By Adela Kolea
Memorie.al / “Ana, tomorrow I’ll wait for you at home for a coffee”, – said Lucia, turning to her friend, and I had the impression that that voice, at that specific moment, represented not only the desire of both friends, for to drink a coffee together, but more than anything, their intention to experience all those confidential atmospheres, common between two old friends, who, at the moment of drinking a coffee, consider it sacred to they say there, things they don’t often tell each other…!
“Of course, I will come with pleasure”, – answered Anna, for her part, with the enthusiasm that was visible in her eyes at that moment, so great was the joy, that she saw this old friend of hers again .
“Would you like to come with me? – Ana asked me – Do you want to come to my friend’s house tomorrow? Actually, you’ve never been to his house, I think you’ll like it. There is also a beautiful garden, with many beautiful flowers”!
I didn’t wait any longer and that’s why I followed Ana, my grandmother, when the next day she went to visit her dear friend, another Italian, who like her lived in Tirana.
We arrived at Lucia’s house, after some walking through the streets of our beautiful Tirana. We had to go there on foot, because she lived on a street where buses and private, personal cars did not pass, we were not lucky enough to own them, like all Albanians.
They were something “foreign” to us. The first thing that caught my attention were the roses in her garden: they were wonderful, and my grandmother, it seems, was not wrong to describe the garden to me in this way and encouraged me to accompany her.
I liked the environment, even the decoration of the house, there was something special, different from usual, I liked the warm way in which my grandmother’s friend greeted me, naturally in Italian: “Hello beautiful”, – included her friendliness, but, not only: the fact that I spoke Italian myself – I, a child at that time – as in fact, my grandmother and Lucia, her friend, were two Italians from Albania!
Mrs. Lucia’s eyes had left a certain impression on me: with all the joy and hospitality she wanted to show us at all costs, those eyes held a strange, suffering light. Perhaps I was wrong, or rather, I really wanted to be wrong in this impression I perceived.
Precisely for this reason, with all the other friendships, those with the Albanians that they had made over the years, they were excellent and very valuable friendships, whenever those few Italians from Tirana met each other, even for the time they had , a coffee, their appearance was striking, like foreigners!
Yes, as immigrants, although by now, this definition should no longer apply to them, since they had lived a life in Albania, had left their beloved Italy for a different life, had married Albanian men, had had children and had started living, creating their family in Albania.
In any case, the moment of their meeting was – at least in my eyes, in the eyes of a little girl – magical, full of nostalgia, love between each other, such a moment of trust, in which they had the opportunity to speak their language, and not only that: to remind each other, their land, Italy, their loved ones, their respective Italian cities of origin, why not, their cuisine and customs, their music and in this direction, we would hum together in a low voice, some old Italian songs, by their favorite artist, at the time.
“Do you want to help me make the coffee too?” – Mrs. Lucia asked me suddenly, with the intention of doing everything to include me in something, since there were no other children my age and she was afraid that I was getting bored. But, on the contrary, I was finding myself very comfortable.
“Of course, Mrs. Lucia,” I answered in a ringing voice, excited about participating in the “coffee ritual.” This is because those two Italian women in Albania did not consume their Italian coffee, espresso – there was no suitable coffee for them and there was no suitable coffee maker either – but they drank coffee in the Turkish style, like all Albanians, like us all. The Balkans in general!
Therefore, I could find myself “helping” them, in grinding the coffee: freshly ground in the usual coffee mill and thus, enjoying the freshly ground coffee, ready to be prepared in the next special container, the so-called “Jeezve”, it was a real pleasure!
In short, they enjoyed the coffee and Mrs. Lucia offered me a fresh drink. Guess how it was prepared? Mrs. Lucia, as well as my grandmother, although they had brought to Tirana, in turn, the recipes of the Italian cuisine, for friends and family – for the little that the Albanian market made available and offered in terms of the necessary ingredients for such recipes, – they learned recipes of Albanian and Balkan cuisine.
Therefore, the fresh drink that Mrs. Lucia offered me consisted of a syrup made from rose petals, those beautiful fresh and fragrant roses from her garden, the so-called “rose syrup”!
While we were still on the subject of cooking, my grandmother said to her: “Do you know Lucina, what did the fruit and vegetable seller in my neighborhood leave me today? You won’t believe it! Three or four artichokes”! “Yes, really?” Lucia was surprised.
Artichoke, at that time, was a type of vegetable, unknown to Albanians. In fact, one day my grandmother, while in the small neighborhood fruit and vegetable store, talking to the saleswoman about the fruits and vegetables she could find in Italy and comparing – generally, in assortments, more or less, she asked her for this.
It was the same in both countries, only the hunger situation in which the country lived, changed for Albania, and this was not a small thing – also the care for the way of speaking and expression, because the grandmother had memorized the strict rules.
Because the censorship in Albania of the imposed dictatorship had taught us not to talk about even a type of vegetable, like artichoke. This vegetable is so unknown to Albanians, but surprisingly the seller of fruits and vegetables knew it, who answered immediately: “Ah, but you mean; artichoke – cynar”?!
“Yes exactly”, – answered the grandmother, – “exactly the artichoke”. Someone had promised him that he would bring them and I couldn’t imagine where he would find them in Albania, even though my grandmother told me that they grew all over the Mediterranean basin and to plant them, that vegetable it only needed slightly fertile soil. Nothing more. I did not know in which area of our country they were grown, or who had bought them.
“They bring it to me from time to time, but I don’t like that bitter taste, those thorns, and I don’t even know how to cook them properly”! – said the greengrocer to the grandmother, with a disgusted expression. So; “when they bring them to me, I will save them for you”!
And so he did! Then the grandmother cooked them in different ways and happily prepared them, one of the specialties of her town.
Their coffee that day had been a little longer than usual, and I, at that moment, despite the beauty of the garden, the company of the gray, green-eyed cat—green as the branches and leaves of those fresh roses—that he followed me, everywhere I turned, before and after that house, I started to get a little bored.
At that moment I decided to enter the house and ask Mrs. Lucia if she had any magazines or newspapers to show me.
But, unwillingly, I saw a part of their speech, though it was kept low by both. I heard the grandmother saying to her friend: “Oh dear, I’m so sorry, when will this torment for us end”?!
The desire to ask Ms. Lucia for a newspaper passed immediately because, despite their advanced age, I realized that those people carried a great weight within them. Although they tried in every way, so that we would not understand them, their suffering was difficult to mask and hide completely.
A little later, in the family, I learned that the pain that tormented my grandmother’s Italian friend was connected to a terrible fact: the pursuit of persecutions, manifested and applied in different ways on the Italians of Albania – if not on all, but at least in part of them – Mrs. Lucia’s husband was in prison and serving a very long sentence.
As if all this was not enough, the same cruel fate was reserved for his son!
This would have deciphered for me, as the “reason” for the melancholy I had noticed in the eyes of my grandmother’s friend, that dear woman, Mrs. Lucia, that day, as she lovingly welcomed us into her home.
And that word that I had unwittingly heard coming from Mrs. Lucia’s kitchen, while she and her grandmother were drinking Turkish coffee, that day in Tirana. It was 1980. Memorie.al
