By Prof. Dr. Isuf Kalo
Memorie.al / There was a time when people were excited by written letters. Although I have now on my desk, a stack of 40 letters of communication between us, I realize that outside of their format, much has been left unsaid. That is why I once again had the desire to write a letter to you, Professor Fejzi Hoxha, on the day of the 100th anniversary of your birth. A letter that has inside it, the past, the present, and the future. Just as it deserves respect between people, colleagues and between teacher and student. Because respect, gratitude is written with sincerity and truth after death. “I could have been in the hall where they gathered, celebrated in this unrepeatable jubilee of yours. I could be at the podium, weaving you dithyrambs. Unfortunately, it was built narrow, leaving no room for what I will say!
However, I heartily joined my applause with those of all the others, for your indisputable merits and contributions, as one of the founders of our health, founder of internal medicine, initiator of support of its specialties, pioneer of diabetology and Albanian endocrinology, one of the first lecturers of the Faculty of Medicine. Member of our Academy of Sciences since its foundation. Deputy in 7 legislatures. Decorated with many titles, orders and medals of merit, up to “Hero of Socialist Work”.
The complex of an alleged forgetfulness
I wanted to talk to you, the things that were not said there, although they are related to a specific task and a long period of your professional activity. They pretended to forget them. They left this space of your activity as an empty cavity, like a museum room with closed doors and shutters, forbidden to the public. No, surprisingly, that’s how you left it yourself: Vaguely, almost without mentioning it in your autobiography.
I say no, surprisingly, because in the years before your death, the big change had taken place. And people rushed to correct and rewrite biographies. It is about that special medical task; “supplementary”, which carries out with correctness and professional honesty, for decades in a row: the treatment of the patient whose name was Enver Hoxha. Officially it was called “secret ball”.
She was really known by all her colleagues. It was the most difficult task that a doctor and a man could perform at that time. Because it was the easiest to discourage you. She sought what is impossible in medicine: infallibility. While even that did not protect you from suspicion, even the imaginary blame. You became exceptionally the confidant of the person who, it is said, did not trust any of his friends. Maybe because he read your kindness. And fear. You said that he; “he loved you because he needed you”. And he was sure that you would love him, because that’s how it should be. You can’t do otherwise.
And I was breathless when you communicated with each other: that “lion” is sick, but safe, strong. You, the old inquisitive “fox”, extremely careful: in every word, in every step. Like two “poker players” who read each other’s hidden cards intuitively, without seeing them! But there were not infrequent moments of irritation. Then you, your voice would shake and the next day your lupus eczema would break out on your head. As for me, my hands were shaking, “Oh my god…! Do you remember how much”?!
Fortunately, you achieved the impossible. I feel professionally privileged to have been with you (and several other colleagues) in this unique medical experience. That task was called coveted by many in the audience. But then it became (as if it had not been a task given by the state!!!), cursed, invalid, to be mentioned in the CV! As in yours and mine. And of those who were with us. You tried to hide the traces of that dance (including your friendship with me!), after “his” regime collapsed and before you died yourself?
Let the doors open
“Special task”, was in gray color. Even the sky was gray on the day of your burial. The complex of shyness and undeclared grudge made your escort on the last trip, not like that of a prominent public figure, but silent without fuss without brilliance…! And today, the sky is blue. There is no talk of running away. Rather for the return. To re find you. That is why I say that it is the day to open the doors of the “locked room”. Forbidden room. Let light enter it.
There will be prejudices, envy and misinterpretations about you. As well as rewards, favors, motives for titles, honors, hero’s medal, merited and inflated glories, trips and meetings abroad. All truths, more than other ex-professors, your colleagues. They will also find the fear that followed you all your life. The doubts, the doubts, the anxieties, the disappointments and the tragedy of the loss of the eldest son, which you experienced; as if “you caused it yourself by staying away from your family, at work”.
They will find intrigue and slander, about those you loved and didn’t love. For which you were forced to lower your ear, to the level of the low!! – Hey, my professor…! Pope Vojtýla said: “It happens that even good people kill their souls.”
Of course, others can also kill you. Especially if you naively leave it in the hands of a “nobody”, who you don’t mind using and taking advantage of. Oscar Wilde pointed out the naivety that aging brings: “Adults doubt everything, old people believe everything”, he said.
“Why do we do what we do”?!
Michael Frayn put this Hamletian question, not about existence, but about our actions, at the center of his play, “Copenhagen”. What is the enigma of “passive guilt”, unplanned, that restrains or on the contrary pushes intellectuals, for what they do or don’t do?, he asks. What was the impetus that clouded the end of your life so badly, my professor?! Fatigue and physical weakness? Sadness from marginalization, after big changes? Sudden loss of honors and social activity? Which of these? Then did your depressing decision of self-shrinking, within the biological family nest, of self-transformation from a public person to a private individual happen?
From a well-known professor and activist, to a single parent! Maybe then, under pressure and pressure, you will have misjudged and hastily thrown away a friendship like ours. As Shakespeare tells, for one of his characters: “… They pierced him, burned him, and tormented him until he lost it all…”! “Why do we do what we do”? How to explain the paradox of your close friendship, of an academic like you, with an officer-protagonist of the patient? And the car “gift” from him to you, along with a personal driver (Wow!). Then, your disappointment: “That “informant” dog!!!
It even created a drama in your family – wounds that have not yet been closed to this day. What can I tell you? In other words, it’s too late, they say, young professor. The truth is that the honors and favors were not of a level that could fill the gaps of the relative poverty of the time, nor did they fulfill the obligations or pressures you experienced as a parent. Your fate was not like that of your peers elsewhere. And the brains and dignity of intellectuals were then bought quite cheaply. Did you not see the cunning chameleon of “mercenaryism”, which lured you and climbed up behind you, with insistence?! Did you make it? I believe that you remained in your destiny: hard work, meritorious, of a poor country.
When we lied to ourselves!
Eh! My professor it is not surprising that in that “room” you will also find lies of others about you and yours about yourself and others. It was a time of “agitprop” of self-righteousness, of valuing people with opinions, with; “You told me, and I told you”. Deception was not considered a value, but was secretly widely practiced as an art and a way of survival. One of your “white” lies, readable and amusing to me, was your “acting out”, with “unexpected, blocking pain in the middle”. This happened every time you had to avoid being there: where and when the “storm of dissatisfaction” was expected from the PATIENT. But the lie, you know, was rooted deep in the system itself.
Orwell from the outside and Haveli from the inside have described “Life in a lie”, people’s addiction to it and the culture of manipulating the truth. That culture did not leave without touching the temple of the latter, science, which produced quite a few “truths, untruths”, and with them, the new type of conformist scientist. Loyal adherent, or “non-conformist conformist”, who “lyed the lie itself”, with or without a third party, with or without original, genuine scientific works, they served as the crown of his glorification. The scientific model of the system was borrowed from the former Soviet one, which you had as a hero; “Academician Lisenko”, “whose wonderful scientific achievements were trumpeted all over the world”.
But when the political conjunctures changed, Lysenko’s “scientific work” turned out to be manipulated and falsified. Meanwhile, “Lysenkoism” had released “metastases” throughout the former socialist camp. Was there and how much was there in our medical science, professor? God forbid that we still have traces of her today!! Because a lie in science is like a computer virus. It renders unusable, everything inside it. Not for nothing, our newly elected academician, Prof. Besim Elezi reminded his colleagues that; “The worst lie is when we lie to ourselves.”
An unexpected oasis
But let’s forget the bitterness for a moment, for something joyful, professor. It is about a miracle, which constitutes for me the most precious memory of you. The miracle began when the barriers of age, generations, merits and hierarchy, imperceptibly disappeared between us and gave way to an extremely beautiful, benevolent, spicy humor. Even “black”. With such macabre themes, as the supposedly “hilarious” experience, by one of us, of the “death” of the other. It was brought to life first with spectacular effects “in three”, Prof. Ylli Popa; that time in a team with us.
Surprisingly, the “patient” was sometimes included in it. The most excited protagonist was you. But you yourself were not left behind. In the letters before me, I re-read some humorous jokes about me, which again made me, laugh out loud. “Maybe bring some reagents for the HLA analysis” – he wrote to me in one of them, while I was abroad for a few days. Your son (laboratory doctor) needed them – “It is needed to identify the individuality and ethnicity of people” – you clarified.
Then you continued: “What about you, we won’t do the analysis, so that you don’t turn out to be a bear…”! What was this?! Where did that humor come from?! Why did we give so much space to death?! Maybe it was a necessary oasis of relaxation, which we created spontaneously, in the tense atmosphere?! I thank you, my professor, for them. Those moments were an unrepeatable privilege and pleasure. Unforgettable for me.
“It’s easy to write prescriptions. It’s hard to get to know people”
Inside that unopened room is a significant part of what you really stood for my professor. Exceptional in the accurate diagnosis of diseases. Not necessarily, in what Kafka warns in the book; “Country Doctor”: knowing and understanding people. Which is really not easy? Not even for those of the same blood and genes as you. I say similar, because even the genes, no matter how angry, angry and “pistonized” they are, it is impossible to repeat another Fejzi, or even close to you!!.
Exactly, this is what you reprimanded me heartily, like the son’s father, in a long letter: “Look, they are throwing him away. You don’t know people.” I realized later with surprise, that although I believed I knew everything about you, I did not spot your psychological “color blindness”. The glasses you used to see people, even your friends, were only black and white.
Power without power
It is not a surprise that in that “closed room”, there will not be found any postmark in the state, no document-decision signed by you…! And yet, you were the chief physician of the time, the chief professor, the then chief god of our medicine. Dominate with what is called; “power of the powerless”, with “influential power”…! Doors would magically open and you would determine fate, with your word. “It was the time of verbal informality, which also worked with a word, a phone, or a pencil. You used it positively Kindly. One of these lucky occasions for me was my specialization in diabetology.
But why hide it? Your strength was not only in professional authority. Behind you was also “his shadow, his halo”, my professor. As well as the “highest nomenclature of the block”, because the chief medical consultant, in case of their illness, was necessarily you. Influential power was an invisible parallel power, like one; “shadow politburo”, exercised by intellectuals, figures selected by the government itself, in the fields of science, culture and art. Many of them became deputies.
You were always on the “Top List”. You had the same last name as Enver Hoxha. Same birthplace. Same age. Same school, same foreign language and early acquaintance. While close friendship, much later. It all started on that day in 1948, when you diagnosed diabetes in “him” with a simple urine test. Until then, you were different in fate and directions in life. Yours was only to help people, from suffering and illness. To save you, prolong human life.
And therefore why not his? Diabetes became the bridge between you. It became your predetermined destiny. Then mine too. So I say don’t be afraid, open that “locked room”, my professor. Fear does not change people’s fate. She could already strip them of their dignity, to face it. You are not alone. With you in the measure that time set, I am also. They are decades of our professional life, with dedication, honesty, without any prejudice. It is also a part of our medicine of that time. With its achievements, pains, dreams, limits and pre-dictated spaces.
The comeback challenge
Your return today is anything but the escape. Because your name will connect the past of our diabetology with the present and the future. He will be placed in bas-relief, at the forefront of this specialty, which you founded and loved. It is the highest decoration, your entrance password, in the present. With something similar, so funny, I had the illusion that I would be happy, when in 1991, the World Diabetes Federation accepted our diabetology, which I was leading (which you had founded), as its member. That same year, she gave us the first prize, for high performance despite all the poverty.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization would thankfully choose me (your student) to voice the model of our diabetology, at the head of a large European program, in 52 of its countries. I couldn’t wait to come back, show you, and share happiness with you. But…! Anyway welcome now. But not as part of today, nor the future. Because you cannot be understood in them. Intuitive medicine, with the senses of observation, hearing, smell and taste, where you shine; it is no longer practiced.
New digitized imaging and endoscopic technology, invasive medicine; you have no way of knowing him. Can you imagine the renal transplant, which was just performed here two days ago? Even clinical decision-making is not done with “I say”! “I”, is done; “We”. The epic of iconic medicine, of exceptional heroes, big heads, gray beards, has been replaced by Evidence Based Medicine, of rigorously measured, factual and team medicine.
A new bridge, with old wood
But you are welcome and valuable. There is nothing if no one will understand you. “What’s next? What’s next?” (Or not?) as you used to repeat in vain, after every 2-3 words in French. Students and young doctors will answer you in English: “Come on”! You don’t know English. Don’t be nervous. Regardless of your early studies and books, they may not recognize you. But maybe, they will become curious about you, and they will click on the Internet, on “Google”, the name Fejzi Hoxha.
It may turn out…empty! They will look for the H index, of the impact, with which the scientists of the world compete today, among themselves. They might not find anything of yours there, either. Don’t be upset. The present is not made for you, not even by you my professor. But you will remain as its connecting bridge, with the past of our medicine. As a relic of achievements, efforts and everything we had then better.
And some old values, which are rare today, like; dedication, humanity, sacrifice and honesty in the profession, which characterized your generation. But before that there is Hygoi, something to say: “Decorate it. And shoot him”!
Sounds creepy. But don’t worry my professor. Viktor Hygoi has it for the principles of justice, which, as it should recognize and reward merits, should, without hesitation, punish evil when it is mixed with them. For you it is not about “shooting”. You are decorating. But then you will have to part.
“We will keep from you, only the bright part as a public person, as good or national value, which belongs to everyone. Both you personally and your colleagues. Even the country. But the private, family, biological part, no. It belongs to them. The reason is that; only your public part; can be preserved long-term. No matter how famous and prominent the public figures are, the flesh, blood, biological part is corroded by time. It happens to come wind, even since they are still alive.
And we need you as “Pharaoh”, as our symbolic endocrinologist, professor. Not “cicîrrimollog”, “mllefollog” and “sajesollog”. The pharaohs have been preserved to this day thanks to the postmortem removal of their entrails. So, happy birthday and rebirth, my professor, of all our medicine, of Albania! With much desire./Memorie.al
