By Shkëlqim ABAZI
Part thirty-four
S P A Ç
The Grave of the Living
Tirana, 2018
(My memories and those of others)
Memorie.al /Now in my old age, I feel obliged to tell my truth, just as I lived it. To speak of the modest men, who never boasted of their deeds and of others whose mouths the regime sealed, burying them in nameless pits? In no case do I presume to usurp the monopoly on truth or claim the laurels for an event where I was accidentally present, even though I desperately tried to help my friends, who tactfully and kindly deterred me: “Brother, open your eyes… don’t get involved… you only have two months and a little more left!” A worry that clung to me like an amulet, from the morning of May 21, 22, and 23, 1974, and even followed me in the months after, until I was released. Nevertheless, everything I saw and heard during those three days; I would not want to take to the grave.
Continued from the previous issue
“Silence, you lot!” the town crier continued!
2 – “The list of those who go to the surface, by sectors.
In the mechanical section: Milto Feshti, Fiqiri Muho, Refat Hamiti, Taqo …, X…, Sotir…, Janaq…., Y., Qenan Jaho, Gaqo Tellalli. This list is closed too.”
Some were irreplaceable specialists; others were spies who carried information just to be useful (“as Kola was found useful in the work”), as my friend Shyqyri Gruda liked to say.
“On the inclined plane: A.., E…, V…, D…, Q…, Z…, K…, P…, L…, Y…,” etc.
Again here, crippled, sick, disabled, and still some spies.
“In maintenance: P…,.., G…, H…, Q…, C…, A…, F…, Y…”, etc.
The same composition.
Noise.
“Are you going to shut up, you lot?!”
“My pee is burning!”
“Piss in your pants!”
“I’m bursting, I’m fainting!”
“You haven’t died yet, huh!”
“I’m dying under the sun, oh my head, mother!”
“May you drop dead right there!”
“Well then, what are you waiting for!”
“Water, water!”
“Piss and drink it!”
“Silence, you lot!” Again, Malo the town crier.
“In the first zone. First brigade: 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, 24, 53, 65.”
“Second brigade: 1, 2, 3, 13, 17, 45, 55, 65.”
“Third brigade: 3, 5, Riza Kamenica, 13, 43, 65. Reserve 1, 4, 9, three per brigade.”
“You won, Zakja, from the second to the first!”
“You got away with it, Captain!” It was Esati sitting next to me.
“I wanted to take them in order, but I guess I went backward!” Zakja complained.
“Oh-ho, you want to move forward, you rascal? You weigh as much as the wedge of the hornbeam, you sir, that’s how many grams you have!” Xhelal Bey teased him.
“I’ll do another fifteen years ahead, but what can I do that they left me out completely!” Tomor Allajbeu shot back.
“You should be thankful; you’ll come out wiser next time!” Xhelali countered.
“Wiser or burnt?”
“If you don’t ripen, you rot! Hurray-a-a!” “Marroku” jumped up.
“Silence, you lot!”
“Go on, Malo!”
“3. – In the third zone. First brigade 49. Second brig… 49. Third brig… 2, 9,…, Bejo Kalaj,..49 and 6 reserve.”
“Congratulations, Bejo, straight to the third zone, you showed Esat!”
“Esat is a young man, he will overtake me and leave me behind, he has life ahead of him!”
“Did my name come up?” Qani Çollaku asked me.
“No, Qani!”
“And mine, eh?” It was Mihal Cerja.
“With this racket, I can’t hear my own name, let alone yours!” I replied.
“They left you, because you have military service experience, man!” Zakja mocked.
“Joke all you want, Zake, your chance has come!”
“It really has!”
“May your Nevzatka live long, man?” Xhelal Bey poked fun at him.
“Eyvallah (Thank God), may I share the halva with the big spoon, I hope!”
“And you, Xhelalo, where is your place?”
“Wherever the Party wants!”
“I asked you about the zone, you fool?”
“In the international brigade of Chinese rice fields!” Esati joked.
“Comrade Xhelal is always ready!” the writer added.
“Xhelali is for his… and for… Z, just forget it! And where will you drown, you poor thing?” Xhelali countered.
“With all the others, Xhelal Bey!” Havzi Nela defended him.
“U-ah, look who’s talking?! This one who doesn’t even know where he is himself!”
“We are here, we have nowhere to go; we will all spin within the prison circle!” Havzi countered. “Don’t worry, Doctor, wherever they send us, it will be worse than hell… unless they exile us beyond hell!” he turned to Astrit Delvina with his head bowed and a bitter smile.
“Why do you pretend to be the smartest people in the world when you know nothing at all!” the dark Ramadan Lipja popped out of nowhere.
“What must we learn from Your Grace?” Luan Koka inquired.
“This time, by order of the Central Committee of the Albanian Party of Labor and personally of Comrade Enver, who loves the Gypsies (Yevgjit), the white ones will be jammed into the pyrite holes, to get a little darker, since they kept cursing us, the lizard!” Ramadan joked.
“Thank goodness, Dan-t-e, a smart Gypsy finally appeared!” Luan mocked.
“Why, Kok-ë-ë, did they make me a politician for nothing?” Dani countered.
“Will you shut up?”
“Listen, you lot!” Malo shrieked his voice raw.
“You’ve rattled our brains enough, Smail, we get where we are!” Esati snapped.
“Where could you possibly be, you jerk!” Zef Ndoi teased him.
“In the darkened holes of your Mirdita!” Esati shot back.
The man from Mirdita recoiled but didn’t give up: “As soon as the black-trousered southerners crossed the Mat River, they darkened Mirdita and all of Albania! Ha-ha-a-a!” and he scratched his neck as if flicking away an annoying insect.
“Go on, Malo!”
“Listen, people! The second zone, we saved for the end, as the most important one. Pay close attention!”
“Attack, Captain!” Esati urged him.
“In the second zone.
- – In the first brigade: 1, 3, 15, Qani Çollaku, 60.”
“You too, Qani?!”
“What am I?”
“You’re a ‘Hero’s’ brother, man!” Zakja pretended to be surprised.
“Oh-oh, who cares about heroes here, may your mind be shut down!”
“They’ve gathered enough to scrape with a shovel; you can’t even find the bones of the others!” Xhelali intervened.
“Will you shut up!” the town crier yelled.
“Go on, Malo!”
“In the second brig…: 2, 7, 14,… Shkëlqim Abazi,… 39, 49, 60.”
“You bit the bullet, son!” Zakja sighed deeply.
“Even those who toil there is mothers’ sons, Riza Bey Kamenica!” I tried to console him.
“Go ahead, Malo!”
“Listen up, you lot!”
“Put your bag down, the matter is closed!” “Marroku” was losing patience.
“In the third brigade: 1, 3, 7,… Esat Kalaj,… 15, 60. Reserve 12.”
“Well done, Esat, for the trust the Party has in your abilities! Now they have put you in the furnace so your bones won’t be lost!” Xhelali wickedly rubbed his mustache.
“Better to have rusted bones in your furnace, than a golden throne in the world’s toilet, Xhelal Bey! Anyway, it remains for me to thank them on behalf of the privileged ones entrusted with the pyrite holes, starting with the Chairman of the Technical Office, Comrade Medi Noku,” Esati burst out pompously.
“Without his goodwill and availability, we would spend the prison term in total lethargy; we would lose our orientation towards the continuity of the bright ideals of the Party. Thanks to him, the command keeps us at the center of attention. Also, all the spy comrades deserve thanks, because they have contributed with positive evaluations addressed to us. But the maximum honor, as high as the peak of Everest, goes to the camp commander, Comrade Çelo, for the boundless consideration he reserves for us. Understand! Naturally, without forgetting the unreserved support of the ‘kindly’ commissar, Comrade Shahin, who by approving our participation in this zone of special importance, practically granted us a pardon.”
“We will remember this honor even after death.”
“Amen, Esat!”
“And last, but not least, on behalf of the aspirants of the second zone, I want to express my warmest thanks—warmer than… the pyrite holes—to the enlightened Marxist-Leninist teachers, to the sister and sister-like Parties worldwide, and to the communist groups spread across the five continents, who made possible the signing of contracts for the export of pyrite and sulfuric acid. I would especially express my modest gratitude to the glorious Party of Comrade Enver, which should last as long as… Comrade Xhelal’s underpants!”
“Xhelali is for his… and for… Z, just forget it!” he was interrupted during his praising tirade.
“Hey, you lot, are you going to shut up or?!”
“Close it, Malo!”
“5 – This order comes into effect (tomorrow morning), on 22. 05. 1971. The sector’s records clerk, Jovan (signature). The Commander of Sector 303, Çelo Arrëza (by his own hand). The end.
May we meet well, after one, two, or three months!” The records clerk turned his back and headed down the stairs.
“You forgot ‘Tartarini’, records clerk!” “Marroku” yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Leave ‘Tartarini’, he’s little, he hasn’t reached the age yet! But look for the kitty, man, the mice are killing our eyes!” Shtjefën Lacuku headed towards the bathrooms.
“Oh Tef, since Vasi washed your feathers, feed the spirit, because it will reward you, truly; it will spy on you every time you fart…” Xhelal Bey also mocked.
“Yes, Malo!”
“Disperse, you lot!” The town crier rushed to the taps, his throat parched.
“Go on, get lost!” “Marroku” also headed down.
“Run to the toilet now, Xhelal Bey!”
“I have nothing to dump, Zake, I did everything by the pillar!”
“And now?”
“I’m going to change my underwear!”
“If you find any!”
“I couldn’t find mine; I’ll borrow the commander’s!”
“And if they are torn?” he grinned, $hi-hi-hi$, and added: “Take care (Be well)!”
“You too (Health to you)!”
Zakja also quickly left. I remained alone.
I headed towards the bathrooms… but the toilet annexes were occupied, and the queue stretched over ten meters. I had to wait for about an hour…!
Wait, wait…!
What is the meaning of waiting in prison?
Nothing, absolutely nothing! A place where the notion of waiting loses its meaning and is translated into its opposite. To wait meant: to stall for time!
I finished in the bathroom and entered the dormitory. Oh God, right from the door, the aroma of rotten straw and toxic dust blocked me. My guts rose to my throat, everywhere dirt and mess! Mattresses, quilts, blankets, pillows, trousers and fur jackets, underwear and shirts, newspaper and magazine pages, crumpled rags, milk powder, stained with bread crusts and straw and chaff, like in a rag market. Under a peasant sandal, half of Voltaire’s portrait was visible.
“Oh dear, the books…” I addressed the bed with my hands on my head, but I calmed down when I found the stylus in the niche where I had sheltered it, beneath the mattress and under the cardboard the books. Thank goodness, my belongings were saved!
“We got away with it this time too, my dear friends!”
“We are saved, Lord, if they had gotten hold of us, they would have viciously lynched us!” replied in unison the ancient and new poets, who, hidden beneath the black earth, aspired to kiss the sun.
“The executioners were careless this time too!”
“What fear, oh Great God?”
“Terror! Horror…!”
I collapsed onto the straw of the mattress.
“I will calm down until the town crier calls for lunch!”
“Damn it, why did I end up in the second zone! May God grant that I escape without any lasting damage (defect)!” And I was lost beneath the troubled foam of dreams…!
Oh God, an endless intermezzo! (Even titans die!)
For months I tried calling the number 0682600585, which my friend Namik Zeneli had, but he wouldn’t answer.
“He must have changed his number! This cursed trend has given us ten phones each, in our hands and pockets, they even hang a phone around the children’s necks, another in their backpack, and straight off to the nursery. Even the woodcutters have two, one in their lunch bag, the other on the pack saddle’s frame. Everyone is chasing the crazy offers of the deceptive companies, finding offers, changing numbers; reading flyers and adding numbers. The companies lie and lie, with reduced tariffs and new phone and internet services, supposedly free; they have invented some tricks with groups and friends of X or Y company, and everyone rushes to benefit first; the flyers have lipstick marks, like the tracts of yore; you open the door and find three scraps, one on the cement below, one hanging on the sunbeam, and the third on the door number!”
“We live in the digital age and modern times, Sir!” the modernists try to defend themselves.
Perhaps! Maybe my friend has also been afflicted by the modern age syndrome! Let’s wait for it to pass!
“Undoubtedly, he will call himself when he misses me!” I decided and waited. “I waited and waited until I was exhausted…”
I took a one-week break, rang the bell, nothing! I waited two weeks and rang again, silence! A month went by, then two, no one answered! Then six months, the bell rang zhërr, and no sign of life! The worry gnawed at me, but I maintained my composure:
“Who knows where he is! Maybe in the West, with some emigrant nephew or niece! Or perhaps he crossed the Atlantic and ended up with the American imperialists, because that’s where the ‘agent’ had his lair, right?”
“Why would the Party punish enemies for no reason? No-o, ‘Uncle’ knows well where he puts his hand!”
The words of the neighborhood activist echoed in my ears from when he pointed his finger at me in the 1980s. I continue with the logic of the Siamese “veteran” from my neighborhood, Namik’s fellow villager.
One spring day, at the Qafa e Murrizit monument, the “veteran” of the magpies was boasting to two or three hundred students from the village’s eight-year school, throwing out boasts about supposedly “heroic battles” and “imaginary wars” against invading enemies and national traitors.
After exalting the leading role of Comrade Enver, who had never set foot in those parts, he mentioned the countless sacrifices of the “nameless” martyrs, who gave their blood in the prime of their youth. Then, he pointed his finger at the enemies of the Party, whose eyes were hurting from the triumphant march of Socialist Albania towards unstoppable progress, and added:
“The blood shed like the waves of the Ionian Sea was not in vain. Today, Socialist Albania marches confidently towards Socialism and final Communism. But this hurts the eyes of the enemies of the Party and the people, who refuse to see the progress and cry during the day about the dreams they see at night, vomiting bile like a basking viper against the Party and Comrade Enver. But we will cut off their tongues down to the root!”
After thumping and threatening all the imperialist-revisionists of the globe, he returned to earth:
“Look at the dangerous enemy, Namik Zeneli, in our village! He acts like a lamb and pretends to be kind, but behind the gentleness hides the wolf; behind the disabled hand, the knife he will stick in our back. Why would the Party punish him for no reason? No-o, Uncle Enver knew where he was putting his hand!” He paused, filled his asthmatic lungs with oxygen, and continued: “Boys, he was a terrorist, meaning he was going to assassinate Khrushchev, but he was aiming for Enver! ‘How could he know about these things, he was just a goat-herder in the end,’ some riff-raff, enemies of the people’s power, tries to defend him. But we won’t swallow that olive pit! Because here we have our shepherds; they might have become devoted communists, even ‘Heroes of Socialist Labor,’ and even deputies in the People’s Assembly, and members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the APL, but they remain shepherds, with their crooks and their goats!”
“They might learn to play the flute and the double-pipe, but as for schooling and politics, ah-ha, they learn nothing!”
“Which one of you brats I ask, have you seen a shepherd who learns foreign languages, science, arts, literature, music, politics, economics, and what else? No, you won’t find one! So how did he learn all these things? Figure that out now!”
“He was one of the most dangerous agents, for the ideal!” Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
