Memorie.al / Eyes, sight, are decisive in the relationship that is created during a conversation. As much as being honest with oneself is a good exercise for the narrator himself, even if reason does not allow him to be as much as he wants, in order to maintain measure, it is the look that is not easily affected by the calculations of logic. Despite the fact that, Vera Bekteshi, physicist-writer, daughter of former general Sadik Bekteshi, one of those who fell from the “throne”, former director of the Institute of Military Studies, being “at home” in the exact sciences, the mathematical pencil, he knows how to use it well, even better than the literary pen. This is clearly seen from the conciseness of the description of the events of the exile in the village of Kutalli in Berat, where the whole family lived after the conviction of the father, in her novel “Vila me dy porta”.
Long spins are not her style, precisely because writing for her was unfamiliar territory. The Dell that, hidden somewhere inside her, agitated by the memories and the need to explode, appeared. But was he able to ‘shout’ as much as he needed, as much as he wanted? So much to free yourself from the darkness of 16 years of exile?! No! For this, Vera Bekteshi is convinced, but if it is completely in her hand to stop or continue the story where it should, I can’t control my eyes.
At the first intersection they seem to have an iron mask, beyond which you cannot penetrate. It’s just that, at this point, the odds are not in her favor. Light eyes, as hers are green, do not know how to cover strong emotions very well. It is so noticeable that liquid transparency that fulfills them whenever the memories become so vivid that it is enough to reach out to touch them.
An only in case like these, the strong woman, behind whom he has always had to hide due to a thousand and one vicissitudes of life, comes and lays down. The end takes on the human dimensions, the emotional and real ones that every woman has.
And that maybe she herself, if it wasn’t for the punishment she lived through, she would have. If he had black eyes and hair, as he had created the belief that Albanians at that time liked the most, he would be able to protect more strongly some of those experiences that he will not share with everyone…!
Why didn’t they like blue eyes in the village?
According to my feelings and things I have seen and understood, the village wants robust bodies, they don’t like elegant women. Albanians once had this model of beauty, with black eyes and hair, only these were beautiful.
This was to your disadvantage, but not only…! They also accused you that your appearance, including yellow hair, was contrary to the revolutionary situation…?!
My natural hair was yellow, as it is now, although time has interfered with it, but my appearance generally resembled a European image. In addition to natural features, I have always shown due care to clothing. I never agreed to evoke pity by having the image of a loose, poorly dressed woman. This decision could also have consequences.
Have there been situations in which, precisely because of this, you felt threatened?
Such situations were constantly created, but I remember one occasion, as soon as I arrived in Berat, well dressed, carefully, someone stopped me in a flower garden. “With your clothing – he said – you provoke, being an enemy of the people. Not only do they not have their sentence removed, but you are threatened with eternal exile”.
Like you, in a fragment in the book, apart from the clothing, the blue, Italian shoes of Ardian, your son, stand out…were they one of the things left over from the time, when you had not yet separated from your husband, or did he ensure material goods for him in succession?
My son stood out from the others because he was well dressed due to his father’s travels abroad. Every time he traveled, until the time we were together, but not after, he would bring her clothes or shoes. Some of them, who had been great, served him in later years.
So, no subsequent contact with him since the breakup, which, perhaps due to a decision of yours, doesn’t seem to be very clear…?!
No, none. My son met his father after 25 years in a completely random situation.
In the 16 long years, Vera Bekteshi has met quite a few people for whom, even if she wants to, she cannot respect. And that, despite this, neither in the book nor in her confessions outside of it, she has not accepted to continue hitting them. Although, in different forms, ironic and self-ironic, he mentioned them. But, no matter how unimportant the moment of her separation from her husband may be for her now, it remains a real fact, and not so transitory, in her life. No matter how much he has forgotten or ignored, this completely natural process compared to the vicissitudes that would follow, in an instant he will have to describe at least….
How did it happen?
When my appetite punishment took place, all brides and grooms were ordered to separate from their respective spouses. At this time, my husband was in America, as he was a diplomat. Of course he was ordered to return immediately and went straight from the airport to the party meeting. Returned from there around 4 am. It didn’t take long to understand the cold attitude, or why.
I guessed so, not only that he was influenced but that he had given his word. I even remember that I came back from an important exam, after which he kissed me on the forehead and said: “You are a lady!”. It was implied that it was not only because of the result of the exam, but because I would be a lady to go through what was waiting for me afterwards.
How long did this tense situation last and what experience did it leave?
From the decision to the separation, it took about a month. I didn’t feel pain because I broke up with this man, because after all, I didn’t even love him. I had married him because of the job position he had. Except I was insulted, how the family could be broken by just one order.
What if it had happened to him, can you guess your attitude?
I showed this, I did not abandon my family, none of us did, not even mine, because we had grown up with such a model, that of a healthy family.
Except, in the book, you say your spiritual leaders were your grandmothers, not your mother…?!
Yes, it’s true, grandmothers represent popular wisdom for me, because they were uneducated, but they were wise and very good. I have noticed that the advice I have applied in life has been from them and not from me anymore. That, on the other hand, she was also an extraordinary woman, but rather more indoctrinated, while I was not. I never tried to join the party, even though it would have my advantages.
However, in the book some things are said truncated, others complete?
Because the value of the book is also in the editor’s assessment. some of the events or details, Ardian Klosi, often told me, rightly, as I understood later, to remove them. There is still room in the next manuscripts.
In the years of exile, could you have had friends, fellow sufferers, with whom you could talk, if only to share a common pain…? It might be a relief, but was it possible?
At that time, you could only have your family as true sympathizers and supporters. It was hard to trust anyone else, or rather; the fear was too great to speak. At certain moments you could even explode, but you didn’t do it consciously. You did it because you couldn’t take it anymore.
What have been some of these moments?
I remember Uncle Tofik, with whom I used to grow tobacco, I sometimes managed to burst out and say things, such as some answer to Stalin, for which I could have been imprisoned, but he did not deconspirator me.
A similar situation was when my aunt’s son was killed. I managed to tell one of my fellow sufferers that one day will come when the one who was killed will become a martyr, and that’s what happened. But if you said that, you had to calculate the consequences, but she didn’t speak either. It must have been some instinctive sniffing…!
Have you had other friends who have been asked about you, and with whom you have claimed that you maintain good relations, have you ever heard their answers?
I had a lot of friends with whom I had conversations, from which nothing came out, Spartak Ngjela, Vladimir Balluku, Fatos Klosi, or a simple resident of the village of Kutalli. Ndjela told me that, when they called him to ask him what he thought of me, he replied that I was a very beautiful and intelligent girl, but that I had a big problem, I adored Enver Hoxha.
Then, when they continued to ask him if he would like to have a relationship with me, he said yes, only that he preferred to connect with the wives or daughters of the Security employees. It’s all an irony that he had questioned March, they sent him away saying – you don’t talk to him!
Were you actually able to create a relationship with a man that felt fulfilling, safe, and healthy, unlike the first?
Yes, sometime later I managed to create a very good relationship, which, although it ended, helped me, made me forget part of the suffering of exile. Or rather, we both helped each other. We continue to be good friends.
Why, was he also part of the suffering of that time?
No, but there could be suffering or other shortcomings, we helped each other.
From all that time, for the consequences of which Vera Bekteshi was helped not only by one, but all the friends and girlfriends of that period that she never lost, some details have remained, which she cannot escape. “Now I understand – he explains – why the talented photographer Jutta Bezenberg, when I posed for the photo of the book, told me to look straight with the clear intention of telling the reader that I want to show you important things”.
He notices, when he sees himself in the rebroadcasts of television interviews, that, apart from not keeping his eyes towards the viewer, but always down or to the side, due to lack of experience, her voice sounds foreign to him. Those 16 years of exile have defeated these 40 or so others, so the Berata accent dominates her speech. As a daughter of the former “Blok”, who spoke the official language cleanly, she cannot make a tail of this change.
In the early days, after the end of the exile, the change in the language was clearly visible, but as it still seems today, 20 years later, the traces of a time that cannot be forgotten and that leave the strongest signs under skin, under the gaze… and that all the stories, even those that will follow in the future stories that Vera has in her hands, can only be half of the iceberg, the foundations of which are unknown.
Inside the perfume bottle…!
…Lime, rose, gladiolus, jasmine, violet, iris… these are the scents of the “Lanvin” perfume, which mixed together, accompanied Vera Bektesh during her 16 years of exile. When the son was born, her husband brought her a set from abroad, which contained perfume and a box of powder.
She took the set with her along with the promise she made to herself that this perfume would accompany her until the end of her sentence. He always made sure to put only a drop in his hair, after every time he washed in the river. He had to use it sparingly, because it was not known how many years the dark period would last.
So sparingly that it was not only enough, but too much! While in the powder box, which he never used, powder could not be used in the village, he saw the words ‘Lanvin’ from the line ‘My Sin’ engraved on it. The last words, Bekteshi read to My Son (my son), because the gift that came for his birth, seemed to him as if it was created just for the two of them.
“Two things I would especially like about my father, his not very frequent but hearty laugh, with his mouth full of big, white teeth and the way he smoked his cigarette. I never met a man like him, but really, I didn’t even bother about it.
It was from him that I learned for the first time that life and people are not exactly what they appear to us, and that we should not take what they say at all seriously, otherwise we can get hurt, which luckily I learned very early on from the event with the lamb. I must have been about 4 years old, playing in the field near the palaces of Moskat, which at that time was a pretty field with grass, where the cattle of the peasants, newly incorporated in the capital, grazed.
Among the animals that were grazing, there was a little lamb, so white and so beautiful that my eyes stayed on him and I wanted to have him. Very timidly I approached the civilized shepherd and asked him if he sold the lambs, because I saw that he gave some in front of my eyes, in exchange for a sum of money.
He told me yes, and when I asked him how much it costs, he replied ‘only 10 ALL’. In one breath I went to the house where I found my father sleeping in the heat and waking up (he didn’t yell at me, but he didn’t kiss me either), I told him about the lucky chance to buy a lamb for 10 ALL.
– A lamb costs more than that – he answered, – but the shepherd told you so because he knows that you have nowhere to keep it. On this occasion, I realized that adults make fun of children and that you cannot immediately take their words as you hear them.
I can’t explain it but I always predicted everything good and bad that would happen to the only and wonderful child I gave birth to. When they showed it to me, after they had cleaned it, I saw a small, smoky face with lots of black hair and a pair of big eyes that, at first, looked like blue, it was exactly like the dream I had a month ago.
-Welcome to this wild world, son! – I told him, ‘wild’ simply as a way of expression, not knowing that especially for him; the world would be really wild, from the first year of life.
The newborn child was not given in the hands at all like in the moving scenes of the movies; they just showed him swaddled, before taking a cleansing bath from the protective and nourishing fluids of the mother’s body. Memorie.al
