Humans…(you cannot kill the fire)

By Lluka Qafoku                     

We are humans

It is a magic word, like every word

We, humans, got name and fame through them, standing Time

We spread our humane humus and waste as far as we go in Universe

We try to domesticate all as subjects to our Will though we never have known whence it comes..

We got homes out of Nature, ever-lit homes, air-conditioned homes, all provided homes

Lukewarm well balanced homes, “reasonably” safe homes

To fly from natural mercilessness of natural law

Into what we ingeniously stole away from nature and claim “our creation”

What is in fact a denatured domestication

And wishful illusion of free will and property

We keep reinventing our homes, we make them drive, sail and fly

We keep domesticating all our environmental surroundings,

Trying to walk on the dangerous razor-edge of our science

Between destruction and construction, economy and ecology

And first and last we have domesticated nearly all natural fire,

Now including solar fire, standing on the brink of atomic apocalypse

We, the animals seemingly capable of all life destruction

Our intimate, comfortable homes

We have succeeded to build to save our crippled, homogenous freedom

To outlive and survive

Natural selection

Preserving the unfit and perverse and deeming it the life sense

Until all sense we lost

Our domesticating, moderating, artificial power seemingly superficial and fake gave us all humanity

We, the last dead end of the Tree of Life, of Biosphere

That insignificant “poor player that frets his hour upon stage and then is heard no more” (Shak)

Ridiculous enough to challenge all World order and chaos

However

We humans keep knocking since birth on the door

Of some natural Grace

Of a future that cannot become a past Trace

In our casual and rarely met but constant in time

Promethean rush of sublime creative effort

Towards a Promised cosmic humane wide open

Home….

Polemic against Biberism (Mr. Biberaj)

By Vasel Malaj

Mr. Biberaj! Your lecture on democracy was delivered too late. On Facebook, I have personally criticized Albanian politicians for being responsible for the present state of Albania. After my criticisms, we exchanged a short message, and then you immediately unfriended me.

Mr. Biberaj, you are the one who opened the door to the Voice of America for the former propaganda journalists of Albanian Communist Radio-Television. They, along with their families, served as levers of the Communist Dictatorship.

To what end? Only time will tell.

The plain truth is that the Voice of America’s broadcasting has entirely changed course after the arrival of the Communist dictatorship’s journalists. It has become a stage for the promulgation of the Communist regime’s intellectuals and pseudo-intellectual spies, who purposely are sent to the West on a special mission: to control the Albanian diaspora communities.  

If we were to compare your lecture today with the book you previously wrote, “Albania in transition,” we would see you contradict yourself, for you willingly or unwillingly become a guardian and inspirer of the Albanian Communist mafia and its cupola of crime. For this reason, you solely confirm the accuracy of my comments on and criticisms of the Albanian-Communist mafia. I have posted these comments and criticisms on the “Voice of America” website and the social network Facebook, and you unduly rejected all of them.  

The Albanian Communist mafia’s plot against the respectable journalists of the Voice of America, Isabela Çoçoli and Zamira Edwards, clearly demonstrates the fact that the Communist mafia continues to fight us even here in this great democratic country, the United States. Your analysis bears no value today, since we, the former politically persecuted people by the Communist regime, have spoken out for years what you were forced to say today.

I feel good about one thing: the Communist propaganda colleagues have at last taught you to ceremoniously voice yourself as “politically correct.”

Amnesia

By Grigor Nosi

I would not choose to write on dark, communist, times, as long as the architects of the Red Holocaust are not yet punished. Moreover, they arrogantly run the country’s politics today. But, as I was reading an article on the life of dissident Klement Islami, the lamenting voice of a young lady from Durres came from deep inside my soul and woke me up from this mindset. She was pleading, “Doctor, will you have to amputate my leg? Please doctor, heal me! I am still young!”  

It was 1977, and I was assigned to work at the General Surgery Hospital in Elbasan, Albania as a medical practitioner. The hospital was recently built, and it neighbored the Elbasan Psychiatric Hospital. A shallow ditch and a partially collapsed fence divided the two, huge, buildings. People spoke of the hospital with a secretive undertone and referred to it as a place of isolation for selected individuals, enemies of the regime. The word was out that the State Security had cherry-picked doctors to intentionally abuse the patients who were incarcerated in that Hell against their will.

“What is your name?” I asked the young lady who was uncontrollably crying in pain. In a broken voice, she somberly said, “Zana, Zana Dhroso.” “Stretch out your leg,” I told her, and I began to probe her red, swollen, and infected knee. Each time I touched it, she bit her lips, dry and split down the middle due to the various medications she was taking. “Stay strong,” I said. After I injected a local anesthesia, I opened the wound and pressed gauze onto it to drain the massive infection, which had spread all over her knee. Just as I finished cleaning the huge wound, a weak voice pleaded, “Doctor, are you going to amputate my leg? Please, do not cut it off! I am young! It’s the second time I have had abscessed wounds.” “No,” I told her. “Your leg will heal.” Her fragile, long, elegant, fingers tightened around my hands as a sign of gratitude.

The senior doctors knew what caused those huge abscessed wounds. I heard that patients brought to the hospital on court order, were injected with pine resin. The injection aimed to paralyze them and ensure they were unable to flee from the prison hospital. I had not previously received the chance to see a case up close or to treat it. I was then, deeply troubled, and I told my father Doctor Stiliano Nosi. He sadly confirmed the practice. He was also an acquaintance of Zana’s father, Doctor Dhroso. My father advised me to especially care for her, and I did. I treated her even after she was sent back to the Psychiatric Hospital.

One day on my hospital rounds, I crossed the path separating the two hospitals, and I saw Zana and her father sitting on the only bench facing the street. Doctor Dhroso, a nobleman worn down by age and agony for his daughter, addressed me in a soft, pleading voice. He showered me with blessings to show his gratitude for his daughter’s medical treatment. His eyes frequently welled up while he patted Zana’s hands that were shaking uncontrollably. Moved by the image the two, poor creatures left on me, I searched to find out why the young lady from Durres was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital.

***

At a high school in the city of Durres, a brave act occurred that was never heard before. A female student took down the portrait of the monstrous, communist, dictator Enver Hoxha, and she threw it onto the cement floor. The picture broke into pieces in front of all students. The heroic, young, lady, forgotten by the Post-Communist era, was Zana Dhroso.

Translated from The Albanian by Hilda Xhepa

Edited by Rebekah Roberts

LOST LIFE

By Ejëll Çoba

(Excerpt from the book Lost Life)

Virtyt Gjylbega, a young man from Shkodra, arrived at the labor camp with the rest of the Elbasan prisoners. He was the son of Hamid Gjylbega, a published writer and a philosopher who was also credited by Fulvio Cordignano, as having created a new religion in his works. Hamid’s long life full of suffering had confirmed him to be a man of strong character.

Virtyt was assigned by the prison command to be squad commander, but in a few days he was demoted for refusing to report his fellow prisoners like other commanders did. He ended up being assigned to work with a shovel. One day the guards lined up all the prisoners and marched them to stand in front of a young man tied to a post on the center of the prison camp grounds. His face was covered in honey. All of us, 1,500 men, were ordered to spit on him. Approaching the man, I recognized the captive to be Virtyt. The commanders and guards strictly enforced the command. I had to eventually spit on the prisoner too. I realized that many of the prisoners before me had fully partaken in the spitting order leaving their marks on the face of poor Virtyt.

The rest of the prisoners and I went to work and left Virtyt bound in the burning sun. Later, I learned Virtyt and his sister’s fiancé, a Kolonjar, always ate their food together. One day, Virtyt was ordered not to work for the day by the labour camp doctor. Virtyt ate lunch from their shared food including honey sent from the home of the sister’s fiancé. That same evening, the sister’s fiancé accused Virtyt of stealing his honey to the camp guard. Two or three occasions I worked closed to Virtyt. We both were not allowed to work with other prisoners for fear we would exploit their efforts. I often tried to lift his spirits because I could see he was getting depressed, but in each conversation, he spoke very little. Each time the conservation ended this way:

       - Oh, Mr. Çoba, I can’t…

       - I am 40 years old, - I told him – and I am trying to endure all of this, you are just 28, - but I knew my words were not enough to convince the man because he kept saying:
  - It cannot be tolerated, it cannot be endured!

Not long after the ordeal, during the night, while we were asleep, we heard gunshots. I found out the next day that, after returning from work, Virtyt cleaned himself and dressed in his finest clothes. Watching the well-dressed man, one of the guards scornfully asked him:

       “Why are you dressed like a groom Virtyt, are you going to be released?”

        “Yes, I will soon be free”, Virtyt replied full of confidence.

When everyone was asleep, Virtyt still dressed in his fine clothes, emerged from the barracks. He walked towards the barbwires and floodlights surrounding the outskirts of the labor camp. The guard called two or three times: “ Halt, halt!”

Virtyt did not stop walking. As he approached the guard, he yelled: “fire!”

The guard executed the order, and he fell dead instantly.

In the morning, on the way to work, the entire 1,500 prisoners were dead silent!

AAFH Translation

Edited by Rebekah Roberts