By Astrit Xhaferi
Memorie.al / Astrit Xhaferi was born in the city of Vlora in 1941 and he belongs to a family brutally persecuted by the communist regime of Enver Hoxha. He graduated as a biology teacher, but in 1968, he left education for family reasons and since then, he has been working as a laborer. In 1977, he was arrested by the State Security and sentenced to 9 years of imprisonment accused of “agitation and propaganda against the people’s power”. From a very young age, he started writing poetry and had a passion for literature, and after the collapse of the communist regime, he published the book: “Green Souls” (2002).
NEW YEAR’S EVE
On New Year’s Eve, when people in the city should have gathered around the tables to celebrate, I was huddled in the narrow, dark, cold cell. I thought. My troubles revolved without any kind of order, like cars at an intersection, without a traffic light and without a policeman. I could imagine the despair in my family that night! The sad, low voices in the house! Especially the questions of my 3-year-old daughter, “What daddy”?! tears were almost coming out of my eyes…!
Just this evening, the investigator found half an hour of time, to create the opportunity for me to listen to the telephone conversation he had with his family, leaving the door open and speaking loudly: “Hey mom, the New Year’s tree came out well? Look, the girl will like some other toys! Don’t forget to wear her new dress; because she’s grown up now, she’s 3 years old. (Coincidence! How much my daughter!). We’ll drink it with beer; we’ll take it out in pictures…!
Then he came and sat in front of me. He sat for a while without speaking, enjoying the effect, as he did during the beatings and tightening of the bars. A mischievous smile played in his cloudy eyes and thick lips. A smile that had within it the scratching of bars and innumerable doors, the oozing of dampness and darkness; the vibration of groans; the anxiety of waiting for the tormenting unknown.
Without waiting, he said: “I have no time to deal with you tonight.” Cop comes on take this. Take him to the cell.”
That night I squirmed as if in a womb, neither awake nor asleep, hearing in my ears the constant crying of the girl and the word “Daddy”, “Daddy”. Her warm hands were burning around my neck…! It was a long night. Grief was congealed. I do not believe that madness has another face in the human brain.
(Later, when I would go to Spaç, I would learn that this investigator was not married at all, and had played these games with others as well).
– “You are,” he told me, “like Petri Dumas’ horse.” Have you heard of that horse”?
– No, – I told him, crushed, but also with miserable joy, that this was the last meeting with him and I, from now on, would get rid of this monster that for five months in a row had tortured me physically and psychologically , even though a formal trial and severe punishment awaited me ahead.
But that night, it seemed, he was happy to give me some lecture overheard by his superiors, which he often did and was immediately understood.
– “I will explain the work of the horse, defendant, but first I want to tell you that, even though this is the last session and the investigation is closed, you have time to reflect even in court (in their language this will tells you to admit your faults even when you didn’t commit them), otherwise, you will be nothing but a symbol of evil for honest people, for society, and for the whole people.
You claimed all the time that you didn’t speak; you didn’t do agitation and propaganda. That the witnesses lie, they are prepared. Very good. But do they all lie? One lied, Remziu! What about the second one, Luani? The second one lied, and the third one, the painter, who you had as a friend and widow in the studio? What about the fourth…”?!
My wretched joy that I was escaping from this man’s claws had numbed me even more, and made me listen as if numb to his “song”, the sounds of which resembled the sounds made by a cuckoo, from destruction what he was doing to the foundation stones of my life. It seemed to me that this song was not coming from his mouth, but from the sound of the gutter pouring rainwater somewhere outside, and it was muffled in the interrogation room.
I was both sorry and angry with myself that, under those conditions, it was impossible for me to spit even once in this man’s face. But this was a useless request to me, because it seemed to me that, in the absence of equality and freedom, there was no other weapon against him, except hatred, contempt and contempt. Sometimes I felt sorry for him as a man-mechanism conspired by the bosses, their system and ideology.
“Here, we assume for a moment that you did not insult the main leader, our system, our literature, we assume that you did not brag about life in the West, all those other vile things you said. But, I’m asking, do you love us?
Do you want this power? When we have dismissed you from your job, we have punished other enemies from your tribe, even though you are highly educated, you do manual labor? You definitely hate us. You hadn’t said those things to anyone in a long time; you were human like everyone else. We got you here when you were about to declare your enmity. Although through the mask of a good man, who works well and who is loved by the team, you could not throw him away. Therefore, I told you from the beginning, that you are like Petri Dumas’ horse”.
The work of the horse, removed my dullness, the monotonous sound of the rain in the gutter, increased my curiosity and made me concentrate.
“Before the general betrayed you, that horse was kept in the best stables. It was fed with the rarest taggis that existed, even with fresh eggs, just like the horses of the sheikhs of Arabia. Kashaisej was washed and wiped with towels every day by two soldiers, and when he went out with his master to camps, inspections, or hunting, people looked more at the horse than at the general. You won’t find a more beautiful horse. It reminded you of the horses of the Kreshniks.
But the master betrayed and the people found out who that horse was carrying on his back. Immediately for them, he became a symbol of evil, a symbol of enmity, although to tell the truth, he was a piece of animal and nothing else. But the people are sensitive and cannot tolerate anything related to enmity…!
They removed him from the stable of the staff horses, joined him with the crowd of other Samari horses. But even there, the soldiers and officers were reminded of the betrayal and they could not bear it. They put him in the cart. There he started to try the sticks and whips, perhaps excessively and unjustly, but that’s how life is, even the animal pays when it serves a bad thing.
The horse went through many vicissitudes, until one day it died and was thrown into a pit.”
Oh God! To what extent was the absurdity of the class war!
Later, when democracy came, this story became popular in films and newspapers.
“I do not wish his fate on you, although you are so weak and the work in the mines is hard, but one thing you must know, you will be a symbol of evil and you will roam the camps and prisons as long as you have a mind and eyes from the west and insulting our power”.
* * *
Many years have passed since then. I, together with my friends of the same fate, made the prison. After the prison, for many more years, we ran to farms and quarries, until one day, just as we had not imagined, we saw the “building” of evil that was crawling.
I have often been tempted by desire and curiosity to meet that investigator again, but it is impossible to meet him. He has long since fled to America. I wanted to say:
“Mister! I endured your dictatorship, and now in freedom here I am here, in Albania. But you could not stand our freedom, and went to the “forbidden west”, avoiding shame. That shame, which, as you told me yourself, comes when you serve evil…! But if it was just that, it would be nothing.
It’s more. Forced exile. Punishment. Ruin of what you stood for.
In every square meter of the homeland, you see “thank you” ghosts. Of those you sent to Burrel, Spaç, Qafë-Bar. Ghosts have disturbed the subconscious. They made you turn your head back often. Don’t have peace of mind. So run away.
But your flight only resembles an ostrich’s head, because you are still here. A little Macbeth, a little Judas, a little Iago, a little Serpent. Porridge head to toe, ice cold. Not from sweat! Not from the waves of the seas you passed! From the sins you committed for fifty years! From the tears of those you punished without guilt.
Run away. But he could not take the black image and spirit with him. You can now find it on the pages of books by Visar Zhiti, Maks Velo, Fatos Lubonja, Agim Musta, Luan Mufti, and many others. Out there in America, one day your sinful body will die. Here, in these books, your soul will forever remain as a snake-fossil of evil, as a dark stain of crime…”! Memorie.al
