Memorie.al / The principle of individuality and the absolute will to dedicate himself to the education of his own people made Professor Sulejman Elezi a unique personality! No matter how hindered by all the possibilities to devote himself to his profession, he is absolutely inseparable from the hearts of his compatriots, from the esteem that generations hold for him! Because, as much as was possible in that time of persecutions in the sixties, and then during the seventies, when he took the diary in his hand and stood before the little ones to sow the light of knowledge, he became so beloved by them that his teacher’s benevolence spread everywhere, and he, with such eloquence, turned into a motivator for the Albanians of Kërçova to gain momentum towards continuing their education!
As clear as he was about the topics he explained regarding the Albanian language, equally embodied was he in clarifying the entire activity of the Albanian nation, which the system’s institutions in school textbooks had long since placed at the point of silence! But teacher Sula, who had the rush of a spring, could not stop at the point of silence! He expanded to add meaning to all that significance that was worsening and tending towards defamation. Towards dissolution!
Sulejmani saw this dreadful tendency from the school benches. Therefore, he tried to gather knowledge about Albanian culture, literature, and history, which throughout his life would remain his primary preoccupation. With this dedication, he conducted his lessons! He explained about the National Renaissance figures and their activity! He stigmatized the five-hundredth anniversary of Skenderbeg in ’67, which became a year of great importance for the process of the Albanians!
He had separately explained about Luigj Gurakuqi and the traitors’ bullets. About Mjeda! He had wept for Noli who died in America! And, like Migjeni of *Free Verses*, he became one with the hearts of the little ones who resembled the *Tiny Flower*, to ignite their love for knowledge and to increase their hope and courage that; “good days will come afterwards”! At a time when the dominant views of the ideology of Yugoslav federalism became culminating in silencing the essence of Albanians, Sulejmani delved into the treatment of topics that had remained taboo and were not touched at all.
Nevertheless, his courage revealed him, both before colleagues and before the citizens of that region, to keep alive all that patriotic idealism! But the system, which had prepared a strategy of obstacles, tracked down his consciousness! And it prepared persecutory masses to open his black file, which was qualified as “inappropriate”. And it incited them to spy on who he associated with in Novosella, his birth village! With whom he went out in town. Where he went to work! And, what he said during the lesson!
To gather facts to darken the scales of punishment, the system’s inquisitors forced the masses of that time to even enter the classroom’s “chiffonier” (as he recounted), to spy on him while he explained! Then they also produced witnesses that Sulejmani spoke to students about Naim, who sang for the tall oaks of Albania! About Asdreni, who wrote the Hymn to the Flag? About Ismail Qemali and Independence Day! The rest, according to the persecutors’ wishes, were added and sealed in the open chapters of the Black File for the Symbol of “inappropriateness”! That was all they needed to raise the accusation and then pass sentence, with three years and six months!
After being stopped in prison, which was done “in the name of the people”, according to the dictate of the Titoist system of Yugoslav social federalism, only the little ones waited for him to enter the classroom! But the teacher was absent! He who did not waste a minute, or a second! He who aimed to eliminate darkness and sow the light of knowledge, love, and sincerity! He was hindered from turning into the little ones’ awaited figure at school! He turned into longing and pain for his mother, father, and all relatives! He turned into pride and a symbol of resistance for Albanians!
However, for the system that singled him out as dangerous, he turned into an “inappropriate person” with a special case number, so that whenever the door was opened heavily, with creaking, for the rays of light to enter, at its threshold stood hyena gendarmes who took him handcuffed and took him to the Shllajferna ward! Where before him Avni Elmazi had spent much time and had written the diary: Idrizova – The House of Hell!
These original views of Professor Sula’s resistance radiated a courageous brilliance to all the prisoners.
Both in the dimension of Kërçova and on the nationwide level, they remained a philosophy of resistance! The conception of all that spread far and wide that Sula is unshakable in his ideal. He has remained the same in his stances. In vain did both those who threatened him and those who promised to promote him to high state positions if he followed their rhythm try to put him on the tracks of wavering! He remained self-determined in his positions that the ruling class which stamped the just development of citizens must inevitably be undone.
Therefore, Professor Sula also placed in the accent of criticism and irony the system and its corrupt morality in a concept based on scientific untruths! All these stances of his were contradictory to those that the basic organizations of the working people’s alliance and the dwarf communists’ league wanted to bring to life! Therefore, he turned into a permanent target to be struck and imprisoned once more as a “separatist and irredentist” after the events of ’81, under the pretext that he was directly linked to that process! This time as well, Professor Sula became the echo of a call to arms!
Namely, he became the defender of a cause that the occupiers had perverted by adding an assimilationist dimension everywhere! Starting from the first cry of an Albanian’s birth to the last farewell from life. Therefore, Professor Sula rose categorically to deny these protracted forms of colonizing assimilation. And he spoke about toponyms, about surnames, about the naming of infants, which were being made architecture of orthodox elevation! And about many other injustices that characterized the stage of the eighties!
And the system, for these, graduated him by dismissing him from work as “inappropriate”, while for “rest” it sent him to the rest home of the Kërçova prison for three months, to eat the mushy bean stew from the same plate that the guardians’ dogs had eaten from!!! All these were a balance sheet of ugliness and distortions that the inquisitorial system devised in the persecution of intellectuals. All these became equilibrium for Professor Sula’s concentration to survive by his silent departure to the diaspora without a travel passport, and without an exit visa! Through that dark night of ’86 he became the true light!
He crossed mountains and fields of his homeland to remain with longing and love outside the turmoil and catastrophe! Nevertheless, always in spirit and heart he stood by the cause that flowed as an ethic of the voice of distance, far away in Canada and then in America for fully fifteen years! Professor Sula, the symbol of “inappropriateness”, the man with the Idrizova case number, turned into an emblem of the persecuted asylum seeker! Even as such, he was not defeated! He stood at the forefront of every action launched for an independent Kosovo!
For the light and Albanian development! If mountain with mountain does not meet, the Homeland with its sons will meet! However, Professor Sula, just as he left silently, returned silently to rest in its bosom! Only the echo of pain and the tears shed that Sunday of December 10, 2000, turned into a true rebirth! That long sea of grieving people walking behind the hearse spoke with silence that the lifeless body of the eternal Professor Sulejman Elezi had returned to the soil of the homeland…! / Memorie.al
