ordinary person that this era produced in abundance. I pushed it aside. In the next one, a nearly complete obituary, illustrated with a photo and a couple of poems! Further? God, what did my eyes see!? The funeral ceremony was taking place in the lobby of the National Theatre building!? What bitter irony with this Albanian race of ours!
“Oh God, they left no filth unfactored while he was alive; they pushed him, spit on him, cursed him, desecrated him; they called him a buffoon, a vagabond, immoral, depraved; they came out as witnesses and threw him into prison! And now…? The tongues that poured venom upon him and his work are picking up the forty-five-year-old filth and want to honour the coffin that hides the stork beneath the shroud! Heavens, writers, artists, clowns, deputies, politicians, statesmen, and oppositionists have swooped down like ravens upon the poet’s remains!
“They tore you apart, Pano, while alive they wouldn’t let you near the doorstep, but as a corpse they put you in the heart of the temple! Could it be repentance, I wonder?! Or some form of apology they are seeking from the famous martyr?! God grant that it be so! Amen”! But a cry from the world beyond extinguished my enthusiasm: “Art-Nihilist! Decadent! Erotic! Sold out with bourgeois vices!” etc., etc., etc…!
“No, the Lilliputians aim to compensate for their dwarfism and put on makeup over the magnificence of Gulliver! Damn, go figure out this scum of drooling cowards!” I don’t know if I spoke it aloud or confessed it to my subconscious. I gulped down the poison coffee and went out to fill myself with air, feeling empty. Empty lungs, empty body, and empty brain! Moreover, this sudden news caught me off guard, making even life seem meaningless. “The devil took him, there are too many…”! I repeated and walked away.
“Anyway, one day I will take a white carnation to his grave,” I conceded. Meanwhile, some verses, which expressed his credo, echoed from the distance of time: “I was born at the white dawn, of the pitch-black time / amidst the darkness, I sought good fortune in the hell-prison. / and I await a white death… after midnight / to rest peacefully, beneath the softness of the goose quill!” The delirious credo, with its free verses, pierced me like a drill.
“I don’t know when you were born, or how death will come, but your life was poison!” – I interrupted his poetic delirium that distant spring day. “From the aspect you see it, agreed, but I drive upon the clouds, disregarding the dampness where we drag our bodies!” – he retorted immediately.
“Lucky you who see light even amidst inviting hell!” – I didn’t push him, I let him sing in his fluid bliss. Nevertheless, he drove and drove, but still returned to earth. But this early summer, he flew. He flew for real, not like back then when his soul escaped and his body remained in the cell. This time he left, body and soul!
“…Body beneath the lawn, spirit in the green fields, under the dense canopy of woods”! He joined the singing birds in the skies: “towards the boundless space, and unrestrained happiness!”…, because he was and remained an eternal knight of fate. He would quarrel with anyone who stained the whiteness or desecrated nature. He showed himself heartless and cruel to anyone who attempted to touch the original, to tame the wild, because he himself acted a bit wild, a bit ancient without being so.
On the contrary, we knew his fragility; he cried and laughed simultaneously, rejoiced and grieved for no reason at all, meditated and vented for no reason. As his own person, he liked controversy; he liked to experience extreme emotions that never crossed the minds of the rest of us. He did not respect traditions, customs, habits; what constituted the norm for the majority, he considered chains.
He loved to sleep wherever he was caught, to enjoy waking up in the mountain, to shiver under the drops of dew in the woods, where he smelled and was satiated with the scent of linden and the resin of pines, then slightly tipsy, to burst into song amidst the chirping of birds; to get drunk on the lawns and have his legs sway from the intensity of the mown grass; to be cooled by the wind on the gravel banks of rivers and sprinkled by the tear of the hanging willow; to be startled by the piercing howl of sirens as ships entered and left the docks; to be stuffed with the buzzing of passenger stations; on beaches where the screaming seagulls invited him, even to be “deceived” by one and have it lay eggs in his old cap, which supposedly served as a deserted nest, and he would deliberately “forget” it.
II
He loved the feminine with all his might, he adored beauty with the delirium of a madman, and he longed for freedom like a slave’s dream! Where the majority vegetated in routine, he felt the shivers and the pulse of life, the chirping of angels, the sensual finesse, the alluring whispers, the babbling of infants, the rhythmic musicality, the joyous clang, the fluttering delight – everything a slave wishes for to feel free.
His Muse frolicked, rejoiced, fluttered; her echoes did not cease even in the cell, but just like Orpheus, he mesmerized the nine sisters and sucked the nectar from their lips! Everywhere the moment caught him, he sang of life like a prince, of joy like an Epicurean, of suffering like a Shakespearean, and he clad the divine woman in superlatives, like a passionate lover! He bowed before the beautiful sex and made curtsies to the miserable woman who washed his worn-out shirt, or offered him a bowl of corn-mixed bulgur and unreserved love, after a day of wandering.
He despised the artificial and drove away the mischievous young ladies who glanced askance behind dark glasses. He caressed misery with royal verses; he praised the Roma man who, after the day’s haggling with mules and donkeys, would swig a few glasses of raki, get tipsy with the defi (tambourine) or qemanja (fiddle), and start a wild party (ahengu i zdërhallej) with the Romani woman (arixhofkën) under the light of stellar candles, defying all bosses with berets and sombreros. He would set off from the River Bank (Bregu i Lumit), strutting like a gentleman, because the miserable woman had cleaned his worn suit the night before, straightened the knot of his ancient German-era tie which he refused to exchange for any “designer rag,” and sent him off on his “mission.”
He would “park” his old cyclomotor in a “reserved” corner just for him, enter the “Kafe Europa,” and head to his “den”, where he would hide with his muses! He would settle in the “corner” and, while waiting for his coffee to be brought, he would set the sails of his mind. He hadn’t ordered for a long time, because the waiters, bartenders, and even the owner would welcome and greet him warmly, bring him his coffee and a pile of newspapers, and leave him to navigate his own ocean. He was so intimate with the environment that if he didn’t come one day, the staff would worry and ask what might have happened to their poet.
Yes, they considered him an exclusive poet! But Pano would compensate their gratitude well; the most accomplished poem, the last pearl he had scribbled on scraps of paper, on crumpled coupons, or torn pages of packages, even on the corners of paper napkins or newspapers, or whatever he could get his hands on, he would leave to them as a “tip.”
Over time, his benefactors recognized his taste. From time to time, they would bring him a glass of raki and two grilled meatballs along with his coffee cup, which he would pay for when he had money, but when he was broke, he would leave without settling the bill. But as soon as he got his hands on some money, he would return to his “shelter,” like a criminal to the scene of the crime, and like a noble bohemian, he would settle the “debt,” accompanying it with an excess, which he called the “glass’s honorarium.” When my path led me to the Capital, I knew where to find him. But I wouldn’t set off without securing Pano’s aqua di vita, or “medicine,” as he affectionately called the Skrapar raki.
I would stop at the “den,” leave the bottle, and leave without disturbing his meditations, because he was riding “Pegasus” and ignoring his surroundings. But when the light refracted on the crystal and hurt his eyes, he would descend from the ether; after sheltering the “medicine,” he would remember me and act surprised: “Wo-o-w, you here”?!
“Just arrived!” – I would reply, even if I had been there for an hour. – “Since I was passing by, I thought we’d meet, and then I’ll see to my business!”
“See to your troubles and leave the wreck to enjoy his own field!” – he would reply with a smile and caress the bottle like an infant. Sometimes I wouldn’t find him in his “den.” The waiters would give me information as if he were a relative; I would leave the “medicine” with the absolute guarantee that they would hand it over to the “patient,” and then I would see to my work. When I returned and found him folded over scraps of paper, I would greet him from the door:
“Pano, my boy, good to find you well, how are you doing, long may you live”?! – we would caress him this way, because he didn’t accept that he was getting old; perhaps in spirit, he felt younger than many youths aged before their time. This quirk originated in the seventies, when Shyqyri Gruda used to joke: “Everyone is a poet for a moment in youth, age demands it, but Pano, my boy, will remain one even in old age!” Shyqi had been right, Pano, over eighty years old, still versified with the passion of a twenty-year-old!
I would wait for him to dismount “Pegasus” and then head towards the “corner.” He would rise halfway, stretch his back, and reply cheerfully, with the stoicism imprinted on his charming face: “As God wills, my dear boy, come on, we missed you! At least I feel like the freest of the self-imprisoned free” – and we would embrace affectionately. I knew his quirks and his concept of freedom since prison, his adoration for nature, for flowers, for birds, for the wind, for the storm, for the air, for perfume…, for every authentic phenomenon. Memorie.al
Continued in the next issue
