From SAMI REPISHTI
Part Fourteen
Sami Repishti: – “In Albania, the communist crime of the past has not been documented and punished; there has been no ‘spiritual cleansing’, no conscious confession and denunciation of the ordinary communist criminals! –
‘Under the Shadow of Rozafa’
Memorie.al / During the 1930s and 1940s of the last century, as the unstoppable torrent of fascism and communism descended upon Europe, sooner or later upon the whole world, “fate” also seized the Albanian nation by the throat. Like all young people, I too found myself at a crossroads where a stance had to be taken, even at the risk of life. Then I said “no” to dictatorship, I took the road that had no end, a sailor on a boundless sea without shores. The rebellious act that nearly killed me also liberated me. I am an eyewitness to life in the fascist and communist hell in Albania, not as a “politician” or “personality” of Albanian macro‑politics, but as a student, as a young man who became aware of my role, at that time and in that place, out of love for the homeland and the desire for freedom; simply, as a young man with a pronounced sensitivity, faithful to myself, to a life of dignity.
Continued from the previous issue
Return me again to the body that does not lay still, squeezed by iron bars, and the mind released into pure memories, into the sincere purposes of a soul born to love. Breeze, oh breeze! Take me with you! Into the infinite expanse of the plain that I no longer see, carry me. There were in my childhood, free and happy, I learned to run, chasing butterflies and picking flowers, accompanying friends in a world that passed too quickly without my understanding, take me back. There where joy never lacked, and my face showed only cheerfulness to my parents, and other adults who advised me not to run lest I fall and catch a cold…!
Only dusk I knew in those days, when darkness slowly drove away the butterflies and wilted the flowers in the fields, until they could no longer be seen. Friends went home, and I followed them without parting until their doorstep. Mother awaited me with a kiss, which was never enough for me, nor for her, when I returned it warmly. After the blessed supper earned by father’s sweat, who worked, I snuggled into bed like a carefree lamb, unable to give more than an embrace to the parents who loved me with all their soul.
At that moment I began the life of another world, the world of dreams, which throughout the night never left me without the happiness of the faded day continuing…! Oh breeze! Take me with you! Into the expanse of that mountain I came to know during the summer, take me! In the azure and blue air that filled the valley, release me. The unprecedented freshness brought by the forest, give me your hand to taste again. Accompany me into the villages of the highlanders, which in my carefree youth revealed a new world to me. The shepherd’s flute and bagpipe, and the melodies of the girl who sings and sings with the flock bleating on the pastures, I desire to hear again.
The voices of the pure‑hearted young people who laugh without care or fear, now I am remembering, and my heart is aching to say again as once: “Come, come! I will teach you a beautiful city song.” With the simple people, who speak what they feel because they do not know what evil is, I burn today to speak…! * In the evening, the bells of the Franciscan Church rang out like a celestial hymn. I remembered this sound when, on free evenings by the lake, it was heard clear and peaceful. Then, it was time to return home.
But in those days, the peace of sunset, the evening that followed, were uninterrupted, undisturbed, not defiled by the voices of prisoners heard in cells, and without the fear of my own death and that of my comrades under torture. In the cell, this celestial hymn had turned into a Solemn Mass for the crushed bodies and the spirits of victims, extinguished every day in the darkness of the criminal communist Security. I had a strange feeling when I heard the prisoners’ voices.
They spoke in low voices, no longer recognisable, as if they wanted to show that during the long period of torture something essential had changed in them, that they were not yet the same as before arrest, but new creatures born of the suffering of torture, not responsible for their new state, phantoms of what they had once been…! Only a few weeks after this “interruption”, which I later understood was caused by a visit of the UN Commission to Southern Albania, the interrogation began for me. This time, the accusations were even more “fantastic” than the first.
Word of mouth had spread that several “deputies” had been arrested and would soon stand trial. The State Security was making superhuman efforts to compromise them, forcing prisoners to testify against them. In the interrogation office, I again found the “boss” of the first day and the officer in charge of my interrogation. From the questions written on paper and read by the officer, I understood that I was facing an interrogation fraught with unprecedented possibilities and risks, perhaps death during torture, perhaps execution after trial, undoubtedly a long period of harsh imprisonment.
“You still do not have a file,” the chief said. “Now we will finish. New accusations have come to light against you.” I did not speak, but the memory of the previous tortures made my body shudder. He began to explain that from the new arrests, the Security had gathered materials showing “beyond any doubt” that the network of the student youth organisation in Shkodra was much wider than thought, and that I, “beyond any doubt”, was the link between the youth and the “Group of Deputies”.
Now there was nothing left but to speak; they would write it down, and that would end the process, and I would be saved from torture. I stood with my mouth open. I did not speak. They waited a while and asked for an answer. “Major,” I began, “I do not know any deputy, nor have I any idea about what you accuse me of…! I have not met any outsider… I swear to you!”
Deep down I knew well that this answer would bring new torture; but at the same time, I became even more aware that it was essential to preserve mental clarity and to defend myself in every way from the inevitable attack, not to allow my irreversible destruction. One day earlier, in front of my cell door, dragging a stretcher, they brought an unknown prisoner. I heard no voice except the sound of the body hitting the floor when the two partisans dropped it.
An hour later, in the great silence that followed, broken only by wheezing and coughing, the footsteps of a guard were heard together with another person following. “Here he is,” the guard said. “Lying on the ground like a pig…!” “Get up, get up!” shouted the other policeman. “Get up, I’m telling you…!” – “Come closer, you white‑livered! Come closer, don’t be afraid…!” said the guard, then in a low voice: “He’s dead…! The lieutenant killed him with a club… upstairs in the office…!” – “But he’s still tied up, what you are saying…?” – “Eh, you white‑livered…!” In this state of mind, I faced my interrogators. This time there was no discussion.
Yes or no! No meant torture again, and from their actions it was clear they wanted results without delay. But the questions about the “Group of Deputies” had nothing to do with me. Still, they did not believe my denials! As the first time, they presented a prisoner tied with ropes and chains, who declared that he had “heard from others” that I was the organiser and link between the “Group of Shkodra Youth” and Tirana.
Accepting this charge would guarantee me the death penalty. After long experience of torture, and with the fear that admitting false accusations would ruin me, I decided not to capitulate. Torture, by two officers and a guard, began immediately and was concentrated. The rough‑hewn club was the classic, milder form. This time, electric current to both ears and genitals simultaneously was almost uninterrupted. Attacked by all three, I tried to defend myself as best I could, naturally without success. For a moment, all three stopped.
I hoped they were tired of me and would stop for the night. I was wrong! The guard removed my trousers and underpants. Tied to the chair with my hands behind my back, they tipped me over so that my head touched the floor.
My two legs were high up, exposed. The officer took a knife and with its blade cut the flesh at the base of my thigh. Blood began to flow. He took the salt from the table and covered the wounds with it. The pain it caused exceeded all endurance. At that point I lost my voice. I could no longer see in front of me, nor hear their voices. Then the officer approached me. It seemed to me that a voice ordered me to open my mouth. I did not understand.
He put his fingers in my mouth, held it open, and with a cardboard tube began to pour salt down my throat. This made me vomit, but the vomit could not come out because my throat was blocked. As if that were not enough, the other officer, with a metal rod, pushed the salt deeper into my throat. With my head on the floor, legs in the air, tied to the chair, I thought I was dying. With extraordinary effort, I coughed and expelled the salt. The officers left. The chair was turned upright, and I began to breathe again. In my throat burned the taste of salt, which I tried to spit out.
Finally, large spittle mixed with the blood caused by the scratches in my throat came out uncontrollably and fell to the floor. “Pig! Do not spit on the floor,” the officer said. I did not utter a sound. They looked at each other and ordered the guard to take me back to the cell. In the cell, the guard removed my mattress. As he went out, he said: “Tomorrow at six o’clock in the morning, you will be executed!” A joke…?! I did not know whether to believe this scum of society, who took pleasure in our suffering. But I did not have enough courage to think that he did it only for his animal pleasure?! Or was it a threat given on order, as pressure to capitulate?!
In the utter darkness of the cell, completely isolated from the world, crushed by physical pain, hands and feet in irons, mouth filled with salt, lying on the cement floor, I waited in terror for what would become of me. The clock of the Franciscan Church struck four in the morning. There were still two hours. I had lost the ability to think clearly. I felt only pain, and I was afraid. A great, all‑encompassing fear, which only increased my shivering from the cold. My head was splitting from the salt, and the need to eat after so long of suffering had disappeared…!
Around six in the morning, I heard the noise of a truck approaching and stopping in front of our prison. The partisans came down the stairs joking with the guard. The sounds of their studded boots echoed like gunshots in my ears, and their loud voices like death knells in our environment where silence reigned. The guards laughed; the prisoners moaned. The noise came closer, until it reached the section where the cells were. My anxiety grew. The fear of execution seized me by the throat, and I could not breathe. I was young, twenty‑two years old!
I felt myself as small as a fist, and I harboured the illusion that maybe this way they wouldn’t see me, wouldn’t find me…! I thought of the kicking of those condemned to death, their mistreatment before execution, the burial without ceremony, without dignity, the policemen’s feet trampling the earth over the half‑covered victims, and their departure from the execution scene singing partisan songs…! Would this be my end?! Then nothing remained but to wait for the day when the neighbourhood dogs would uncover the carelessly buried corpses, to bring an end to the final act of the irreversible annihilation of my life.
And as a crowning touch… the mockery of those I had known and opposed, who out of hypocrisy before the dictator, or irredeemable inhumanity, would raise a toast in celebration of the death of an “agent of the bloody American imperialism”. I heard the policemen’s footsteps leaving with laughter, and I calmed down. For seven nights in a row, after midnight, I was called to the office, questioned about the same “crimes”, tortured mercilessly, and punished with no water and no food. On the last day I was extremely exhausted.
Lying on the floor, unable to sit in the chair because of the wounds and bruises that covered my whole body, my condition had worsened so much that even the “interrogator” understood that my body could not endure more torture. Then, in a threatening voice, he asked me: “Do you admit the accusations?” – “No,” I said with a half‑voice, my head lowered. – “We must finish the process,” he told me; “alive or dead”! – “Yes!” I replied with a jerk of my head.
XII
I returned to the dark cell with the hope that physical torture had ended. I was convinced that I could not get through without a “trial”, proper or not, but not as the “executioners” wanted. At the same time, I felt myself so crushed that I was certain a new wave of torture would kill me outright. “I will sign the file,” I thought, “as long as I am not tortured again”! In the state I was in, death was less terrifying than torture, the basest act of inhuman activity, the deepest humiliation inflicted on the victim individual, and the symbol of the absolute moral and political degradation of the “state” and society that produces torturers…!
In this state, physically paralysed by pain and fear, the revolt against the torturer had reached its peak. Anathemas followed one another, day and night without pause. The malice of the executioners had brought me to a point where even their faces and voices, the very selves of the executioners, disgusted me whenever I recalled them. I saw no sign that there existed in them any feeling that elevated them as human beings. None! Stripped completely of the garment that ennobles, “they”, in my opinion, were wild beasts, carnivores, inhabitants of the putrid communist swamp…!
Nevertheless, something internal, not the call of flesh and blood, seemed to invite me to seek a new path. Contrary to what might be expected, for the first time during my imprisonment I began to conceive the possibility of forgiveness and mercy. A new spirit tried to remove me from that mountain of hatred that was my heart that night, and from the desire for revenge that was fed by every cell of my body. To my surprise, I understood that the “religious” feeling was taking its first steps and opposing the instinct awakened by daily physical suffering.
Why not think of more refined ways of revenge against those who had brought me to this state, I thought, against those who caused me this suffering? Against the call of flesh and blood, inside me I heard a voice, gentle but persistent, that commanded me: “Do not lose the human spark that elevates you. Rise to the sphere where conscience remains pure and does not gnaw. Because unlawful violence and torture are not means that liberate or ensure brotherhood and sisterhood. They are incapable of bringing you out of the cell of solitude in which each of us lives, as long as solidarity with other beings who suffer like you is not discovered.”
Without my conscious intervention, I understood that I was going through a “religious” experience. It was a true revelation! On this night of severe torture, alone in “isolation”, I heard the inner voice telling me: “No! Do not allow yourself to sink as low as your torturer. He is not a man. With full conscience, he has placed himself outside the framework of humanity, outside the field where brother embraces brother, outside the world where each of us, no matter how wretched, remains the centre of our attention and care, outside the society where the salvation of even a single life is an incomparable victory.
Because nothing, nothing is worth more than a human life. Do not envy the executioner who tortures and does not share the crippling pain of those who suffer at his hands. For him, life has meaning only when it serves the destructive instinct, when it plunges into the depths of infinite, irreversible evil, there where death reigns over life…”! That night, I felt with power and believed in the supernatural, the divine. That night I triumphed, I felt free, and in this inner freedom, full and conscious, I found my Creator, I discovered the Symbol of unconditional Good, and the ideal that inspired, and I embraced it for life.
The pain of my crushed body and the terror of death in solitude granted me the salvation of my soul. In the dark and threatening cell of the prison, I won eternal peace, the unquenchable light that kindles love for brother… and for the criminal. For three days in a row, they left me in peace. No questions, no torture. And I felt relieved also spiritually. For the first time since the day of my arrest, I had the impression that a great force, more powerful than the terror surrounding me, an “authority” above the one that ordered the torture against me, an unbreakable pillar beside me, had become my support.
The spiritual experience I underwent that night, three times black and three times cruel, had lifted me above the hated everyday life and softened the paralysing fear of death under torture. I heard the voices of the prisoners in the cells around me. Someone was sighing deeply; someone was knocking on the door, begging the Red Guard. Others were pronouncing in loud voices words and expressions I did not understand.
I was calm! Amid this mixture of underground voices, I felt a spiritual connection created by common suffering, and in the long, absolute solitude, it allowed me to enjoy their sounds as a melody that helped me escape my cell, created contact with the outside world that was denied to me, linking my thoughts with those unknown persons, with a feeling that was pure human companionship…!
Physically separated by the thick prison walls, I united with them in the shared desire and devotion for freedom. It was the height of solidarity! The next day, they brought me clothes sent from home and food. Without having washed for more than a year, dragged through the mud of the yard, the corridor, and the unswept cell, I was so filthy that everything on me gave off a nauseating odour.
The guard unchained my hands and feet. “Five minutes,” he said, and closed the door. I stood up with difficulty, and holding onto the wall, I began to remove everything from my body. I was covered with lice of every colour and size. My overgrown hair and unshaven beard had become unbearable. But what worried me most were the bloodstained underpants after the knife torture, and I did not have the heart to send them home. “Mother will be shocked,” I said to myself, even though the other clothes would give her an idea of my condition and of the place where I was held.
But sending the clothes out was unavoidable, as was the family’s shock. The knife‑opened wounds, filled with salt, had become infected by millions of filthy insects. I wiped my body with a rag and put on the clean clothes. The feeling of cleanliness they gave me reminded me of the simple joy of daily washing, and it made me very sad. “How low you have fallen, you wretch!” I said to me, “how low you have fallen”?! The flow of thoughts was interrupted by the Red Guard who entered, looked at me, took the bundle with the dirty clothes, and left without a word.
I sat down again on the floor and began to taste the home‑cooked food. But I had no appetite, despite the great hunger that tormented me. Something had seized my throat, and I could not get anything down. I began to pity myself, the state I had fallen into, my family and their suffering, and I was deeply moved. My heart had given way; I had reached the lowest point. I felt like a rag in the hands of the guards and officers of the bloodthirsty communist Security, a forgotten shadow awaiting the final act of my life.
I do not know how long I remained in this state of deep depression. When the guard entered again and saw the food barely touched, he looked at me in surprise, took the food, and without a word, closed the door with the bolt. It seemed that even hunger did not disturb me, despite my empty stomach. I needed to shed tears, to relieve myself. How was it possible that they had brought me to this miserable state? Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
