By Sokol Parruca
Part Six
– Rare testimonies of the well-known jurist Sokol Parruca about the icons of Shkodran football over the years, such as Halepiani, Hasa, Rragami, Rakiqi, Bizi, Dani, Zhega, etc.; artists such as Vasija, Tërshana, Aliaj, Ljarja, etc.; as well as other emblematic figures of that city –
Memorie.al / It is difficult to write about the former players of the “Vllaznia” team of Shkodra through the years without being a football scholar or specialist, but I am simply recording my impressions of those whom I knew, met, and watched, including the youth coaches, without claiming that I am saying everything they deserve. And of course, it is impossible not to mention Ernest Halepiani. I was about nine years old. I do not remember which neighborhood friend first went with me to the “Pioneer Park,” near the former “11 January” school, to begin training in football. There, the children’s coach was a short man with fine curly hair and a face that shone with kindness.
Continued from the previous issue
A LIVED EVENT
I wanted to be present at a procedural investigative confrontation. I was curious to know what had driven this mother to report her own son for attempting to escape abroad – something that had never happened to me throughout my entire professional career.
Moreover, I knew her. We had grown up and lived in the same city. She was an athlete. I knew that several years earlier her husband had escaped abroad and that she had been left alone with her son. She had no other children. The boy was just two or three months away from turning sixteen.
This confrontation between the son (who had been arrested) and his mother had become necessary for the investigation.
We scheduled it for the next day at 10:00. Exactly on time, she arrived. The room was next to the prison cells and was used for questioning detainees. It was not very different from the cells – no light, no air, and damp.
As soon as she entered, she took two or three steps toward her son and collapsed to the floor. The boy, terribly shaken, bent over her and cried out in fear:
– “Mother, mother, oh mother…!”
His voice quickly brought her back to her senses. Sitting there next to each other, they caressed one another and wiped away their tears. Her tear in his eye, his tear in hers. They withdrew completely into their own world – a world filled with love and pain.
Down there on the floor, as they sat side by side, it seemed to me like an endless space where all the love in the world had gathered.
I felt a wave of warmth spread out – it was the warmth of a mother for her son, and of a son for his mother. Little by little, at first it seemed as if they were stammering, but then their words became clearer, and a dialogue began between them – one I had never heard or read before.
The words seemed as though the soul itself had found a voice and was reaching us as sighs and laments.
– “Ah, my son… I…” she said, choking with sobs. “I brought you to the prison door. Didn’t I tell you, my son, to take me with you until you crossed the border, so I could protect you from their bullets? They would kill you, my son! Let them shoot me instead – if only you could escape unharmed.
Your life would be extinguished, and the soldier who killed you would be decorated. It is better, my son, that I bring you food in prison than flowers to your grave…! But what am I saying – these people might not even leave you a grave. Who knows where they would throw your body, my son.”
The boy wept silently, curled up beside his mother, looking even younger than he was. Like a sigh escaping from the soul, his voice was barely audible:
– “How could I take you with me, mother? How could I leave you lying there bleeding from the soldiers’ bullets and continue on my way? My heart knows how I could never leave you alone at home – let alone leave you lifeless at the border.”
That was enough. I could not detach myself from what I was seeing and hearing. I realized it was impossible for that oasis of love not to reach me, not to ignite and overwhelm me as well, no matter how much I tried to control my emotions.
Those two bodies, united as one, brought before me a mountain of love, an entire world of sublime feeling that could raise even the dead from their graves – let alone me, a human being of the same flesh and blood as them.
We left them there for a long time, mother and son. The investigator, a young man from Tirana, looked at me, asking silently what we should do. My silence gave the answer.
When they finally calmed down, we left without writing a single line. What value could a procedural document have compared to the act we had just witnessed and experienced?
I went outside. The sun was at the peak of its heat, yet I felt strangely cold.
It was the fever of those moments that still accompanied me – moments that had warmed me and illuminated my emotions and my state of mind. For the first time, that prison room seemed warm to me, as if the burning embers of human love had glowed within it.
And as I walked thoughtfully, fragments of the dialogue I had just heard came back to my mind. They sounded so sweet – sometimes like murmurs, sometimes like birdsong, sometimes like the incomprehensible words of a divine language.
Walking absent-mindedly, not noticing the passers-by or acquaintances, I understood – perhaps for the first time – that I had chosen the wrong profession. Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
