By Visar Zhiti
(Extract from the book “Torn Hell", pg. 419, 420)
Father Zef Pllumi
I
recall Father Zef Pllumi once saying, “Hell” was written for us while I was
looking at him lying on the white hospital sheets. I kissed his weak hand. His
whole body was like that hand - small, hollow. I wanted to cry. A shadow like
fell over the sick, similar to that of the crossbeams; it was our shadow.
“Because
you are our ‘Nation’s Honor.’ I wish you speedy recovery,” the ambassador said to him.
Father
Zef Pllumi barely smiled, saddened, with eyes burning full of light, he
murmured a thank you, and cast his eyes on me. “How are you,” he asked me. “How
do you get along with him? How many years did you spend in jail,” he asked me
deliberately and looked at the ambassador.
“Half
as many as you have.” I also answered intentionally.
I
had seen him at other times so, in the black soutane, with the rope round his
waist. He was humble but fiery, often ironic perhaps left over from the prison
time, forlorn but prideful, prudent in his book launches, sitting in the chair,
and anyone who was close to him, publisher, art critic, known, unknown
individual looked as a tormentor, resembling his healthy torturer.
He
was fading. It was his last day. They had brought him from Shkodra to the
Vatican’s hospital. Through the huge windows, light trembled like the white
wings of pigeons at Saint Peter’s square. Behind the high walls there was the
infamous old library - the archive, and amidst endless shelves, in the half
lighted mysterious halls, there was also the only copy in the world of the
first Albanian book, “Meshari.” I had seen it, too. I wanted to say to Father
Zef Pllumi, “I have kissed the book, just
like your hand … a monk like you wrote it. So, why not
bring this book back to Albania, for one day? One week? Ask the Pope, please, for
Albanians to see their first book, touch it, pay tribute to it, because the
so-called Albanian embassy…”
“I
want to die in Albania,” Father Zef Pllumi intervened.
“There, we die repeatedly, every
day,” I replied. I raised my voice, “Revive here, because we need you, Father!
With your nourishment, you provide and grow our hunger for truth and love.”
