From Shkëlqim Abazi
Part fifty-seven
S P A Ç I
The Grave of the Living
Tirana, 2018
(My Memoirs and those of others)
Memorie.al / Now in old age, I feel obliged to confess my truth, just as I lived it. To speak of the modest men, who never boasted of their deeds, and of others whom the regime silenced and buried in the nameless pits? In no case do I take upon myself to usurp the monopoly of truth or to claim laurels for an event where I was accidentally present, although I wholeheartedly tried to help my friends even slightly, who tactfully and kindly avoided me: “Brother, open your eyes… don’t get involved… you only have two months and a little 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 that followed, until I was released. Nevertheless, everything I saw and heard those three days, I would not want to take to the grave.
Continued from the previous issue
“Listen, my friend, before we talk about Spaç, you should picture a gigantic pit that they call ‘The Grave of Enemies,’ where they have gathered the traitors and C.I.A. agents, the diversionists and the enemies of the people and the party, from wherever they might be.” – he continued. – “But I didn’t recognize any of them because we were forbidden to speak to them. I swear to you on my ideal, those wretches are smart; they have finished schools in the West and have been trained in camps in Federal Germany. They are so physically prepared that they can scale the wire fences, over three meters high, and take you hostage at the guard post (karakoll)!
There were all sorts of people, from politicians on the high platforms to criminals who would flay you alive. But the party found their place for them, locked them behind wires, and buried them in the mines so that they would leave their bones beneath the earth!”
When it came to the May 21st revolt, he expressed: “I will never forget those days! The enemies rebelled, incited by foreign espionage, with whom they connected using radio transceivers, employing a secret code that no son of a mother could decipher; with such chosen vocabulary that it would turn your mind to buttermilk (dhallë). My friend, when they spoke, you’d think God was speaking! But even our leaders knew them well, because they were more capable and more…”
“But why did they allow them to erupt in revolt if they had spotted it beforehand?” – I asked, pretending to be worried.
“Babuç (Dear friend/old man), the work of the Sigurimi (Secret Police) is deep, deeper than you can ever imagine!” – he squinted his eyes like a conspirator and added – “Perhaps they let them show their purpose, to uncover the hostile services working against Albania, and to strip naked the leaders of the internal reaction who operate camouflaged.”
“What happened next?”
“Well, here you go, we let them blather as much as they wanted, then we turned the barrel of the rifle on them and made them ‘cold water’ (made short work of them). The climax was reached with the flag, when they put up a crow without a star in the middle of it, but we also ‘plowed their mother’ (destroyed it violently), made it full of holes, until only the bullet-eaten flagpole and a rag, as if torn by dogs, remained on the terrace. Why, were they going to mock the party’s flag?!
On the morning of the third day, we made uproar! They gathered the 400 prisoners (sampistët) from Diko Zeqo’s group, they also selected about a hundred from us, equipped us with wooden stakes and crowbars, and we attacked those who didn’t surrender; we went at them fiercely (vënçe), so much that we broke their ribs and took them out on stretchers. Four were executed that day, over eighty were sentenced a second time (re-sentenced)…!”
“And with that the whole ‘mesele’ (mess/affair) was closed?” – I wanted to push him further.
“Man, we were willing to execute every last one of them, them and their people, wherever they might be, but what can you do about the party and Comrade Enver, who has a wide heart and a big belly (is merciful/tolerant)!”
Almost two decades after this tale, in February 1991, Mersin was leading the Enverists, who spared no alley or street in Berat, carrying plaster portraits and busts of Enver. The boys from my alley tore them up and smashed them, and went at them with stakes, whoever got away from their hands grabbed river sand and threw it in Remanicë. Three of my nephews had one of them pinned down. I didn’t approve of the violence, although he deserved the beating, so I took him out of their hands. And what do I see? The guard of the Spaç prison, Mersin!
“Thank you for saving me from the enemies of the party!”
“They are my nephews,” – I replied.
“What are you saying, man? These guys tore up Enver’s photos and the flag with the star!”
“They served you right (made you pay your due); instead of repenting and asking for forgiveness for your ancient sins, you’re dealing with corpses (i.e., dead ideology)?”
“I don’t repent for then, or for today, or for tomorrow, but I regret that I didn’t wipe out the enemies in Spaç, including you!”
It seems he had learned that I was also one of the “diversionists,” trained in the camps of Federal Germany!
The Second One
Xhevdet Cenka, from the villages of Devolli, as ignorant and uneducated as the first, but more cunning. After the army, he left the village and became a sergeant in Kavajë, where he married and served until the nineties. On the eve of democracy, he noticed the change and joined the Democratic Party, naturally for profit, but in any case, he became unemployed.
After the “revolution,” communist-peasant-Roma-Greek of 1997, I worked in Kavajë for nearly six years, where among those who supplied me with bricks and mortar, I also met Xhevdet. He posed as a pure democrat, but he was talkative and often forgot what he had said an hour earlier. During a lunch break, he was recounting to his colleagues episodes from an event in 1973, when he had been a soldier in the Ministry of Internal Affairs…!
“….they were strange, my friends! Why, would the government be overthrown by propaganda? They didn’t possess weapons, but their word weighed heavier than a bullet, and it stuck like glue! They almost convinced us too, us who had been specially selected and were given ten hours of political education per week!
That day Feçorr Shehu and Kasëm Kaçi lined up three hundred men, their blood boiled, and they threw them into the attack against the enemies of the party…”
This very passage piqued my curiosity.
“What are you talking about, Detkë?” – I used the Korça affectionate nickname to sound confidential.
“Have you heard anything about the Spaç prison and the 1973 revolt?” – he looked at me triumphantly.
“I’ve heard about the prison, but not the revolt!” – I pretended to be uninformed. What happened? – I asked naively.
“It’s a long story, to go back to the beginning again.”
“There’s no need, continue where you left off,” – I encouraged him.
“Well, alright! They got us drunk (xurxull) with cognac, and after an hour of politics, they equipped us with brass knuckles (doreza bronzi), rubber batons, and helmets (skafandra), and divided us into two groups. My group was ordered to enter through the main gate, the other through the ordinary camp, above the slope of a stream. The prisoners had been tied up beneath the command offices. My God, the state they were in, not having slept, they scared the wits out of you with their filth.”
“Didn’t you give them a good beating?” – I provoked him.
“No, man, we didn’t have business with the tied ones, because we were an elite force, for special intervention! But besides us, they also brought two thousand soldiers from the Burrel and Shkodra corps, not counting the volunteers from Rrëshen, Laç, Lezha, Puka, Kukës, Dibra, Mati, etc., totaling over four thousand.”
“Four thousand military forces, for seven hundred unarmed people?” – I feigned surprise.
“We had rifles, they were orators, man, and they would mess with your mind and throw you off!”
“What happened next?” – I couldn’t wait.
“After they informed us that a part (of the prisoners) would resist with improvised means—axes, pickaxes, crowbars, wooden stakes, stones – besides helmets, they also equipped us with plastic shields. We called upon the barricaded ones, but they did not surrender. We surrounded the barracks and the building, but surprisingly, four people delayed us for two hours! Stones and bricks rained down on us like hail. Also, a shaggy dog confused us and made our lives hell! The barricaded ones from above, the dog from below, they ground us up, oh, by God! – They went bam (hit) on our heads, he went ham (bit) on our thighs, and we couldn’t find a cure. Allahun shahit (God is my witness)!”
“Why didn’t you put a bullet in him, to send him to the bottom of the mare!” – I prodded him.
“We didn’t have weapons, my friend. We went bam with stakes, he went ham with his teeth, he tore us up, man, may your mind be shut (a curse for disbelief)!”
“How many of you were there?”
“About two or three hundred souls!”
“Aren’t you ashamed when you tell this, man, Detkë?” – I put him on the spot.
“Listen, friend! He was a hazhdërha (dragon/monster); the more we hit him, he would turn back and charge us with his teeth, and tear us to pieces, as if we had been grated!
“He must have been strange, man, Detkë!”
“Ellahun shahit (God is my witness), he wasn’t like all the other dogs!”
“The external enemies must have sent him on a mission, man, Detkë!”
“Good for you! We reached the same conclusion; they had trained him in the best schools of West German counterintelligence. They sent him as a diversionist! Although he didn’t resemble German dogs either in stature or color!”
“What happened next?”
“Up there, their ‘ammunition’ ran out, and they entered into hand-to-hand combat. Vallahi (By God) they were brave, but we broke their jaws with brass knuckles and their bones with stakes, took them out on stretchers, almost dead, and threw them onto the truck beds.
“And what happened to the dog?”
“About ten men dealt with the dog and beat him with stakes, but he also bloodied them and rattled them with his teeth. But we recited the kuluvallanë (sung his death knell/finished him off), we sentenced him to death!”
“What did you say, what?” – I was stunned.
“Why are you surprised, may your mind be shut, he paid for every last damage he caused us!”
“I have never heard of a court being gathered to sentence a dog!”
“No, man, the court didn’t sentence him, we did! He deserved it; he was more dangerous than his owners! If he had remained alive, he would have sent information to the masters who had sent him on a mission.”
“And you executed him?”
“We left that duty to the camp leaders, who carried out the decision the next day.”
He was silent for a while, but I prodded him:
“Anything else…?”
“What else, man?”
“I wanted to ask, what happened after that?”
“A-ah! We left the rest I only heard about. After us, the police checked the dormitories and arrested about a hundred men, broke their ribs with stakes, tied them with iron chains, and tossed them onto covered vehicles. The court sentenced twelve that very day, four were executed by firing squad, and the others got twenty-five (years)…!”
“In other words, your job was to kill people?!”
“What else was the party feeding us for, with wheat bread and meat, man?” – he laughed ironically.
“And you carried out the directives, without any pangs of conscience?”
“They trained us for three years for that day! But they deserved it; they tried to overthrow the popular power by force, man!”
The Third One
In the two thousands (2000s), I had a worker from Lybesha. Selman Murati was uneducated and ignorant, like the first two, but unlike them, he was a convinced believer. In short, he compensated for his naivety with devotion to God.
We were renovating a house near the Beqarëve Mosque, in the “Mangalem” neighborhood, where Bar “Dardha” was across the street. Whenever I felt like it, I ordered from the balcony, and when the coffee was ready, I would drink it sometimes with one, sometimes with the other, but I hadn’t had the chance with Selman. Since I had no one else that day, I invited him, and he didn’t refuse. We were sipping it leisurely on the veranda above the waters of the Osum, when someone from the sidewalk wished us well:
“May it do you good?”
I had encountered the person at the gatherings of the Association of Former Political Prisoners, but I didn’t know his name.
“Welcome!” – I invited him, according to custom.
“You didn’t leave this guy even at the café, man?” – he threw a remark at my worker. They seemed close, but I didn’t know what connected them.
“We have been working together for almost two months; today it went well, so we’re drinking coffee,” – Mania replied.
“Does the coffee taste good, with the ‘enemy of the party’?” – he teased and patted my shoulders. After this joke, I invited him to sit down:
“Come and drink a coffee with us; Mania is friends with everyone!” – I defended him. “Even with you?” – he asked seriously.
“For a few months now.”
“Are you two guarding some secret from the past?” – Again seriously.
I didn’t know him, just as I didn’t know the interlocutor, but I wasn’t interested in the secrets of either of them, as nothing connected me except work.
“Why would I need your secrets?” – I cut him short.
“No, my friend, we don’t have secrets because we are villagers, but you and this one have been in prison; one inside, the other a guard with an automatic rifle!”
I froze with the cup in my hand and my eyes on Selman, because I couldn’t imagine a kind man like him serving the State Security (Sigurimi) or being a prison guard, let alone a political one.
“Is it true?” – I addressed him.
“Yes, I was a soldier from… ’71 until… ’74,” – he paused for a moment, looked at me from under his eyebrows, and added: – “Well, they sent me unwillingly, but what is your connection to Spaç?”
“They didn’t ask me either, but they handcuffed me and took me by force…!”
“Oh, Mane, this one was a political prisoner!” – the other clarified.
“U-ah, o-ooo, Ja Abas Ali (Oh, Abbas Ali)!” – he froze, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. – “Were we there at the same time?!”
“He was released a year before you,” – the interlocutor added.
“Did the revolt catch you there?” – Mania was interested.
“I stayed two and a half months after it.”
“Thank God you escaped unharmed! O-ooo, Ja Abas Ali!” – he groaned, stretching out with his hands on his head.
“Does it hurt?” – the fellow villager worried.
“My head hurts whenever I remember it. O-ooo, Ja Abas Ali!” – he groaned and continued: – “God knows what my eyes saw!”
“Tell us what you saw!” – the fellow villager urged him.
“O-ooo, by that God who sees and hears us, those mysybete (misfortunes/incidents) are not easily confessed!”
“Speak without hesitation,” – I intervened.
“Will you not hold a grudge against me?” – he shrunk to the size of a fist.
“Why would I need to?!”
“Brother, we did bad things too!”
“A good person finds the opportunity to apologize, even when they make a mistake!” – I wanted to ease his mind.
“The bad things we did, the sea cannot wash away, nor will God in heaven forgive us! O-ooo, Ja Abas Ali!” – he groaned deeply.
I don’t know why I pitied that remorseful wretch! Indeed, how many others in Albania or abroad feel the burden of guilt and look for a chance to ask for forgiveness? From experience, not many result. Furthermore, the arrogance of those who despise us and don’t deign to look at us, who hate us and regret that they left us alive, coincides with the behavior of the socialist government officials, who didn’t employ a single political persecuted person – a behavior that gives no hope for forgiveness, even a delayed one.
“What particular thing stands out to you about the former political prisoners?” – the fellow villager asked.
“The fact that they presented them to us as devils with horns and criminals who would eat children alive, but…!”
“And you believed them?” – I interrupted him.
“Oh, brother, that’s all we knew, just country folk! They dressed us in coats, filled our bellies with wheat bread, our heads with communist nonsense, and made us charge!”
“Where did the soldiers who served in prisons come from?” – Although the question might yield a relative answer, I posed it to find out whose hands our lives were left in.
“There were people from all over Albania, but the overwhelming majority was from the South, in a ratio of three to one.”
“Were there city dwellers?” – I interrupted, surprised by this unknown fact.
“In the unit where I served, about one hundred and fifty soldiers, only two were city dwellers, but they didn’t stand guard, because one was the youth secretary, the other the quartermaster. Furthermore, the composition was the same in the border units, where my fellow villagers performed their service. They filled them with villagers from the deep areas and here and there a city Gypsy.
“What was their educational level?”
“They had eight years of education; there were some with primary school, and more rarely, one with a high school education.”
“Did they do political work with you?”
“O-ooo, Ja Abas Ali, three months, from morning till night, and then three times a week, for two hours.”
“And training?”
“Training, you say?! The first three months, they took our souls! Starting at five in the morning, we would run five kilometers, then training all day – marching, running, learning weapon handling – and the evening found us exhausted, as if we had been beaten with stakes, but the tranazhi (changing room/routine) awaited us, where they would dress and undress us about ten times. When they transferred us to the unit, we did it twice a week, outside of duty hours.”
“What else did you do in the unit?”
“Ja Abas Ali, eight-hour shifts, my friend! In summer, two four-hour shifts; in the winter cold, four two-hour shifts.”
“Did you feel happy?”
“Man, are you trying to mock me?! You are talking like those who wanted to convince us that we were supposedly the most privileged people in the world, that the party had entrusted us with the most difficult front, facing diversionists and dangerous enemies! But time eroded the delusion when the differentiations began. The worm of doubt gnawed at us, and we would talk to some trusted comrade, but cautiously, because the prison was right in front of our noses, every day and every minute.”
“Did they punish anyone?”
“About three or four! Two with prison, for unauthorized absence, and two others were sent to the psychiatric hospital, for failure to follow orders.”
“What do you know about the revolt of May 21, 1973?”
“O-ooo, by God, those mysybete (misfortunes/incidents) is hard to confess!” – he repeated his previous expression and sighed again, with his head in his hands: – “O-ooo, Ja Abas Ali!”
I didn’t urge him. When I got up to pay, the fellow villager insisted on paying for our round. As he ordered three soft drinks, he nudged Mane: “Got a headache, huh?”/Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
