By Shkëlqim Abazi
Part four
Memorie.al / I were born on 23.12.1951, in a black month of a time of mourning, under the blackest communist regime. On September 23, 1968, the sadistic chief investigator, Llambi Gegeni, the brutish investigator Shyqyri Çoku, and the cruel prosecutor, Thoma Tutulani, mutilated me at the Branch of Internal Affairs in Shkodër; they split my head, 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 pathetic Faik Minarolli gave me a ten-year political prison sentence. After my sentence was halved because I was still a minor, a sixteen-year-old, on November 23, 1968, they took me to the Reps political camp, and from there, on September 23, 1970, to the Spaç camp, where on May 23, 1973, in the Revolt of the political prisoners, four martyrs were 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 Director General of the “Renaissance” government sent order No. 2203, dated 23.10.2013, for the termination of a police employee’s duty. Thus, Divine Providence became entangled with the neo-communist “Renaissance” Providence, and precisely on the 23rd, they replaced me, with nothing less than the former operative of the Burrel Prison State Security. What could be more telling than that?! The former political prisoner is replaced by the former persecutor!
The Author
SHKËLQIM ABAZI
Continued from last issue
REPSI
(The Forced Labor Camp)
Memoir
When I saw Father Vaska dressed in felt (a traditional Albanian woolen cloth), I could never imagine how he would transform with his religious uniform, his black cassock, and the kamilaf on his head. On his face, the diseases and years of prison had left a deeper mark than his real age, because when I learned that he was only forty-five years old, I couldn’t believe it. His appearance gave the impression of an elderly man, at least over sixty. But the suffering, the prison…!
He was a quiet, meditative, and methodical person. From him, I learned the philosophy of sacrifice without complaint, and how to ignore revenge even against brutality. This man of few words, with his measured, yet devoted actions, gave you the hint of how to win paradise by worshipping the invisible, the imaginary, Jesus; who was embodied on an icon (even though icons did not exist in prison, he would pray to an imagined figure).
I never heard him complain, not for a single moment did I see him waste time, you would always find him either praying alone to his idol, Jesus Christ, or with books in his hand. Thrifty with words and as calm as a Solomon, he commanded respect. With his rational thoughts, he instilled knowledge. Kind, resourceful, and without fuss, he lived out the command of Christ; “when you have two, give one to your neighbor in need,” sharing even his last bite.
Since he was always weak and the medical-legal commission had deemed him unfit for work, he spent most of his time lying down. He lived a frugal life on six hundred grams of bread and the mushy black soup, with some pieces of eggplant, leek, or spinach, depending on the season, and with only twenty grams of oil a day, and even that was given only on some days. Thus, he survived on what they called a meal, as well as on the few food parcels his family brought him, taking it from their own mouths.
Despite his illness and poverty, for as long as I was near him, I never heard him complain. You would always find him available, with his ever-present smile on his tormented face, radiating kindness.
Thanks to him, I learned to overcome the initial difficulties; I chose my friends without making a mistake in selection; I resisted and endured the suffering of prison, without falling prey to cliques or individuals connected to the command – spies and immoral people – who swarmed there as they did in every other cell of the rotten socialist society. For all this, I will remain forever grateful to my friend, Vaska.
Meanwhile, Esheref Zaimi was the priest’s complete opposite. Ironic and boisterous, a born talker, but who always said the right thing. He often became cynical and unscrupulous, but he would find the right approach for each person!
He had the talent of an artist; although anonymous and unschooled, without any tools at his disposal except for a few pieces of shkope (juniper) or bushi (boxwood) and a small knife, made with electrode wire or thin steel threads, genuine works of art came from his hands that, had he been given the chance to exhibit them, would have been envied by the most renowned artists in the country and perhaps in the world.
When you saw those pieces of wood come to life, masterfully transforming into works of art, full of taste and imagination, you’d think he possessed the quality of magic. He gave even objects a soul! That burly man, with a scowling face, eyebrows set low over his eyes, a high forehead that ended at the back of his bald head, with large bony hands full of calluses, produced such delicate works. It was a marvel to behold!
At the time I met him, he could have been around fifty-five or sixty years old, maybe older, maybe younger, since you couldn’t tell the exact age of that category of people. His purplish, weathered face was traversed by deep lines like plow furrows, which started from his wide forehead and ended under his completely graying beard.
Because of the color of his face, the white hairs were more prominent. He had light gray eyes, but the frequent wrinkles around them gave their glow a special reflection. It was precisely these reflections that had stamped the mask of perpetual irony on his face, but also of a typical cleverness. With a below-average body, broad shoulders, and bony hands, he reinforced the idea that this dynamic person belonged to the peasant-worker class.
The pieces of wood transformed into works of art captured all my attention.
“Uncle Esheref, you are an artist!” I said, surprised, a short time after we had met.
“Oh, man, I wish I could make some money with it!”
“But you are a sculptor, man!”
“Pshhh, just passing the time, boy! I can’t read, so I deal with these things!”
“But where did you learn to carve so beautifully?”
“What do you mean, boy?”
“Man, what art school did you graduate from?” I added with childlike sincerity.
“Didn’t I tell you that here, they are all professors!” He made an ironic smirk, or so it seemed to me, and then became serious: “I’m joking, I learned with the sheep in the mountains since I was a little boy!”
“Without a single day of school?” I was surprised.
“What school, kid? And why would you need school to make these scribbles?”
“No, they’re not scribbles, but real art!” I praised him.
“Come on, man, if you wanted to, you could learn this trade, it’s not some great philosophy!”
In fact, it wasn’t like that; he downplayed things to not give himself importance. So, the truth was different: he was an artist, an artist in the full sense of the word! During my years in prison, I also met many other individuals who worked with wood, but none like him! I met Hil Pashku, a master woodworker, a perfect carpenter. I met Father Zef Pllumi, the same as the first. I met my compatriot from Skrapar, Petrit Spahiu, who, out of his passion for art, would kiss the piece of wood before he started carving it, and even apologize to it, saying he was disfiguring it with his knives!
But Uncle Esheref remained special: he gave life to the wood! But these things belong to later times, while that evening, after he put his knives and the piece of wood into a satchel, he ordered me:
“Get up! Go take a piss, because the snake is whistling now and you’ll come out in this commotion in your pants and shirt!”
“The snake! Why, do snakes whistle in winter?!”
I had no idea that this neo-term was what they had named the police’s whistles. Naturally, I learned later that with “snake’s whistle,” they meant the signal of the whistle for the synchronized actions performed there. But he didn’t give me time to get lost in thought, because he repeated:
“Well, what are you waiting for? Come on, get up, or you’ll have to take a piss naked!”
“Naked! What does that word mean?!”
“Leave the questions and follow the others!”
This boisterous and joking man, with his special experience and cleverness, although speaking in a somewhat archaic but very expressive dialect, when I first arrived at the camp, in the moments of depression that every new prisoner inevitably went through, he lifted my spirits. I cannot imagine how I would have gotten through those days and what turn my later life would have taken, without the valuable advice and piercing sarcasm of this “old man,” seemingly very ironic, but in the depths of his soul, quite human.
Without a doubt, following his example, I would draw the conclusion: “A positive soul, in whatever shame it may be, transmits only goodness around it!” He lived within a dual positivity, between the miracle of words and art, which had nothing to do with prison. The artist Zaimi soared on clouds, while the prisoner Esheref crawled on the ground! One personality contrasted with the other, and together they completed the individual, but the artist always emerged victorious. In his artistic daily life, there was no room for sadness or sorrow; the terrifying violence had not touched that soul. And like a heavenly angel, he injected it into others as well. Gratitude, Uncle Esheref!
Initially, I took his words as a joke. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but when the others were leaving the shack door in a hurry, I decided to do something. I got up, went down the wooden stairs, crossed the corridor and the door, and followed the majority. As soon as I was outside, the cold wind hit my face, and a shuddering chill went through my entire body. I was thinly dressed, in a taffeta shirt and terital pants; on my shoulders, I only had a light canvas jacket.
I watched the darkness that surrounded me with my eyes. A black veil had covered all the hills around, only over the territory surrounded by barbed wire did lights gleam. A two-acre area, enclosed by a triple perimeter, was illuminated by five powerful projectors, installed in the four corners of the sleeping camp, while a fifth, like a cyclops’ eye, pierced the darkness from the guard post above the main gate, pouring its blinding light over the entire camp area.
The lighting was completed with the contribution of one hundred and twenty-three smaller lamps. That was also the number of the fence posts. Each bulb was fixed on its respective post, and all together, they formed the new constellation of the communist galaxy, indistinguishable to any astrologer’s eye.
Naturally, I couldn’t have known this arithmetic on that night, but I would learn it later, during the endless nights in prison, when with my comrades in suffering, we would compete and make bets on who could accurately count the number of bulbs of the inner perimeter, as the sleeping camp was called, to distinguish it from the external lighting lamps, or those of the work camp.
Under the supervision of an impartial commission, I won the bet, because I was the most accurate in counting the bulbs, and consequently the posts of the sleeping camp. As the winner, I was rewarded with a spoon of yellow boxwood, masterfully crafted by the hand of maestro Esheref Zajmi, on which the author had stylized a goat’s head, with its mouth turned up, which also served as a whistle, to remind me of the snakes’ whistles.
Until the day of my release from prison, I guarded this trophy with fanaticism, but that day, the police confiscated it. It seems they liked it and took it from me, with the absurd pretext that I was supposedly not allowed to take it outside. They deprived me of the most precious gift, of the artistic work of the undiplomaed sculptor, Esheref Zajmi, which I had won with my amateur skills!
When I suddenly found myself in the epicenter of this circle illuminated by so many lights, I forgot for a moment that I was in prison, among the barbed wires. My imagination flew far away, to a festive event, under the gurgling rivers of fireworks, where I was also an unconscious participant.
But, fiu-fri-fiuuu! That extinguished this illusion, because at that moment the signal was given for a “dressed” curfew. Meanwhile, this was followed by the powerful voices of the soldier guards, who howled: “Stop! Turn back or I’ll shoot!” And indeed, as if to materialize the threat, I heard a prolonged cough of a machine gun: kra-krak-kra-aa-ak.
I froze in place. I didn’t know what to do. Dazed as I was, I saw the others who had been caught by the signal like me; they began to undress down to their underwear and shirts right where they were. What a macabre reflex! From brown, they turned into white ghosts! At that moment, a theatrical sketch came to mind, where some actors directed by an invisible director, played the role they had been taught. Even those in front of me acted with astonishing precision. Now naked, they resembled white ghosts wandering in the dark night. The screams and gunshots completed the eerie decor, and aroused a sense of insecurity in me.
Instinctively, I turned back, to take shelter under the door of the shack. I huddled there and turned my head again, to watch what the “actors” were doing on the grounds. I saw them taking off their clothes and with them in hand, continuing their way up to the bathrooms. But I didn’t have the courage to do it. The feeling of shame that they would see me in my underwear and tank top overcame the physiological need, so I went back inside. I had to get through that entire night without going out. Of course, I was young, my renal system worked wonderfully.
I went into the shack. My ears were met with silence. Now there were no more noisy conversations, only the clatter of clogs of those who were leaving and returning from the latrines some muffled whispers like the buzzing of bees, and a dry cough, which scratched this tragic silence. I noticed someone making signs with their eyes and lips, with some comical poses, like mime artists, but always without a sound. That’s how Uncle Esheref addressed me too; he put his index finger in front of his lips, which meant that I shouldn’t make a sound. I was silent, and in silence I climbed the wooden steps to my mattress. In a low voice, I heard him whisper:
“Sleep now! Even small noise is punished with a cell! Come on, good night!”
He concretized the theoretical lesson by lying down and covering his head with a wool blanket, then began to snore. Meanwhile, Vaska, on the other side, with a long-fringed rug that hung over his pillow, had covered his head long ago. You couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or dreaming, because every now and then, he would let out some deep groans. Groans and snores could be heard all over the shack. Since I was in my underwear, I felt ashamed to undress, so I dove under the thin quilt, with my pants still on.
The moments I had spent outside, in the bitter cold, had given me chills to the bone, but in order not to bother the others; I tried not to move under the covers. Even though I covered my head to warm myself with my own breath and lay flat under the bedding, I didn’t feel warm. The temperature inside the shack was not much different from the outside. I was shaking; my teeth chattered involuntarily and made some sounds, as if I was chewing on pieces of glass. At one point, I felt someone throw a cover on top of my quilt.
I was surprised; the care of these men who by age could have been my fathers, but who in these conditions had simply become my friends, almost made me cry. But what warmed me the most, which had no connection with the thermal effect, was the warm, fatherly hand that I had missed for a long time. However, I couldn’t get lost in deep thoughts, because the sensation of warmth spread throughout my body and lulled me to sleep. My eyes closed. While my ears were still being scratched by the creaks and shrieks from the planks laid under the endless bed.
In that shack, seventy men slept, and the snores followed one another and created the feeling of a continuous anxiety. Every time someone moved to change sides, the planks would whine and creak, like a complaint. I was lost in the vapors of oblivion. I felt like I was rocking in a broken boat in the middle of the ocean, which rattled and groaned under the crushing of the terrifying waves, and from moment to moment, you expected the disaster, which, along with the wreck, would swallow the unfortunate cargo into the boundless abyss of the kingdom of chaos.
The fatigue, the torment, and the rattling from the long journey had their effect. My body fell into peace, my mind into deep oblivion, while my thoughts escaped. What I experienced that evening had left an indelible mark, somewhere deep in my subconscious. The impressions of that day would accompany me for the rest of my life. Thanks to the welcome of those unknown men, a new world, with other colors, with another meaning, with other aspirations, would precede an unpredictable future.
The light of hope that dawned on me that evening would belong to the next day, to a world where you could give and receive unconditional love, outside of the petty and hypocritical interests of the moment. These two wise and intelligent men, with their gesture, had given me lesson number two; unlimited love and sacrifice without reward, for the needy. In my sleep, I thanked the noble men: “Thank you, for life and eternity!” I slept./Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
