By Memisha Gjonzeneli
Memorie.al / We were nearly 1100 prisoners, in Ward 309 in Thumana, who worked hungry, until we were exhausted. We would leave, in line for four, early in the morning and return around dinner time. We walked for more than an hour to get to the work front. The road was a sticky mud, we were often accompanied by rain, and this was one such day. It had been raining for over an hour. The prisoner who was next to me slipped his leg and the shovel he was carrying on his arm hit me on the head.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t want to”!
“It’s okay,” I told him, “rubbing my head.”
The captain, who was very alert, saw the whole scene. He put handcuffs on us, squeezed us to the bone, and when we arrived at the camp, they put us in the dungeon.
That’s how I met Malo. He was sentenced for harboring saboteurs, with 18 years of imprisonment and had been in prison for 5 years. A week ago, he had turned 25 years old, while I had passed two months from the age of 18. The next day, early in the morning, the police came and took us out of the dungeon, there was the problem of fulfilling the norm.
“Hurry up, get ready for work,” he ordered us.
From that day on, we never parted with Malo. One day they came from home for a meeting, Malua, help me, until I arranged all the food. According to the custom of prisoners, I took Malo to lunch that day, despite his objections.
Malua was from the villages of Tepelena, tall, with a regular body, he was smart, and had only been able to complete three grades of high school. He had a way of speaking that forced you to listen to him.
He would look you in the eye when he spoke, if you turned your head, he would immediately stop, and when you looked back, he would start talking again. Initially, he treated me as younger, but as time passed, he no longer held reservations, he saw me as his equal.
I began to tell him about the difficulties of life in the city, the class struggle, and other events. We suffered from hunger, we were never satisfied with bread and all night, we saw dreams, as if we were eating! When I spoke to him about our misery, he stared at me and did not take his eyes off me.
He listened to me very attentively, he was a rare listener, I may have seen few people like him. He let you talk calmly and when he was sure that you had finished, then he spoke, or asked about what you had told him. One day he asked me:
“Brother, do you know how to play chess, because you city boys are more developed than us villagers”?
“Listen to me,” I told him, “I told you about the difficult life I’ve had, and that I haven’t had the opportunity to play.”
“I had completely forgotten,” Malua told me, “but I will learn this beautiful game.” They spent some time playing chess and I moved forward even in my sleep at night, it felt like I was playing chess with someone. Very soon we became equal, so much so that in many games, we were drawn. From then until today, I was known as a good chess player.
When the camp was moved to Laç, where construction was underway, we also parted with Malo. He was transferred to Burrel prison, as a dangerous man.
The day of release from prison came. I noticed that my people and society were no longer the ones I had left before entering prison. Now I had to take every step carefully and I had to keep my mouth shut, because it was very easy to go back to the prison.
I had to work hard, in order to pay the one who was guarding and spying on me, so that I wouldn’t be a burden to the state, but also to live for myself. This was the lesson I had learned in prison and to tell the truth it served me well, since I did not go back to prison, like many of my friends.
One afternoon when I was coming back from work, a friend of mine in prison came up to me. I started asking him about the friends I had left behind in prison. My friend told me about Malo first. It’s been a month since he was released, he told me. After a few days, I went and met him, on a farm near Fier.
It was a great joy for both of us to meet after 10 years of separation. He had not changed at all, only the grays showed the suffering he had removed in life. He spoke as always in a low and slow voice. He lived alone with his mother. When we parted, I took out an envelope, where I had some money that I had saved.
After objections, he obeyed and took the money and two drops of tears wet his cheeks. He threw his hand around my neck, lowered his head and shamefully told me that his father and brother had abandoned him as an “enemy of the people”. “My brother ran away from home, because he couldn’t stay under a shelter with me, after a month my father also ran away, without giving any explanation.
They left me alone with my mother, without any help or support”. “You know,” he told me, “that even in prison, I worked hard, that’s why I wasn’t defeated, but I suffer spiritually because of the lack of love from my brother and father, but you are replacing them.”
“You have plenty of reserves and strength to move forward,” I told him.
After a year, I received a letter from Malua, where he informed me that he had married a woman separated from her husband, but even that, they could hardly give her. Her people had asked the People’s Council of the neighborhood, the chief of staff where she worked and the Department of Internal Affairs.
In the end, on a Saturday, they told her at home: “You will be inherited, – the woman’s people told her – and don’t get married, because that’s what you’re in trouble for.” The mother was very happy, because now she also had a daughter-in-law at home.
In another letter, after two years, he wrote to me: “My friend, I have become a father, I have a beautiful daughter and now I have two angels: my dear mother and my beloved maid. I don’t get on well with my wife. He often comes home late, for no reason. He became a brigadier. He doesn’t care about the girl at all. One day the girl was crying and she said; “Loot in the country, spawn of the enemy of the people, you ate my soul, when I will escape from you”!
The mother had listened to him with pain and remained silent. The next day, while my mother was escorting me, she said to me: Malo, son, please, don’t talk to her friends. Now we also have the daughter, then the mother filled her eyes with tears and returned home. We broke up with my mother, without understanding why she gave me those advices”? Later I found out that Malo’s wife had run away from home and married Llazi, the farm’s tractor driver.
In 1990, I immigrated to America with my whole family. Malua came to the front line of the Democratic Movement. Several times he had also gone to Tirana for demonstrations and they wanted to arrest him.
At the beginning of 1997, I received a letter from Malua, in which he wrote: “I was tired of living all these years, a continuous war with people and the system. I feel very tired and weak. All those in the shadows won. They are leading today and tomorrow. Let’s see how we will fare”.
Malo’s daughter, who was married and had two small sons from this marriage, came to America. She told me about the separation from her father: “The day she separated, for the first time in my life I saw my father cry. That mother who had not been bent by the waves and the storm of life, I now saw crying in front of the two children.
– Daddy, please, don’t do that, I told him.
He raised his head and quickly wiped his eyes, he didn’t want to be seen crying. Then he recovered and proudly told me: “I am crying for you my soul, I have no one else in this world, and we have never been separated. I knew this day would come, but…! I am also crying for those stars you have, since when I played with them, they gave me all the good things of this world…”!
I listened to this girl, who told me with tearful eyes, but I also could not sit without shedding tears, for my friend, proud that he had endured the sufferings of prison without making a sound, without shedding tears and without losing hope for life . At one point, the girl gathered herself and turned to me:
“What about you?” – she told me.
“How can I not cry? – I told him – I cry for our lives, for our youth that we lost in prisons and internment camps, without having any fault, for you, our children, who have not yet finished the suffering of life”.
The day came when my friend’s daughter became an American citizen and Malo was also called to America. I also went to wait for Malo. As soon as he got off the plane, he was looking for us with his eyes, when, as soon as he saw the children, he put down what he had in his hands, and ran towards them.
He grabbed them with both hands and put them to his breast. He was shaking all over and it seemed as if from moment to moment, he would fall to the ground…! Finally, he gathered himself…! He met his daughter and son-in-law and when he turned to me, he said: “Brother! God did not leave us far from each other” – and threw it on my neck.
Malua and I met every Saturday. We talked and looked ahead, about the future, how we will be and what we will do…! One day, while we were talking in a park, he looked me in the eye and said:
“When I get my prison money, the first thing I’m going to do is buy a good gray suit. I’m sorry brother, maybe it’s a shame, but I’ve never worn a suit, but I didn’t need to, so why did I need a suit?
I’m going to buy another shirt, I’m thinking of buying a white one, but it’s in vain to buy a white one, I’ve never had a white day in my whole life. I will buy brown, red and black collars, shoes, socks, brown ones too. I also say about a pair of glasses, even though I’ve seen them on my friends and I didn’t like them. I am of two minds”.
I was stunned by this lecture of this suffering man and lost in thoughts. Malua in simple words was showing the suffering and misery under the dictatorship and thus he was apologizing to these people, they were all like Malua. His words reminded me of another friend from the prison, Ahmet Hoxha.
There was a man who did not know what a spring bed was, what a woman’s perfume was like, what beer or wine tasted like. There was a man who had never worn a suit, even a dock, who had never slept with a woman…!
Ahmet Hoxha had spent his life in prison. He had escaped twice from the labor camps, where he was serving his sentence, but he had not been able to cross the border…! He escaped for the third time, but was betrayed, caught and shot, as a dangerous enemy…!
Malua didn’t let me think for long. Something else, he told me: “In the inner pocket of the jacket, I want to put a small plastic flag, so that the times will not spoil me. I love my brother, – he told me, – that flag, because I have had it in my heart all my life. That’s why I want to have it on my heart forever. Let him sleep with me, brother, do you hear me? You know that we fought for Albania, for freedom, and for the flag…”!
He stood up. It was like a lemon on the face. Come on, he said to me, we’re going home and headed for the car. We didn’t open our mouths at all on the way. I took him home and when he came down completely calm, he said to me: “Brother, I’m sorry, I said harsh words to you today. But don’t forget, we are men of this land”.
As soon as I returned home, I thought that life doesn’t know, that’s why I wrote Malo’s bequest, so I wouldn’t forget. Since that day, it seemed to me that something was not the same. One day when I went to take him home, as soon as he got into the car, he gave me his hand to help him. I was surprised and worried, his hand was very warm.
“I think you have a temperature”, I told him.
“No, no, he said, – I’m very well, I started, – he told me, – what are you waiting for?”
The time was very beautiful.
“Hey,” Malua told me, “where are you taking us?” I have never passed this road”?
I turned my head and looked at him with pain, that man had lost consciousness.
“We will return home, I told him worriedly.”
“No clock,” he said, “what are you talking about?”
We went to the park and sat where we always sat. But Malua could not orient himself and told me that; it’s the first time we come to this place!
I was extremely worried and while I was thinking of taking him home, he asked me for water. I ran to bring him water and when I was approaching, I saw two or three people near him, who had laid Malo on the bench. His eyes moved in contrast to each other. I stood up.
“Who are you”? – he told me.
My eyes filled with tears, I was frozen and I didn’t know what to do. At this time the ambulance arrived. I called my daughter and gave her the address of the hospital. The girl, crying, told me that; even at home, it had started to confuse us.
I returned home, took the pen and wrote this letter: “Dear and honorable niece, I tell you niece, that your father, I have an older brother. What I am writing to you are his bequest and wish” I wrote in detail what Malua had told me about. I put the letter in an envelope, along with 1000 dollars, to cover the expenses as little as possible.
Malua died a week later, in agony. In the crown I ordered for Malo, in respect of the chess man who taught me, I inserted them on both sides, by a white chess officer, so that they would forever stand guard over this simple and great man at the same time.
The daughter fulfilled her father’s bequest: she dressed him dead in a suit, just as he had dreamed of all his life…! They did not forget to put a flag with them…! Memorie.al
