By Shkëlqim Abazi
Part twenty-two
Memorie.al / I were born on December 23, 1951, in the dark month of a dark time, under the darkest communist regime. On September 23, 1968, the sadistic chief investigator, Llambi Gegeni, the ignorant investigator Shyqyri Çoku, and the cruel prosecutor Thoma Tutulani, butchered me at the Branch of Internal Affairs in Shkodra; they split my head open, blinded one of my eyes, deafened one of my ears, after they broke several of my ribs, half of my molars, and the thumb of my left hand. On October 23, 1968, they took me to court, where the wretch Faik Minarolli gave me a ten-year political prison sentence. After they cut my sentence in half because I was still a minor, sixteen years old, on November 23, 1968, they took me to the political camp of Reps, and from there, on September 23, 1970, 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 claim to have. But on October 23, 2013, the General Director of the “reborn” government sent order No. 2203, dated 23.10.2013, for the dismissal of a police officer. So Divine Providence was intertwined with the neo-communist “reborn” Providence, and on the 23rd, they replaced me, no more and no less, with the former Security operative of the Burrel Prison. What could be more meaningful than that?! The former political prisoner is replaced by the former persecutor!
The Author
SHKËLQIM ABAZI
Continued from last issue
R E P S
(Forced Labor Camp)
Memoir
“And the burden of the soul, once you vent it somewhere, you feel lighter, and a renewed heart returns to a vital rhythm; the brain seems to cool down, and judgment becomes clearer. This, I think, must be one of the main reasons that influence believers, who after confession, come out of the church cell more pure, walking more carefree and with their heads held high.
Without the burden of guilt on her back, even a defiled prostitute resembles a virgin. Believe me, the opposite happens with the priest; the more penitents confess to him, the more ruined he looks, as if all the burden of the sinners of this world has been unloaded on his shoulders, and that withered body is condemned to drag them with him on the arduous road to Calvary!”
A few moments of silence passed, and each of us re-digested the mess that Qazim had thrown. Uncle Esheref had frozen like a store mannequin, with a piece of wood in one hand and a thin knife in the other; while Vaska, with his eyes closed, had learned his head on his hand, as if dozing off to sleep; and I was staring at the void somewhere on a fluid horizon, beyond Qazim’s silhouette, in the ether where he wanted to dissolve. I waited for the old men to break the silence, but when they remained silent; to break the anxious quietness, I intervened:
“Forgive me, Qazim, I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble, I just wanted you to explain what kind of anger had gotten into you that day at the blacksmith’s shop?” “Well, I was very upset! I don’t know if you know that commissioner from Korça, the one who wants to be transferred to his own city? Some time ago, he had ordered me to make him a knife. He brought me a Stalinesque valve and I worked on it. I made it with great care, it couldn’t be done better! I opened two grooves on both sides and put a handle of colorful plexiglass on it. A little before you came into the blacksmith’s shop, he came, I gave it to him finished, but he started telling me: no, you should have done it like this and like that!
By God, I got very upset! To teach me the trade! Do you understand how offended I felt! And who wanted to teach me, huh?! That fool, who only knows how to talk about politics and the Communist Party! And yet, he wanted to show me how to work iron! I got very angry and I took it and I hit it with a sledgehammer, and I broke it into two pieces, so it couldn’t be put together again! He left and never came back!” The blacksmith fell silent and didn’t speak anymore. It was as if he forgot to breathe.
I also fell silent. From that day on, I spoke with Qazim more often than with any other prisoner. As I mentioned earlier, different types of people worked in this brigade, but everyone did their job separately from the others. At the time I arrived, the installations were still ongoing in the laboratory building. The engineers and technicians, who were in charge of the works, were three prisoners and one free man.
The prisoners were Hamdi Haska and Franko Sara, both from Korça. They were talented engineers, but above all, brilliant intellectuals and people. They had been punished after the break with the Soviet Union, as revisionists. While the third, Bardhyl Belishova from Mallakastra, also a graduate in electrical engineering from the Soviet Union, was also sentenced as a revisionist, but more so as the brother of Liri Belishova (Çomo).
These men, together with the free one, were implementing the project. As managers, they had the opportunity to influence the camp’s command and in the selection of a specialist. They used these unwritten competencies to place some well-known figures of the camp according to their profession or clique, in addition to those who were appointed by order from above.
In a word, besides the spies and informers of the Security, who pretended to work and were a thorn in our side, there were also honest people who had come with the support of the engineers. During these days, I was given the chance to get to know, on the ground, a good part of these specialists. One of them was the well-known imam from Shkodra, Hafëz Sabri Koçi.
Hafëzi worked as a plumber; he was skilled and diligent. On his own initiative, he managed to create works of art, for the conditions of the prison, where everything was lacking. The innovative plumber-imam used every tool he could get his hands on, in the service of the prisoners. Due to his perseverance, with leftover pipes and discarded tubes, he managed to install showers in Reps and then, in Spaç.
In Shkodra, I had heard a lot about this person. The individuals, who slandered him, spoke with both positive and negative superlatives; it depended on the slanderer. When he was a simple citizen or believer, he spoke well, while the indoctrinated officials spoke very badly. Endless anecdotes had wrapped the figure and personality of the imam, with a veil of mystery.
When I was brought to Reps, from the first days I heard about the imam that he was serving his sentence there. My curiosity to meet him grew. But when I met him, I felt disappointed. Imam Sabri, as we all called him, or simply “Hafizi,” as the police called him, seemed like a very ordinary person to me, even less than ordinary: humble. To anyone who addressed him, he would reply: “Yes, sir”; when they asked him to do a service for them: “Yes, sir.”
From the first day, I only heard these two words come out of his mouth, so I said, I was disappointed. With a face like an ascetic, tall and thin, slightly hunched, but always light, he would finish one job, without even wiping his hands, and would rush to finish the other. You would always see him in motion, with his hands busy with pipes and wrenches.
The way he behaved and his meek answers gave you the impression that you were dealing with a slightly strange type, a kind of servile coward. Of course, these were the first impressions because very soon, I would change my mind. In Shkodra, I had heard many stories related to his name, especially from the detainees I happened to meet in the dungeons. So, with my imagination, I had created the image of an authoritarian, strong, slightly downtrodden, but harsh man, like the heroes of epic tales.
When I was faced with that weak physique, with that face all bones, I consciously felt disappointed and tried to go back in time to when I didn’t know him yet. Of course, I couldn’t get a picture of what this imam, who had been turned into a myth, might have looked like with his beard and cleric’s uniform. My imagination would get stuck on that real figure, which was unconvincing and wouldn’t go any further.
At that time, when I was opening channels with a chisel and hammer, a few meters away from him, I doubted the authenticity of historical and mythological figures: “It doesn’t seem like what they taught us in school was real! Simply, the gibberish of mythomaniacs!” It was the first time that the heroes of antiquity, like Heracles, who had defeated lions, Antaeus, who drew strength from Mother Earth, Theseus, who saved the maidens of Athens from the lust of the Minotaur; our epic warriors, Gjeto Basho Muji, Halil Garria, etc., etc., transformed by popular imagination into divas and giants, and even our Skanderbeg, whom I pictured with a broadsword, endlessly cutting off the heads of Turks, so much so that even his horse stepped on a pile of torsos and on a sea of blood, I brought them closer to the dimensions of normal people.
The confrontation with reality turned out to be irrational for me; the squaring of the truth dictated a revision of my radical views, and at that time I arrived at a not-so-heroic deduction, about myths, legends, tales, and fables. They must have belonged to a microscopic truth, which in the haze of centuries; the unbridled popular imagination had turned into myths. “Maybe in the future, even these ordinary individuals, with whom I was connected by chance, could become part of the legends!
Myths can attribute supernatural properties to them, which they don’t actually possess, but by that time, a lot of water will have flowed and many years will have rolled by, maybe even centuries, and we, their contemporaries, who shared the good and the bad with them, will no longer be in this world to bear witness. Then…) The myth was born!”
These thoughts stunned me all day long. As always, when I returned to the camp, I confessed to my neighbors about my new acquaintances, as well as the thoughts I had ground in my mill. Uncle Esheref, a realist, told me directly: “Good, by my word, why, what were you expecting! Did you want to see a mountain! Well, they are also people of God, like you and me! Oh boy, a man is not distinguished by his height, but by his brain! And if we’re talking about a brain, Hafizi has enough for a thousand like you and me!
Do you get it, boy, virtues and vices separate people! I swear by Almighty God, I also thought like this when I was young, but life taught me to make the distinction between a brain and a blockhead! The wise man is quiet, he doesn’t lose his patience when others are disoriented, the strong man is perverse and foolish and has his grave nearby! Whoever is useless for the world is not even for his own kind! It’s like that, my son!” – he concluded.
And Vaska squinted his eyes and rubbed his forehead: “Sherefi is right! The truth cannot be shaken! Hafëzi is a wise man! His words have weight! I don’t know, what is your idea of a wise man? This is a matter of perception. But the status of an imam, a priest, a baba, a dervish, doesn’t make you better than others who are not. Religious people are teachers. Just as someone can be a literature, mathematics, or history teacher, they are theology teachers. But the profession doesn’t make the man, my boy, but the man who makes the trade! The profession can leave you with some habits, but in essence, you remain who you were. It’s the education, the culture, the strength of character, the virtues, and the vices that you convey to the environment where you live; the manner, the logic, the arguments with which you defend and express them.
So, these qualities I mentioned, and even others that I haven’t mentioned, Hafizi has in abundance. He is a tireless worker, but you don’t have to think that a priest or an imam has to pray all day? No, my son, no, everyone wants to survive the prison! What is important is to go through the ordeal in the most honest way. – He fell silent for a moment; he looked for something under his pillow, from where he took out a book with a yellow cover or one yellowed by time. – Take it and read it, or better yet, I’ll read it to you, since you don’t know Italian. This explains a part of what we are discussing. I saw the title: “L’Uomo questo sconosciuto” (Man, this unknown), I returned it again, because I didn’t know Italian.
“Here or elsewhere, you will happen to see priests, imams, dervishes, and babas, working in various trades; depending on the case, they can be masons, carpenters, cooks, plumbers, welders, etc. But this neither takes away nor adds anything to their characters, because they are also people. In essence, the individual remains the same, regardless of the place. While the religious leaders who are here, besides these chores, have the duty to be up to the mission, if not even more devout and more dedicated in their ecclesiastical zeal.
Maybe they won’t have the ideal conditions and time, but at the most convenient moment, as soon as they have the chance, they must turn to God, with the most sincere prayer, for themselves and for others; especially and even more so for others! Do you understand me, my son?” – He fell silent as if he wanted to make an impression on me.
“And Hafizi does this with the utmost devotion! Of course, to prove what I’m saying, I hope you get the chance to see it with your own eyes soon! With this lecture, I don’t aim to defend my colleague, no! Even more so, Hafizi, as a man with virtues, doesn’t need a lawyer at all! As for the humility that caught your eye, it is a characteristic of intelligent people. The full ear of corn bows its head; the empty one holds it high! In conclusion, you should consider it an honor if you attract his sympathy, and even more valuable, if you gain his friendship,” – the priest concluded.
The other friends also expressed almost the same considerations. In simpler words, but with the same respect, Uncle Daut told me: “Oh boy, if Albania had a thousand Hafëz Sabris, we would be a thousand years ahead! Fables with dwarfs and giants are for kids!” with that, he ended the conversation. The daily conversations with my elders injected me with the necessary optimism, for the place where we were vegetating, and with their clear point of view, they outlined the paths of the future for me.
The next morning, I was again on that work front. I had been breaking the concrete for over an hour, when the imam appeared with the pipes in his arms. With all his politeness, he wished me a good morning, in the Shkodran dialect: “How have you been feeling?” “Thank you!” “Were you able to do it?” “What?” “Are you getting a little tired?” “We’re pushing through!” “How are your things going?” “So-so!” – With special respect, I returned one-word answers, which he immediately noticed.
Then each of us went about our own business; I was breaking the channels, while he was mounting the pieces of pipes. He would finish what he had in his hands, take the measurements for the others, go to the workshop where he had installed his workbench, from where you could hear the grinding of the hacksaw cutting the pipes; he would thread them with a die, tie them in a pile with wire and return to the assembly site. He did this back and forth several times that day.
Around noon, he hid behind the boxes of hydro-sanitary equipment in the corner of the room, he took something out of a pocket under his shirt or from his chest, I didn’t notice well, he spread some cement bags on the floor and knelt down. He began to mumble in a language that was incomprehensible to me, with his hands joined in front of him, which he would occasionally pass over his face, as if washing his eyes. Meanwhile, I also put the chisel and hammer aside and began to peel off the crumbled pieces of concrete by hand, so as not to bother him.
When he finished his recitation, he addressed me: “Come on, rest a little, man!” I left the work and sat on a box, facing him. “Where are you from?” – He started the conversation. I answered this question and others that were asked of me. As the ice was broken, it was my turn: “Hafëz Sabri, first of all, I apologize for doubting you! – I started. – When I heard you answering only yes, sir, I took you for a sycophant.
When I saw you working without raising your head, I got the impression that, besides being a sycophant, you were also a coward, not to mention others. Second: since I lived in Shkodra for some time, I have heard different opinions about you as a person and about your religious and secular activity. To be honest, without knowing you, I imagined you to be very different from what I saw!” – And I confessed that I pictured him as an iron, unbending type and so on.
He listened to me with a slight smile. From the grin, the right corner of his short-cut mustache rose up. He didn’t interrupt me, he let me express myself until the end, and then he burst into an unrestrained laugh: “Ha-ha-aaa! Do you know, my son, how this thing is: it’s very simple; if it weren’t for children and youth, there wouldn’t be any myths or heroism! By God, even when I was young, I believed in a lot of superstitions, sometimes I would even get lost in unbridled fantasies! But age did its thing, now on the verge of old age; I look at the world more clearly, with the eye of a realist.
However, thank God that He created dreams; if it weren’t for them, how would a miserable man be able to take it! Half of life passes in dreams and joys, in the other half, reality begins! It’s not a shame to experience all the phases! Only the misfortune of today is that the young people are old before their time! I meant to say, they made them old! So, of all that you heard them say in Shkodra, little is true. The others were spread by the Security with its puppies, to discredit us as clerics and to divide us and cool us off with the believers and the faith. Did it succeed?
Time will tell. Now we are at a total turning point of confusion, they attack us everywhere with every means, in every way, without sparing honor, dignity, or human lives. The end may be far away, but the right will triumph! Allah with His Greatness has given man eyes, enough to see the abyss where the communists want to push us. Meanwhile, he has given everyone enough brains to distinguish the devil from the angel. As long as we have health and patience, to get to salvation. Allah has put us to the test, my son, and the test is here, on this land of bitterness!
For the Prophet, we have a series of obligations that we must fulfill. Wherever a man is, he must fulfill his obligations; not to lie or steal, not to covet other people’s things, and not to take what is not yours, not to be arrogant, and above all, to be patient and merciful; and then as much as possible, to give alms to the poor and needy and many, many, other obligations. And so, nowhere was it said that it is a shame to work, on the contrary, one must face any kind of work, as long as it is honest and for the benefit of man!
On these principles, Islam has been based everywhere, my son! But to apply them in practice, you need religious guides at the helm; so this duty, who can do it better than an imam, a priest, a dervish? And so, the saw hit the nail for the communists with these people! They had to strike at all costs the devout leaders of the faiths, not only the Muslims, but all faiths. And where could they find anything better than stories with thieves, for us Muslims, and with whoring and villainy, for the priests and dervishes?
They are ready to even take out the stones of the grave, just to discredit us! To achieve their goal, they have spared nothing from the arsenal of perversions and meanness, just to tarnish us, to humiliate us, in the eyes of the believers and the people. They have incited packs of shameless people, without faith or religion and have spread all these disasters among the people, which no one believes. You must have heard many of these baseless follies too. This is the game of the Security! But on the other hand, all of Albania is not defiled, from top to bottom; there are still honest people left, more so than the wicked. Even though, they have kept their mouths shut in public. In circles of friends, even if with fear, they have spoken well, they have defended the right and the truth.
Of course, you must have heard from these people too. But exactly, the truth about the war against religion and supposedly backward customs was said very clearly by the monster from Gjirokastra, in the speech of February 6, sixty-seven. Of course, you must have heard this too. That is, to influence the general opinion, a series of factors have influenced, which in a way, have left a mark. Positive or negative? Time will give this answer! But still, Shkodra remains Shkodra and will always be Shkodra, the center and epicenter of religious beliefs, and the cradle of Albanian anticommunism!”
When I asked him about the excessive kindness with which he behaved, he replied: “The communists put us in prison, so, man has punished us, not God! As I explained to you above, Allah with His Greatness, has put us to the test. We must pass this ordeal with honor, even if it may weigh heavily on our body and health. Here they have surrounded us with fences of barbed wire, with armed soldiers, and with border dogs. But it is not the siege, nor the guards, nor the dogs that keep us here, but the will of God. With our positive example, we must show the atheists that we are morally much higher than them, not because we have accepted the challenge with damnation, because in the end, we will be the winners!”
When I asked him if we should make efforts to win freedom, he cut me off: “It depends on what you mean by effort? Someone sees it as a gladiator’s match in an arena, someone as a battle of dragons head-on at the front, someone as a violent confrontation, while we consider it a spiritual war, a clash of worldviews, a moral collision, and a defense of dignity!”
With these arguments, he spoke to me for about an hour. I listened to him and approved. Now that I had before me the devoted religious man, the real man, the real one with flesh and bones, the illusion vanished, the phantasmagorical offspring fled to mythological times. From that day on, I revised the vague concepts about history and looked reality in the eye; I entered, so to speak, the age of manhood. Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
