By Dodë Melyshi
– My grandmother and Musineja –
Memorie.al / – “They were together for two weeks in a hospital room in Rrëshen. The same food that we prepared for our mother (mother-in-law) when we took her to the hospital, we prepared the same for Musineja. She was a golden, wonderful woman” – my mother told me a few days ago, about Musine Kokalari. I looked my mother with curiosity and surprise, straight in the eye, for two seconds, with a faint suspicion, maybe this is one of the 50 thousand miracle workers, who today confess and “beat their chests” in chorus, how they managed to ease the spiritual pain of Mrs. Kokalari, when she was in exile in Rrëshen (even though when she died, only two or three people, along with the municipal worker, accompanied the truck assigned for the funeral).
But these statements for my mother’s generation have a value, truthfulness and seriousness as unshakable as the Bible itself. And they have nothing to do with the “rhajajoka choir” of social networks. Undoubtedly, my mother and my uncle’s wife, whose hands had the means to know and not know in their lives, had the same dedication to the “woman who came from the far South”, just like for an aunt!
They had the means to know and not know because they were an integral part of a family, where the code of hospitality of the New Year had survived. And in whose towers often, even very often, even distant strangers, vagrants who had spent the night outside, or travelers in need of inns, knocked and found shelter.
Musineja’s grandmother, an immense curiosity prompted me: what could they have talked to each other, in those fourteen days or, better, in those fourteen nights, of a hospital room?!
I say night conversations, considering that the eavesdropping ears of the spies, with the most absurd pseudonyms, such as: “The Mountaineer”, “The Painter”, “The Brave”, “The Çiftelia”, “The Harmonica”, “The Musician”, the teacher, etc., should have stopped eavesdropping at night in the hospital rooms. Convinced by now that two elderly women would suspend their plans for the overthrow of the popular government.
“If only they didn’t have problems, they would cry to each other!” – my mother said throughout that story, of which I didn’t want to miss a single comma.
Musineja’s grandmother, the same age and with a past, experience and life drama, almost similar. Musineja, an intellectual and writer from the most enlightened and noble families of Gjinokastra, lived in Tirana in the 1930s.
During the same period as my grandmother, the sharpest woman and with the most personality that could be known, who replaced the lack of education with other extraordinary, additional qualities?
The wife of a young career military man, the sucker of a family of bajraktari, a boy full of virtues considered for charisma as much as for looks, forming together a famous couple, in their time…!
What could they have talked about with each other! She would certainly have told them stories, about the two brothers who were killed by the dictatorship, about the trials, about the war, about the exile, about the suffering, about loneliness.
While the grandmother would certainly have told them about the anti-communist brother who was killed, about the husband who was also killed by the same dictatorship, and about the constant aggression that this same evil seed showed towards her sons. And about the same suffering and troubles.
Or maybe they talked about their youth, their dreams that burned and burned in the best of times! Or maybe they talked about Tirana in the 1930s. You associate a city with great shortcomings, of course, but with great hopes and expectations, for the youth of that time!
Or maybe they talked about Italy. One Rome, the other Bari. I am curious to know how many troubles my grandmother and Musineja cried together, during those 14 days and nights in the hospital, in Rrëshen in the early 1980s! A curiosity that will never fade.
We… although we were unable to dig and learn from our grandparents for “anagraphic” reasons, our parents’ generation is also saying goodbye to us without having thoroughly read their book and school of life!
There will come a time when, for our history, we will only be subject to historians – improvised prototypes on fb. And not only! Memorie.al
