By Shkëlqim Abazi
Part forty-nine
Memorie.al / I were born on 23.12.1951, in the black month, of the time of mourning, under the blackest communist regime. On September 23, 1968, the sadistic chief investigator, Llambi Gegeni, the ignorant investigator Shyqyri Çoku, and the cruel prosecutor, Thoma Tutulani, mutilated me at the Internal Affairs Branch in Shkodër, split my head, blinded one eye, deafened one ear, after breaking several ribs, half of my molar teeth, and the thumb of my left hand, on October 23, 1968, they took me to court, where the wretch Faik Minarolli gave me a ten-year political prison sentence. After cutting my sentence in half because I was still a minor, sixteen years old, on November 23, 1968, they took me to the Rrëps political camp, and from there, on September 23, 1970, to the Spaç camp, where on May 23, 1973, in the political prisoners’ revolt, four martyrs were sentenced to death and executed by firing squad: Pal Zefi, Skënder Daja, Hajri Pashaj, and Dervish Bejko.
On June 23, 2013, the Democratic Party lost the elections, a process that is perfectly normal in the democracy we claim to have. But on October 23, 2013, the General Director of the “Rilindas” (Renaissance) Government sent Order No. 2203, dated 23.10.2013, for; The dismissal of a police employee. So, Divine Providence was intertwined with the neo-communist “Rilindas” Providence, and precisely on the 23rd, I was replaced, no more and no less, by the former operative of the Burrel Prison Security. What could be more significant than that?! The former political prisoner is replaced by the former persecutor!
The Author
SHKËLQIM ABAZI
Continued from the last issue
RREPSI
(Forced labor camp)
Memoir
The First Meeting
(The boat sunk in the swamp)
Naturally, over time, this strict program cultivated in me a sense of self-discipline. Since my day was full and I had no opportunity to engage in idle chatter, the impression was created that I had settled down. I really did settle down. I settled down so much that my friends openly propagated the idea: “This boy will change from now on, he will deal with nothing but his studies!” To be honest, this unwritten label, which the dear elders attached to my name with great effort, would accompany me for years. And it began to be respected, or almost respected, even by simple police officers. They no longer saw me as a troublemaker, but with a different eye.
Of course, not everyone wanted this path, for example, the camp operative would have preferred an ordinary hooligan over a knowledgeable student, and so would a few spies who would want a friend behind them, because someone permanently engaged had neither time to waste nor the chance to deal with them. Excluding some small squabbles caused at work by the police and after some tricks that the foreman Nasho Corrosive pulled off at the beginning, but encountered my contempt and that of my friends from the first days, everything seemed to be going smoothly. Of course, a smooth run within that denatured normality, of that cursed place; as much as such a thing could exist under the cover of the barbed wire fence, under the whistling of the whip and the terror of beatings.
Life Fragments
(Or when the wolves tore each other apart!)
That little free time, especially during the summer, when I was not engaged with school, I spent in the company of my elders, but also with Jani Iliadhi and Namik Zeneli or “Sancho and Don Quixote,” as I innocently called them. In compensation for these noble titles, they called me “Gavroche.” I became very close to them. During the breaks between lessons or even when we made them up ourselves to rest, we discussed various topics. I loved listening to stories with authentic facts. Especially one of them, who had in a way been a protagonist himself and possessed innate oratory, accompanied by a very strong logical argument.
He was passionate about the historical truths of the past and a champion of freedom of speech. He was a strict analyst and judge of the past, a far-sighted, almost infallible predictor of the future, and a pleasant interlocutor. The staunch leftist had evolved during the long years in prison, undergoing a profound catharsis, so much so that his ideas, convictions, and mentality had completely changed. The quality of self-correction, which was rarely seen in others, had become part of his character. He did not lack the courage to publicly admit the mistakes of the war years, take responsibility for the faults of that wicked period, and apologize for the dishonest clashes and confrontations with the “enemies of the nation.”
In this individual, the just judge was intertwined with the exhaustive analyst, the impartial assessor with the absolute correct one; his objectivity even crossed the line of former “enemies.” “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s! Or To each his due!” was his motto. He considered Enver Hoxha the most diabolical politician to ever emerge at the head of Albanian politics during the last two thousand years. “He is a devil with horns! Cynical and unscrupulous immoral, evil and black-hearted, like Lucifer! His conscience swims in the blood of the innocent! But he is not the only culprit, we are all somewhat guilty! What were we doing when the nation’s card was gambled? And when the borders were predetermined? Nothing and… Nothing or, almost nothing! Who kept silent out of fear, which ran after the tails of Serbian and Russian emissaries for undeserved gains! This is the truth!”
On May 5, 1969, when the thundering voice of Enver Hoxha, at the Martyrs’ Cemetery of the Nation, echoed from the loudspeaker on the pole in front of the command: “In memory of Qemal, his youthful blood, and twenty-eight thousand others…”, Ilia would burst out: – “Oh, brother, we started badly! Oh, Lucifer, may you be struck down! Shame! You swear by Qemal!” – Ilia cursed and continued: – “We started the game of elbows early! Right from the beginning, we shed blood!” – He turned to me, – as if I were jointly responsible for Enver’s faults, but when I kept silent, he continued:
-“Maybe you have heard of the betrayal against him? Well, it’s true! I once had doubts, but I didn’t want to believe it! When his fiancée, Drita Kosturi, presented me with facts, I was shocked! He imprisoned the poor girl for this reason! Because she refused to deceive and falsify history, as Lucifer wanted! Is there any greater hypocrisy than this?! To sacrifice the other yourself and then celebrate this date as Martyrs’ Day?! Deception, a thousand times deception! But did the others know this? Of course, they knew! Then why are they silent? We are afraid, some justify! Shame and disgrace!”
“Hmph, why should we deal with the dead!” others defend themselves. Scoundrels! – No, no, they have a stronger reason! Everyone is stained a little with this mess! Do you understand now that it’s not just Enver, but everyone! Everyone, all the mutes and bootlickers!” – Ilia monologued, threatening the invisible voice shrieking from the funnel. He continued to accuse and argue further: – “We were indeed a little naive, and he exploited this! But even the bear wakes up in the spring. But what did we do?! We remained asleep, yes, asleep!
Even when it became clear that the supposedly fraternal Yugoslav communists were stabbing us in the back, we still dozed off! We hoped we were dreaming, like the donkey in the fairy tale, when the wolf was tearing him apart! We believed that these breakdowns would be repaired along the way! We thought that the wheel that was following us would not crush us, but others after us! Everyone withdrew and prayed: away from my ass! But, no! The wheel was spinning, and in its dizzying rotation, it ground and will grind bones, leaving and will leave a red trail of brothers’ blood!
Were there brave men? Of course. But whoever dared to express even a half-truth, the next day they would find his corpse in the ditches behind the bushes, killed by the treacherous rifle of his comrades in ideal. We propagated perfection, we sowed treachery! And yet, Qemal Stafa, Vojo Kushi, Sadik Stavileci, Xhorxhi Martini were eliminated by betrayal, they killed Anastas Lulo, Mustafa Gjinishi, and dozens of others from behind. The doubters avoided the ambushes; the believers went to be slaughtered! We all had eyes in our heads, but we played blind, we were silent without distinction!
We killed and killed each other to clear the way for Lucifer! Maybe we even discussed it sometimes among friends, but secretly because we had been blinded, the sense of duty towards the homeland languishing under the nose of the foreigner during the War and the supposedly bright perspective, according to our point of view, afterward, had clouded our judgment. The rampant Serbo-Slavic propaganda made us hope for the golden spoon. Everything that happened, we called momentary misunderstandings, which time would overcome, and with time democratic normality would return.
But what did we do later? Worse and worse! We stripped the owner of his property! We took the land from the rich man and gave it to the poor man! Very good! But, we took it back from the latter and collectivized it! What did we gain? Poverty! We produced two kinds of poor people, we made the rich poor, and we made the destitute utterly impoverished! To the shame of the world, today, after twenty-five years, you see a whole people struggling for a mouthful of food, living amidst extreme poverty and shortages, unfed, ragged, working with their soul in their teeth in unproductive enterprises and in cooperatives without yield, and they can’t even secure a mouthful for their children, but are dragging themselves through this misery that has plagued Albania far and wide!
When you hear a handful of charlatan demagogues talking as if in ecstasy about the material benefits that communism will supposedly bring us in the future, but which is nowhere to be seen and no one can enjoy, your guts churn! Let alone when those who denationalized us and who for personal interests sold the nation, those who still deceive with unity, within the framework of the triumph of the proletarian revolution, shout about the national interest, then the disgust multiplies! But at that time, we did not judge this way, the ideal had maddened our minds and hearts!”
He experienced the division between blood brothers quite painfully. – “First of all, I hoped that after the war, with the punishment of those few traitors and a part of the quislings who, consciously or not, served the foreigners, the hatred between brothers would end, and love would be reborn among Albanians. I was among the first to believe in unity, but when Mukje was thrown in the trash and fratricide began, I was bitterly disappointed. Then when I saw the hopeful agreement of Bujan trampled underfoot, the disappointment reached its peak.
It never crossed my mind that Tito and Ranković would be given a free hand to eliminate thousands of Kosovar sons without a trace, to sacrifice them in Tivar and Ulqin, and our leaders would remain silent, as if life was sliding on oil! I saw the brave Kosovar men being deceived; supposedly the war was over and that we would build the new Albania and Kosovo would be an integral part of it. The heroes of Shaban Palluzha with two handfuls of mustaches, tearful eyes surrendered their weapons on the faith of the faithless brothers. And they were put forward, like goats to the butcher, straight to mass executions.
What no invader achieved by force, Ramiz Alia, Gjin Marku, Shefqet Peçi, and company finished with the most shameful methods, the lie. Brother betrayed brother! They filled Tivar with the massacred corpses of thousands of sons of Kosovo, and ours were fooling around with Serbian women in the harems of Nish and Belgrade. Neither the river nor the sea would wash us clean! Open up, earth, let us enter! When the Albanians of Kosovo executed the raging anti-Albanian, Miladim Popović, he was ready to bring the blood up to his knees and declare the Montenegrin a national hero. And yes, they made such an ass of themselves with the Yugoslavs that every slogan started with druže Tito and ended with druže again.
They invaded the shops and merchants, robbed them of goods and gold, and straight to druže, even flocks of sheep and goats, whole trains of olives and olive oil, went to the state, until they turned our peasant into a beggar in his own country. That famine that we all know about struck! Evil tongues want to say: because of the grasshoppers! Even Enver and his own try to sell it to us this way! But no, the two-legged grasshoppers of Belgrade cleared our barns! At that time, they put a peasant-style slogan into circulation: ‘either the corn in the manger or the skin on the donkey’! They skinned the poor farmers, as if they were not an integral part of the people and the power was only to be enjoyed by the working ‘class’!
When the children of the Albanian peasant suffered for a crust of bread and a drop of buttermilk, Nexhmije and Tito’s Jovanka bathed in milk in the pools of Budva. But it didn’t take long and those who had licked Tito’s boots over the years were risking their chairs. The rudder had to be turned before it was too late. They re-entered the ancient game of elbows. The comrades, who had been kissing each other mouth to mouth yesterday, today were looking askance at each other and grinding their teeth, like beasts in the jungle. Amidst this petty perversity where everyone pointed fingers at everyone else, without respecting merits, values, or morality, they attacked each other. The witch hunt began. The moment arrived when the revolution was tearing apart its own cubs!
Someone ended up with a bullet in the back of the head; by his own hand or by others’, it didn’t matter much. Afterwards, they found some illiterate tinsmith bumpkin, attached a few baseless careerists to him, and shot them with a bullet; some others were forced to commit harakiri, some were banished to internment camps. All the evils up to that point were blamed on Tito and the labeled Titoists, regardless of how guilty they were, and they closed Pandora’s Box. But no one wears a fault even when it becomes a cloak!
Enver and his gang later tried to exonerate themselves, but every evil that should not have happened had happened, and the dead could not be raised again from the anonymous mudflats of Maliq, Vloçisht, and everywhere else they were disgraced. The intellectuals were being depleted; a new kind of sycophantic scribbler was born, who only knew how to sing hosannas! So, it was not only Enver, but also the others! Aren’t we all somewhat guilty? Didn’t we see these calamities? Don’t we see them even today? Didn’t we bloody our hands by applauding Lucifer? Aren’t we still skinning ourselves? Where were we? Where are we? Why were we silent? Why are we silent? We all have our share of the blame, even though the majority does not want to admit it!
The master pulls the donkey out of the mud! But we, as masters of the house, kicked it on the neck, sold the ideals of our predecessors, abandoned Kosovo, disgraced Chameria, left our blood brothers to the mercy of the butchers. And what good are the crocodile tears now?! Nothing, just hypocrisy! Some pseudo-historian rascals emerge and declare Enver innocent! They even compose brave dithyrambs for him! No, everyone is guilty, but he is especially guilty! He was and is the first among the first! He sold the Chameria brothers! Let Enver and his own justify themselves however they want, I have been engaged from the first day, I know well what happened!
When the crowds of old people, women, and children were being driven out with fire and iron by Zervas’s paramilitaries, Enver was fooling around with Tito. But please find me a single instance where the Slavs were against the Greeks, on our side? I say it with unshakeable conviction; it has never happened and will never happen, not even in the future! The damages to the Chameria population would have been several times smaller if Enver and the Albanian state had taken the responsibility of the moment upon their shoulders. But unfortunately, those displaced people, without shelter, without food, barefoot, naked, were left to the mercy of fate, and if it were not for the generosity of their blood brothers, the damages would have been even greater. And for this, they portray Enver as pure as crystal!?
No, sir, this man was yesterday, and still is today, the main culprit, not to say the most important one! But without question, he found a pack of hounds that drooled and fawned over his shadow and a wretched people without a backbone. He caught the intelligence off guard. For as long as he needed them, he flattered their ego, and then, like the butcher who chooses the fattest of the flock to slaughter every day, he mowed down the smartest ones one by one. And the sacrifices continue every day and every month, and every year; endlessly! And everyone is silent, bowing their heads, waiting for their turn at the proletarian guillotine…!”
Ilia were direct, expressing his opinion without hesitation, in front of anyone. He was an excellent polemicist, had strong expressions and convincing arguments, was honest and brave, but above all, a fervent nationalist. I often happened to witness debates between him and former comrades of the same ideal, such as with Bedri Spahiu, with General Halim Xhelo, with Maqo Çomo, with General Gjin Marku, whom he had once had as a superior in the Berat district but with whom he had broken off over ideological and moral issues, etc. With undeniable arguments, he put them against the wall.
When Ilia was convicted, Bedriu, Halimi, Gjini, Maqua, etc., were rising stars toward the zenith, but one after the other they too crumbled and began their descent until they faded away. After a few years, they ended up there, with Ilia. However, their political views remained diametrically opposed; if Ilia had converted into a fanatic nationalist, Bedriu continued to be the same devilish prosecutor. Although he had sobered up on many issues, he still showed no remorse for the crimes committed in the name of idealism. Bedriu was clear in discerning the indecipherable truths of the dark labyrinths of politics, had long experience, and admirable interpretative skills. So, he was a kind of barometer to measure the ups and downs of the daily politics. He had an extraordinary character, I can say unyielding in its kind. Halimi also remained the same, he felt proud of the path he had chosen in his early youth.
He knew well the backrooms of the Security that set traps for opponents or those they had targeted as such, and it was precisely he who first put them into practice. But stubborn and arrogant, unlike anyone else, he got stuck in the trap he set himself. Now he felt the weight of the guilt, but he never submitted, perhaps stubbornness cost him his life. Gjini remained a perpetual slave to the utopian ideas of his youth. Despite being late, he also managed to understand that his former comrades had betrayed him, had eaten him behind his back, just as he had done to others. Maqua was the most balanced, perhaps the only tolerant former communist, who, over the years, understood where that cursed doctrine that had infected him at a young age led. Here are some fragments from the debates between them.
Debates of Ilia Iliadhi with Bedri Spahiu
Ilia: – “Bedri, why did we sink so deep into blood?”
Bedriu: – “It’s true, but at first it was justified. Think, we were members of the anti-fascist coalition, we came out of the war as a winning force, and then, as everywhere in Europe, we also had our quislings. You know very well, all the winning states organized special trials for the punishment of war criminals and crimes against humanity. All the more so with us, who had two occupiers one after the other, consequently two groups of quislings.”
Ilia: – “I think we didn’t understand each other? I wasn’t talking about the punishment of the quislings, although even among them a distinction should have been made between the real quislings and those who placed their lives and dignity at the service of the nation. I mean those great figures with distinguished contributions, who served the high interests of the nation, since independence onward! If they wanted to, they could have retired to their asylum, enjoyed the material benefits they had accumulated for a lifetime, and when they realized that the end was not favorable, they could have left and lived in any country they wished! But on the contrary, they consciously chose to sacrifice themselves in those conditions to save what could be saved.
Bedriu: – “Collaborators were punished in every state; France punished Petain, its national hero!”
Ilia: – “No, dear Bedri! If these states you mentioned left everything to justice, with us, illegal methods were used. Recall the massacre of ‘Bristol’ and the alleys of Tirana, and throughout the country, where dozens and hundreds of intellectuals, who had committed no crime, were executed without a court decision, hidden in the dark, at a time when the German had already left.”
Bedriu: – “Traitors all over the world face the same fate, the bullet!”
Ilia: – “Very true, traitors face the bullet! But who found these honorable men guilty to be shot?”
Bedriu: – “Who else, the Party?!”
Ilia: – “Mr. Bedri, when we rose up, we propagated war against the foreign occupier. In Peza, everyone united, regardless of religion, region, and idea. The existing parties and those that would be created later could not have a monopoly over justice, much less over injustice. It would be the courts that would give the verdict. Who decided that precisely these wretches were the guilty ones?”
Bedriu: – “I told you, the Party! And let’s not forget, we were still at war!”
Ilia: – “No, please, the war was over. The last German had crossed the state borders long ago. We were all together, celebrating the victory with parades and fanfare, have you forgotten?”
Bedriu: – “No, my memory is fine, but after all, they had been targeted as collaborators of the occupiers, and either way, that end awaited them.”
Ilia: – “So, their elimination was predetermined! But by whom?” Memorie.al
Continued in the next issue
