Memorie.al / Time is never enough to tell everything. Especially not a book. Every time you look back, something will have been left unsaid. “Insufficient Time” (Kohë e pamjaftueshme), is what Helena Kadare has called her memoir. A 730-page book where the writer and wife of Ismail Kadare recounts her memories, starting from when she was a girl in Elbasan, learning by heart the verses of a young writer who was studying in Moscow, and whom fate wanted to become her husband. The life of Helena Gushi, later Kadare, was not like everyone else’s. Fate had reserved a different life for her, one she had often dreamed of. While she was a high school student, she received the first letter from Is, as she calls him, but she had never imagined that it would be such a life, full of so many emotions.
She was the wife of the man who would pull Albania out of isolation through his works, even when the dictatorship was at its peak. Personal feelings alongside a not-so-simple man, from the first kiss, to jealousies, arguments, and sleepless nights, all for a novel that was expected to be published.
“Being a writer herself, Ismail Kadare’s wife, Helena, reveals the fate of an unusual couple. In this narrative full of events that surpass the ordinary of a common life, the reality of a half-century that saw the apogee, and then the agony and end of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, is unfolded.
Within their circle of friendships, meetings, and shared secrets, this couple finds the energy and courage to overcome the anxiety that the dictatorship exerted on the inhabitants of Europe’s most closed and mysterious country,” notes the French publishing house “Fayard.”1
Kadare has always been discussed as the writer who had a very delicate relationship with the dictatorship. In her memoirs, Helena tells about the meetings of the League of Writers2, the plenums, the complaints, the criticisms, the book bans…! That entire period of anxiety, when everyone thought their end had also come, when people were being questioned in investigative custody about the writer’s possible “intelligence” connections, his visits to France…!
Relationships with the powerful, told directly or indirectly, with Enver and Nexhmije Hoxha, Ramiz Alia, the children of the suicide prime minister, Mehmet Shehu…! From this voluminous book, we have selected a few excerpts from those difficult, anxiety-filled moments when tomorrow was never certain.
Passages from Helena Kadare’s book “Insufficient Time”
Accused as an agent of Mehmet Shehu
A few days after returning from Frankfurt, Is summoned to the Central Committee of the Albanian Party of Labor (PPSH), to be reprimanded for meeting with Martin Camaj. Is did not try to avoid what had happened. To Sofo Lazri’s first question: “Is it true that in Frankfurt you met Martin Camaj, an enemy writer, or not?” Is answered unequivocally: “It is true.” His defense was simple: “The meeting was accidental. Besides, I did not know that he was involved in hostile activities.”
The events of that year would unfold rapidly. On December 17, the Prime Minister’s suicide or murder occurred. After 2-3 days, he was declared a traitor. Immediately, there began talk of a great plot, the most dangerous one discovered until then. All of Albania started trembling in terror. Everyone brought to mind the relatives who might be targeted and the danger that came from this.
We were at risk from two directions: from Bashkim and Marietta, the son and daughter-in-law of the deceased Prime Minister, who were isolated and expected to be arrested any day, as well as from Gim Myftiu, whose father might suffer a grave fate. And if the father suffered, it was known, the son would have the same fate.
The year 1982 began with this black cloud. Meanwhile, Bashkim and Marietta had been arrested. But the misfortune would not end there. On January 28, in the evening, we had gathered with some friends for Is’s birthday, when one of the windowpanes of the living room was broken by a rock.
The rocks came from the street, and Is called the Police Precinct. The police came immediately, behaved very well, and conducted the forensic examination. A few days later, the incident was repeated, this time with a knocking on the apartment door. The same ritual was repeated: photography, measurements, official reports.
This was the beginning of an ugly story that lasted a long time. We had heard so much about the tricks that communist regimes use to slander cultural figures, but this disgusting soap opera crossed all boundaries of immorality.
At the time when Tirana was buzzing with meetings for the denunciation of “Mehmet Shehu, the greatest master plotter of all time,” shouts could sometimes be heard in front of our apartment in the evening: “Ismail Kadare, agent of Mehmet Shehu!” Or; “agent of the bourgeoisie!” And to think that he was still a Member of Parliament, a fact that his detractors would remember for a long time afterward!
The Condemnation of “The Palace of Dreams”
The proverb: “When bad things come, open the door to them,” took on a special meaning in countries like ours. At the time when the mud-slinging story was at its peak, bitter news came to us from the League of Writers. Soon, the Plenum of Literature would take place, where “The Palace of Dreams” (Nëpunësi i pallatit të ëndrrave) would be condemned. The first thought that came to us was: Did this have anything to do with the issue of the “broken windows”?
The Plenum took place in March, in the great hall of the Palace of Culture. The meeting was chaired by Enver Hoxha’s official deputy, Ramiz Alia. In the front rows, among the members of the Politburo and the government, was the dictator’s own wife, Nexhmije Hoxha. Is was on the presidium, and from there he had to listen to the harshest criticisms before the entire audience. They were being read by the Chairman of the League. I was with my office colleagues in the hall. I sat completely numb, carefully following every movement of Is’s grim face.
After the terrifying phrases, now and then, I felt the silent and meaningful squeeze of my friend, Nasta Haxhiu, on my arm. Heavy words were coming from the podium. The novel was accused of making allusions to the “communist regime.” This was the most dangerous fear that could be leveled against a work in Albania.
Meanwhile, I heard with astonishment citations of phrases from the book—phrases that I knew all by heart, but I do not know by what alteration or strange arrangement of them, they sounded even more frightening than they were. Everyone thought this was Is’s end. For the second day, he himself had to listen, with the same frozen expression, to what was being said about him…!
Bashkim Shehu, a week of questions about Kadare
His fate, that is, our fate, did not depend at all on what the Chairman of the League of Writers or the zealous discussants were saying. Nor on the scrutinizing eyes of Nexhmije Hoxha, which did not leave him from the first row where she was seated.
Our fate was being decided in another place, far from this hall, in the cell, or in the isolated location, where Bashkim Shehu and his young wife, Marietta, were being questioned. What they would say about us was much more fatal than the errors of “The Palace of Dreams,” which were being counted there…!
Bashkim Shehu, along with his wife, was being intensively questioned about us in different isolation places. This news was brought by my cousin’s son, Kujtim Kito…!
In 1991, immediately after his release from prison, Bashkim Shehu recounted what happened in a letter. Here is the text of his letter, first published in the preface of his book “Autumn of Anxiety” (Vjeshta e ankthit), a book also published in France with the title “L’automne de la peur.”
I wanted to write to you primarily about that part of my investigation in 1982, when they questioned me about you. They questioned me intensively for about a week; in fact, once the Deputy Minister of Interior, Rexhep Kolli, came to me in the middle of the night.
They called you a “dangerous old enemy,” who had tried to “get away with it from the Party,” but “could not get away with it,” because “the Party” had “known you for a long time,” had “extended a hand to you several times,” but now “you had nowhere left to go,” etc.
They sought to know what opinion you had of the regime, what you had said against Enver Hoxha, and they even implicated you in espionage matters, as they asked me whether you had ever gone to France, sent by Mehmet, and whom you met there. In order to extract the confessions they needed, they first tried to put me in a state of total self-blame, which they succeeded in doing.
Then, like saving angels who would lessen the pain of such guilt, they had to make me admit that the cause of my faults was, in reality, someone else, and this someone else could change depending on the case, depending on who they needed me to testify against.
Thus, at first they focused on you, and then, when the investigation passed the espionage chapter, they focused on my parents. So, I was required to confess that my friendship with you; “was the main factor that had helped me enter the hostile path,” and consequently, this had to be concretized with depositions related to the questions I mentioned above…”!
The letter revealed that the only thing they wanted to know about Is was what he thought of Enver Hoxha. This confirmed that the questions were being asked according to the direct instructions of Hoxha himself. The rest they already knew…!
Saved by Enver Hoxha
…By the studio fireplace, just as before, without it being clear whether he was defeated or victorious, Is was writing “The Blind Decree” (Qorr-fermani), the long novella that described almost exactly the terror he had just experienced. The only difference was that the event was set in the Ottoman Empire…!
One day he told me something that surprised me. He said that what he was writing, he had no intention of publishing at all. It was the first time I had heard a statement of this nature. As he explained to me, his relationship as a writer with what he was writing now was different, completely different.
Another day he told me that what he had known for a long time had become clear once again: the clan against him was too strong because it was headed by Enver Hoxha’s wife. No one else would insist with such tireless zeal on something the dictator did not approve of. But this fact was not only understood by him. There were many other close people who told us this.
It was clear that this time too he had been saved by the dictator. Because, as was already known, and as Is said later, only Enver Hoxha could save you from Enver Hoxha./ Memorie.al
