By Romeo Gurashi
Memorie.al / When I saw him approaching me with a step that he could hardly take, with a slightly bent body and with an almost lifeless hand, I gave him the age of an old man who has passed his 80s. But his confession, which lasted almost two hours, sitting at the bar of the “Kosova” restaurant, disappointed me. – “If I tell you that I am from November 1951, with this ruined appearance that I have, you will not believe me. I owe everything to that power dog who not only destroyed me physically, but also destroyed me as a family. Ten years of discrimination, sunk in the galleries of Spaçi, as for 20 years gathered together. I was a fit and handsome boy, with a big body, full of muscles, so much that everyone envied me, when I was arrested on January 22, 1980 and when I returned to my apartment, here in “Hekurudha” on the beach of Durrës, after ten years, no one recognized me.
I had changed so much that the two sisters who never let me come and meet me at the prison bars, took me for another person, not for their brother. I remember it like today, that morning of Tuesday, January 22, the morning that “stole” my freedom.
It had just dawned, when at the door of the villa that my father had bought since 1934, the chairman of the Democratic Front, Ramazan Kaçani, appeared and asked me to follow him to the office, because we needed to clarify a small problem. .
I got dressed and without saying goodbye to anyone at home (oh how I regret not hugging my relatives) and went straight to the office where they wanted me. Upon entering, they closed the door and, in the name of the Prosecutor General, handcuffed me.
I was arrested by Pehlivan Malaj from Vlora and Isuf Kola, from Shishtaveci in Kukës, and without giving me any explanation, they took me from the office of the Democratic Front of Ward number 11 and straight to the police dungeons of Durrës prison. They accused me of two articles, that those years were the most terrible, of agitation and propaganda and of attempts to escape.
Six months in the dungeons of Durrës, without bringing me to trial, and on June 23, 1980, in the hall of the former “Telat Noga” Cigarette Factory, a trial was held, where those who were allowed to enter the hall where they provided invitations, but there were also photo-reporters.
That day, I was not the only one who was punished, but there were also 8 other people. My hand was handcuffed to the hand of an elderly agronomist from Shijak, named Mitat Turkeshi.
The trial lasted three days in a row, a trial with which the ruling state wanted to show its power to the people; this is how he puts the enemies of the people in the dock. I received the heaviest sentences in that trial, with 15 years of imprisonment, and the one who was held as the leader of the group, with 20 years.
Others were sentenced to years less than ten years. After the trial, they kept us in the cell for another three months, supposedly for appeal, but this method was just a formality, because for me, who put the water on the fire.
In the month of November, they removed me from the dungeon and took me to the Tirana warehouses and, from there, straight to the galleries of Spaçi. Arriving there at night, they didn’t let me rest, but straight into the third shift. When you went into the mine, you knew that you were going in alive, but you didn’t know that you would come out again.
There was “Hell” by Dante Alighieri. The slave of the communist regime had to do the norm or he had to give his soul. Whether you had power or not, the wagons had to be filled. Norma was pretty crazy. 70 to 100 wagons had to be filled in a shift and this had to be done in very miserable working conditions.
They started from Baraka. at the entrance of the gallery, where the work rags were worn. that even the greatest pauper in the world did not care for, and no more the gallery worker, with torn boots, with rags frozen by the ice and by the frozen pyrite of Kalkan.
The work began with the placing of hands on the wagons, which had frozen from the ice, which were barely pushed along some broken, uneven tracks. Don’t forget that we had to push them through the water, the level of which was half a meter high. The candles, from the weak carbide, went out without lighting well.
Enter the work front, and there the suffering began, the shovels began to fill the wagons, the wagon was taken and transported to the trinosh, (place-pouring of ore) and passed to the central level. The leveler had to push the empty wagon to the entrance from 4 to 20 km.
This job was the blacksmith’s own, because the wagons, due to the bad leveling of the tracks, fell over several times, so to raise the wagon, I had to stretch my body, and I became bloody. There were times when you couldn’t lift it alone, so all those people gathered to get it moving again.
There were times when we worked only in underwear, because the temperature reached 60 degrees, this temperature came as a result of the heat emitted by the pyrite. As if these were not enough, in the gallery, there was a collapse and, before our eyes, comrades died that we needed hours, why not two days, to dig them out to bury them.
When we took out our comrades amid tears that fell like rain, the leaders rejoiced and openly expressed their satisfaction that they had one less enemy left.
This very heavy and difficult work required high-quality nutritional treatment, but the prisoner’s diet was only 18 old ALL, equivalent to a pack of “Partizani” cigarettes at that time.
In the morning, they gave us rice gruel, without oil, for lunch; collard greens, with Romanian lard and, with a sauce that sticks like grease, while at dinner; tea without sugar. Blessed are those prisoners, who were helped with food by their family, because the prison food did not keep them alive.
Many of the prisoners had this opportunity, while there were 5 of us, who did not enjoy this right, as during my life in prison, my name was never called for any letter, nor for the first meals from family, or relatives and friends. So, my prison, which doubles as a prison.
I lived like an octopus, when it has nothing to eat, it feeds on its own meat. Not allowing my relatives to come to meet me, they did experiments with me, to eliminate me physically, but I was saved only by hope, in the great GOD.
They really gave me three small reductions, but from them I benefited from 5 years of prison life, which if I had done them, I would definitely have died or I would have gone crazy. The hunger pangs reached the point where, when you saw a crust of bread, it seemed as if you had found a pearl. The fist bumped between us, who would do it himself.
There were even worse, than some, who had lost their torua, when they watched others take out the guts of the stomach, vomiting, collect them in their fists and put them in their mouths. The most terrible, the friend you were with died, and there was no announcement for several days, just so we could get his food ration.
The most precious thing, for which there was a celebration and we waited for the news of its cooking with applause, was the beans. Beans, it was cooked only once a month and, on the plate, you would spoon the juice all day, you could hardly find a grain, there were times when they gave us marmalade, a piece of the ration, it was the size of a matchbox.
Previously, the marmalade had been adopted by the rat, and we were served it together with the rat. The prison is such that it makes a person forget the egg, oil, sugar, dessert, salt, onion, so it turns you into an animal, so that even the god does not love you.
You were destined, because I had nothing to keep, so you would eat in the dirty prison cauldron, which I don’t believe has ever been washed. This was the food treatment, which could not withstand an extraordinary hunger.
Many people went crazy from hunger, others who couldn’t stand it any longer, jumped on the ropes, were killed by the soldiers, who shot without warning, many walked around, talking incoherently, the prison was no longer called a prison, yes psychiatric hospital. The prisoners cursed whatever came out of their mouths, there were many of them, the pillow on which they rested their heads became like a loaf of bread in their dreams and they began to beat it, to quench their hunger.
Why deny it, I was one of them. And with this food treatment, you had to fulfill the norm. The work consisted of three shifts, and if you did not fulfill the norm, the punishment was extremely animalistic. They would take them out of the galley, in their underpants and in their canoes, tie a wire pole to the back and as a counterweight, attach a wagon wheel, and this happened more often when it snowed.
There were also such punishments, dragging you with a rope, from the gallery to the dungeon. There, they stripped him and left him on the cement with only a blanket, to be brought at nine in the evening and removed at four in the morning. Lying in the middle of the cold on the cement, he would pass out and, frozen like that, they would pick him up and take him to the infirmary, make a needle and bring him back to the dungeon.
It has been years since I returned to the apartment that my father, the former photographer of the Royal Court, Palush Gurashi, who left me for 6 and a half years, because he died in prison on May 13, 1958. In the diagnosis they issued for his death, it was written that; he died of jaundice, but from what his former colleagues from the Durres prison told us, he was injected with a needle and this was done by the director of the Durres hospital in those years and a doctor in the police service, Koçi Moisiu.
Now I live in a second prison, totally isolated with broken morale and ruined health. I have no economic basis, to live, I am without a pension, without any moral stimulus. I am sick.
Two years ago, I had a thrombosis that cost me an arm and a leg. I, who suffered for this power to come into force, today I do not see any green light from them. The future of this country, there will be no correction at all.
The neo-communists have come to power, who have remained loyal to those who polled them, the whore Russia, the bastard, Mikhail Gorbachev, where the decisions of the Katowice meeting are implemented.
Communism likes to eat, drink, and have fun by itself, only it changes its skin, making its children businessmen, traffickers, manufacturers, sending them to the schools of the West, so that it has political and economic power in its hands. This is the charter of the meeting of Katovica.
I, like Romeo, stand by my idea, which is; “Among all evils, choose the least evil.” For me, the least bad of all regimes is the Monarchy, so I am and will remain loyal to the King. These existing parties are the offspring of Enver Hoxha’s party. Memorie.al
