By Maks Velo
(Extract
from the book "Spaçi", Pg. 350, 351)
Ahmet Hoxha got stuck in my mind, for I could not be
like him. Halil, who had slept by him in the communist prison cell, told me his
story…
“Ahmet, not yet eighteen, was arrested along with two
other villagers for attempting to flee the country’s borders. After serving his
sentence, he spent years in several communist concentration camps. In Laçi
concentration camp, he met two convicts who were ready to risk their lives to
escape. While unloading a truck, the three of them hijacked it, smashed the
gate, and fled to the mountains of Kruja. On the third day, they were caught in
hiding - betrayed by the people who had given them shelter. Ahmet was savagely beaten. He regained
consciousness in the prison hospital. He shared a room with former communist
General Halim Xhelo. On the same day communists killed Ahmet’s father in
Gjirokastra Fortress, General Halim Xhelo knocked little Ahmet to the ground,
kicked him, and told Ahmet’s mother, ‘We will kill your son when he grows up,
too.’ Ahmet, having recovered, began
regularly caring for the communist General. When the General regained health,
he asked Ahmet, ‘Do you recognize the man whose life you saved?’
‘Yes General, I know you well. In Gjirokastra Fortress,
you said that you would kill me once I was a grown-up man.’
‘Then why didn’t you let me die? It would have been
very easy for you.’
‘I wanted you to understand the people well.’”
Halil went on telling me, “Ahmet and the communist
General became good friends. When the news of former General Halim Xhelo’s
suicide reached Spaçi prison camp, Ahmet handed out cigarettes to honor his
dead friend…”
AAFH translation
