From Sokrat Shyti
Part fifty-five
Memorie.al / The writer Sokrat Shyti is the “great unknown” who for several years has shown the tip of the iceberg of his literary creativity. I say this based on the limited number of his published books in recent years, mainly the voluminous novel “The Ghost Night” (Tirana 2014). The novels: “BEYOND MYSTERY,” “BETWEEN TEMPTATION AND WHIRLPOOL,” “THE DIGGING OF NIGHTMARES,” “THE SHADOW OF SHAME AND DEATH,” “COLONEL MAIN HAND,” “THE FADING HOPES,” “THE TWISTS OF FATE” I, II, “SURVIVAL IN THE COWSHED,” as well as other works, all novels with 350 – 550 pages, are in manuscripts waiting to be published. The dreams and initial enthusiasm of the young novelist, returning from studies abroad full of energy and love for art and literature, were cut short early by the harsh blade of communist dictatorship.
Who is Sokrat Shyti?
Having returned from studies at the State University of Moscow right after the rupture of Albanian-Soviet relations in 1960, Sokrat Shyti worked in “Radio-diffusion” (which at that time was located on Kavaja Street), in an editorial office with his journalist friends – Vangjel Lezho and Fadil Kokomani – both of whom were later arrested and subsequently executed by the communist regime. Besides the radio, 21-year-old Sokrat had passionate literary interests at that time. He wrote his first novel “Madam Doctor” and was on the verge of publication, but… alas! Shortly after the arrest of his friends, to fill the cup, one of his brothers, a painter, escaped abroad.
Sokrat was arrested in September 1963, and in November of that year, he was interned along with his family (his mother and little sister) in a place between Ardenica and Kolonje of Lushnje. For 27 consecutive years, the family lived in a cowshed made of reeds, without windows, while Sokrat was subjected to forced labor. During those 27 years, he was legally obliged to report three times a day to the local authority. He had no right to leave the place of internment, was deprived of any kind of documents, etc. In these conditions, amid a cowshed, he gave birth to and raised his children. Precisely from this event, or more accurately a very long story of persecution, he based his writing of the book “Survival in the Cowshed”!
Agron Tufa
Continued from the previous issue
EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK “SURVIVAL IN THE COWSHED”
– “Your childhood friend, Kujtimi. He was here, he hospitalized his wife. You met in the yard. I don’t know what you talked about. But when he returned to Lushnje, he came straight to me at school to tell me that Sokrati is fine. I tore my eyes out in shock when he told me that he had seen you in your hospital pajamas! I was horrified by the evil suspicion! Our minds went to the worst thing: Either you were wounded by a gunshot! Or someone was shot”!…
– “As you can see, nothing happened!” – I tried to calm him down. – The arrival here was made in agreement with the unit commander and the division doctor…”!
– “Did you know them before?” – she asked curiously.
– “I’ll explain it more clearly another time. The important thing is that these two officers have good relations with each other. The colonel happened to meet someone; he knows us as a family. When I told him that I got engaged three weeks before I was to be a soldier, he had the idea of traveling to Tirana.”
– “You can tell me that later. First, I want to hear why you were hospitalized!” – she interrupted me in a heated tone. – Please don’t play word games with me, because my blood is still frozen”?!
– “I don’t understand why you don’t believe me. I revealed the truth openly. Get rid of the bad idea from your mind, that I came here to do the analysis on a suspicion”! – I replied in a raised tone
– “Only when I see it with my own eyes, I will believe it”! – she said firmly.
– “That’s not possible! – I replied. – Not because we’re in the main square, and they can see us. But even if we were somewhere inside, just the two of us, I wouldn’t show my ass…”, – I added with a smile.
– “Did they operate on you there”?!…she added with a sigh of relief.
– “Now that you know, let’s sit on that bench over there, and we’ll talk while lying down. It’s my turn to give you some good news: the division doctor promised me that after I leave the hospital, they’ll give me seven to ten days of bed rest…”!
– “Are you coming to Lushnje”? she shouted, throwing herself on my neck.
– “But why did you take your purse with you?”?! – I asked curiously.
– “Don’t you remember what I brought?” – she said with smiling eyes.
– “Besides some delicious food…”?!
– “When Kujtim told me that you had been admitted for tests, and I immediately thought of coming here, I said to myself: why don’t I take your civilian clothes with me, the ones you took off at the last moment when you changed, as we may need them to go for a walk somewhere, without having to worry about being checked by military patrols”?
– “You have shown yourself to be a smart girl! You have done a wonderful thing! This very outfit will help me travel to Lushnje carefree. Because despite the discharge form from the hospital, where bed rest in the family apartment will be noted, facing an ignorant patrol can cause me not only trouble, but also a waste of time. Therefore, to eliminate the slightest doubt, when you leave the hospital, you will buy a hat, so that your shaved head does not look like…”!
– “Try it! – I brought you a beret”, – Arqilini said happily.
– “It’s exactly my size! Does it suit me”? – I asked.
– “Even though you’ve lost weight (you’ve lost weight during these seven weeks due to the lack of normal food, in addition to the stresses and fatigue that have worn you out, a marked change in your lifestyle, which is also noticeable in the size of your head, giving the impression that its volume has decreased), this beret suits you…”- she said, after looking at me for a few minutes with concentrated attention.
– “It’s possible that you’ll be discharged from the hospital tomorrow…”, – I said.
The next day (after the last visit of the surgeon who operated on me), the head of the ward handed me the hospital discharge certificate with the relevant notes, where the most important thing for me was “ten days of rest, bed rest in the family apartment”, according to the agreement with the division doctor.
Although I was hospitalized for only a week, I established mutual social relations with the medical staff of the ward. This was especially evident at the moment of separation, when the nurses gave me hot kisses. The blonde nurse with blue eyes even accompanied me downstairs, went down the stairs with me, carrying my handbag in civilian clothes, and before we said goodbye to each other, I fulfilled her request, returned the gift in kind, with a kiss, as she wanted.
– “You were truly a kind and sweet boy, who keeps his word!” – she said happily. – Even though you stay a few days, you will remain in my memory, for a long time”! – she added, hugging me.
– “You will also have a certain place with your graces in my imagination. I wish you white luck! You deserve to be paired with a good boy, so that you can love him and be loved by him”!
At the metal entrance gate of the hospital, my fiancée was waiting for me. When I noticed her, I raised my hand so that she could see me coming, considering that I was wearing a soldier’s uniform, and perhaps she couldn’t recognize me.
– “You’ve changed so much that I couldn’t recognize you from a distance…” she said, after we hugged and kissed. “What are we going to do?” – she asked after taking her purse.
– “Of course, by train. But first, let’s go somewhere, so I can change my skin…” – I said.
– “Where?” – she asked, somewhat worried.
– “Behind the hospital’s perimeter wall, there are corners where no people move and there are no residential buildings. Yesterday after you left, I checked, keeping this in mind, until I found the right place,” – I said, walking along the wall.
We stopped a hundred meters further, near some dense bushes.
– “You stand guard here while I undress and dress. Give me your purse!”
– “Did some sex maniac see us and follow us, thinking that we are looking for a place to make love, and the moment you are naked, he pounces on me”?! – she expressed her fear.
– “I won’t be even five minutes late. Captain Sykuq has given us so much training, on dressing and undressing before bed, that I have gained the skills to participate in military sports competitions…, – I said, quickly taking off my military uniform. – To save time, you fold and put the uniform in your bag, over your shoes. Do you see how quickly I changed my skin”?… – I added, emerging from the bushes in civilian clothes.
– Now, I’m closer to myself”?…
– Even though you’ve lost weight and don’t have hair, your external silhouette hasn’t changed, – she said after looking at me carefully, and adjusting my beret. – Do you see what a practical girl your fiancée is?… – she added with a smile.
– “You deserve a thousand compliments!” – I said, kissing her. – Now we can walk around free, without the shadows of the patrols following us. The company commander of our unit told me two cases when military patrols were chasing two couples: the soldier was stripped and tied up, while the girl was raped”!
– “Terrible”!… – she said, looking at me with frightened eyes.
– “Of course, these events are kept secret, they are not made public. The lieutenant mentioned that I should be careful in the future, when I am given permission to go home and I happen to go out for a walk with my fiancée, wearing my uniform. By this he meant the village soldiers, who when they go home on leave, take pride in walking through the village streets dressed in their uniform! But we citizens do the opposite: we rush to get rid of her as soon as possible! We have two completely opposite worldviews. You didn’t tell me where you slept last night?” – I asked.
– “At one of my cousins’, – she answered. – We have many close relatives in Tirana. But recently I have very rarely had the opportunity to come. Whereas when I was studying at the Pedagogical Institute of Shkodra, I had to stay overnight, every time I went and came back from there…”!
– “You know, I tried it before you four years in a row, when I was a boarding student at the Gymnasium, with what difficulty we bought the bus ticket at the agency near Sahat – I interrupted him. – But in Kolonjë, did you have the opportunity to go?” – I asked him timidly.
– “I went every week by bus, on Saturdays,” she said, pleased that she had fulfilled her promise, knowing that this delicate point would inevitably be mentioned. – Your mother and sister are in good health. Now Dhora works in the tailoring cooperative. Shaja, the wonderful woman, never leaves a day without returning home to chat with her mother. Likewise, Neli, her son, is hardworking, well-mannered and cheerful, meets the needs of the family: he brings firewood from the mountain, bakes corn bread for his mother, and is ready to do anything!
When I’m there, our conversation begins and ends with Socrates…, – she added with a smile. – Shaja mentions your jokes from time to time, how you tease her about the old man, her second husband, whom she married to raise her only son, Neli, whom she gave birth to when her husband ran away, disappeared like an axe without a tail, and she never heard from him!… – How much pain and sadness her words express, especially when she tells how she was abandoned by her husband and her parental family, at a very young age, a woman of rare beauty, all alone with her umbilical cord baby.
My whole-body shudders when he repeats with tearful eyes: He bought me for a bag of corn! I had nowhere to hold it or where to hit his head. So, I closed my eyes and said to myself: Your work is seen, my Shaje. Since you brought the baby into the world, you have to raise it. So, I told him, the only way was to put my head and the babies in a shelter, and we would eat a piece of bread”!
– “A terrifying human tragedy! Then we were also followed by a strange surprise: without having committed any crime, our family is exiled from the capital and is buried in the cowshed, in this village whose name we first heard, and it is here that we meet and befriend a wonderful, generous widow who had experienced a terrible tragedy of the most astonishing”!
– “I love you with all my heart, just like Nelin! – said Arqelini with tearful eyes. – He has a heart of gold! You, mother, and Dhora, filled the greatest void that was created for him after his husband’s escape and abandonment of his parental family. In you he found that warmth, after so many years of contempt, which he had either forgotten or did not know at all! Precisely because he loves you with extraordinary divine love, I also love him so much and adore him!
Such strong spiritual bonds very rarely happen. The fact that even at this moment, when we meet after seven weeks of separation, we dedicate a part of our precious time to this, we value her pure friendship, proves that Shaja has entered the indelible memory of your family, and will remain so in our new family”!
– “When you hear such impressive topics, you are filled with a powerful feeling for life, you give it its real dimensions, you understand it to the depths of its infinite value, like the universe, the intention carries the value of kindness when you perform it for another”!… I said, hugging her.
– “She repeats it time and time again, calling your appreciation a miracle, with how much courage, intelligence and protection then not to fire her from work, by sending a telegram to the Prime Minister in her name…! – ‘If it weren’t for Socrates, the saving angel, what would we feed on? He, your mother’s Socrates and your fiancé, with his clever telegram, revealed the unwashed to the scoundrels…”!
– “In every area of life, you encounter dirty charlatans! – I interrupted. – Imagine what dirty tricks happen in enterprises and state institutions, when in a storage warehouse, they play with the lives of workers from loading to unloading…!? When the manager threatened her with dismissal, with the explanation; the place was reduced, she came straight to us, sobbing, that I was scared, my blood froze, I remembered that something had happened to her son!
Only after the confession did I come to my senses and start thinking about a way out. After a few minutes I composed the telegram, and read it to her. In her tearful eyes, hope returned. I ordered him to leave for Fier, to send the telegram from there, and not to meet anyone he knew on the way.
– Don’t tell Neli either! So, walk to Vajkan, and I’ll find a car there. When you’re done, you’ll come back here. Remember: tell them to send the telegram urgently”. Memorie.al
Continued in the next issue
