By Enver Lepenica
Memorie.al / Enver Lepenica were born in the village of Lepenica in Vlora, in 1944. He comes from a family with patriotic traditions and persecuted by the communist regime of Enver Hoxha, both from his mother and from his father. He graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Tirana with very high results. He has published and continues to publish in the press many articles of economic, historical and social problems. He has published the books: “Barbarians descend on Vlora” – co-author, 1998 and “Hysni Lepenica…” – monograph 2000.”Uan Filipi”, “Major Ahmet Lepenica”, “Mayors of Vlora”, “Elimination of the Communist Group of of Young People”, “I. Murderous communists, II: Shootings before the people”, Tirana 2021, etc.
MEETING MOTHER
(From the story of my friend Fadil)
… “They took us without any fault…!
They took our mother along with her two brothers and a baby, the beasts of the State Security.
Why did they take our mother?! What had he done? What can a newborn baby do, who broke the nursery where he slept?!
The father fled to save his head.
What about us little ones? The 2-month-old sister had her mother’s breast as a source of food. And where would the mother find some bread to keep herself and her baby alive?
The three of us, who remained in Dukat, had a poor nursery where we gathered, uncle Gani’s house. Our 7-year-old sister replaced the mother who was taken from us by the beasts. She would get up at night, look at us and cover us. She often asked us if we were hungry and she did this to show her love, because even she herself had nowhere to find a single morsel of bread.
Uncle Ganiu also sent us to school. I was learning a lot. When I came back from school, the widow gave me a gift. But wherever I went, I couldn’t take my mind off my mother. What would my mother be like if I didn’t see her? Ah, if I had your mother, let me be hungry and suffer! At least she would say something to warm my exhausted and naked body and the word warm is warm.
I had been separated from my mother for 12 years and had never seen her. He left me when I was 8 years old and now in 1960 I was 20 years old.
Those 12 years spent in suffering and misery, without bread and water, without love, without family, forever separated from her people and children, had aged her very much, but had not spoiled her beautiful spirit.
So after 12 years, uncle Gani receives a letter from his mother, who we found out that she was alive and interned in Savër in Lushnje. The mother wrote like this: ‘Dear brother Gani! I am begging you to bring me the three children once to see them and then let me die’.
The noble man did his duty this time as well. He dressed us and packed us with what he had and we set off to meet our mother after 12 years of separation.
We arrived from Dukati to Plug i Lushnje in the afternoon. In the endless fields of Lushnja, many interned women were wasting away. Uncle Ganiu sent me to ask about my mother.
– Where is Velide Çapoj? – I asked the first women I met.
– At the end of the fields, you will recognize that you are holding a child next to you, – those tired and exhausted women told me.
After I arrived at the end of the fields, I turned to the woman who was plowing and who had a little girl next to her:
– O friend, I said to that woman, do you know Velide Capoji
– What does mother want? – she told me.
– Some people are looking for him on the causeway, I told him.
The suffering woman stared at me, began to breathe as if with difficulty, approached me and asked me:
– Whose son are you and where did you get your son from?
– I’m from Dukati, the son of Gani Çapojt – I lied to him.
The woman approached me and was looking at me from top to bottom with tears in her eyes, so did her daughter. They put me in the middle and they were looking at me like crazy. My heart started beating hard. –
Don’t lie to me, bad mother – she told me, Gani Çapoj doesn’t have a big son. Aren’t you Fadili? – He asked me with a trembling voice.
– Yes, – I told him.
The poor old woman fell to the ground, while her daughter jumped on my neck and kissed me. “Bad sister, bad sister”!
That old woman, whom I did not recognize, was my mother, that girl, whom I did not recognize, was my sister. We broke up when she was 2 months old and now I was seeing her 12 years old…!
I looked out into the endless field and asked myself: do not even the children of these poor women know their mothers, like me?
From that moment we, three orphaned children, with mother and father alive, lived with mother forever…”!
After we broke up with Fadil, I always thought: “How many such dramas are there in Albania?” Memorie.al
