Revival

POET SURVIVOR
AND
REVIVAL OF THE SONNET

Uran Kostreci

Uran Kostreci, after nine years living in America, went to Albania to promote his new book Sonnets. There are sixty-six sonnets, a genre nearly forgotten, which remind readers of the genuine nature of writing in verse.


by Oliverta Lila

The burning desire to travel through stanzas of poetry began for Uran Kostreci, dissident poet, when he was behind bars in the notorious Burreli communist prison in Albania. The intellectual spent twenty years in jail because of his strong anti-communist beliefs.
To “make use of time,” Kostreci mastered the Italian language, which made it possible for him to understand the bona fide art of Francesco Petrarca, Giosue Carducci and other famous Italian masters of poetry. He began to translate the poems. From the very first poems, Kostreci would marvel at the splendor of their beauty, a sacred feeling that the communist guards could not imprison.

“I read enough of the famous Italian poets to understand where the limit of beauty in art lies. Therefore, it is essential to read great poets in their own language,” says the poet. He recounts how he spent much of his restricted time translating the inspiring sonnets, which later would be confiscated by communist prison guards.

“I did not write sonnets while in prison, but I did translate from Petrarca and Carducci. All of my translations disappeared without a trace; if they had been spared, they would form a large volume today. The act of translating made the sonnet diagram be absorbed into my bloodstream. Every time something stirs within me, I write it down, almost without knowing that it will take shape as a sonnet,” he relates. Kostreci realizes that writing a sonnet is challenging, but he says, “If you succeed in expressing everything within the fourteen required lines, the sonnet converts into music.”

The poet still has vivid memories of the unspeakable prison cell. “The most evil thing was, though you were allowed to translate, at the end of the month, prison guards would come, seize, and destroy everything you had done. We tried in vain to hide our work in coal sacks or hiding places. Three months was the greatest extent of time you could hide something. They searched everywhere, and you could say nothing to stop them. Even when the sonnet simply expressed a love sentiment, you were not able to save it; guards cast doubts on everything, though they never took the time to read one line. Thanks to my photographic memory, I was able to remember my satirical poem, ‘The Epopee of the Grasshopper,’ which I could publish in 1995, when I was out of prison,” recalls the poet.

“My sonnets are my life story, not always told in a chronological order. They are my impressions, an accumulated love,” says the poet. His sonnets contain lyric, nostalgia, agony and sometimes rebellion. They were composed in moments of inspiration, and later he gave the needed refining touches. “I never let the moment slip away. Everyone has euphoric moments; they do not last long, and they are very few in life. But there are also moments of depression and melancholy. I put my feelings in writing the way they come to me, through the moment. Later, I get into details.”

However, after all these years there is still bitterness that stirs his spirit. “I spent most of my life in prison. I was not able to create a relationship and have a family. A marriage in old age for the sake of marriage was unacceptable for me,” says the poet.

Sonnets is composed of sixty-six poems, crafted by Kostreci during a period of fifteen years. Most of the sonnets were written after his arrival to America in 1997, when he was granted political asylum.


Last Will to Ancient Plain Tree

Someday olden plain tree, away I’ll fade
Whereas in centuries you will be in sight;
Twice a year the outfit you will trade:
In summertime green, and in winter white.

The dark blue sky, and green whispering plain
Sparkling under the sunbeam golden light,
The flying birds and breezy wooded lane
I will no more admire, once I have died.

You will remain after I depart this life
Beside you buried I desire to be,
My bones over your roots I want to lie;

My death you will mourn with sighs olden tree,
Each dawn falling leaves my grave beautify
For no one flowers will place there for me.

——Uran Kostreci


Vloçishti Swamp

By slave labor were you sullen marsh drained
Alive too many were digged into!
Morass to graveyard reduced, and chained,
By blood and human bones, stiffened were you.

What charm and magic this morning you gained
Rich soil, where healthy sugar beets grew,
Although in clods, birds peck at bones, remained!
But when tourists come, are they let known, too?

By slaves of free word was gloomy swamp dried
With hands, famished and scantily dressed;
On knees crawling, in mud entirely tied

Into marsh sunk, they slush out the ditch cast;
Bleeding by canebrake and sore leeches bite,
Under guards’ cudgel severely repressed!...

——Uran Kostreci


Translated from The Albanian by Hilda M. Xhepa
Edited by Elizabeth B. Coffey

Red Holocaust

Dead among the living

by Afrim Imaj

Though shocking, this is true: A resident from Vlora discovers his brother’s body after thirty years, bearing the same visage as he did the day they parted.

The central character of this extraordinary narration is seventy-year-old Lavdosh Mersini, from Çeprat of Laberia in Albania. Lavdosh, after many painful attempts to find the remains of his brother, who was executed by a phony communist court, was able to locate them in the anatomy room of Tirana Medical Facility. Just as Lavdosh began to lose hope of ever finding his brother’s remains, when every effort seemed wasted, pure chance would grant him unexpected success. His legs took him to where Luan’s body resided, appearing as he did when he was twenty-five years old.

“At first I couldn’t believe my eyes,” said Lavdosh. “It seemed like a dream; like something from those ancient ballads. I had to restrain myself. It was not easy. I stretched my neck and looked him straight in the eye. It was him. Yes, Luan! His eyes longed to tell me something; they were the only things that could talk; everything else, from his head to his feet, was frozen and ice-like. Only his eyesight offered life, warmth, and memories. They were weary and looked far into the horizon, reminiscent of the days when he was in jail, asking about his mother, Hairie. I took my first steps toward him. Was I drawing close to my brother, or close to a ghost? I stretched out to embrace and kiss him, a brother yearning to embrace a brother. He looked young, very young, identical to the day we parted 30 years ago. It was Luan, just the way he had looked that very day, with the same eyes, dark eyebrows, forehead, and full-sized, straight body. Only his hair had been trimmed. A bullet hole on the edge of his nose was mute testimony of the brutal actions of those who had decided his tragic end. He was in formalin, a lot of formalin, which kept his well-built body intact.”

Lavdosh had to restrain himself, to rise above his painful shock. He had to bring Luan back home, to remote Çeprat, to be among his brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, friends, and acquaintances, who would rejoice. But first there would be the journey: long, tiring, and deeply moving...

After you have knocked on the door of her apartment somewhere on the outskirts of Durrës city, Lavdosh’s sister, Burbuqe, relates an account that sends chills down the spine. She says: “Luan, like Kostandin (1), came back after thirty years. Have you heard the legend of Kostandin? Indeed you have, and I too, though I don’t think you have experienced it. I don’t know who else had that destiny. Luan’s return after thirty years was like that of Kostandin. Yes, yes! While I kissed him, cold though he was, I recalled the ancient legend. The legend of the long wait for the knight leaping over whole mountains to fulfill a promise he had made to his mother. Though Luan had died, he had not perished, and did not have a grave - just like Kostandin! But Luan was not really like Kostandin, because he did not meet his mournful mother, and did not see her fade away, grief-stricken over him...”

She has to force herself to hold back her grief, to stop the tears rolling down her cheeks. Her husband, familiar with the situation, continues the conversation to give her time to compose herself. He begins, “The communists arrested Luan for refusing to collaborate with State Security. They trumped up a case against him - abuse of public funds - during the construction of social and cultural works in the agriculture cooperative. They fixed a shortfall of public funds amounting to 50,000 leks so they could execute him at night with a firearm.” The husband falls silent, allowing Burbuqe to resume the conversation. He takes out a pile of papers, discolored by the long, somber passage of time. The papers feature the court’s verdict.

The sister of the young martyr goes on thoughtfully, “All of a sudden, they took him from the village where he worked, unjustly handcuffed, and transported him to the prison cells in Vlora. On the way there he met his brother, and confidently handed him the watch for safekeeping. Afterwards we could see him only with the approval of the interrogator. His courage never let him down. He never begged for mercy. The only thing he asked for was cigarettes. His only concern was Mother, who was his first and final worry. He remained that way until October 24, 1968, the day the communists executed him.” That was all Burbuqe could say. However, she was certain that her older brother, Lavdosh, knew more. He still lived at the same address, the place where Luan became separated from his heartbroken mother so many years before.

Thirty years after his brother’s execution, Lavdosh Mersini still sees the image of Luan making a brave stand against the communist court. “Luan asked the communist judge to look him straight in the eye,” says Lavdosh. Each time he tries to visualize his brother’s image he remembers Luan fearlessly challenging the false accusations of the State Security people. It is this memory that initiates the conversation...

“After the secret investigations, they took him to court and accused him of misuse of public funds,” says Lavdosh. “They rounded up an amount of 50,000 leks in the offices of the State Security. They served it and legalized it in court through the prosecutor, Sotir Spiro, and the judge, Irakli Bozgo. According to them, Luan had inflicted economic damage on the state, an act that would cost him his life. At the time, no one thought it would result in a deadly decision. What's more, witnesses summoned to the court strongly opposed the accusation. The first person who opposed the charge was the key witness, the chairman of the agricultural cooperative of Mavrova, Telo Dana. He disputed all the evidence used by the interrogator and spoke courageously about Luan’s good manners. This backlash enraged the communist judge, who arrogantly ousted the main witness from the courtroom. The same thing happened to the next witness, Maliq Hoxha, controller of the cooperative. They ignored his testimony by forcing him out. At that moment, with a powerful and fiery look, Luan rose to his feet on the podium. ‘Don’t put pressure on innocent people!’ he said. ‘Cut it short! Do what you have decided to do! I will face you to the end; I will boldly prove your lies. You don’t possess valor. You don’t have the courage to look me straight in the eye; you work behind the scenes, in the dark, with lies and false accusations.’ Luan, in shackles, wanted to continue, but his speech was cut short by the voice of the prosecutor. ‘You will get paid for it by bullet, Luan Mersini! You will be rewarded by hanging.”

This is all he can recall from his brother’s trial in Pasha’s house, in the Vlora town center. What would come later was obvious at that time. Luan’s fate was predetermined.

The first to receive the grave news was the eldest brother, Bardhyl. He recalls, “When we took his winter clothes to prison, we were told he had been executed.” It was a cold October day in 1968, when, on his mother’s request, Bardhyl left the house to take food and winter clothing to his brother in the Vlora prison. As he was knocking at the prison door to explain his reason for being there, the officer on duty told him the dreadful news. “Don’t you yet know Luan has been executed?” He heard enough to feel weak in his knees.

“I fell on the floor, out cold, and could not remember who brought me back to my feet,” says Bardhyl. “I remember how they splashed water onto my face and made me regain consciousness, and the kicks of the officer on the bag filled with clothes and food, which were spread everywhere under his small window. At that moment I thought of our mother. How would I tell her? I left for the village in a state of confusion. I had to hold back my tears. It had been Luan’s wish during our last meeting not to shed tears for him. It appeared that he had foreseen his tragedy.”

Beyond this act of communist barbarism, Bardhyl Mersini wants to evoke and to give respect to the virtuous life of his brother. Caught in his memory is impish Luan who graduated high school with first-class honors, but “bad biography.” He was the son of a kulak, and an obstructionist policy was used to prevent him from attending the university. Heart-to-heart talks about movies and sports with Luan are still very vivid memories to Bardhyl.

Bardhyl says, “Unique was Luan’s interest in having his hair western style, dressing nicely, and wearing fashionable ties. Right after graduation he started life in a hurry. He rolled up his sleeves and worked ten to twelve hours a day in construction. ‘We have to be ahead of others,’ he used to say to us. After work he had another personality. He washed, dressed, and went to Vlora, mostly when there was a soccer match. Movies were his passion. He knew almost all famous actors, and tried to make other young people like them. He was lively and active in his social life, open for help to anyone who knew him. In a few years after school, he was admired by all, a fact that caught the eye of the State Security. They wanted to benefit from his sociability, and used his political "defect", son of a kulak, to put pressure on him. They asked for his collaboration to obtain information about groups in Vlora that were interested in fleeing the country. Though he understood the consequences, he strongly opposed collaboration. He told us, State Security would not easily forget his denial. It was for that reason why the fatal drama took its toll...”

Burbuqe’s husband details another aspect of Luan’s life, something he will never forget. He recalls, "Mother Hairie refused to give Luan’s suit to the police. The security men came accompanied by a dozen police officers. They searched every inch of the house to find and take all his belongings, from books, notebooks, papers, clothes, to nightwear. When they got hold of his new suit, custom made that year for his wedding, mother Hairie stormed upon them. ‘You may take my life but not the suit of my son,’ she said, and grabbed it from their hands. The police frowned for a moment; but, convinced she would not let it go, they left. She kept the suit by her bed stand until the day she died.”

Mother Hairie lived for only a couple of days after Luan’s execution. She died at fifty-five years old, with profound agony that she would never know where her son’s remains rested.

According to a former employee of the forensic medical lab, a woman who did not wish to be identified, “They embalmed the body of the young man from Vlora at night.” She had tried since then to deliver the news to Luan’s family. Lavdosh confirms this fact. He got the message from an acquaintance of hers in Vlora, while he was searching for his brother’s remains in Soda Forest, Mezini Well, Olive Plantlet Plantation, Old Beach, and many other places. Her story, connected through work with the cadaver forensic hospital laboratory, does not end here. Something very unusual about this case rooted in her memory. Everything is related to the moment of arrival of Luan’s lifeless body.

She remembers, “It was somewhere in the end of 1968. I remember it well because the anatomy faculty was badly in need of cadavers. Following an order from a high ranking communist authority, a group of experts was created in haste with three to four medical doctors and state investigators to search some local prisons. Their prey was primarily from the contingents of political prisoners. One day, early in the morning, the expedition had just arrived from the city of Vlora. I heard one specialist informing the person in charge that in Vlora they had scented prey, “first-rate material”, for which they had agreed with the Department of the Interior Ministry to make it part of the laboratory. Furthermore, I learned it was about a young man, twenty-five years old. In the evening of the next day, they informed us that the body was brought in. By coincidence, I saw him the moment they took the body out of the truck. He was a handsome young man with a muscular body. The people who processed him said it was one of the rare cases which would last for a long time in the lab. When I saw the paperwork that came with him, I found the way to send, indirectly, word to his family.”

One dead among the living.

The following is what happened to twenty-five-year-old Luan Mersini from Çeprat of Vlora.
They shot him at night, and immediately transported his body to Tirana, the capital. For many hours, and in complete secrecy, medical doctors worked on it. After they embalmed him they placed him in the anatomy lab of Tirana Medical Facility with just basic paperwork. The next day he was placed on the podium of the laboratory, and ever since he had silently ‘argued’ with the lab coats. Generations of physicians would practice on his body. The dead would coexist with the living for thirty years, until the day ‘the silent professor’ would abandon his ‘unwilling profession’ to return home.


Translated from The Albanian by Hilda M. Xhepa



1. In the famous Arbëresh song, Kostandin e Garendina, mother reminds her son, now in his grave, of his besa (besa - is a sacred promise and obligation to keep one's given word). She summons him to arise in order to fulfill his promise - to bring her daughter back from a foreign land:

Kostandin i biri im,
ku ëë besa çë më dhee,
të më sillje Garendinën,
Garendinën t'it motër?
Besa jote ëë nën dhee!

Kostandin, my son,
where is the besa you gave me,
that you would bring Garendina back to me,
Garendina, your sister?
Your besa is under the earth!

Kostandin rises from the dead, fulfills his promise, and returns to the grave.

Unspeakable Crime

by Teuta Mema


The Interrogation

Bedri Blloshmi, brother of the executed anti-Communist poet Vilson Blloshmi, recounts how he communicated with his brother by tapping a finger on the wall of a Librazhdi interrogation cell. Vilson told him that Kadri Azbiu himself, the Communist Minister of Internal Affairs, had grilled him in the interrogation cell in Tirana, the capital. After three months of cruel torture, Vilson’s left arm was paralyzed. During the night, plainclothes security officers kept him awake. With shackles cutting into his wrists, they forced him to stand on one foot, leaning against the wall. When he collapsed on the cold concrete floor from exhaustion, they raised him back on his foot, and persisted in asking the same question: “Will you accept the proposal of the minister to collaborate with the Albanian secret agents overseas?” Vilson said no; they started the brutal interrogation all over again.

The Trial

On June 7, 1977, outside the Librazhdi movie theatre, a horde of Communists kept screaming at the top of their voices, “Hang the reactionaries! Hang the reactionaries!” Inside, many police officers and numerous individuals carefully selected by State Security operatives applauded the unfamiliar faces that stepped in front of the head judge, Subi Sulçe, to read the false accusations prepared in the State Security offices. Isa Kopaçi, from the People’s Army and Todi Bardhi, chairman of the Agricultural Cooperative, read the false charges. The trial went on for six days. In all the proceedings, the judge held up expertise in the form of a written statement crafted by Diana Çuli, Koçi Petriti, and Myzafer Xhaxhiu and screamed: “This will put you to death!” On June 13, 1977, Vilson Blloshmi and Genc Leka were sentenced to death by firing squad. Bedri Blloshmi was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Expertise (1)

Selim Caka, head of the Communist Interrogation Department in the city of Librazhdi, asked the editor of the newspaper Drita [Light], Diana Çuli, to look into the content of the poems written by Genc Leka. Diana Çuli responded to the request by expressing her expert opinion in a written statement on November 19, 1976. She wrote: “Genc Leka, the author of the poems, is marked with an ideological shake-up. In his poems is sensed a pessimistic spirit; the author does not seem happy, and tries to find happiness somewhere else. Behind the symbols he uses is revealed the desire to stay away from our socialist reality.”

Sparrows

Its veil slowly took off the yellow fall.
With frost and blizzard will winter start
Yet birds; in here you endure all,
None can from native land take you apart.
—Genc Leka

After examining “Sparrows” in great detail in order to discover more about it, expert Diana Çuli writes: “Genc Leka uses irony. Our socialist reality looks miserable to him. Sparrows are personified like unfortunate creatures. It is a reactionary poem.”

Expertise (2)

“On January 1, 1977, in Librazhdi, I, the interrogator of Interior Ministry, Lulo Ymeri, after studying the material about the criminal case number 56, realized that the defendant, Vilson Blloshmi, has written a poem entitled ‘Sahara.’ In order to determine the content of the poem, I decided to ask expert Koçi Petriti, literature teacher at Librazhdi High School, to get to the bottom of the following question: What is the real meaning of the poem, ‘Sahara?’ To answer my question, the poem ‘Sahara’ was made available to him.”

Sahara
Sahara, away is Sahara far,
Sahara of rocks, stones and sand
Only her name befriended by
Having no vision, has no plants.
Sahara has no dreams in mind.
Only stones grind inside her head...
Sahara can’t even a song find,
No tears to weep for all her dead.
Sahara in world has no friends,
Sahara has no children to fret
Sahara is a piece of land,
Quarrels all night, the news has spread.
Night in Sahara hates to fall,
It can't stand its stony mat;
There is no love, or chat, or soul;
Her black veil has nothing to wrap.
No one knows why earth was swayed
This injury on its back to hold,
On purpose created was, they state
To make it a curse to nations all.
When of her, he awfully speaks;
Sahara eavesdrops and snorts;
Sahara feels being so pleased
When among us we curses drop.
And when sunbeam timidly lies
On mossless stones reflecting bright;
Like a veil looks shrouded sky,
To desert lightning with burning light.
Therefore when deep and fiery hatred
Blasting, abusing, someone befalls,
Looms memory intoxicated
For help Sahara promptly it calls.
When evil curse its rage exhausts,
Away in time memory fades...
When rising sun thaws piercing frost
Forlorn wasteland feels desolate.
— Vilson Blloshmi

“It is a hermetic poem; it explicitly has a depressing substance and gloomy figuration. It is a symbolic poem, and here and there turns into allegory, which speaks of one thing or action to be understood as representing another thing or action and symbolically expressing a deeper political meaning. Within the allegory, a different idea is hidden. This hermetic poem is a result of the influence of decadent literary movements, such as symbolism. Symptoms of dark figurations were criticized by the IV Plenum of Central Committee of the Communist Party. Comrade Enver Hoxha in this Plenum, said, among other things, ‘In recent poetry is manifested a tendency to use gloomy figuration which is in conflict with the Albanian tradition of unambiguous poetry. A few young poets have started to adapt in their poems the hermetic style. This is utterly alien to our literature…’ (Report of IV Plenum, p. 20)
What is the real meaning of this hermetic and symbolic poem?
In order to understand the poem as a whole we need to shed light on the symbols ‘Sahara and night.’
This poem is not a natural scene, i.e., a mere description of the African desert. If so, it would contain details of a desert, whereas here only the sand and the name of the desert are revealed.
Second, the main meaning of desert, a vast area of land, is shrunk by the line, ‘Sahara is a piece of land.’
Third and most significantly, it makes no sense for someone to write a poem about an unknown land which is out of his sphere of observation. This fascination in geography, if supposed to be so or alleged to, is absurd and discreet.
Fourth, if it is a mere panorama of the desert then there is no motive to indicate that the desert rises like a curse, created by mankind, to serve mankind. The poem unfolds the idea that mankind calls the memory of the desert when mankind needs to curse or hate, in the same way someone puts a curse on someone else, another country or the world by saying: May God make you desolate! Or turn you into a desert!
So, if the poem is a real panorama of Sahara, it would come as a creation of nature and not as a creation of mankind, human society.
We understand the symbolism of the poem up to a certain point if we bear in mind the rationale of the author. What is his viewpoint for our socialist reality? Through what eyes does he picture our life? The discontent toward this reality makes him express regressive and nihilistic sentiments and ideas. The symbol ‘Sahara’ is addressed to a specific country other than the real desert of Sahara. If so, what remains for this country which has no friends or acquaintances, sons or daughters?
The symbol ‘Sahara’ is made clear up to a certain point in the line ‘Sahara is a piece of land,’ as well as with the details ‘rock…and stone’ and ‘Night can’t stand its stony mat,’ along with the lines ‘Sahara eavesdrops and snorts,’ ‘When of her he awfully speaks.’ It is possible that the word ‘he’ stands for mankind, or for those ‘friends and acquaintances’ that Sahara does not have.
The closest hint is for a small country, a piece of land in conflict with ‘friends and acquaintances’ that it does not have, and ‘with the night’ that it does not even get along well with. From the overall spirit of the poem intended by the author ‘this piece of land’ without friends and acquaintances, is a forlorn country encircled by hostility and damnation, and like an injury on the back of the earth, it serves mankind as a curse that comes out in moments of hatred.
What is ‘night’ in the poem? What does it symbolize? That ‘night’ is a symbol can be figured out from the details: ‘The news has spread that night quarrels with the desert,’ ‘Night in Sahara hates to fall,’ ‘It can’t stand its stony mat,’ ‘Her black veil has nothing to wrap,’ because in the desert that ‘Is a piece of land,’ ‘There is no love, or chat, or soul’; ‘No tears to weep for all her dead’, ‘Sahara can’t even a song find,’ ‘Sahara has no dreams in mind’, this piece of land etc...”
Therefore, ‘curse’ is the only thing left for this piece of land, which from hiding ‘intoxicated memory’ calls for.
The idea of the loneliness of the desert resurfaces throughout the poem and in its conclusion: ‘Forlorn wasteland feels desolate.’
Let’s go back to the symbol ‘night’ which is in conflict with the symbol of the desert. The desert, as the poem reveals, has two types of powers it does not get along with: its friends and acquaintances it does not have, and the night. Here ‘night’ is outside the sphere of friends and acquaintances that ‘desert’ does not have, which means night is a force within Sahara’s sphere and actually inside it like a black veil, which does not have anything to cover.
The symbol ‘night’ is to some extent confusing. If ‘night’ was a force that the author sympathizes with, it should have been within the range of ‘friends and acquaintances’ that ‘this piece of land’ does not have. So it remains a symbol of a power the author does not like, which for him is night. What might ‘night’ look like in our reality to the author? If the symbols stand to this interpretation, the poem is in an allusion (it is allegorically spoken, indirectly) to this ‘piece of land,’ ‘devastated,’ deserted, desolate, then, according to the author, life is a desert. Nothing is created there. ‘This piece of land’ feels delighted even when they use it as a curse. The poem has a pessimistic, nihilistic feeling. It denies everything related with human activity. Symbolism makes it allegorical, and gives its content a reactionary meaning.
The poem has several dark, contradictory and meaningless lines which, in fact, convey confusion, dissatisfaction for our reality and the author’s fear to express the ideas directly.
I do not believe the poem has an interpretation different from the symbol and allegory used, despite the fact that, here and there, the symbol is incomprehensible and erratic.”
January 20, 1977
Literary Expert
Koçi Petriti

The Parliament

In November 2006, in one of the sessions of the Albanian Parliament, the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports of the democratic government of Albania, Bujar Leskaj, denounced the member of the Albanian Parliament, Diana Çuli, “A very successful book is recently published,” he said, “written by Sadik Bejko about Vilson Blloshmi and Genc Leka; two poets that Diana Çuli sent to the firing squad with her expertise.”

Diana Çuli

“At that time, when I was only 25 years old, that was my judgement about literature.”

Execution and Tribute

At midnight of July 17, 1977, two anti-Communist poets, Genc Leka and Vilson Blloshmi, were executed by firing squad. Tied in shackles, a few kilometers away from Librazhdi in the area called Absconder’s Creek on the side of a shallow hole dug in haste, Communist terrorists fired bullets through the poets’ hearts, and covered the warm bodies with mud. They killed them because they wrote poems the Communist Party found objectionable. Their poems were classified by literature experts as reactionary, and the poets were considered enemies of the Party.
In April 1994, with the decree of the President of the Republic, Sali Berisha, each poet was honored with the title, “Martyr of Democracy.” After the ceremony, the coffins were transported to the Librazhdi Cemetery. While the caskets were lowered into the ground, hundreds of mourners burst into applause, and some in the crowd shouted, “You were true heroes, heroes!”

Washington

On October 24, 2004, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., one of the most well-known cultural centers in the world, organized the educational seminar “Through Current Albania.” The expert, Diana Çuli, daughter of a well-known hard-liner Communist family in Albania, also herself a member of the Communist Party since she was a university student, at present a member of the Albanian Parliament representing the Social Democratic Party, a new variation of the former Communist Party, was invited and lectured about “The phases that Albanian literature has gone through and the changes it has undergone with accordance to the time.” At the end of the seminar the American coordinator complimented her on behalf of the Smithsonian Institute.



Translated from The Albanian by Hilda M. Xhepa

A Heinous Crime

A Heinous Crime

by Teuta Mema

Lamtumirë, atdhe I dashtun,
Po të la, po zemërplasun…

Farewell, fatherland dear,
Yet I leave you in despair…

In the criminal courtroom in the city of Kukësi in Albania, on June 24, 1988, the Communist judge, Agim Hoxha, read aloud the verdict: “Dictated by the interest of the Party in Kukësi district, and the spread of hostile activity in the region, the enemy of the Party and people, Havzi Nela, is sentenced to death. Therefore to serve to a better prevention of the enemy activity within the district, he will be executed by hanging.”

The poet Havzi Nela stood up proudly, and, addressing his final words to the Communist judge, Agim Hoxha and to the Communist prosecutor, Nikollaq Helmi, he said, “You only hastened the time of my departure. I ask for justice and not mercy from you.”

Better from this world I depart
Better by worms I eaten be
Better become stone and mud
When the villain abuses me!

Better clod, field or meadow
Better grass, of grazing land,
Better I by not a soul be known
When the ruffian is on my head!

Havzi Nela

On August 10, 1988, the anti-Communist poet was hung by a rope in the city he loved most.

At the stroke of midnight on August 10, 1988, Communist terrorists put a rope around the neck of the dissident poet and hung him in the main square of Kukësi. At dawn, in front of the bus travel agency, the lifeless body was seen swaying in the air. Many people saw him, and read the inscription on the piece of cardboard hanging around his neck. “Havzi Nela, enemy of the Party and people.” The words Party and people were written in red. The fifty-five-year-old Havzi Nela, wearing a thin, discolored, fully unbuttoned shirt, a pair of worn out cotton pants and a pair of rubber sandals (opinga), stared the terrified onlookers in the eye. There were dark and red scars on his face and hands. When a pregnant woman saw the corpse swinging from the rope, her unborn baby was aborted. Only the members of his family, living in the countryside of Kollovoz, were prohibited from seeing the poet exposed as an enemy of the people.

Havzi Nela’s lifeless body dangled from the rope for a long time. Then the uncovered body was shoved onto the trailer of a truck “Soviet Zis”. The truck then rolled throughout the city as a means to terrorize the residents.

When you’ll find out, I have departed
“May he rest in peace?” whilst say
Do you realize what I’ve suffered
I, the poet passion hearted?

Havzi Nela

Havzi Nela was hung because he dreamed, thought, and wrote differently than the preaching and the orders of the Communist Party, then the state party of Albania. His poems were classified as political crimes.

Who was the dissident poet?

Havzi Nela was born on February 24, 1934, in the village Kollovoz of the Kukësi district in Albania. He finished elementary and high school while living in extreme poverty. He took his schooling farther and began attending college in the city of Shkodra, where he was expelled as a destructive element because of his beliefs. After much difficulty, he found a job as a school teacher in the elementary school of Plan i Bardhë, a small village in the Mati district. He was also banished from this village because of suspicious activity
- reading some of his poems to his students. The poems were considered “repulsive” at the time. Later, he finished college in Shkodra through correspondence courses. He worked as a teacher in various villages such as Kruma, Lojma, and Shishtavec until 1967, the year he was transferred to Topojan. Topojan was where the most dramatic events for the poet and his family began.

Havzi Nela considered what he was being put through: the endless verifications, being taken into custody many times, and limitations on the kind of work he could do and on where he could live. After reciting to his students the poem “Shko dallëndyshe!... Fly (Go) swallow!...” written by Filip Shiroka, Havzi Nela, with his wife, Lavdie, risked their lives by taking the road to cross the border to Kosova on April 26, 1967. While crossing the borderline, he wrote on a piece of paper, “Lamtumirë, atdhe i dashtun, po të la, po zemërplasun... Farewell, fatherland dear, yet I leave you in despair...” and placed it on a branch of a hazelnut tree for the murderous border guards to find.

A more tragic fate would follow him in occupied Kosova. The Yugoslav soldiers handcuffed Havzi Nela and put him, together with his wife, in Prizreni prison.

On May 6, 1967, the Yugoslav occupiers turned Havzi and Lavdie in at Morina army checkpoint, in exchange for Albanian patriots from Kosova that the Albanian Communist government had to hand over to the Yugoslav Secret Police, “UDB.”

On May 22, 1976, the poet received a fifteen-year sentence for crossing to Kosova. All of his property was confiscated. His wife was sentenced to ten years in prison. The poet never compromised with the dictatorship and its marionettes in prisons and camps.

On August 8, 1975, he was sentenced to eight more years in prison as he was considered an ardent enemy of the Party and people. On December 19, 1986, he was allowed out of jail, but only for a short time. Less than one year later, on October 12, 1987, he was placed under arrest and sent into internal exile at the village of Arrën. On June 24, 1988, Albania’s high court consisting of Communist judges Fehmi Abdiu, Vili Robo and Fatmira Laskaj rejected Lavdie’s appeal against her husband’s conviction and death sentence; the court ordered Havzi Nela should be hanged. The final approval of the death sentence by the Head of the Presidium of the People’s Assembly, Ramiz Alia, led to the proceeding of his execution.

The poet was not buried; Communist terrorists thrust him into the hole of a removed wooden pole.

After he was exposed all day long on August 10, 1988, at midnight Communist terrorists took his body down and thrust him vertically into the hole of a removed wooden pole. He was deprived of the chance to lie down like all dead. He stood on his feet for five years and ten days, until August 20, 1993. After many attempts by the democratic government of Albania, that was the day it became possible to find the hole, covered with stones and thorn-bushes near the village of Kolsh, two miles away from Kukësi. With the presidential decree of the President of the Republic of Albania, Sali Berisha, Havzi Nela was granted the title “Martyr of Democracy.”

When you’ll ask: “Where is he lying?”
When you’ll search to find my grave.
Say: “He deeply hated the tyrant.”
Say: “The dirt won’t him decay.”

Havzi Nela

Now and forever, the poet rests in peace in a modest grave beside his parents in Kollovoz.

When spring will come in fullest bloom,
When nightingale will start to sing.
On stones, thorn-bushes veiled tomb,
A bunch of flowers for me you bring.

Havzi Nela

Translated from The Albanian by Hilda M. Xhepa