From Lek Pervizi
Memorie.al / The metal pot of the great camp bag rushed unrestrained into all the nooks and crannies of the barracks. He ran between the corridors of the scaffolding of the bunk beds, where the prisoners slept piled on top of each other like sardines, on top of every dirty and spotless layer, from the day that they too were part of the prisons. That deafening shriek enters under the blankets, wildly harassing the ears of the victims to the depths of their bodies. Insults and curses erupted from all kinds of people. They didn’t even have the right to sleep! Sleep was the only escape from the daily toils. What was going on? Shouldn’t they be removed from there? Control? Who was the fugitive?
In vain they sought to explain the premature collapse of the canga, so early and so long. Usually, it fell for the wake-up call and the appeal, for the ladle of food and the ration of bread, as well as for the departure for work. Every morning at five o’clock. But this time it was not as usual. There was definitely something similar. When the gunshots stopped, the menacing shouts of the police began, urging them to get out as soon as possible.
He had begun to agonize. The mountains to the east stood out blue-blue against the background of the sky, which was taking on a pink color from the still distant rays of the sun, which was trying to get back to where it had been the day before, at the same hour. None of the prisoners noticed that display of natural beauty. They were all immersed in their sad troubles. Would they be able to escape those endless exhaustions?
Three thousand people lined up according to the respective companies in the square between the silos, whispering among themselves about the why of this extraordinary gathering. The objects had begun to stand out better and better. In front of them stood the commander of the camp himself, with several officers and fully armed policemen.
Ten meters away, a pole was visible, and on that pole a sausage was tied with electric wire, a man. Those in the front rows were shocked. Dude! His name passed from mouth to mouth and reached the last lines in the blink of an eye. Guy? Which Genc? Genz Pervizi. Genz Pervizi? Why? What? The night before they had beaten him in the isolation tent. They had it carved into wood. What was going on? The mutterings stopped instantly, when the strong and rude voice of the commander was heard:
-Stay calm…! Peace! There was an awkward silence, which was broken by the same harsh, raspy, thick voice.
– Do you know why we got you up so early today? Here, because of this friend of yours, Genc Pervizi, the son of General Prenk Pervizi.
Of this sworn enemy of the people and the party, who fled to Greece, where he seeks to act against us together with other fugitives and traitors gathered around him. He helped his father to escape and now he wants to throw it at us, hiding behind another last name. Now let’s see how much the skin is worth! There, dead behind the stake, the dog’s son!
The deserted prisoners got scared; they killed Genci right there in front of their eyes. Who knows what the brains of those people had invented!
– You yourself must give him the deserved punishment, continued the commander, you will pass by him and spit on him. Did you understand? He, who does not, will be punished even worse! Come on, get started. Spit it out!
The guards opened up and took positions with automatic weapons in their hands. The prisoners were forced to pass by the prisoner, trying to prevent the saliva from reaching his body. Walk and do not follow the order of the arrogant commander!
-Spit him in the face! In the muzzle! Did you find out? The officer of the guard snorted, ready to show me his barbaric servility. Meanwhile, the director, the officers and the police were arguing among themselves. They mocked and snarled with sadistic glee, which for them was an amusing spectacle.
Genci had his eyes fixed on the ground in order not to put his comrades in a difficult position, who were heartbroken and saddened to be forced to perform that disgusting gesture. Finally, the square was empty. The convicts, after eating the breakfast ration, made their way to the Vloçishti canal. The guards were flanking, front and back like rabid hyenas.
The commander and his suite are locked in their offices. The pole remained there, and Genci was tied behind the pole, like in the movies with red-skinned Indians. He had tried all kinds of tortures, but he would never have thought that one day he would find himself stuck like that behind a funnel and that he would suffer such vile treatment that his fellow sufferers would spit on him and of suffering!
But the executioner’s mind had the ability to invent tortures of the most barbaric intricacies. This was a prominent feature of the Communists of the East, which had been taught and imposed by Lenin and Stalin, according to the methods of that GPU, which wreaked havoc on its own people, maiming and exterminating not thousands but millions of victims. Innocent. The Albanian communists sought to outdo their masters, showing themselves to be more diligent and diligent in the implementation of torture and crimes.
Contrary to the traditions and the noble character of the Albanian, who had never reduced himself to such animalistic and sadistic actions? The Albanian killed for revenge, but he respected the dead enemy, he returned his whole body and placed his rifle next to him. It was not part of the tradition that animal torture should be practiced on the enemy!
The great silence brought Genci to himself, as if he had passed into a state of parentheses. Then he felt body pains and exhausting fatigue. The scene of the spitting and the sad faces of the prisoners who passed in front of him appeared again. You have a great despair that could sink you into a depressing pessimism, with no way out. He could not concentrate on any thought, he was so perverted he was left by the wickedness of the executioners. How could man work like that against man, and even worse, the Albanian against the Albanian?
In this desperate state, without even knowing how, he let out a loud voice:
– Oh God, don’t leave me!! Save me or take my life! He remembered Christ’s call to be nailed to the cross, there on Golgotha. As if he felt a relief and a strange premonition of salvation. The guard who was walking around stopped and shouted at him:
– Oh!… Who are you talking to…?! Shut your mouth or you want to eat wood. Isn’t it enough for you to be tied to that man and spitting all over him?
The sun had managed to come out behind the mountains and its rays were starting to become scorching. It seemed to Genci as if they had put a ember hat on his head, but it was even worse. Flies start to rush over his body, from all four sides, by the thousands and millions. They had abandoned the barracks and toilets, lured by the pleasant and delicious food of the drooling saliva with which Genci’s body was covered. They roamed freely over all the masses of his stature.
The worst was when they attacked the face. On the lips, on the eyes, through the nostrils and ears. Where did they find the detectable body parts? The torture that the flies were inflicting on him exceeded many others. Bugs and filth had found heaven in the hell that the prisoners were experiencing. The sufferings of this one were negligible compared to their pleasure. Genci was discovering a strange philosophy of life. His sufferings had reached the peak, peak after peak; even the flies had reached the peak of happiness! A great contradiction of principles.
This suited the political climate of the twentieth century. Communism, by applying its principles, had created that philosophy, where their strata or class had the right to rule and enjoy privileges, at the expense of other defeated strata or classes, which were destined to disappear from the face of the earth land, only the communists were left with a free field of action. So the persecutions, as in the dream of the family members, grandmother, mother, father, brothers…..he lost his senses.
The circumstances that led Genci to that pillar were created by chance. An incident. He probably could have escaped that kind of punishment, but not even worse and severe measures, if he would have known from the beginning whose son he was. When they were brought to the Maliqi camp in the spring of 1949, and the appeal was made according to the relevant lists, his last name was pronounced with a deformation, Pervaza instead of Pervizi, by the reading captain, who did not even have a school class.
Genci did not pay attention to that work, because it often happened that names were called by mistake. After all, it would be better if the correct last name did not come out. Like Genc Pervizi, the son of General Prenk Pervizi, they could take him by the legs and make him suffer badly, in that extermination camp, where even life could go for the slightest pretext. As had happened to several others.
He was in a group with some Mirditas, ilaka, kind friends like Mark Doçi, my mother’s uncle; Dod Bardhoku and Preng Paçuku, cousins of his mother and uncle; Ded Gjomarkaj, cousin and nephew, etc. Mark, academic officer, captain of the Royal Guard, then major and his father’s adjutant, was a strict and punctual soldier, we learned him with principled discipline at the top.
-More Genc, he had been told several times, how do you accept this change of surname? Do you know whose husband and whose tribe you are? You should be proud of the last name thy!
-Why don’t you say it, Mark, thank goodness that captain doesn’t know how to read. Do you want me to be flogged for life!
– Leave the boy alone, Dod Bardhoku intervened.
The whole camp knows who you are and whose son you are. As for the command, great job. Good thing they messed up his name. Genci is fine. You can target him and find him some danger!
It was half way through July. The return to prison was approaching. The prison seemed like heaven against the torments and tortures of this cruel labor camp. The Vloçisht canal was a real hell. The prisoners were reduced in the shadow of themselves. Many had given up their lives, from suffering, torture and daily violence. Some had the remains killed by the bullets of the criminal guards. Others had ended up covered in monster channel mud.
The pyramids of the ancient pharaohs had turned into gigantic canals of the modern pharaohs, where thousands of human beings were treated worse than animals. While those ancients believed in idols of wood, stone and metal, or in cows, calves, goats, jackals, birds and snakes, these modern Bolsheviks did not believe in ghosts.
Their religion was the philosophy of the great prophet, Karl Marx, Marxism; then that of the Ural psychopath Lenin, Leninism; that the philosophy of the bloodthirsty Caucasian Stalin, Stalinism, was added to the end, who had managed to kill his own father.
This one, after studying in the Bible, how God had created man (when he started to be a priest and turned out to be a devil), you put a cap on him everywhere, you made, according to his image, some dwarf Stalins, for the small state space where they ruled, but the monster for the crimes they committed!
If Marx were to be resurrected, he would put his hands on his head and quickly announce another manifesto, the “Capitalist Manifesto”, to turn the wheel of history back to the country, to which he had given a reverse acceleration. Unfortunately, the first “Communist Manifesto” had turned into a “Bible”, where all human, spiritual, moral and material values were annihilated, and man was transformed into an amorphous breathing being, an animal or a work tool, even a blade of grass (since scythe or scythe was easier to harvest grass). Marx, Marx, where did you get your head! Drop the stone and hide your hand! You must have ended up in hell.
If Dante were alive, he would have found the right place. But the Lucifers do not enter into their work, neither your beard nor your brain. He has a goat’s beard and a brain full of cosmic knowledge. Ugly but practical. God himself was at his right hand. It may seem paradoxical, but he emerges as a caring servant of God himself, despite the punishment he received from him. Why? Yes, whoever is against God, evil and criminal, sinner, bloodthirsty and bloodthirsty, will be burned, right into the flames of hell, to be punished for life.
Towards a classless society, the apotheosis of communism. The Marxes, the Engels, the Lenins and the Stalins and their dwarf successors, like that Enver the butcher, have no reason to be upset, because they found what they trumpeted. What they did not achieve in this life, they have found in the next. They slide a little in the flame, but it’s better to fry them a little and bake them than freeze them with ice! However, everything is relative, someone likes fire, someone polar suffering. For some, great heat, for others, great heat. De gustibus….non disputandum est!
Let’s go back to our story. Genci knew well what to expect if they targeted him, and this target was precisely keeping the surname Pervizi.
Even because it was Sunday and a holiday, the prisoners were woken up at the same early morning by the bell ringing, which called them to appeal and to receive the ration of bread and the ladle of hot soup from the zinc kettles. After this torturous ceremony, they returned to their barracks and lay down on their beds to rest their broken bones.
The sun outside was scorching paper on the roofs. Inside, the heat became unbearable, but the nabaras stayed in the shade. They could not stand the sun. The flaming life-giving star was for them torture and death. He sat on top of their heads all day long and he had a razor blade and rubbed his skin like an opinge sole.
Someone said that the brains were already ripe for the best delicacies, but you couldn’t find me anywhere! The prisoners did not lack humor even in that hopeless state. Capanoni buzzed with chatter and jokes. In the midst of that sudden commotion, the strong and resounding sound of the camp bell was heard. This spread up and down command orders and meeting calls, which were usually only allowed on Sundays.
-Genc …..Genc Pervaza….on a date!…Genc Pervaza on a date!
The prisoners called Genci by his correct last name and mocked the transformation made by Captain Hazbiu in the appeal. One of the prisoners had remarked to the captain that his name could have been written incorrectly as Pervaza, instead of Pervizi. The captain was angry:
– What do you remind me of… an illiterate? Was the threatening answer. Walk and talk if you want. The one who made the remark was a former professor of the Albanian language. Genci had not played from the country. It wasn’t about someone else. But in fact, he did not have the last name Pervaza.
– Well, it will be for Genc Pervizi, his friends teased him. And what do you need, as long as they call you by the name… official… of Captain Hazbiu…? He is not illiterate. The thing is not lost…it could be someone of yours…miracles also happen.
Genci left thoughtfully. Who could it be? You mean Rika, the jeweler from Korça? He had the courage to meet them with a sack full of food, from the beginning of April, when they were brought to that camp. Also, they had called him by that name even then. If it was Rika, it came at the most critical and necessary time. Memorie.al
The next issue follows
