By Shkëlqim ABAZI
Part thirty-two
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
This is how everyone acted. When the police found them, they flinched and held their hands down, under the impression of the dazzling beards and mustaches of the distinguished proletarian theorists. Although the command had smelled out these tricks, bringing along representatives from the technical office and known spies to guide them during the searches, it did not prove effective, because the escorts themselves were in need, and consequently, they would either lie or try to regain lost sympathy with supposedly “benevolent” gestures.
“Why are you moving so much?”
“I’m numb, sir!”
“Shut up, you!” – the commander strutted back and forth haughtily like Napoleon before his glorious divisions. The police followed his shadow, while we defied the heat with stoicism.
“How are you feeling, Tomor?”- I asked my friend who was snoring, leaning against my shoulder.
“Beautifully!” – he replied drowsily.
“Bravo, Tomi. You turned night into day and day into night, for the triumph of socialism,”- scoffed Xhelal Bey from the left: – “That’s how you execute the directives of the Party and Comrade Enver!” – he added, laughing.
“We have an exemplary role model in Comrade Xhelal, who is coming to the island day after day!” – Esat Kala cut short his pathetic zeal.
“Xhelali of your mother… oh, never mind, never mind!” – And the hypothetical Bey put a leash on his tongue.
“Did you sleep at all?” – I turned to Tomor again.
“I got bored!”
“People pay money for sun rays, we get them for free!”
“Thank the Party and the Government, who can’t find a cure, for our own good!” – Esat provoked him.
“Quiet!”
The chatter stopped the itching increased.
“Why are you moving so much?”
“My urine burned me, sir!” – complained Xhelal Bey.
“Pee in your trousers!” – the officer ordered.
“Will you give me yours, sir, when mine get soaked?” – Xhelali returned the quick retort.
“Do you know who you are talking to, you there?” – a policeman threatened him.
“Oho-ah, I’ve figured it out; it’s been three hours now!”
“Well, he’s the commander!”
“May he live long and may you have a long life with him!”
“Long live the Party!”
“May it live long and may we eat its halva (funeral feast)!” – Xhelali pushed it.
“Everyone to your feet!” – the Chief ordered. We rose, dizzy.
“Thank God, we’re saved!” – Fetahu whispered to me.
“Sit!” – the Chief commanded. We sat down on the dust and the clipped hairs.
“Why aren’t you sitting, you there?”
“I’m numb, sir!” – Xhelal Bey stood motionless like a candle, in white breeches and a white shirt.
“Aren’t your legs dry yet?” – the commander asked.
“After yours, yarabi (God willing)!”
“What did you say, what did you say?!” – but Xhelali had already flattened himself with the others.
“Get up! Sit! Get up! Sit! Get up! Sit…” – he gave the command with solemnity.
Seven hundred men rose and sat with the rhythm of recruits in training. Some remained seated, suffering from rupture (hernia), but they were mostly unnoticed in the crowd. Those who remained standing had it bad; when the others flattened, they stood out like garden scarecrows.
“You and you, blockhead, come forward!” – the marked individuals were Xhelal Bey and Hilë Pashku (Keqi), one from Kolonjë, the other a mountaineer.
“You two, why are you standing?!”
“Why should I sit down, when I knew I’d get up again!” – Xhelali retorted.
“Who do you want to mock, you there?”
“Myself!”
“And you, blockhead?”
“I got a rupture, sir, I couldn’t sit, and that’s all!” – Hila answered.
“Sit! Get up! Sit! Get up! Sit! Get up!” – the two punished men panted.
“Get up, you!” – the commander roared.
“I have no strength left, kill me if you want!” – Xhelal Bey snapped back, worn out to a pitiful state.
“I can’t move anymore, sir!” – Hila said.
“What’s your name, you there?”
“Hilë, sir!”
“Hilë who?”
“Keçi!”
“You are so bad that you even hid this thing behind your butt? What is this, you?” – he pulled a pickaxe from the belt.
“A pickaxe, sir!”
“We don’t allow you to eat qesim (cornmeal mush) here, you!”
“Yes sir, as you order, sir!” – The commander did not add anything.
“Do you know that I am the commander myself, you there?”
“No, I swear to God I didn’t know!”
“Well, you should know it well, did you hear or not?”
“I heard, Commander Sir!”
“That qesim, we’ll see about it now! The wolf eats qesim; our Party eats with a plan, did you understand, you there?”
“Yes sir, Commander Sir, I understood completely!” – Hila clenched his fist.
“What did you understand, you?” – the military officer growled.
“Just this thing!”
Poor Hilë fell silent, but a policeman intervened:
“He’s a carpenter’s pickaxe, Comrade Commander!”
“What do you do with that pickaxe?!”
“Nalla (Wooden sandals).”
“Palla (Palaces)? We don’t need your rotten palaces. Our Palace has grown and become this big, under the continuous care of the Party!” – he stretched out his arm, put his finger near his elbow, and shook it several times.
“Nalla, Comrade, to wear on the feet!” – the policeman clarified.
“We don’t even need sandals! The Party has built factories for shoes in Tiranë, Korçë, Shkodër, Gjirokastër, and… We will dress and equip all Albanians, and the whole world, you there!”
“Yes sir, Commander Sir!”
“But this pickaxe then?”
“Hila make very beautiful nalla!” – the policeman intervened again.
Indeed, he was a master. With a pickaxe, a file, an auger, a pair of pliers, a chisel, some glass shards, a little sandpaper, and wooden material, Hila made things that the most distinguished artists would envy. Perhaps he didn’t know the meaning of the term sculpture, but every piece of wood, no matter how deformed, he transformed into art.
There wasn’t an officer, policeman, or prisoner left who hadn’t ordered at least a cigarette-lighter, not to mention furniture with antique shapes, chessboards that Fischer and Kasparov would envy, vanity boxes, artistic tables, medallions, frames, nalla for brides, even wooden clogs worthy of the Louvre.
In Hila’s “atelier,” you could find the cheapest works in the world, with prices starting from a pack of “Partizani” cigarettes up to a few kilograms of sugar. But there were also works priced for a friend!
I still keep today, after more than forty years, two frames and a suitcase, crafted by the hands of master Hilë. Thus, the command turned a blind eye to Hilë – meaning they didn’t “see” the tools, the pickaxes, the augers, the files, the chisels, the glass shards, etc. During searches, they would let a log, a board, a rail, a hinge, and plywood, something… “Slip through their fingers,” and he would compensate them with antiques.
In prisons, I have met masters of all trades. Yet the strangest thing of all was perhaps not related to trades as professions, but to the individuals who practiced them. I have known hoxhas as plumbers, priests as carpenters, philosophers as jewelers, professors as masons, historians as motorists, musicians as stone carvers, singers as mechanics, writers as laborers, poets as blacksmiths, painters as welders, etc., etc., etc., just as I have known the inverse: a polyglot shepherd, a philosopher mason, a painter farmer, a poet, etc., etc., etc.
So the unique was generalized there; perhaps the effect of captivity stimulated the intellect, and on the other hand, it dug up unplowed fallow lands which, as a counterbalance to the lack of freedom, brought forth hidden talents that could not be discovered elsewhere. When I saw those serious men dedicate themselves with such passion to a trade that in other circumstances they wouldn’t have thought they could master, the words of Esheref Zajmi spontaneously came to mind:
“There are professors in abundance here, man, for all subjects and all trades…! For heaven and hell, for light and darkness…! I would even say, they are all professors!”
And when I doubted, I would ask him: “Why, aren’t there any teachers left outside?” He would answer: “Yes, truly…! How can I explain it to you, you rascal, you enter here a simpleton and come out educated! You enter without merit and come out with a university degree, a professor and beyond a professor…! It depends on the person what they want to grasp, the good or the bad, because here you come out either a devil or an angel; you must learn one trade, you must, man!”
And when I got to know him better and was astonished by the pieces of wood he transformed into art, he would answer me: “Leave it, man, I’m just passing the time and making a penny, you rascal…! Oh, I can’t read anymore, so I mess around with these things!”
But when I asked him about school with childlike sincerity, he blurted out: “What school, you deaf one? And why is school necessary to make some scribbles on wood…? Come on, man, you can learn it too if you want, it’s not philosophy!”
In fact, he simplified it, so as not to give importance to himself, because he was an artist, in the full sense of the word, just as I would get to know dozens of others later.
“You there, what is this pickaxe, I am telling you?” – the commander turned the pickaxe, sometimes by the handle, sometimes by the blade.
“A pickaxe, then!”
“Exactly, but it is a forbidden weapon!”
“No, it’s a tool!”
“A weapon, I tell you!”
“For me, it’s a working tool, Commander Sir!” – Hila defended himself.
The commander removed the shiny scabbard and tested the edge on the ball of his finger:
“Oh my God, this is sharp as a barber’s razor, you there!”
“Well, honestly, how else could I work?” – Hila replied.
“Chains! One month isolation!”
“Slow down, Commander Sir…”!
“Pjetër, Llesh, the chains, do you hear?”
“Yes sir, Comrade Commander!”
Despite Hila’s resistance, they chained him. Two minutes later, the voice of the Party roared over his head from the loudspeaker:
“We have the enemies at the barrel of the gun…”!
Below, the commander’s scream: “Right there, in the midday sun, the soul of the Party’s enemies will leave them, the criminals who want to overthrow the people’s power by force and with weapons! The eagle-eyed Party has taught us to seek out the enemy, even here among the enemies!” – he snorted, as if seven hundred workers, devils, had seized him.
“Blockhead! What’s your name, you there?”
“Xhelal Canko!”
“The Bey, the Bey!” – the crowd thundered.
“What is this Bey in breeches?! What are you hiding here, you there?” – he pointed to the circle of the breeches.
“My wife’s things, honored commander.”
“What else inside!”
“Drawstrings (ushkurët)!”
“Who allows you to wear a drawstring?”
“The Party of Labor of Albania!” – Xhelal Bey answered coolly.
“The Party has made trousers with buttons, convict!”
“They are made of sheet metal, they got rusty and broke!”
“There are stores!”
“You can’t hang yourself with buttons, commander!”
“Are you intending to hang yourself, then?”
“Not before you, you!”
He played deaf and gave us a squinting look.
“Where are you from, you there?” – he turned to Xhelal Bey again.
“From Reps!”
“You don’t look like it!” – the officer scratched his head thoughtfully.
Xhelal Bey, in his shirt and breeches, resembled a phantom, except that unlike the real one that appears at night, he shone brightly in the full daylight.
“Where do you live, I’m asking you!”
“In Spaç!”
“I mean, where were you born, you!”
“Ah-ah, in Kolonjë!”
“Just so, say from Korçë then!”
“Wherever the Party of Labor of Albania wants!”
“Convict, what business you have with the Party?!”
“I have none, but it has business with me!”
“You are an enemy then?!”
“I don’t know!”
“How long were you convicted for, you?”
“As long as the Party wanted!”
“You will leave your bones here!”
“Together, God willing!”
“Chains, fast!”
“Welcome, do your job!”
“Come on, Ndoj, the chains, you!”
“Yes sir, Comrade Commander!” – kriq-friq, the fly landed on the flesh.
They chained Xhelal too, across from Hila, while the bombastic speech of Comrade Enver thundered from the loudspeaker against the imperialist-revisionist enemies:
“On our Albanian shores, the international enemies will break their snouts..! Albania is a granite rock, where the enemies of social… will find certain death!”
“Hurrah-a-a, long live Socialism! Long live Comrade Enver Hoxha! Hurrah-a-a!”
“May you burst, may the curse cut you short, and you’re splitting my eardrum!” – Xhelali cursed.
“You gypsy, may seven hundred devils eat you!” – Hila retorted.
“The enemies anathematize us and accuse us of being atheists. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, dear enemies that are what we are! I emphasize with pride, we are the only country that descended from the pedestal and cast out Christ and Muhammad from the churches and mosques. We completely threw out the priests and hoxhas, stripped them of their cassocks and habits, cut their hair and shaved their beards! The world is envious of us, because we cleansed the Albanian land of dogma and the intoxicating opium; we crucified Christ and Muhammad at the pillar of shame, and lifted onto their podium the glorious Party of…”!
“Hurrah-a-a, Socialist Albania! Long live Comrade Enver! Party Enver, we are ready always!”
“You ate shit, wretch, may the speckled one kill you, with a turtle on your head!” – Xhelali cursed and spat at the loudspeaker.
“Oh, Holy Mary, mother of Christ, you’re driving us mad, and may Saint George destroy you!”
Hila raised his head and spat phlegm toward the noisy speaker.
“Right there, you will both breathe your last!” – the commander also cursed. The search ended.
Police and spies sneezed, inflated their cheeks, blew their noses, and threw away black phlegm-streaks. “Phew-s-tew, psh-ew, psh-ew, pyah-ew.”
“You stinking filth, you don’t even know how to keep the place where you sleep!” – a policeman vented, “p-sh-ew-oo-oo.”
“The Party did them justice; this is where the scum deserve to be!” – the other retorted, “p-sh-ew.” Memorie.al
