Beyond Reach

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