By Shkëlqim Abazi
Part Ten
Memorie.al / I were born on 23.12.1951, in a black month, of a time of sorrow, 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. They split my head, blinded one of my eyes, and deafened one of my ears, after breaking several of my ribs, half of my molars, 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 having half of my sentence cut because I was still a minor, sixteen years old, on November 23, 1968, they took me to the political camp of Reps and from there, on September 23, 1970, to the Spaç camp, where on May 23, 1973, during the revolt of political prisoners, 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 perfectly normal process in the democracy we pretend to have. But on October 23, 2013, the General Director of the “Renaissance” government sent Order No. 2203, dated 23.10.2013, for the release of a police employee from duty. So Divine Providence intertwined with the neo-communist Renaissance Providence and, precisely on the 23rd, I was replaced by none other than the former Sigurimi operative of the Burrel Prison. Could anything be more significant than that?! The former political prisoner is replaced by the former persecutor!
Author
SHKËLQIM ABAZI
R E P S I
(Forced Labor Camp)
Memoir
Six Hundred Grams
(The routine of a day at the dormitory camp)
“What are these?!” he thundered.
“The envelope contains the questions. When you return to your cell, open it, read them, mulls them over in your head, and then writes. If you run out of paper, I’ve ordered the guard to give you more. But, be careful, think about your answers!” he told me, pointing his index finger at his temple, and with a slightly more authoritative tone, he added; “Now we part. Goodbye,” he shook my hand and as he left the door, he turned once more: “Take your time, you have plenty of it!”
They escorted me to the isolation rooms. As I was heading to my cell, the guard stopped me at the door. “Grab your stuff; we’re taking you to another cell!”
I went inside, took the two blankets and the canteens; I had no other possessions there. They put me in a larger cell, facing the entrance door of the corridor.
“Now you’ll stay here; it’s better than the one you were in, and it has more light. Besides, you’re close to us; you might get a little extra soup.”
After closing the door, the police officer expressed surprise: “Man, oh man, you must have a powerful friend!”
Inside there was a wooden bed with a straw mattress on top. It seemed like a VIP cell for the big shots. When I compared it to the cell I was in before, it was truly a hotel room.
“Come on, P., you made it, you hit the jackpot!” I soothed myself and threw myself on the bed, lying down full length.
In the corner, there was a table and a chair, and above it, a window that, in size, could be compared to a house window, only wider so it couldn’t be reached by hand.
“It’s high, but the light is full! Have fun, you scoundrel! You’re like you’re recovering in a sanatorium, except you have a guard at the door!”
Oddly, without realizing it, I was talking to myself.
I rolled over on the mattress a couple of times, and then opened the envelope. Inside, I found three folded sheets of paper. I unfolded the first one, left it aside without reading it, and then opened the second and the third. All three were typed in blue ink.
“They even wrote it in the color of their uniforms! Let me read what they say!”
I turned them face down on the table, closed my eyes, and reached out my palm. I started with the one my hand caught. Everything written on it was similar to the questions the first “beast” had asked me; during the time he disgusted me in the interrogation room. I threw it aside. I took the next one, and there, too, were the familiar questions. The third one had some additions that were new to me.
However, all of them required the same answers that, willingly or unwillingly, would turn me into a spy.
“Well, it serves me right, I walked into this game myself!”
But for the moment, I didn’t think about it further.
The food changed from the first day; now they brought it to me in a separate container, unlike the others. The dish had more meat than stew. Before the food came from the police kitchen, they would ask me what I wanted for lunch and dinner or if I wanted more.
“Wow, wow! Has the day come for them to ask me for my wishes?!”
Then I fell into thought, about the reward I would have to pay. But I didn’t dwell on it too much: “First, let me fill my belly, I was dying, then we’ll see what to do. I’ll get out of it somehow, I’ll invent a solution!”
So I started to enjoy my days of recovery. I ate, drank, and slept, and acted like a big shot! Of course, as much as you can is a big shot in a cell.
From time to time, the internal service police would visit the window of my room, take a look around, ask me about any needs I might have, and light me a cigarette whenever I wanted. Where they found them was none of my business, but I never lacked them during those two weeks.
From eating without limits, I felt the need to go to the bathroom more often. Every time I asked, the door to my room would open without a problem, I would go out and relieve myself in the bathroom at the end of the corridor, fill my canteens with fresh water, and return to the cell. Now I didn’t have just one canteen, but several.
I even managed to get friendly with the police officers and start conversations as if they were old friends.
I spent the first days of my recovery lying down, because the tortures had exhausted me for two months straight. But I changed quickly; I saw that I was getting plump.
“Oh, you rascal P., put on some meat now! They’ve put you in fattening, like a pig in a sty!” I joked with myself.
“Baldy” didn’t bother me during those days, but I was aware that this special treatment couldn’t last forever, so, as I recovered, I thought of coming up with a trick to prolong this special treatment as much as possible.
I sat in the chair, and looked at the questions. I opened the blank sheets on the table and began to rack my brain:
“What should I mess up? How could I justify this treatment?”
But instead of writing, I started to scribble nonsensical gibberish.
I came up with some perverse drawings, God forbid.
“Man, what’s wrong with me?”
When I was in school, in the seventh grade, they brought us a drawing teacher from Vlora. He was like he was semi-interned in our area. I don’t know exactly why they brought him! In our village, all the schoolteachers were like that, with flaws.
This new teacher taught us drawing, music, and gymnastics. He was a prominent painter; to confirm this, you just need to read the newspaper “Drita.” His name is quite well-known; he has participated in many exhibitions and has been awarded first prizes.
Anyway. During his classes, whether in music, physical education, or drawing, most of the students would skip, but I stayed because I liked to doodle, but mostly to get in his good graces, because I wasn’t good at my lessons, and since he was approachable, I hoped he would influence the other teachers to pass me. Because I became, so to speak, his personal student, he taught me to draw, and after a few months of training, I didn’t leave a door or a wall without scribbling on it. I became a kind of village painter.
To demonstrate my newly discovered skill, I scribbled door to door and wall to wall. I became a nuisance to the women of the neighborhood, who, out of desperation that I was dirtying the doors and walls of their houses, incited their husbands to give me a slap on the face.
The bruises on my nose prompted me to find other forms of advertising for my art. So, when I went to the mountain with the goats, I would fill my pockets with chalk and charcoal; then I would start scribbling on every rock and tree that came my way. I would dirty them with some monstrous figures that, with my imagination, I called paintings.
But the most ideal place to express my talent remained the livestock salt licks.
“Do you know what salt licks are?” No? Well, salt licks are stone slabs where salt is poured for the animals.
Those of our village are located in a clearing on a hill. There, I unleashed all my amateur painter skills; I didn’t leave a single slab without a drawing, and on the biggest ones, even two. Of course, the next day I would find them erased; the animals, along with the salt, had licked off the chalk or charcoal, so every day I started all over again.
I usually drew figures of domestic and wild animals, but also human faces that didn’t resemble anyone. However, I would give them a name as a caption. But I chose that, too, according to my taste; when the portrait seemed nice, I would give it the name of a good person, when the drawing turned out ugly, I would give it the name of those I hated the most.
But I reserved the most beloved figures for my female classmates, whom I imagined completely naked or nude, as they say now. Back then, I didn’t even know that term. So, with my imagination, I would draw naked figures and after masturbating, I would give it the name of the most beautiful one.
“Come on,” I thought, “since I’m just sitting here, why not remember those happy years and perfect my talent, drawing, on these sheets of paper that ‘Baldy’ has put at my disposal to denounce my friends and companions.”
I only drew on one side. After I was pleased with the product of my hands, I turned the sheet over so the guards wouldn’t see it.
With drawings, eating, and sleeping, I got through the whole week. One beautiful morning, they came and took me. They tied me up and took me to the second floor, to “Baldy’s” office. After they untied me, we met like long-lost friends.
“Well, P., you’re the first one! How have they treated you?” he asked me, not giving me time to answer. “Did you have any problems with the food, or with the staff?” he continued on his own.
“It’s good, thank you!” I replied.
He sat down across from me:
“And how did you do with that conversation?”
“I’m working on it! But I still need more paper and a little more time, because I can’t remember everything at once,” I replied.
“Alright, take some paper, here it is! As for the time, today is Monday, on Wednesday, I want them here! I believe we understand each other?”
“Yes!” I replied.
“Now I have to go, I have a meeting. See you on Wednesday!” he extended his hand and left with a quick step.
I was returned to my room. I escaped the beating, but I got an ultimatum. The deadline was in two days, I had to rack my brain. Even though I had memorized them, I read all the questions again. I started to write the answers in order. But it wasn’t going well.
I racked my brain, trying to remember the names of people I had known or had heard of from the elders. But, I made a condition for myself that all those I would mention had to be either the most fanatical communists from my area or long dead.
I spent those two days in anxiety; I read everything again from the beginning. I had messed them up, to make sure that none of the mentioned people belonged to my family or friends. When I was convinced that everything was arranged according to the scenario I had in my mind, I signed it and slept peacefully.
I knew what was waiting for me, but I didn’t think the investigator would be so foolish as to lose another week with me. On Wednesday at noon, they took me to the second floor. When Baldy saw me with the stack of papers in my hand, his face lit up. He invited me to sit in an armchair across from him, extended the pack of cigarettes to me, and with his other hand, a lit lighter.
He took the pile of papers and started to leaf through them, but when he saw the drawings, he was stunned:
“What are these, what have you brought me? What are these shepherds and naked whores you’ve brought to my office?! What, do you take us for fools?!”
His color changed immediately, his eyes widened, and his lips began to tremble with rage.
“Oh, Mr. Investigator, I spoke with them!”
“With them?!”
“Yes! Below each one, there’s a name, look! On the other pages, I’ve explained everything in writing!” I quickly intervened, not to give him time to vent his anger. “Read them first!” I repeated.
It seemed the intervention had an effect because Baldy sat down and looked at the sheets one by one. Maybe he liked what he was reading because his face began to brighten. His face, which had been full of anger moments before, was now opening up, and he was even smiling.
My blood ran cold, my heart, which was pounding like a madman, calmed down; at least for the moment, the storm had passed.
When he finished reading, he turned to me joyfully:
“Oh, you’re a big rascal! You’re a gold mine! Look, look! With this entire rabble, you’ve spoken against the People’s Power!”
He couldn’t stand still. He opened the door and shouted with joy:
“Spiro, Spiro! Come here, you lucky man, look what fate has brought us!”
The one they called Spiro came in but froze in the middle of the office, not knowing what was going on. He was a chunky guy, one of those they call ‘bull necks,’ with a red, round face.
“What’s got into you that you’re jumping up and down with such joy?” he asked in a tenor voice.
“Do you understand? I fooled the province! With this carp I caught, you are saved too! There’s plenty here for both of us, do you understand? At least twenty people! It never crossed my mind that we would get such good luck so quickly! Do you see this partridge, we must keep it well in the cage, and fate brought it to us! We’ve captured the capital, do you understand?!”
“What are you talking about?” the red-faced one interrupted his momentum. “You’re driving me crazy!”
“Here, read it!”
Baldy squeezed in and offered him a chair. The red-faced one immersed him in reading, but when he turned to the other side and looked at the drawings, he turned red. He kept looking and getting redder until his blood almost burst from his veins.
“What are these, man?” he turned to me. He shook the papers in my face from across the table. “What do you take us for, you scoundrel?”
“Wait, wait!” Baldy intervened. “I got angry like that at first, but then… do you understand?”
“Man, this mutt is making fun of us!” he continued to furiously shake the stack of my drawings.
“The time for the stick has come, clench your butt, P.,” I suggested to myself, and I tensed up, waiting for the first blows.
But Baldy stood up and cut him off:
“Spiro, tomorrow morning we will go to Vlora, we will verify everything on the spot. Spiro, my dear, from a small hell, a big rabbit comes out, my darling!,” Baldy continued with rhymes and songs. “Now, hurry back to the room!” he turned to me. “Stay calm, for all this, I will decorate you!” He approached me, shook my hand, and motioned for the police officer to escort me.
I breathed a sigh of relief; I had escaped punishment this time too. They returned me to the room, where the food containers were full of stew and meat. I lunged at them, as if I were eating the last supper with Christ.
I devoured everything. Now, full, I threw myself on the bed and sank into the world of illusions. I knew what was waiting for me, but I gave myself courage:
“Come on, let’s enjoy today, and for tomorrow, a new day, new fate!” as they say, and I fell asleep like a satisfied caterpillar. It never crossed my mind that my feast would last another week, but fate was with me. In the middle of it fell the May 1st holiday. You know what communists do to give this day as much pomp as possible.
So, when my investigators went to Vlora, they couldn’t get the information they were looking for, because the officials of the Committee, of the localities, and of the cooperatives where the people I had denounced as my collaborators were supposed to live, were busy with the holiday and were not available to give them the requested information. I spent the week eating for pleasure. May 5th arrived. Memorie.al
Continued in the next issue
