By Visar ZHITI
Part Four
Memorie.al /…It began on the morning of a nameless day, why nameless, it was May 22nd and it is called “The Day of the Revolt of the Qafë-Bar Prisoners? – yes, because the days in prison are very similar, like the prison uniforms, with stripes, the days like this, the nights like the black uniforms of the police. Inside the barbed wire it seemed as if there were exhausted saints and crazy devils. The night brigades, the third shift of prisoners, had returned from work, they had been waiting on their feet for 2-3 hours and no order had been given to go to the dormitory. Half of them were sleeping on their feet. Leaning on the wall, on their friend, on the stairs, on the barbed wire. Black marks on their faces, either from being unwashed, or from the horror they saw in that fragment of a dream.
Continued from the previous issue
Only round bunkers, domes, concrete mouths that call our names, spewing cold ice fire. What, are the spectators of the amphitheater cheering, the cooperators of the mountains? Shame. Tigers, panthers, party secretaries are emerging from the entrances of the bunkers.
The police were swarming among us, the tigers, tearing the arms of prisoners, tearing open their stomachs with their claws, a stream of intestines, one was stepping on the other’s buttocks, the police were returning to take what was left of the extortion, the other arm, some ribs, skulls were cracked, the bunkers, but the sky, I didn’t have it, it’s a concrete dome, it’s coming down, it’s getting closer, we took our breath away, other walls after walls, fell, collapsed. The rubble above us. We’re giving up. We escaped…!
MOANS AND BLOOD
… The moan(s) again: oh-h-h-h-ooo-ooh! Another moan, the night, the last of the uprising, rose-iih-ste shka-ah-llë-eh-t. It fell, oh, it rose, ih, slowly, ah, it saw the sky, full of star nails, full of holes, moans fall, the black earth, with sighs of pits, it shook, ej, of, op, uh, uf. The moans dripped blood-ak. Lava… The spasm of moans fell again, long, he grabbed his ribs with his hand, broken, two, three, yyyyeeeehhh, exhaled, uh! He collapsed…
All the arrests, both planned and random, had been completed, the central command had been notified by code that the uprising in the political prison of Qafë-Bar had been successfully suppressed, a complete victory, when the prisoners were still on their knees and a former provincial investigator, now a senior official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, so diligent in torture, stopped his steps and asked the one next to him, the police chief or the operative.
– Here you have him, Nuredin Skraparin, do you understand?
– Yes.
– How is he behaving?– No problems. Correct.
– I was his investigator 10-15 years ago. We sentenced him as much as we wanted. They were drinking in a club, and he, a complete enemy, dared and hit comrade Enver with a bottle.
– How?…
– The portrait of our glorious leader. I will not part with you for the rest of my life, – I shouted at him. How come we didn’t put his name on the list of those arrested…?! Give him a good beating before I ran away…! They took him to the wall…! Dragging. Ah! Oh, oh… The shadow of groans fell again. Oh. He lay down… the earth was groaning, the dusk above it, panting over the pool of its own blood…! “Get up, convict,” the policeman shouted after him. “Go up the stairs, to the dungeons.” The prisoners around him were motionless, as if under a curse. By regulation, you were not allowed to help another. Ah, if I took him by the arm, his broken ribs hurt terribly, to carry him to the small gate… of the inner dungeons.
Forgive me, my fellow sufferer, I could not help you, I did nothing for you, ah! Warm gushes of blood burst from my mouth between my broken teeth…! U-u-u-y-e-e-e! Water… my wounds inside my body were burning, electro… oh… vo… z… sti Agron Ho… xha, he was moistening my lips with a cloth, I don’t know where he found the water, maybe it was raining, but you… in the dungeon, I saw the police hit you on the head with a stick… calm down, don’t talk… Roola(h)nd Too(h)li was holding my head so that I wouldn’t fall to the ground, they arrested him too, but he’s tall, he has more places for wounds than me… and he wasn’t letting me die… Goooooo(j)iiii, water…!
ALIVE IN THE ARCHIVE
I must be half alive… and half dead. Maybe everyone is like that. But where am I like this? Nothing moves, there’s no humming, no noise of wheels, no pulse, they must have unloaded us from the car where they threw us tied up one on top of the other. I was alone, yet they put me in a living coffin? What do they want from me now, they’re going to take me to court, back to the hostile group of soldiers, but were we shot once? No, no, Zhabolli, we left you alive, look how weak you are, we made you a scoundrel, you can’t even lift an arm, but we made you head of the re-education office in Qafë-Bar. Why am I wearing a helmet and handcuffs, like those who are going to be shot?! We will take off your helmet and start the Chinese torture, a drop of water on your head will fall continuously, in the same place, but it makes a hole in your skull, it completely splits it.
You will sleep on a bamboo; it grows 7 cm. per day and pierces your body. It hurts a bit! Do you remember that we only got factory machinery from China, but also torture tools, tricks, types of torture? We also hired a Chinese specialist who specialized in our own boy, they make old documents, as if they were real, and we leave the files in order, not yours, no, who cares about them, whether you sign or not, it doesn’t matter at all, I’m talking about history, we do it as we want, it’s all right, the events happened the way we want, here’s the document, our Chinese does it, better than the real thing. Where am I? Inside the coffin.
Listen, I want you to sign the list with 36 names, of the group that led the political revolt of Qafë-Bar. I don’t know that the revolt was political and I don’t know if there was any organization or group. Dalip, do you understand what you’re saying? We know that it was like that. It doesn’t cost us anything, to put the lid on the coffin, 5-6 nails. Do you like being buried alive? So, sign this letter, here’s the other one, the decision that you will be released. Choose between the two letters…! It’s not bones that break. We broke that scrapper’s ribs, but also Xhike Bazhino… just one leg, Drago Vujošević… the Montenegrin, we made him completely black.
Hey, hey, what about Sandër Sokoli? He died on the way, in the car, all his bones were broken, everywhere, everywhere, he was a mess. (The Party died too.) What about my friend Dine Fratari? We took him away, threw him in another prison, they beat him a lot too, and Lekë Mirakaj, and… if you sign, we said, I have an order from the minister. I won’t wait long for you; we can return him in another way. What’s going on like this, is this investigator inside the coffin? It’s that, the camp coffin, that you made for us, you fish, it’s no longer needed for the dead, but for the living…! Voices come from inside you. You won’t sign? Put the lid on the coffin. Don’t they need the coffin for other living people. Where are the signs? Am I underground?
THE PUNISHMENT OF THE REVOLT
The scythe fell, the iron on my head. They gathered us in the canteen again. That rascal was where we had left him, motionless, that’s what he looked like. Do they want us to repeat the rebellion? That officer from the South came again, the deputy commissioner, what the hell was he, his hat with the star on it rolled off and he got tangled up in his legs like a cat, like his own ideology, you say. Policemen with signs of wounds. Half heads tied with bandages, pieces of broken arms. Communication. The commissioner’s voice wanted to seem strong, unwavering and he himself was standing straight like those firing squads. Gun batteries. The dictatorship of the proletariat crushed the revolt of the enemies… and… the people’s court…! He was silent. He lowered his eyes to the paper, without glasses…!
The Criminal Panel of the Supreme Court, after reviewing the file in charge of the defendants… we were taken aback, names, names… imposed these sentences: Sokol Sokoli, death, shooting; Tom Ndoja, death, shooting… Sokol Progri, 25 years in prison, Vllasi Koçi, 25 years in prison, Martin Leka, 16 years in prison, Haxhi Baxhonovski, 21 years in prison, Bajram Vuthi, 15 years in prison, Ndue Pisha, 25 years in prison, Lush Bushgjoka, 12 years in prison, Kostandin Gjordeni, 10 years in prison, Lazër Shkëmbi, 12 years in prison and Hysen Tabaku, 11 years in prison. For all of them, the serving of the sentence began on May 22… what about those who were shot? And Sandër Sokoli… with his head hanging from his shoulders, they threw him on top of the others in the car, a corpse, broken bones and tied up… the signatures of three judges of the Supreme Court, Puka, on 3.06…!
In Spaç, over 100 people were re-convicted. The days of profit were taken away. They are no longer called that. If they are not days, they are lives…! Time is not ours, but outside of us like stolen goods…. They killed them… They chained all the prisoners together two by two and lowered them to the ground. They also sentenced the prison dog to be shot, because it openly sided with the prisoners, not only barking at the police, but jumping at their feet, biting them. And a real trial was held. Doesn’t our prison resemble a natural coliseum, – Gëzim Çela was saying, – the stairs descend steeply, under those stairs are the black galleries’ vaults.
The stairs roll down and stop in the arena, the squares surrounded by barbed wire. The walls of this coliseum climb up…! I couldn’t hear anything. Bullets roared and drowned out the voices. And the stormy applause, the cheers for the Party and comrade Enver, in the cinema halls, when the judge gave the sentence, by shooting… fell on my shoulders. Behind the wall, once again, my murdered friends fell, the terrifying holy trinity of their heads with streams of blood and the line of slaves, of those bound in chains, newly convicted…!
In the Spaç revolt, they shot four: Pal Zefi, Skënder Dajë, Dervish Bejko, Hajri Pasha. Confiscating their share of the family wealth. What, chairs, spoons? And with the removal of the electoral right 5 years after the sentence. After death? Terrible, cynical. Because the voters here are dead…! The desire for life and the thirst for crime were put face to face, groaned Shefqet Gjana. See the Big Bear in the sky, how it trembles, are their souls, the four shot in Spaç and the three in Qafë-Bari.
We were talking to ourselves. No, with our killed… in old Albanian, with ancient messages, fires, screams, other signs, smoke. Often a person feeds his own captivity. But we broke its technology and saw that here there is the substance of freedom. This is victory and not only ours. Under the blankets, murmurs could be heard, imprisoned prayers to God, prayers were repeated, the Bible, the Koran, languages were mixed, Babylon under the prison blanket, while the skull of a policeman, pinned to a pole, with his teeth out, gnashed in the darkness…!
AND THE PRISON SENTENCE
Then the sentence was given for the place of punishment itself, the prison! Just as Spaçi was sentenced after the revolt. And what will they do, will the prison also be imprisoned? How? What, will they demolish the buildings, the stairs, will they overturn the dormitories? If you tell me that they will increase the violence, you have nothing more to add to that. A condemned prison, wonder! Will they fill its grounds with barbed wire and, every day, we will walk over them, barefoot, when we go to work, which will have become even more difficult? The surrounding mountains, the water, the air are condemned.
Everything will be worse, even worse. Starting from food, calories will be reduced, although they were few, but families will be put under rules, so that nothing will happen and meetings will be as rare as possible, twice a year, maybe. Even letters. They can remove the television – they will do well – and reading Enver’s books, no, they will increase that. No walking will be allowed, they will drive away the surrounding families, there will be no more beautiful women beyond the barbed wire, there will be no…!
Convicted in a condemned prison
Where else do I know? The dictatorship is insatiable, worse than in the old days, when there were superstitions, but to be an atheist, to believe in nothing and to condemn even the horse of your Deputy Minister of Defense after he was shot, to take the poor animal to the municipal, in Kukës, to pull the garbage cart, and what a white, royal horse, the Kinostudio asked for for filming, no way, it is a horse with a bad biography, they said. But why, the black car of the Minister of Defense himself, after they shot him too, they took him to Ersekë. Do you know what they did to him?
They cut half of the car and welded a large cauldron to it, turning it into a vegetable van and the driver never washed the car, he was afraid to rub it with water. And it looked like a monster hybrid. Is that true? And the danger is that his minister and deputy minister – what are their names? Beqir Balluku and Petrit Dume – will be remembered by the white horse they condemned, and the black car, which made it worse. Nameless graves run… skeletons with undecayed shackles…! Mild poison was added to the food…! With the aim of causing a slow death… soap soda… ordinary poison…!
“…The food provided was of poor quality, completely outside any standard or quality…! After all, even for military units, restaurants or the population, it was in pieces. But what is inexcusable, of criminal, genocidal proportions, is even the systematic method of poisoning that was used against prisoners… which led to weakening and then to death of…!
And, to think that this was done in parallel with the hard work that the convicts performed, with the daily violence they received as well as the numerous isolations, is truly painful…! In a report dated August 27… it was admitted by the prison command that they had complained of poisoning… Stomach pains and vomiting accompanied the prisoners’ daily life…”!
PROSECUTOR’S ACCUSATION
In the Qafë-Bar revolt file: “The purpose of committing this crime was to carry out the escape in a more organized manner by opening the operations, by exploding the galleries. The criminal offenses committed by the defendants represent a significant social danger against the socialist social order and the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat…”!
“The convicts of the Qafës e Barit camp, Sokol Zef Sokoli, Sokol Zef Progri, Tom Kol Ndoja, Lush Prel Bushgjoka, Haxhi Shefqet Baxhinovski, Vllasi Llambi Koçi, Kostandin Sotir Gjordeni, Bajram Islam Vuthi, Martin Sokol Leka, Lazër Zef Shkëmbi, Hysen Halil Tabaku and Ndue Martin Pisha, in collaboration with each other, have committed the criminal offense of terror against a state representative, provided for by Article 50/1 of Article 13 of the Criminal Code…!
…The defendant Haxhi Baxhinovski explains the actions he has committed: When the political instructor saw the knife I was holding in my hand, he told me to hand it over, but I refused and with it in my hand, I attacked him by shooting him in the stomach. I do not know if I killed him or not.…?! Only when they heard the crack of rifle bullets did the defendants feel the fear and great strength of the dictatorship of the proletariat and began to retreat…!
SHOOTING
…The two young men… I am the same age as them… I can’t speak… I can’t stop crying… they took them from their cell, at night, tied up…! And it is not known where they took them, where they killed them…! The minutes were signed by six people…! The composition of the commission appointed for the implementation of the Supreme Court’s decision… with 60 Kalashnikov magazines… under the direction of the district police chief….! The file trembled in my hand:
Sokol Sokoli, son of Zefi, born in 1952, from the village of Gërni in the Tropoja district, sentenced by decision No. 3 dated 3.6.1984 of the Criminal College of the Supreme Court to death (Shooting), after the Presidium of the People’s Assembly with letter No. 888, dated 7.6.1984 did not spare his life. Tom Ndoja, son of Kola, born in 1952, born and residing in Kllogje, Shkodër district, sentenced by decision No. 3 dated 3.6.1984 of the Criminal College of the Supreme Court to death (Shooting), after the Presidium of the People’s Assembly with letter No. 888, dated 7.6.1984 did not spare his life…!
The last groans of the two convicts, after midnight on June 9, before the firing squad, are handwritten on the document. But who wrote them, the gunmen? Here: Before the execution, the convict Sokol Sokoli was informed that his life was not spared and in his last words he said: “Don’t kill me from behind. I’ll dig the hole myself. The Presidium of the People’s Assembly did a good job. We didn’t spare anyone”! The convicted Tomë Ndoja, in his last words, said: “Long live justice!” At the end, the signatures… 30 lines, one page in total…!
THE EYE MASSACRE…!
…The letter ordering the execution of Sokol Sokol and Tom Ndoja, signed by Minister Hekuran Isai, June 8, 1984, had on the side a note… unbelievable… from the director of the Directorate of Criminal Execution: “By order of Comrade Minister, the eyes of the two convicted persons who will be shot, shall be given to the Ministry of Health for scientific work”.
What?! I read it again. Horror! I put my hands on my forehead as if to protect my eyes from a cruel plucking. The execution took place on June 9, at 24:00… without a firing squad, carried out by two people…! Who are they? Yes, all of them…! And then they gouged out their eyes… how?! With a bayonet?! Horror! And they took the minister’s eyes? Where? They left them on the table? Did he knock on Enver’s office to show him? Was the dictator watching? Did they really give them to the Ministry of Health, for scientific work?! Criminal, you say. Ministries of death! …
Or did they want the retina or some nerve, to put in the dictator’s frozen eyes? How, with what means? But where can they do it! Or did they try it once. And they chose courageous eyes, from the mountains…! But in those dead eyes there was revolt, shooting… did they want to see them, to put them on some microfilm or to completely disappear…? My eyes hurt…
And what haven’t these people done, they’ve cut off legs and arms through torture, with a saw, they’ve pulled out nails, teeth, their insides, they’ve poured out their blood, they’ve covered living people with their heads above the ground, they’ve made them scream, they’ve cut out their tongues so they’ll never speak. And they’ve gouged out the eyes of the murdered. No, they’ve gouged them out before the shooting. Come on! They needed living eyes…! No! But these people have completely destroyed the human being! Memorie.al
