Anti-Communist Resistance

By Maks Velo

(Extract from the book “Spaçi", Pg. 151, 152, 153) 

            From the long lines of prisoners in the camp, one man, who always got in the unemployed line, really caught my attention. He was like one of Balzac’s characters. I do not know why this thought got stuck in my head, but he was slow moving, most often alone, and a man of few words. They told me he was Ceni, Hysen Shoshori from Tirana. It was clear he was an inveterate prisoner, lacking any outside support. At the end of mealtime, he would go over to the kitchen counter, and if there happened to be some leftovers, they would give him an extra tea ration. It was supposedly tea, but it was really more like cold water with no sugar at all.

                                                          Hysen Shoshori

            They told me his story. In April 1959, using a mimeograph, he typed up a flyer in which he exposed official propaganda. He distributed these flyers throughout Tirana, until he was caught in 1974. He would change up their scripts. During nighttime he scattered them under the doors of private houses and apartments, and stick them onto walls, pillars, and stairwells. He had even taken them to the Polish, Romanian, Italian, and Yugoslavian embassies, among others. He would toss most of them out onto parked cars while the embassies were hosting cocktail parties, or he would send them over the embassy walls. He did this from 11pm to 1am and make initial plans for distributing the flyers by changing up his neighborhood route. News about these flyers was broadcast from “Voice of America,” Radio Moscow,” “Radio Belgrade.”

            State Security was on their toes. They positioned themselves in places with clear views, from treetops to apartments used for surveillance. It is now I realize what happened to me in 1966. It was winter, January to be exact, a gentle January like it is in Tirana; it was delightful to be outside. It was close to 2 o’clock in the morning, and I was under a tree near the Gallery of Arts. I was with a girlfriend. We just had kissed when I heard a slight noise. I raised my head and looked up to find a man on top of the tree. Without saying anything, I quietly left.

            They caught him on August 16, 1974 in the alley across from the ambulance building while he was sticking up a flyer with two drops of glue. Ceni would place them either at the start of a road or at the end. Security had climbed on the poplars near the former War Museum. They jumped in front of him, laid him down on the ground, and beat him. Kadri Ismailati handcuffed him, shoved him into a “Warsaw” car, and took him directly to the Interior Ministry. There were special tools of torture in the cellars of the ministry. All of them were inhumane, skilled criminals – Kadri Ismailati, Ali Korbi, Koço Josifi, headed by Nevzat Haznedari.  “Tell us your friends…” but Ceni had no friends. They did not believe him. After the torture, they ordered Bujar Shkaba, the doctor to “Save him, otherwise he is going to leave with the investigation halfway complete”… “Urgently take him to the hospital…” The next day Ceni was taken to the new prison dungeons on the second floor. He was sentenced to be executed by firing squad. Death was salvation for him. However the door of prison cell opened, and it was communicated to him that his life was spared and he was to be sentenced twenty-five years in prison. They expected a thank you, yet Ceni was deeply despaired. He wanted to die. Ceni spent sixteen years in prison and was released in March 1991. He was among the last inmates who were released from St. Vasil’s camp in Borsh.

            What drew my attention most to Ceni’s story was when I found out Ceni’s sacrifice – the cause that turned him into an ardent enemy of the regime. He never forgave the communists for taking his small piece of land, a fertile soil there on the hills; it kept Ceni always dreaming. 

AAFH Translation

Meeting once again with Pope Frances

By Visar Zhiti

Meeting once again with Pope Francis, shaking hands with His Holiness, staring into each other’s eyes, gilded by the goodness of His vision in which heavenly elation mixes with the dedication of a compassionate shepherd, exchanging a few words with him, he immediately says what you really need, and though these moments close to him are very brief, they pour a sense of biblical eternity into you... Along that minute passageway, where you started to walk off from the side where the diplomatic corps is set, you approach Him, waiting on his feet, white, candle-like, ethereal, you also feel Him to be an old friend, special emotions and a beautiful responsibility grab you, superb.

You are heading towards Him as an Albanian citizen, a representative of your country, carrying with you centuries of testimonies, Buzukian liturgical whispers, and as you cast another step, instead of adorning your breast with medals that others surrounding you have plenty of, you fill your chest with the pain of the wounds of your country’s martyrs, carrying Fishta and his “Lute of Highland" in English, along with the images of two Albanian cardinals, whom you have been accompanied by in the dictatorship’s hell, and they shoulder you on both sides, you continue to walk, dazzled by the magical smiles of our saint, Mother Teresa, spreading throughout the air like doves’ wings, another step, and the revamped walls of temples quake, the Onufrian cardinal red icons move, you feel the proverbial brotherhood allegiance among religions in your country, present-day distresses suffocate you, your step heavies, your personal tragedy weighs on your shoulders, while, underfoot the wickedness of those who enacted it emerge like traps – assassins’ offspring, insults, your steps are confused by the slurs of the presidential clan of the republic of banality, the sad silence of your people, their exodus, the Sisyphean stone of torment, the love of those who only know how to love, etc., the patron hermit angel that leads the generation of the fatherland,  O’ resurgent angels where are you?...

Meanwhile, you have arrived before Pope Francis, stopped there, bowing slightly... His Holiness was waiting for you, staring at you, immediately understands you, he shake hands with you, his hands that thousands of people from all over the world have held, nameless and famous, from your country too, children and the elderly, poor men, artists, statesmen from all the continents, heads of religions, etc., etc., those hands with which he has washed the feet of prisoners of all kinds, the feet of the miserable, of deprived, murdered men, the journey of humanity, but now he is with you, for you all, and you feel the need to say something in the name of what you are, that you have not said before. I love Albania he says to you once again, but sounding new, special, his voice reminds you, His sacred masses, and you, heartened, say to him that as much as Your Holiness and the Holy See have done last year and now for Albanians and their church, etc., was not done for 1,000 years, 2,000 years, and he laughs out loud, we are grateful to you, you add, and he stretches out his hands and strongly holds yours, and you feel the apostolic warmth of the strongest moral leader of the world.

You would like to have continued to say that the world has become better because of Him, but you have to leave and let the next person from another country, meet with him, yet your wife, like a Mary dressed in black, completes what was left unsaid by embracing Pope Francis, and as you leave, you see the vision of the Son, Christ in Heaven, through Michelangelo’s large windows. Amen!

AAFH translation

Letter of the Ambassador of Hungary

Statue of the "Budapest Lad"

Statue of the "Budapest Lad"

Memorable Meeting

Thomas Marsh

Figure Sculptor

Orange, Virginia

www.thomasmarshsculptor.net

June 11, 2016

Washington, DC

Dear Muçi,

I was so happy to see you at the ceremony, and was hoping you would be there! And it meant very much to me that you could again greet my sons. I try to remind them always of the struggles that you and your countrymen have faced for the cause of freedom.

It would be such a great honor to create a bust or a statue of Petro Zheji for you and for Albania. I trust that when the time is right, we will be able to do this project. I will be ready whenever you are ready.

Yes, friendship is so important. In today's world there are so many secular pressures for people to discard their friendship loyalties. You are clearly a man of your word, and a man of courage, and I am proud to call you my friend.

God bless you always, my friend,

Thomas

P.S. Again, please give my best wishes to Uran.

Thomas Marsh and Mustafa Xhepa

Ferit the “Cow”, Partisan

By Visar Zhiti

(Excerpt from the book, “Trails of Hell” pg. 227,228)

Hundreds of spoons clattered and scared the swarm of flies buzzing all around. We no longer washed our bowls; instead, we wiped them clean using the last bite of our bread, which we still ate despite the bitter taste of aluminum, because waiting in another line would mean another long torment for us. Washing the dishes every day from the water pipe, perforated in a row of holes, (I could compare it to a monster’s fife), where cold water spouted, would have caused us more distress.
In the meantime, the prisoner Ferit the “Cow,” was observing and waiting there. As soon as you left your bowl on the ledge of the washing station unattended for longer than a minute - just to wash your hands or to drink water, there, he would snatch it. And you had truly forgotten it. “Aha! You lost it,” he would smirk. He would sell you back your bowl a few hours or days later, and you could not always borrow someone else’s bowl to eat. You would have to buy it back cheap –for a pack of Partisan cigarettes. Ah, the partisans! Was Ferit the “Cow" a partisan? He says, “Yes.” His surname was not actually “Cow.” Ever since he stole a cow from the Cooperative and put children’s rain boots over the cow’s hooves so that the tracks of the cow’s hooves could not be traced as he walked to sell it at a faraway market, and, so they say, fooled the animal to eat straw by putting his green-tinted sunglasses over the cow’s eyes so that the yellowed straw looked green as fresh grass, etc.. etc.… - he is full of adventures, from that time, the nickname “Cow” stuck with him.  He quite resembles the good face of a cow: in the way his cheeks droop, in the way he stares at you and in the way he bellows when he speaks.

Translated from The Albanian by Kelly Mema