By Shkëlqim Abazi
Part Forty-Nine
“While I was under the rubble, the police officers were saying to Çelo Arza: ‘Comrade Commander, should we continue looking for the corpse?’ – even though they knew the answer…” / The sad testimony of the former Spaç prisoner.
S P A Ç I
The Grave of the Living
Tirana, 2018
(My memories and those of others)
Memorie.al / Now in old age, I feel obliged to tell my truth, as I lived it. To speak of the humble men who never boasted of their deeds and of others whose mouths the regime sealed, burying them in nameless, obscure pits. In no case do I presume to usurp the monopoly of the truth, nor to claim laurels for an event where I was accidentally present, although I struggled with all my soul to help my friends as much as possible, who tactfully and kindly avoided me: “Brother, open your eyes… don’t get involved… you only have two months and a little more left!” A worry that clung to me like an amulet, from the morning of May 21, 22, and 23, 1974, and even followed me in the following months until I was released. Nevertheless, everything I saw and heard those three days, I would not want to take to my grave.
Continues from the previous issue
Prisoner in the “Polyphemus’s Hole”!
The crossbeams collapsed over my head, and the pressure caused a tremendous turbulence that swept me away and slammed me into the terrifying darkness. My ears roared, as if my brains were bursting.
“Damn, the blind ‘Polyphemus’ must be the master of the cave!” Odysseus’s expression came to mind, and I reached out to grab something to resist the current. My hand caught something static that I couldn’t understand what it was, yet I squeezed my fingers painfully around the unknown object until a huge weight crashed onto my helmet, and the pressure pressed me against the wall.
“Polyphemus is throwing rocks!”
The crossbeams cracked, and so did my ribs, accompanied by a cracking sound inside my skull, as if the brain were made of bone and was crumbling. My sight darkened, my thoughts blurred. As the pain surpassed every limit, a string of identity-fewer figures flashed before me, as if in a concave mirror. Facing the old shadows…
A little time passed. How much? I can’t recall! When the panorama began to clear, some opaque figurines unfolded in the dim light, which gradually took on human form. A metallic voice, as if coming from a giant gullet, grated on my nerves:
“You came, huh?” – the picture was confused with the darkness.
“Look, look who it is!” – Darkness all around.
“Eh, hey, did we finally meet?” – the timbre became cynical.
“A familiar voice!”
A ghoul with a potbelly strutted before me.
“U-ah! You too, prosecutor-patriot, here?”
“Why are you surprised, hey? Didn’t I tell you we’d see each other soon?” – he acted surprised.
“I didn’t believe you!”
“U-ah! It doesn’t matter to us whether you believe it or not! But now, have the tenant and the innkeeper met?” – his throat gargled ga-ga-ga.
“I didn’t think it would be this soon!”
“Well, it happens, daddy! Ha-ha-ha-ha! You turned eighteen, huh?! Now big brother will fix your saddle!”
He raised his snout, intoxicated with the pleasure of fulfilling the old prophecy, or perhaps the vapors of sadism hit his brain.
“Krra-krra-a-h!” – a black raven croaked.
“What’s wrong with this Arab?”
“Pleasure, patriot! The royal court is delightful with young men like you!”
“Krra-krra-a-h!” – the raven cackled a second time, and the prosecutor-patriot kept him company, krra-krra-a-h.
“Who is this?!” – the shadow with the coarse appearance startled me.
“Didn’t you recognize Hades, hey?”
“Maybe we’ve exchanged two or three times in passing!” – I retorted to the cackling shadow.
“You’re finished, patriot, you fell into the trap now!” – the prosecutor continued.
“Why are you picking on me?”
“You escaped us so many times, hey!”
A curtain of steam separated us briefly.
“Thank goodness he broke his neck!”
Just as I was rejoicing at the fact, he appeared behind the “Arab” and cackled:
“Ha-ha-ah, did you think I left?”
“Perhaps he is in his place, but what are you looking for here, patriot?”
“I’m a prosecutor, hey!”
“So what?”
“We are needed everywhere, father (babam)!”
“Even the underground needs prosecutors?” – I replied, astonished.
“When the above-ground has them, why shouldn’t the underground too!” – the bull-necked figure puffed and gasped.
“Oh God, get this breed of wretches off my back! Ptui, leech!” – and I spat a mouthful of phlegm at him.
“Pray and curse until you burst, but we won’t leave you, we’ll stick to you like the patch to the sole, in this world and the next!” – the paunch soared like a feather.
“Drag that ragamuffin to me!” – the “Arab” ordered some creatures with human bodies and dog heads. – “And fast, lest he escapes us like last time!”
Many hands at once pulled my work clothes. Some by the arms, some by the legs, they tried to tumble me into Hades, but others insisted on keeping me on this side.
“Help me, O Prophet Muhammad, save me, O Jesus Christ!”
“O great God, what pain!” – I complained.
“Does it hurt, huh?”
“Mercy, I’m dying!”
“May the devil take you?” – the ether cursed.
A vice with rock teeth and crossbeam knuckles squeezed me between giant jaws, ground my bones between two planets, and exiled me to the apocalypse.
All the devils ganged up against me. On one side the communists, on the other Hades, they imprisoned me twofold.
“Where am I, O God?”
“In hell!”
“What a horror this hell is, dear God!”
“You want us to caress you too, perhaps!?”
“The anguish is killing me…” – I vented.
“May your soul leave you there?”
“O God, protect me from evil!”
“You found a church to pray in?!”
“I am begging you with my soul!” – I directed my gaze towards the voice.
“Me!? Do you know who I am?”
“No, I can’t see anything in the dark!”
“May you die there?”
“Great God, I’m done!”
“Who are you complaining to?”
“This weight crushed me!” – I complained.
“Slowly, it has just begun!”
“What did you say?”
“You complain in vain, you poor wretch, what you are about to endure!”
“There’s more?”
“We have fated you as a sacrifice!”
“Me?”
“You, because you went off the rails for us!”
“Whose rails?”
“The triumphant rails of Marxism-Leninism!”
“Thank goodness I escaped that plague!”
“You escaped the doctrine, but not the stroke!”
“Didn’t you get enough of the prison?”
“There’s even worse!”
“Worse than in the gallery?”
“Oh-u-a, of course there is, man! We’ll load the globe onto your back!”
“Me!?”
“You, certainly!”
“Ha-ha-ha, I’m skin and bones; I can barely hold my own head up!” – I joked, hoping to arouse their pity.
“As far as I know, Atlas holds the globe!” – With this great discovery, I intended to remind them of mythology.
“He used to hold it!”
“Not now?”
“He got old and we put him into retirement!”
“Even Titans retire!?”
“They got tired, the centuries bent their backs.”
“I didn’t know the Titans got tired!”
“Ha-ha-ha, learns it now, and enjoy the globe!” – the underground roared with thunderous laughter.
“You are ungrateful, the poor gods toil since the beginning, and you devalue them?! God, O God!”
“There is no God but us!”
“May a curse fall upon you?” – I challenged the darkness.
“We are the only ones, in heaven and on earth!” – a devil with disheveled hair and a matted beard jumped out amidst the smoke. A little further away, three or four other long-haired, matted-bearded figures, a bearded bald man, and a big-mustached, grim-faced oaf were frolicking and mocking, with their tongues sticking out.
“And these clowns?”
“They are the pleiad of distinguished Marxist-Leninist-Dimitrovists…”
“And you…?”
“I am MARX, these are; ENGELS, LENIN, STALIN, and DIMITROV!” – the matted-bearded boogeyman introduced them.
“So all the bastards of the prostitute age have gathered in hell?”
“We are neither bastards, nor sons of whores, but the offspring of Kronos; we are the heroes, the teachers, the inspirers, and the implementers of the proletarian revolution!” – the disheveled-haired, matted-bearded “Arab” bristled at me.
“Go to the devil, you, along with the others!”
Immediately in the background, a crowd appeared that stretched and twisted like a knotted millstone log, fouling the atmosphere with the stench of carrion and retreating and plunging into the darkness, like a dragon’s tail.
“The army of faithful disciples!” – the long-haired, matted-bearded one, grinding his teeth and wrestling like a dog, introduced the group to me.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side, a jumble of monstrous figures were teeming; torsos without heads, heads without torsos, busts without limbs, limbs without busts, skeletons without skin, skin without skeletons, scalps without skulls, skulls without scalps, crushed, pierced, mutilated, monstrous; eyebrows glued on, mustaches torn off, broken bones, mouths torn open with brand new teeth and molars, phalanges of fingers and toes, in short, an amalgam worthy of total chaos. I was overwhelmed! My imagination couldn’t break the boundaries of the real to penetrate the corners of the macabre, otherworldly unreality.
“And these poor wretches?” – I asked unconsciously.
“They are the victims of our ideal!” – the long-haired, matted-bearded man beat his chest, like a monkey in the jungle.
“All these unfortunates?”
“These are the first ones, sir!”
“Why, are there others?!”
“Ehu, how many more will be added later!”
“Why were they massacred like this?”
“To practically fulfill the slogan: ‘Man is a wolf to man, and the proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains!’”
“Is this sacrifice worth it?”
“Undoubtedly, because we came to reign and left disappointed…” – I interrupted him.
“You deserved it, I believe!”
“We currently rejoice in the seed we sowed, we savor from the other world the calamity that is being made in our name, and after us, the apocalypse!” – the disheveled-haired, matted-bearded man accompanied his word with serpentine flames, as if challenging the fire of hell.
“What an atrocious blasphemy, O God!” – I covered my eyes with my palm and broke contact with the world of the living. Then I lost consciousness and plunged into oblivion, in the lap of life-death.
I can’t recall what happened or what would happen, except for the feeling of the slave caught in the cave of “Polyphemus.” This thought was the last one that registered in my mind, and the rest I would learn from my comrades, days later. When the Grace of God becomes one with the will of fellow sufferers. I’m not sure what happened to neither my body, nor what sacrifices my friends had to face to pull me out from under the massive stones, abrasive sand, and rotten crossbeams. Fortunately, those “rotten” crossbeams weren’t as “rotten” as we joked, but they made a “den” for me within their bosom. “Naturally, thanks to the Grace of God,” as my friend, Hafëz Sabri, would express:
“Your fate was written in letters of gold by God, and He attached it between your shoulders since you were born! Nothing remains but to respect it and submit to the will of Allah!” – He would spread the lambskin prayer rug, which he never parted with, onto the ground and begin the ritual of bowing and rising with his face toward Mecca, repeating: “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”
And the “Grace of God,” embodied in the recklessness of my friends, determined the future of my fate. The accident was classified as one of the most severe, but with a blessed outcome, when similar incidents had caused serious damage, with tragic consequences. In such cases, the command did not usually rush things, and in fact, did not engage at all in rescue efforts, because they required cost, time, tools, and manpower. They let time flow and the wretch’s life fade away, and then closed the issue with a formal protocol.
“Go, draft a protocol, but with points, mind you!” – Çelo Arëza instructed his lackeys. – “With points, where it clearly states what happened, why it happened, and how it happened! Do you understand?” – After receiving the answer: – “As you command, comrade commander, we are quite good at the trade!” – He turned back to them once more: – “Listen Gjin, Gjet, Gjok, Llesh, Nikoll, Frrok, Mark!” – Or whoever was present at that moment.
“It must be precisely specified whose fault it is! Do you understand?” – he paced back and forth and emphasized with a strut: – “The fault, my dear fellow, I believe you understood?” – he added another: – “Do you understand!” – he gave the final orders and did not leave without receiving confirmation: – “As you command, comrade commander, it was his fault, because he wanted to kill himself on purpose, that’s exactly why he entered that pocket!”
“By the holy… ideal of the Party, he wanted to discredit us, comrade! He wanted to shame us, hey! He wanted to obstruct the realization of the plan! Ultimately, there are signs that he wanted to escape, hey, my friend…!” – After listing a series of other denigrating factors, addressing the unfortunate man, he added just to clear his conscience: – “Comrade Commander, should we continue looking for the corpse?” – Although the answer was clear to him; neither fish nor fowl: – “Do your job!” – Which was followed by the bombshell confirmation: – “Well, one less enemy?” – And then they offered their farewells:
“We wish you good health, comrade commander!”
“May you have health and long life?”
“Go, get to work, men!” – they parted, the commander with his chest swelled with decorations, towards the central command offices, the police officer or officers, towards the hole where the unfortunate wretch or wretches were lying, with the presumption that the responsibility and consequences lay with the poor soul or souls crushed under the mountain. That procedure was followed in my case as well, more or less that conversation had taken place, with almost the same words, and the same directive had been given, except that they had not foreseen the reactions and dedication of the colleagues, who energetically opposed the orders of Çelo Arza.
The two comrades from the group, Tomori and Osmani, ignored Preng Rrapi’s threats, but stubbornly defied the danger with elephant-like obstinacy. As soon as they felt the rumble, followed by the rush of the current that had reached the front where they were working, they ran to get out. At the site of the disaster, they found themselves facing a catastrophe of smoke, rocks, sand, and corrosive water. Although the secondary tunnel branching off, which we scorned as the “mice’s hole,” was only a few meters away, they did not turn back because they sensed the evil.
The noises had now subsided, here and there a helmet cracked, a pebble settled on the others, and the terrifying silence reminded one of the glooms of the grave. They struggled to make a noise through the smoke, but the darkness prevented them. They called out with all their might, but received no answer. Normal, how could they receive one from under the massive crossbeams, stones, and pyrite sand, where I was at the peak of my battle with Hades, with the Prosecutor-patriot, with the pleiad of Marxist-Leninists, with…, with death? Terrified by the scale of the catastrophe and fearing that they themselves might get trapped inside, they exited through the “mice’s hole.”
They searched for me again as soon as they stepped outside, but couldn’t find me anywhere. They hoped to find me sleeping, near some mound of bodies, but they were mistaken, no trace even in the shelter where we hid from the police. There was no sign from the wagon. They asked everyone, but received no answer. And when no one directed them anywhere, they returned to the gallery through the main entrance. At the collapsed point, they shuddered: smoke, rocks, sand, and corrosive water, no sign of me or the wagon.
Meanwhile, word of mouth, the alarm had been raised and the news had spread throughout the whole area:
“‘Polyphemus’ has unleashed the mountain into the hole like a Cyclops’s eye, and a prisoner is trapped under the abyss!”
“Alive or dead?” – the trembling listener would ask.
“God knows!” – the messenger would reply and shrug his shoulders.
Anxiety descended upon the second zone, the miners abandoned their fronts and joined my colleagues. Tomçja and Osmani loaded the wagons with stones and pieces of crossbeams; the newcomers grabbed them and poured them at the entrance of the gorge to gain time. Down the slope of the valley, the stones dragged a river of gravel, which violently crashed against the drums of the battered boilers in the stream. The rattling of the iron drums overshadowed the echoes of a hundred bronze shell pickaxes and exceeded the usual noises, turning into an alarm siren. The unusual commotion broke the quiet of the Spaçian cemetery. It even woke up the police, who rushed up the slope and arrived at the pyrite holes, where they spotted the convicts who had abandoned the fronts.
“To work, hey! What are you doing here, convict?!” – They started howling like handakosur (deranged or possessed). When they learned what had happened, they howled even louder:
“Hey, hey, hey, to the front!”
“A prisoner is dying!”
“The cycle (production quota), convict!”
“Will you let him die?”
“Never mind, he won’t be the first!”
“He’s a young man!”
“Mind your own business, hey!”
“He is a human being above all!”
“The plan, convict!”
“A life is being extinguished!”
“One less enemy!”
“What, what?”
“Hey Gjin, Gjet, Gjok, Llesh, Nikoll, Frrok, Pjetër!” – or whoever was there at that moment. – “Fetters (handcuffs), now!”
“We will save our comrade!”
The fellow sufferers paid no heed to the threats but hastened to do what seemed best. One side rattled the chains, the other unfolded hope! Meanwhile, the hours passed, and the anxiety grew. As soon as the first shift arrived and got the news, they didn’t wait to be equipped with work tools but headed to the disaster site, as the moment caught them. Someone who managed to grab a piece of carbide filled the lantern and cut through the darkness, the others followed. To avoid the chaos, they organized a “Rescue Committee,” with Esati as the most rational leader, and the writer as a medic, while the two colleagues, devastated by pain and exhausted by fatigue, did not stop for a moment.
Everyone struggled to give their maximum in the limited time fragment. After they had unloaded several dozens of tons of material and removed hundreds of beech logs, around noon, they hit the nose of the wagon, and after an hour or so, they spotted me crouched under a mound of crossbeams and stones. Thanks to the Grace of God, my head was stuck bent over my chest, but the air tubes also happened to be new, not yet corroded by sulfuric acid (my friend Gjet Kadeli had just replaced them). The armor caps were hanging with one end on the tube and the other clenched onto the wagon’s boiler, which was bent by the pressure, thus forming a kind of shelter.
Fortunately, the fatal moment had caught me right in that saving crevice, where the current had lodged me. Like that, arms and thighs, they laid me out on a makeshift stretcher with a couple of planks, on the bed of the wagon. Although the sun was burning like a hot plate, I didn’t react even under the rays falling from the zenith. The dirt had completely covered my body, like a black shroud, making me a corpse. Someone remembered to throw water on my face; the fellow sufferers were shocked by my skin, which clung to the dead body (meitit). But they didn’t accept the fact, they made every effort to keep me alive; someone gave me his breath, another tied my limbs with splints, and yet another checked my pulse. Someone thought he felt tremors and shouted: Memorie.al
Continues in the next issue
