From Shkëlqim Abazi
Part fifty-one
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
“After this assertion, he blushed; the feeling of revulsion of his subservient being seemed to rise, and he tried to turn the opinion according to his whim, but he changed his mind and chose to ease his uncomfortable position: “I would lose too much! I would lose my profession; I would lose this nest that I have built with my nails and with the sacrifices of my family!” – Perhaps this argument emboldened him: “Look, do you want the plain truth? They won’t do it for five of these; they will tie the donkey in place of the horse, and goodbye to my clinic! Here and elsewhere, there are plenty of doctors, even if we are not professionally equal!” – the marble whiteness was replaced by a saffron yellow. – “Then the mine remains. But my loins can’t hold up! So, whether I want to or not, I will behave submissively. Did you get that?”
He spoke to me in the plural, as if all the disbelievers were lined up behind my shoulders, even those he had exchanged words with over the years but were not currently in Spaç.
“It’s true that I have problems, but I am not a spy, I am not immoral, I am not a ne’er-do-well!” he added, agitated. Perhaps with this outburst, he aimed to silence the evil tongues.
“Don’t mistake my weakness for a lack of character!” he added enigmatically. “Come on then, let someone step forward and prove the gossip to me!”
He pretended to be observing some crooked arabesques in the visitors’ book, but it was clear that he was distracted, as if he had lost a needle in a haystack. I was speechless. The nurse was also stunned, hearing for the thousandth time the apology of that overburdened soul, perhaps unjustly. Although I had a multitude of arguments to counter him, I remained silent…, because I felt sorry for him.
Perhaps he was entirely convinced of the version he was defending, but the indecision that characterized him couldn’t dispel the shadows of the past; perhaps his pragmatic and utilitarian mind couldn’t perceive the sacrifice in the name of a great ideal, because his petty soul couldn’t penetrate the labyrinth of factors that pushed a responsible proud man toward sublime acts.
“Perhaps he is rightly protecting his investment, but he hasn’t found the irreproachable path, way, or means! Perhaps in his concept, ‘honor’ represents a ready-made suit, cut for all sizes! Perhaps he was born a great healer, but a small character!”
I still hold that same opinion today, reinforced by the words of Father Mark Hasi in the Reps cells: “Not everyone is born to be a hero! Not everyone is cut out to sacrifice themselves like Christ…”!
I thought of all these things, but I didn’t utter a sound, I remained silent, and endured the metallic scraping that was tearing at my flesh.
“Oh!” – a moan escaped me.
“Does it hurt?” – the doctor intervened.
“A little!” – I tried to minimize it, but it stabbed my heart.
“Hold on a little longer!” – the nurse encouraged me.
“Go on, Vani!” – I clenched my jaws. – “Do I have to endure more?” – I don’t know why I asked that foolish question.
“It’s gone, may it be the last!” – he comforted and scraped beneath the skin with the turned tip of the scissors.
“Recall beautiful memories to forget the wounds!” – and the doctor reached for a flask.
“Today doesn’t allow you to evoke the past, which has faded over time!”
Nevertheless, I closed my eyes to avoid seeing the massacre on my body and immersed myself in dreams. I ignored the pains, rode the “Pegasus,” and flew in reverse: With the Dyli brothers, at the beginning of the prison term in Reps, when I had just finished a one-month solitary confinement. It was the time when I was under the fumes of youthful “heroism”:
“I’ve been gaining weight for a month!” – Muharrem’s excited tone brushed my ear: – “Well done, lad, you brought us honor!” – etc., etc.
“Enough Rrem, now we must keep him away from trouble…” – Rizai, the older brother, intervened.
“Oh-u-ah, with moralizing you’ll end up being their friend, brother!” – the younger one snapped back. – “This dog-of-a-people doesn’t understand politeness, only the stick is needed for him! Noble with the noble, dishonorable with the dishonorable, that’s the nature of this breed! The stick came from paradise, fatty! Come on, don’t worry, you have your brother!”
“Wait, Rrem, he spent a month in the cell, and you’re at it again, the stick, the congratulations!” etc., etc.!
When Rrema mentioned the weakness of a friend, Rizai mentioned a very practical maxim: “They are not made of iron, brother, the poor soul is made of flesh, one endures and one doesn’t!” – the elder wanted to temper the anger of the younger.
“I don’t understand you, brother! Why, did a cow give birth to the others? The whole world is made of flesh and bones, father! But they are weak pretense, brother dear!” – Rrema clenched his fists like a paladin.
“Listen to Zaken, now!” – the old man addressed me. – “God has distributed tempers and abilities in this world, my son, He made the lion, He made the mouse, one lives like a king, the other beneath the ground; He made the eagle, He made the toad, one lives in the mountains, the other in the canals; but when He made the mule and the donkey, the mule climbed Tomor mountain with a quintal, the donkey with two baskets lay down in the canal. Did you understand how the Great God fashioned them, to whom we should be grateful?”
The wisdom of the uneducated old man, with excellent logic and oratory, lacked nothing compared to the poets! I pondered these things while the nurse was tearing my flesh with the tips of the tweezers and the doctor was pouring out his own woes. I linked them to the event, but to be honest, I couldn’t make sense of it; was the doctor weak, or were we incompetent? To discern the characters, or was he aiming to seize the opportunity to perform a catharsis from the gossip, or was he attempting to self-cleanse the mud that had been thrown at him, rightly or wrongly, or had I, due to the pain, fallen into a delirium so that I couldn’t concentrate and reason clearly?
Neither they nor later, throughout the years, did I fully manage to understand the dual, contradictory, cynical, nihilistic, and philanthropic type all at once. When he happened to bring up damaging topics, which I didn’t feed due to lack of trust, but listened to without replying or tried to avoid the core by giving opinions that were neither fish nor fowl, as soon as someone came in, besides the nurse who seemed to enjoy blind trust, he would side-line or interrupt the conversation and start with professional details, but he could hardly wait to pour himself out as soon as confidentiality was established.
These equivocations instilled in me the idea that he was hiding something. A month or so before my release, he invited me for a coffee. I had been healed for a long time by then, we would exchange greetings when we met accidentally, and briefly exchange an opinion in passing, but that was all. I feared socializing with him; the echo of the May Revolt had not yet died down, where in some criminal proceedings, he had testified against fellow sufferers who were re-sentenced.
While I was hoping for release, re-sentencing became the main topic of the day, and the prison became so heavy that I was wary even of the shirt on my back, let alone the doctor! Nonetheless, in respect for his care during my immobility, I accepted, but with a dull mind, to keep my mouth shut. He brewed the coffee in a corner of the private kitchen and poured it into two cups (I want to emphasize that he was one of the few who had cups and was never short of coffee).
We talked about general topics, when the conversation turned to the accusation for which he was in prison, I had no choice but to listen to the rumored and quite delicate affair, which was widely whispered in the orbit of the prisons (according to the gossip, he was said to have been convicted of necrophilia, which I could not verify). Nevertheless, the act he was accused of exceeded the boundaries of imagination; to believe it, one had to escape to primitive eras when humans and animals were still indistinguishable. Naturally, I had heard it in dozens of versions.
Without knowing him, it had seemed like fantasy, but when the authentic author told the story, it took on real nuances and fit within a static frame. He spoke and swallowed the coffee with difficulty, perhaps by confessing that crime that depressed him, he sought to ease his soul, while the nightmare of the unimaginable made him feel sinful. At those moments, I felt like the priest in the cell; this is what he must have aimed for, to confess to the first trusted person, so that they would tell others, and those others, and so on; perhaps his burdened conscience, perhaps even innocent, would be relieved.
I listened to him as many before me may have done, but the truth was weakly entangled, so much so that it never made sense, the event had turned into a legend, and legends remain legends, so much so that even the veil of mystery cannot isolate them, just like sheer tulle that cannot hide the atmosphere. Identification with the legend made it unbelievable; to take it for granted, one had to be well-intentioned.
Nevertheless, I parted disbelieving; even after dozens of years, I am not sure if he confessed the truth to me. However, I contented myself with the intellectual subtlety of the dual personality with impaired credibility. I have lingered on the doctor, not because I hold him in special regard, but because he recovered my physical state, and I am striving to recover his image. With God’s help! This part is an extract from the narrative of my friends, because I was wandering somewhere between Hell and Eden.
They brought me to “his clinic,” more dead than alive. But the doctor embarked on an experiment that rarely occurred in his long professional career: “to deal with dead living beings.” Initially, he had removed the companions from the environment of “his clinic,” who were now hindering him, except for his colleagues: Astrit Delvina, Met Karakashi, Bahri Marku, and the nurse.
I had lost a lot of fluids, so they had laid me on a white tarpaulin, stuck needles into my veins, and connected some rubber tubes at the end to transfer the serum, while the doctor checked my bones by hand. In “his clinic,” almost every necessary apparatus for a hospital, even a field one, was missing: the “Röntgen” machine for fluoroscopy and radiography was missing, as were laboratory equipment and medicines, but the readiness, desire, will, and dedication of the doctor, who continued the examination with professional ego, were present.
Upon encountering a broken bone, he would give the order to mix some plaster dust in a tin basin, and they would lay it went on strips torn from an old sheet – I don’t know who they took it from their mattress. They plastered this cloth and gypsum mass onto my injured limbs and tightened it with gauze until it hardened. Oh God, a man of fifty kilograms, they loaded me with one hundred kilograms of plaster! They thus plopped me onto a bed of rough planks, where I would languish for a long time.
In “his clinic,” silence reigned; only the footsteps of the doctor echoed, who, with a stethoscope around his neck, crossed the “headquarters” back and forth. He gave orders in a low voice, but didn’t wait for them to be executed; he rushed and carried them out himself; if he needed an instrument, he would reach and take it himself; if he needed a needle or a syringe, he opened the autoclave and took it. So he dealt with a volume of work that would require a considerable team in any other clinic.
Naturally, he had the help of his colleagues and the nurse, whom he never separated from himself, so when he expressed “I,” with his finger he pointed to Vani and implied “we.” After five or six hours, he was utterly exhausted, at the door of “his clinic.” When they saw him so worn out, his friends didn’t dare ask him, because his gloomy face and slumped body was not a good sign, but they cleared a path for him to walk through the rows as in a funeral review. He headed to the restrooms a few meters below and returned shortly after, relieved and with a face where the previous gloom had dissipated, but bags hung under his eyes, and his eyelids were swollen and bruised, as if they had been grimed with mascara. That slight change gave courage to someone who addressed him:
“Eh, doctor, how…?” – but he feared the answer; “he’s gone!”, so he didn’t dare finish the question. – “God help him, I did my part!” – he had answered laconically.
“Allahu ekber!” – Someone had prayed.
“Reach out, O Saint Mary, mother of Christ!” – Another had followed.
And they left with pipes between their teeth, to prepare for another tiresome night, perhaps even for another more painful tragedy. Five days, neither dead nor alive, in the “clinic” where Kosovrasti and Vani kept vigil. I languished on the planks amidst the tubes that hung over my head and dripped fluids from the bottles stuck in the ceiling, to the needles submerged in the veins of my forearm, distributing it throughout the entire periphery of my body. Every hour of the day or night, two or three friends would act as orderlies, lifting and laying me down according to the doctor’s advice. When the nurse noticed a flutter of eyelashes on the fifth day, followed by a prolonged moan, he stammered confidently: “Life!”
“Life, life!” – the two friends followed. “Life,” repeated the others behind the door.
“True or imaginary?”
“God knows!”
But the darkness was torn. Back to life again. Upon catching the signal, the angels gave the news, while the friends burst into cheers, applause, and praise, for the individual hated for his vices but adored for his craft:
“Let me kiss your hands!” – my compatriot, Bajram Hoxha, begged him.
But the sobbing doctor embraced the small Bajram, with his bulky physique.
“Dio mio, bravo dottore!” – Angelo Bertoni, with teary eyes, implored him.
“Grazie tante, signore!” – the doctor replied in his language.
“O Theos, yasu megalo yatro!” – Vasil Dhimitriadhis, the Greek with a strange history, thanked him. “Life!” “Marroku” had screamed.
“Life!” the cat had meowed from atop the tar-paper roof. “Life, a-ee!” Malo the crier had relayed, with his booming voice.
A mishmash of questions and answers, clatter of wooden clogs, rustle of peasant shoes, screech of locks, echo of shouts, lashed my ears like ultrasound coming from extra-planetary orbits.
“O Allah, life!” – Haxhi Mekolli, from Devolli, prayed over my head. “We thought you were dead, son, but God saved you, to whom we should be grateful!”
“God willed it, live!” – the voice of [unclear].
“He’s a tough nut, this one, hey men!” – Shtjefën Lacuku’s ironic voice from Shkodra. – “Like that Christ’s blood, he will cheat death and live another century!” – as if reinforcing the previous determination.
“Leave the boy alone, now! Don’t you see how he is?” – it was Zihni Dervishi, from Durrës.
Sounds of life! Signals of light!
Now “Polyphemus,” “Hades,” the Prosecutor-patriot, and the hated pleiade of Marxist-Leninist-Dimitrovist-Maoist-Enverists, barked furiously, the prophetic mind of the healer Kosovrasti. Meanwhile, I was alive, I realized I could distinguish people by their timbre and was capable of reasoning, even though I couldn’t perceive the extent of my injury.
When I tried to get up, some invisible thorns kept me nailed to the bedding; I reached for my hands, my limbs stiffened, perhaps they had tied me with the rubber tubes hanging above, or perhaps my legs were mummified so they didn’t move.
I forced myself to open my eyes, my eyelashes weighed as if they had been caught in bandages or sewn shut entirely, while my eyeballs had jumped out of their sockets and were rolling outside the cavities. My brain worked through smoke, but it still functioned. Even my ears caught signals, perhaps not clearly, but as long as I could distinguish the rustling of peasant shoes from the clatter of wooden clogs, it implied that I was still in this false world. Similarly, a beehive buzzed deep in my skull, while the chirping of crickets dizzied my brain.
I sought calm, but the state of jermi, neither asleep nor awake, felt like balm on the wounds. I felt some hands, but I couldn’t react. I forced myself and tried to utter a syllable, but my lips stiffened, while the words turned and circulated in the narrowness of my throat and crumbled like pea grains in the cavity of the gullet. I sighed: “O mother,” but even the sigh couldn’t pass the bracket:
“O God, have they sewn my mouth shut, or have they pulled out my tongue?” I moved my tongue; it swayed in the vacuum, like a sluggish snake.
“Oh, they must have cut my vocal cords!”
Anguish gripped me. Terror squeezed my lungs, while an invisible aspirator sucked the bubbles of oxygen and injected me with bitterness. I tried to fill the void, but a sharp ember pierced my chest through and through. “O-o-oh, what torture!” The pain asphyxiated me and passed the limit of endurance. In the void of my lungs, a ball of thorny wires gathered, piercing my diaphragm with stinging points, and inside my chest, it exploded like a mine, splitting my ribs into threads.
The sensation of pain awoke the sleeping sensors, whose tentacles squirmed like mercury across the entire periphery of my body, caught the signals to the extreme, and transmitted them to the central unit. The flood of pain gave me the sensation of a lump growing somewhere in the depths, it swelled and swelled like a gigantic tumor and burst, spilling pus into my heart; “O God, my heart!”
The sigh shattered the narrowness of the throat, demolished the ramparts of the remaining teeth, ripped open the shield of my dry lips, and came out.
“We thank you, O God,” – a prayer boomed near my ear. I don’t know if they were truly praying, or if it was just me? Perhaps. But who? God only knows! The prophets appeared to me when they conversed with God, addressing Him from earth, from prison, from hell, for themselves and for the sinners of the world, worthy and unworthy, mostly for the unworthy.
“We thank you, O God,” – the echo repeated.
The prayer touched my chords, soothed the pain, settled the suffering, and ignited an unknown joy in me: “O God, I am still among the living beings of this planet!” Under His grace and with the perseverance of my friends, I escaped the claws of “Polyphemus!” I resurrected! When the dead is resurrected, the structure of communist propaganda, built without foundations, collapses, just like the Tower of Babel, under the weight of sins!
“We thank you, O God,” You cast the monsters into Tartarus and left me on earth, where I continue to breathe even after five decades.
“Amen!” And then try not to believe it!
Eve of the Revolt
The liberal spirit of the 11th Festival, in 1972, started somewhat better for the command of Camp 303, Spaç; the Plan was being realized rhythmically, there were no tragedies with deaths in the mine, no escape attempts, and no prolonged hunger strikes, except for sporadic cases that faded before worsening.
Thanks to Chinese aid, there were also some achievements on the national level. The products of the “Mao Tse-tung” Textile Combine in Berat, although of poor quality, invaded the market, somewhat filling the gap, but everywhere you encountered people dressed in rags for shame, especially in villages, or wearing uniforms, canvas clothes. Agricultural and livestock products increased somewhat, but the scarcity of bread continued as before, even though the party members tried to mask it, supposedly behind savings and reserves in case of war. Nevertheless, this was quite advancement for a starving population!
Meanwhile, the situation in the region seemed to stabilize, even though Enver and Tito gnashed their teeth day and night, they kissed in secret. Likewise, he silently came to an understanding with the clique of Greek colonels. Thus, the war against the imperialist-revisionists remained a slogan for external consumption and a scarecrow to terrify the people internally.
The enemy groups within the Party dried up, unlike the periods when a new anti-party group would be fabricated every two years; the leadership enjoyed the honeymoon for a little longer. Naturally, this temporary illusion would continue, because the fight would rekindle fiercely until it ended with the heads of the most important hierarchy of the communist government on a platter.
Those few months did not change the treatment in prisons too much: they continued to demand the norm without hesitation, but liberalized some rules. Çelo Arëza, the shepherd with a bizarre character, reached the peak of greatness. His rewards and decorations increased, so he played the loving “father,” allowing some entertainment that amused no one. He founded the Estrada (Variety Show) troupe, which degenerated us; now the convicts had to sing about the happy socialist life, stigmatize external and internal enemies, and scourge backward customs, meaning themselves!
The actors of the “Estrada of Unit 303, Spaç, Mirditë,” were a bunch of wretches (ronxho-bonxho), without personality, technical office clerks, and lackeys of Medi Noku, brigadiers and work supervisors, backstage “specialists,” and healthy surface workers, who wandered in the mining areas; “as easy as for Kola to find a job.”
But the amalgamation of bunglers was inept at art, so they began to seek real artists, librettists, set designers, directors, actors, singers, instrumentalists, etc., whom you could find in abundance in Spaç, even of a superior level who would honor even the most renowned national and regional theaters; but… they refused to answer the call, because they feared the command’s tricks! Memorie.al
Continues in the next issue
