Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
By Shefki Hysa
The false miracle
When he opened the eyes, he saw how the sunbeams were toughing lightly the opposite wall. It was time to wake up but however he didn’t move from his bed. He only gasped and moved his arms out of the linens. He brought to mind that last night he had considered changing something in his life. Doing absolutely something worthily, which could serve to the people but he had no idea what to do. Thinking was necessary before deciding the step to take.
He had all the time, until two o’clock in the afternoon when he had to start the work in that old buses machine-shop. He was a mechanical engineer.
Recently, he had to repeat the same actions all the days. Getting up at about eight o’clock, prowling awhile until he could wake, then bathing in the old cracked wash-hand in the corner near the door, combing his hair in the blind mirror, nailed within the wardrobe covering, getting dressed and going out.
After leaving behind the long-standing hotel of the singles, along a still unpaved street, with five-storied buildings on sides, he could draw in at a crossing where he had the possibility to meet any friend and have a coffee at Piluri’s club. Then he could climb down at the city center to have breakfast at “The seaman” tavern, near the buses agency or at “The Fish” restaurant, in the boulevard which originated from the harbor. Later you could find him away the seashore, toward Bistrica embouchure. He drowsed himself in every kind of hypothesizes as far as that poppet, the schoolgirl appeared at the highroad. With black apron and white collar she could surprisingly arouse the nostalgia of the visitants, the swallows, maybe because she had to migrate every day from the village to the town, where she was doing the secondary school and conversely. His heart was flickering while he was making his steps slower, waiting for her to pass close to him. He could feel with every cell of his body the coming of the girl and suddenly, the heartbeats were intonating in her trot that was similar with that of a hind. He could hardly take heart in those moments, with the back quivering and the nape chilling from the sweat. He could feel even her flurried breathing in one of his ears and he didn’t have courage to flounce about. A voice tightened him from inside to talk to her but they had never said good-bye to each other. Her collar swished as a spring rustle while she was leaving and he damned himself that once again he hadn’t been man enough to talk to her.
But what was she thinking as she was walking anxiously awhile, without hazarding to pick up her eyes from the asphalt?! The girl was going away and he only whispered with the thinking that tomorrow he had to burst without fail. He was going to pour out his heart like the crack of a gun shot.
But the tomorrows, following quietly each other, were never ending. Every time he looked at the girl, the wing of a swallow in flight seemed to graze his face and further his heart.
- Bo! Perhaps it’s time to go to work, - he suddenly called up to himself and jumped frightened.
He began to get dressed hurriedly, but surprisingly the clothes were not the initial ones. He noticed that he was wearing a brand new suit, made of one of the most expensive and uncommon coating, that was glittering like the room itself, drowned in a wonderful, blue light, like a sleep light, but more sparkling. He wasn’t realizing if it was the sun shining this way or the flashlight. Even the furniture wasn’t the same. They were fabulous and smelled as they were just taken from the joinery. He wanted to observe a long time this fabulous change of the environment but the thinking that the bus could run away pull him out from the seat. He rushed outside.
A forest with monumental trees, whose garlands were thrilling like green fountains that throw themselves into a copper air, rose at the building entrance. He stopped for a while, terrified of that fancy view, but the voice of a red horse, which appeared suddenly from the forest profoundness, shook him.
- Come on Sir, get on and I can take you wherever your heart wants, - pronounced humanly the humble horse.
- I just wanted to go to work and if you want, take me at the bus station, - asserted the boy, almost disconcerted from that horse with a man tongue.
- It’s late Sir. At this hour you return from work…I would better take you to your girlfriend… It’s been so long that she is waiting for you… She said to me that you have to meet each other today, - was felt lowly the horse, like those old-time servants of the kings’ stories.
- What are you saying, I don’t know her, and neither do I have a girlfriend?! - rebelled astonished the boy.
- You know each other Sir, you know each other! You have met each other many times in dreams, - insisted the horse.
- Then as you want, take me there, - gave in the boy and hunched at the horse’s back, which meanwhile flied across the trees that were whistling every kind of magic carols and melodies.
They stopped under the garland of a gigantic, thousand years old olive, whose bole hardly could be carried even from the arms of seven giants. The tree cleaved with a crash and in the just-opened door appeared a phosphorescent creature, with the form of a known as well as unknown girl, who looked like that schoolgirl and she was irradiating with a grace, kindly fascinating.
- I am the Beauty of the Earth. Give me your hand my sweetheart, - intonated her voice and the boy sensed that that melodic voice was shuddering even the stone and the tree.
He held out his arm, she grabbed it and in mid-air, as in dreams, they lost across a range of royal hallways and stood amidst a grandiose library, with infinity of books. The boy wondered. He forgot the Beauty of the Earth and began to browse those strange books that could tell their title with a human voice when you were touching them.
- All the thesaurus of the human knowledge is in this Library. Here you can find even the books of the famous Library of Babylonia, disappeared thousand years before. They are yours, if you like them, - said the Beauty of the Earth.
The boy didn’t take his eyes off of that Beauty, unknown from the mankind.
- Everything you are looking at is yours. I am yours too, - continued The Beauty of the Earth with her intonating voice.
- But with a condition…, - was felt the boy with half voice.
- With no conditions! The thesaurus and me belong to you, - was felt imploringly the Beauty of the Earth.
- I want this thesaurus to serve to the humanity. So this eighth Miracle, discovered by me, can be useful - emphasized the boy.
- Neither can the sun view this Miracle, - implored the Beauty of the Earth.
- Then its grandiosity is false! I don’t want a false Miracle! You have to know that the humanity has lost too much with the disappearance of the famous Library of Babylonia. - asserted emphatically the boy.
- Don’t hurry guy, put aside the humanity and its loss. You deserve the Miracle. We belong to you, only to you.
- No! - screamed he boy. - I don’t need this miracle if I don’t have the possibility to help the people with its values.
- Forget the people and take care of yourself, Sir. You don’t exist for them.
They have never thought about you. Why serving to those people, who has never been impressed with your existence?! You deserve their servings, you deserve the Miracle too. Don’t push away this blessing but open the door when it knocks. It is said that the bird comes to your hand only once, - supplicated frightened the Beauty of the Earth.
The boy thought an instant. The beauty of the Earth reached and kissed him magically as to fuddle the boy with the celestial sweetness of her lips. He was almost falling asleep as it were, afoot.
- No, my darling, I can’t accept your gift. Maybe I don’t really exist for the people and they don’t know how much valor do I have inside but I want to change precisely for this reason. I want to become someone, be among them so they can see me with their own eyes, touch me with their hands, perceive me with mind, feel me with heart and so I can diminish their sorrows and enhance the joys. This is me. I want them to feel that I am serving them a little and say: It’s our blood! So, I want to be useful for the people, I want everything that serves them.
The Beauty of the Earth whispered and laughed violently.
- You don’t believe me?! - jumped the boy with a hurt sensibility.
- You want me to serve the people?! My love too?! My love is sacred and it belongs only to you, to nobody else! I can’t believe that you are so ingenuous at all! - stressed bitterly the Beauty of the Earth with a tearful face.
The disappointment was clearly read in all her being…
The boy faded away by her reaction, even was he ashamed for that terrible misunderstanding, however he pulled himself together and exploded dolorously:
- I feel with all my soul your sacred love and neither can I think to give that God’s gift to somebody else. I am not so immature. On people’s service I want to put the “Miracle” of this thesaurus, not you, don’t misunderstand me. The poor people are so longing for knowledge and I feel so eager in front of this thesaurus, but it looks like a desert mirage if it doesn’t quench my thirst…
- This miracle is my set of clothes and together we are a sufficient gift to quench your thirst, I hope! The bride’s set of clothes, is understood, can’t be put on everyone’s service, can it?! - interrupted his speech the Beauty of the Earth.
The boy hushed.
- Do you accept this sacred gift or you don’t?! - shouted the Beauty of the Earth, impatient as much as angry.
The boy shrugged humbly.
- Do you?! - echoed languishingly her voice.
The boy swallowed up faintly. How could he convince the Beauty of the Earth that his knowledge didn’t go for anything if he couldn’t extinguish the human curiosity, if he couldn’t soften with them, just a little, the permanent glow of the unquenched thirst of its kind, so unknown in front of the Universe Mystery?! Probably it was impossible. And he was taught from the human practice that it was impossible for the man to coexist with the impossible. Coexisting with it was an absurdity. It meant a coexistence of the life with the lie. And this was unacceptable for a guy like him, with that moral, with those convictions, with that knowledge ambit of life. But he was made this way…
- Do you?! - was repeated the Beauty of the Earth’s voice, more faraway, more glacial, sharper than the edge of a homicidal arrow.
- No! - wheezed painfully the boy.
He had the sensation that the glacial arrows of her voice permeated his heart and it ruptured and fell on the ground.
- Then goodbye, guy! Have a felicitous journey in the people’s world.
- Goodbye Beauty of the Earth! Goodbye, you unachievable Miracle! - spoke through clenched teeth drowsily the boy and immediately disappeared from that dreamy world with a frightful glass crash.
Suddenly he opened the eyes and felt that an invisible hand had thrown him away from that magical dreams paradise to the reality of the cold room. He whirled his eyes and distinguished in the concrete floor, between the bed and the dressing-table, the shredded glassworks of the flagon that, as he could understand, he had pushed down while sleeping, with the instinctive movements of the arm.
- Welcome to the human reality! - shouted joyfully the boy and after throwing away the linen, jumped with the thinking that he had to change something of this equal daily life with a gray color.
He was going to color his future with the warm colors of the dreams and put it on humanity’s service. So his life could have a sense henceforth…
Translated by: Lorena Uliu
The false miracle
When he opened the eyes, he saw how the sunbeams were toughing lightly the opposite wall. It was time to wake up but however he didn’t move from his bed. He only gasped and moved his arms out of the linens. He brought to mind that last night he had considered changing something in his life. Doing absolutely something worthily, which could serve to the people but he had no idea what to do. Thinking was necessary before deciding the step to take.
He had all the time, until two o’clock in the afternoon when he had to start the work in that old buses machine-shop. He was a mechanical engineer.
Recently, he had to repeat the same actions all the days. Getting up at about eight o’clock, prowling awhile until he could wake, then bathing in the old cracked wash-hand in the corner near the door, combing his hair in the blind mirror, nailed within the wardrobe covering, getting dressed and going out.
After leaving behind the long-standing hotel of the singles, along a still unpaved street, with five-storied buildings on sides, he could draw in at a crossing where he had the possibility to meet any friend and have a coffee at Piluri’s club. Then he could climb down at the city center to have breakfast at “The seaman” tavern, near the buses agency or at “The Fish” restaurant, in the boulevard which originated from the harbor. Later you could find him away the seashore, toward Bistrica embouchure. He drowsed himself in every kind of hypothesizes as far as that poppet, the schoolgirl appeared at the highroad. With black apron and white collar she could surprisingly arouse the nostalgia of the visitants, the swallows, maybe because she had to migrate every day from the village to the town, where she was doing the secondary school and conversely. His heart was flickering while he was making his steps slower, waiting for her to pass close to him. He could feel with every cell of his body the coming of the girl and suddenly, the heartbeats were intonating in her trot that was similar with that of a hind. He could hardly take heart in those moments, with the back quivering and the nape chilling from the sweat. He could feel even her flurried breathing in one of his ears and he didn’t have courage to flounce about. A voice tightened him from inside to talk to her but they had never said good-bye to each other. Her collar swished as a spring rustle while she was leaving and he damned himself that once again he hadn’t been man enough to talk to her.
But what was she thinking as she was walking anxiously awhile, without hazarding to pick up her eyes from the asphalt?! The girl was going away and he only whispered with the thinking that tomorrow he had to burst without fail. He was going to pour out his heart like the crack of a gun shot.
But the tomorrows, following quietly each other, were never ending. Every time he looked at the girl, the wing of a swallow in flight seemed to graze his face and further his heart.
- Bo! Perhaps it’s time to go to work, - he suddenly called up to himself and jumped frightened.
He began to get dressed hurriedly, but surprisingly the clothes were not the initial ones. He noticed that he was wearing a brand new suit, made of one of the most expensive and uncommon coating, that was glittering like the room itself, drowned in a wonderful, blue light, like a sleep light, but more sparkling. He wasn’t realizing if it was the sun shining this way or the flashlight. Even the furniture wasn’t the same. They were fabulous and smelled as they were just taken from the joinery. He wanted to observe a long time this fabulous change of the environment but the thinking that the bus could run away pull him out from the seat. He rushed outside.
A forest with monumental trees, whose garlands were thrilling like green fountains that throw themselves into a copper air, rose at the building entrance. He stopped for a while, terrified of that fancy view, but the voice of a red horse, which appeared suddenly from the forest profoundness, shook him.
- Come on Sir, get on and I can take you wherever your heart wants, - pronounced humanly the humble horse.
- I just wanted to go to work and if you want, take me at the bus station, - asserted the boy, almost disconcerted from that horse with a man tongue.
- It’s late Sir. At this hour you return from work…I would better take you to your girlfriend… It’s been so long that she is waiting for you… She said to me that you have to meet each other today, - was felt lowly the horse, like those old-time servants of the kings’ stories.
- What are you saying, I don’t know her, and neither do I have a girlfriend?! - rebelled astonished the boy.
- You know each other Sir, you know each other! You have met each other many times in dreams, - insisted the horse.
- Then as you want, take me there, - gave in the boy and hunched at the horse’s back, which meanwhile flied across the trees that were whistling every kind of magic carols and melodies.
They stopped under the garland of a gigantic, thousand years old olive, whose bole hardly could be carried even from the arms of seven giants. The tree cleaved with a crash and in the just-opened door appeared a phosphorescent creature, with the form of a known as well as unknown girl, who looked like that schoolgirl and she was irradiating with a grace, kindly fascinating.
- I am the Beauty of the Earth. Give me your hand my sweetheart, - intonated her voice and the boy sensed that that melodic voice was shuddering even the stone and the tree.
He held out his arm, she grabbed it and in mid-air, as in dreams, they lost across a range of royal hallways and stood amidst a grandiose library, with infinity of books. The boy wondered. He forgot the Beauty of the Earth and began to browse those strange books that could tell their title with a human voice when you were touching them.
- All the thesaurus of the human knowledge is in this Library. Here you can find even the books of the famous Library of Babylonia, disappeared thousand years before. They are yours, if you like them, - said the Beauty of the Earth.
The boy didn’t take his eyes off of that Beauty, unknown from the mankind.
- Everything you are looking at is yours. I am yours too, - continued The Beauty of the Earth with her intonating voice.
- But with a condition…, - was felt the boy with half voice.
- With no conditions! The thesaurus and me belong to you, - was felt imploringly the Beauty of the Earth.
- I want this thesaurus to serve to the humanity. So this eighth Miracle, discovered by me, can be useful - emphasized the boy.
- Neither can the sun view this Miracle, - implored the Beauty of the Earth.
- Then its grandiosity is false! I don’t want a false Miracle! You have to know that the humanity has lost too much with the disappearance of the famous Library of Babylonia. - asserted emphatically the boy.
- Don’t hurry guy, put aside the humanity and its loss. You deserve the Miracle. We belong to you, only to you.
- No! - screamed he boy. - I don’t need this miracle if I don’t have the possibility to help the people with its values.
- Forget the people and take care of yourself, Sir. You don’t exist for them.
They have never thought about you. Why serving to those people, who has never been impressed with your existence?! You deserve their servings, you deserve the Miracle too. Don’t push away this blessing but open the door when it knocks. It is said that the bird comes to your hand only once, - supplicated frightened the Beauty of the Earth.
The boy thought an instant. The beauty of the Earth reached and kissed him magically as to fuddle the boy with the celestial sweetness of her lips. He was almost falling asleep as it were, afoot.
- No, my darling, I can’t accept your gift. Maybe I don’t really exist for the people and they don’t know how much valor do I have inside but I want to change precisely for this reason. I want to become someone, be among them so they can see me with their own eyes, touch me with their hands, perceive me with mind, feel me with heart and so I can diminish their sorrows and enhance the joys. This is me. I want them to feel that I am serving them a little and say: It’s our blood! So, I want to be useful for the people, I want everything that serves them.
The Beauty of the Earth whispered and laughed violently.
- You don’t believe me?! - jumped the boy with a hurt sensibility.
- You want me to serve the people?! My love too?! My love is sacred and it belongs only to you, to nobody else! I can’t believe that you are so ingenuous at all! - stressed bitterly the Beauty of the Earth with a tearful face.
The disappointment was clearly read in all her being…
The boy faded away by her reaction, even was he ashamed for that terrible misunderstanding, however he pulled himself together and exploded dolorously:
- I feel with all my soul your sacred love and neither can I think to give that God’s gift to somebody else. I am not so immature. On people’s service I want to put the “Miracle” of this thesaurus, not you, don’t misunderstand me. The poor people are so longing for knowledge and I feel so eager in front of this thesaurus, but it looks like a desert mirage if it doesn’t quench my thirst…
- This miracle is my set of clothes and together we are a sufficient gift to quench your thirst, I hope! The bride’s set of clothes, is understood, can’t be put on everyone’s service, can it?! - interrupted his speech the Beauty of the Earth.
The boy hushed.
- Do you accept this sacred gift or you don’t?! - shouted the Beauty of the Earth, impatient as much as angry.
The boy shrugged humbly.
- Do you?! - echoed languishingly her voice.
The boy swallowed up faintly. How could he convince the Beauty of the Earth that his knowledge didn’t go for anything if he couldn’t extinguish the human curiosity, if he couldn’t soften with them, just a little, the permanent glow of the unquenched thirst of its kind, so unknown in front of the Universe Mystery?! Probably it was impossible. And he was taught from the human practice that it was impossible for the man to coexist with the impossible. Coexisting with it was an absurdity. It meant a coexistence of the life with the lie. And this was unacceptable for a guy like him, with that moral, with those convictions, with that knowledge ambit of life. But he was made this way…
- Do you?! - was repeated the Beauty of the Earth’s voice, more faraway, more glacial, sharper than the edge of a homicidal arrow.
- No! - wheezed painfully the boy.
He had the sensation that the glacial arrows of her voice permeated his heart and it ruptured and fell on the ground.
- Then goodbye, guy! Have a felicitous journey in the people’s world.
- Goodbye Beauty of the Earth! Goodbye, you unachievable Miracle! - spoke through clenched teeth drowsily the boy and immediately disappeared from that dreamy world with a frightful glass crash.
Suddenly he opened the eyes and felt that an invisible hand had thrown him away from that magical dreams paradise to the reality of the cold room. He whirled his eyes and distinguished in the concrete floor, between the bed and the dressing-table, the shredded glassworks of the flagon that, as he could understand, he had pushed down while sleeping, with the instinctive movements of the arm.
- Welcome to the human reality! - shouted joyfully the boy and after throwing away the linen, jumped with the thinking that he had to change something of this equal daily life with a gray color.
He was going to color his future with the warm colors of the dreams and put it on humanity’s service. So his life could have a sense henceforth…
Translated by: Lorena Uliu
By Shefki Hysa
The Doe
The asphalted public road, as straight as a die, lay among a wooded forest, always green and disappeared somewhere in the horizon. If you observed carefully, the horizon would give the idea of a loss or more exactly of a mixture of colours in a unique heinous colour, without a clear name, extremely provoking, hateful, terribly hateful... The eternal blue of the sky, the green of the trees and the grey of the asphalt melted away and that nameless colour rose...Oh, what a hateful colour!... Hateful and horrible at the same time, maybe because it was an eyesore with that view of a monotonous veil, which could arouse an immensity of corrosive feelings, exactly contrary to that sensation that the white veil of the bride arouses to the groom in front of the altar. That nameless colour would remind you the veil of death and it seemed as if the public road threw you away to Hell... Could that street lead you somewhere or not?!...
Behind the back, somewhere tremendously far away, it used to begin the town, with a grey colour too, as though the death had clutched it to the throat, smothering slowly the colours of the nature...
Where could you go?!... Behind the death’s door, alongside, to the left, to the right an immense forest, stately and tremendous, in front a frightful immensity... Hell...
- Oh! - I screamed with a howling voice that came from the profoundness of my heart.
- O God, give me the force to understand this mystery of the crossroads!
Surprisingly, without being in a desert crossroad, I was experiencing some ghoulish feelings. A tempting voice was intonating in my ear:
- Everywhere you go, you go and you don’t come back, everywhere you go, you go and..., everywhere you go...
Maybe I was lost in the lands of fairy-tales and who knows what kind of sylphs, dragons, divas and ghosts were going to come out of the forest to engulf me?!... Who knows?!...
I revaluated my situation and I couldn’t understand if I was dreaming or not, if I was asleep or awake, in this or in that world... I couldn’t explain to my self how I had arrived in this situation... It seemed as though I was robbed at my own home and so bewitched, I was left far away the humanity, in an extremely straight way, among an immense forest, me-the complete ignorant man... And that way couldn't lead you anywhere. It could only fling you in the death’s lap...
It seemed as if a coma had me in its power, from which I couldn’t extract a reaction to myself, neither the finest muscular movement, as if my reasoning was numb, my instincts too, and I had no desire to move in any direction...As if I were a dried tree with the legs amidst the asphalt... And what can you expect from such a tree in a crossroad, immense everywhere?!..
Suddenly something moved... Absolutely... I began to spy on it...
- Prrr, prrr!...
It was an empty sound, like that of a piece of leather crumbled from the trunk of a dried tree... Was it an extraterrestrial sound?... Maybe I have not good ears!...
- Prrr, prrr!...
The sound was repeated with the tempos and the dimensions of the real...It was an illusory sound, wasn’t it?!...
Excited by the sound-waves, I was constrained to turn sideways. And a lively ball that had rolled off the nearest pine close to the public road, appeared in front of my eyes. What was it? Was it a squirrel or a weasel?
The ball opened and an extraordinary little animal, with a small oval gray face, took shape. It jumped on the back legs and caressed the face with the forefeet. Its small eyes brightened like the just burnt cinders. It wheeled round itself, wagged and shook the tail, which was bigger than its body, as though it wanted to brag with its pride, that fleecy mass, which was standing upwards, arching like an umbrella over the little head.
- Prrr, prrr! Prrr, prrr! - The sound was heard again and it seemed as if the small creature or a voice that I had heard once talked to me.
I froze.
- You don’t know me?!... You act as if you have never seen me before?!... I think that you have forgotten me!...Hi, hi, hi – exploded that creature with a human voice, followed with a derisive laughter and I don’t know why I had the idea that a nymph, a jinn or the Beauty of the Earth itself was hidden behind that little creature...
That voice sounded known as well as unknown and when the waves were still sounding, the silhouette of a girl, whom I had met once, somewhere, suddenly greyed...
- You are that poppet, aren’t you? - I screamed instinctively and I felt a wave of warmth and vitality permeating into my freezing body.
- No, I am the Doe! – laughed the creature in front of my naive astonishment.
- The Doe?! Which Doe, because you are driving me crazy?! – I sprang in myself and I felt released of that numbness that had seized my whole being.
- You have to know that I revived you from that madness that had invaded you!... I am the Doe, the daughter of the Squirrel... I am the queen of this forest, - replied that jezebel, insulted in its dignity from my ignorance.
- Aha, you are the Doe! The queen of the forest! But it seems as if the death has devastated this forest, where are its habitants Your Majesty?! - I continued not less astonished and bewitched by the discourse of that mysterious creature which still I couldn’t remember where I had met in the past times, before losing the vivacity in that endless way...
- I am that Poppet, coming from the high mountains of Muji’s Fairy, I am not the Doe!... You forgot me very soon... For which Doe are you talking about, you good boy?!
- The Poppet?!... The Poppet or the Doe, my beloved, because you are driving me crazy, with forests’ kingdoms and legends’ high mountains?!...
- You should thank me because I cleared up your memory from the magic of madness, you sleeping beautiful boy?!... Neither that Poppet nor the Doe can you remember?!... You deserve to stay in this endless way, like the bride’s and groom’s relatives, frozen from the Fairy’s power in Muji’s high mountains! – interrupted me, really disappointed, the Poppet-Doe and immediately made a quick about-face, disappearing among the woods of the deserted forest...
The word “disappearance” itself used to terrify me; moreover I was really lost in a magical way that couldn’t lead me anywhere... Endless way... The death’s way... Suddenly the symbol of vivacity had appeared in this way and weirdly it was leaving me alone, with the veil of death, because I didn’t know how to deal with life...
- O God! Give me life to follow life! – I screamed with all my force and I rushed as fast as possible to the forest, trying to pursue the Doe-Poppet...
I was running blindfold from the exasperation when I felt my head bumping into the pine’s trunk.
- I am here, above the fir! – I felt the familiar facetious voice.
That voice made my whole being shudder and it filled me with life and vivacity.
As if God’s power rejuvenated me at once to triumph over the uniformity of death...
- Hold on, Doe! – I shouted elated and nebulously I hugged the fir.
- I am the Poppet, not the Doe, you unmindful boy! I am at the pine sideways...
- I am chasing after you, Poppet. I am almost catching you...!
- I am the Doe...! The queen of the deserted forest... The daughter of the Plumed-Tail Squirrel, - laughed and made fun of me that melodic voice and I was ready to explode from the anger, from the inability I had in those moments...
The Poppet-Doe or the Doe-Poppet reminded me an invention of my imagination that used to caper only in the desert of my ill fantasy. And I crashed in the abysses of desperation, so tired of that unlucky hunting. So it passed a long time of drowsiness and of fighting with the desert pines and firs and my hunt didn’t appear anywhere, except its voice that was echoing everywhere...
In an instant I decided to give up living my life and to be submerged in the death’s lap. It was exactly then when the Poppet-Doe appeared in front of me, more captivating... It looked like a sparkling lightning plume and it was sufficient to fire it and, with the speed of light, it would permeate into all the spaces between the eternal green woods...
Although I was haggard, practically lost in the doze’s arms, I gathered strength to view with love that fantastic creature...
- It’s me. I am of meat and blood, I have a soul and I am mortal like you, but I know how to survive...Here I am, touch me if you want! – said all of a sudden the Poppet-Doe, the Queen of the forest, with a soft voice, very fond, burdened with regret notes, but I had no energy to move the fingers...
I noticed curiously her lips, the white teeth, small and sharp like all the gnawers, its small oval face, a little pinched from the eternal gymnastics of its kind along the forest woods, the forehead hair, that starry view, that time after time used to disappear under the crest of pride, that showed a rare feature of that being: the savage freedom, and I thought how difficult its domestication was...
- You don’t love me anymore?! – it furrowed the face and meantime, rushed and grasped my neck like a fur with a magical warmth, which I had dreamt for so long...
What warmth...! It seemed as if I was hugging in my chest the Beauty of the Earth...
- Why, have I ever loved you?! – I murmured surprised.
- Always...but we have missed each other for so long...!
- Then, come, come with me! – I said and jumped with the idea that, being accompanied with this fabulous creature would drive crazy all my friends, who had acted high and mighty with those living creatures that moved around them...
With the passing of days, weeks, months and years my love for the Doe was not ending... Neither her love for me... It seemed as if the world was breathing from our love...
But happiness doesn’t last forever, as being a matter of another world...
Then I figured out that my friends began to trick on me... Maybe jealous of that rare creature that God had brought near me, surprisingly, in stead of congratulating me, they tried to diminish its values, exalting their inventions, some lionesses, tigresses, puppies, cats, mouses, foxes, chickens and every kind of ostentatious creatures, which were worse than lyrebirds, more talkative than parrots... Eh, the friendship...! It is better to be on your guard against it?!...
- The Doe...! A small and capricious thing... Wild, wild and mysterious, maybe it will never be civilized...! You would better choose a lioness... A lady in the jungle and in the zoo... Look how happy we feel with their grandiosity! – didn’t leave me alone the masters of the jungle’s queens...
- My happiness is enough! – I responded to the enviers....
- As you want, but the lionesses are the delicacy of this life! - they insisted.
- The does too... Everybody has his own likings... Then the forest can’t be enjoyed only with the lionesses... The roes are necessary too, even the... each creature has its own beauty and this makes more varied the forest’s life, with its presence... Even the does...! Even the does...! Even the does...! They are the rarest thing of the wild world! – I teased the evil friends, as far as to make them turn their back and disappear immediately, appearing next day even more annoying...
What have they got with me?!... As if my happiness was troubling them?!... Did the Doe’s particularity make them furious?!... Did they want to see me like themselves, near ordinary creatures or lonely?!... I had different likings...The Doe made me happy...!
Eh, this life! Overstrained... Cruel life! The man gets tired of its vicissitudes one day... Even the superman gets tired of intrigues... Once I got tired too... I was tired of intriguers... Those whom I called friends and mates... All my companions ... All my envious acquaintances... I was so tired of them...
With or without my desire, I decided to change, to deny myself again... Far away from intriguers and intrigues... I let the Doe go in the forest... Dolorously... I brought it back in the forest.... There, among the trees, among its species, the squirrels... And I turned the back to it, thinking to get separated from it forever, but I don’t know what used to keep me attached with the common past... A kind of unconfessed sorrow...
I used to get out sometimes close to the forest and hiss, keeping my ear to the ground and spying... I could feel how the forest gave the hissing back... The woods’ leaves would swish and the Doe, like a wind plume, trunk to trunk, appeared amidst the nearest wood’s branches...
- Prrr, prrr, prrr, prrr! – it used to greet me with its immemorial tongue.
Its eyes used to shine from the tears... It used to spring around and wander as if liking to remind me the past times and, while being faced with the glacier of my soul, slowly, so unhappy, it would turn back crestfallen in the squirrels’ kingdom...
Finally I felt that this adventure was torturing me... And I decided to follow the way of solitude, with an old longing in my soul, in the endless public road of desperation, among the forest, at the same time near and far away the Doe...
Lonely... Who knows...?
Tranlsated by: Lorena Uliu
The Doe
The asphalted public road, as straight as a die, lay among a wooded forest, always green and disappeared somewhere in the horizon. If you observed carefully, the horizon would give the idea of a loss or more exactly of a mixture of colours in a unique heinous colour, without a clear name, extremely provoking, hateful, terribly hateful... The eternal blue of the sky, the green of the trees and the grey of the asphalt melted away and that nameless colour rose...Oh, what a hateful colour!... Hateful and horrible at the same time, maybe because it was an eyesore with that view of a monotonous veil, which could arouse an immensity of corrosive feelings, exactly contrary to that sensation that the white veil of the bride arouses to the groom in front of the altar. That nameless colour would remind you the veil of death and it seemed as if the public road threw you away to Hell... Could that street lead you somewhere or not?!...
Behind the back, somewhere tremendously far away, it used to begin the town, with a grey colour too, as though the death had clutched it to the throat, smothering slowly the colours of the nature...
Where could you go?!... Behind the death’s door, alongside, to the left, to the right an immense forest, stately and tremendous, in front a frightful immensity... Hell...
- Oh! - I screamed with a howling voice that came from the profoundness of my heart.
- O God, give me the force to understand this mystery of the crossroads!
Surprisingly, without being in a desert crossroad, I was experiencing some ghoulish feelings. A tempting voice was intonating in my ear:
- Everywhere you go, you go and you don’t come back, everywhere you go, you go and..., everywhere you go...
Maybe I was lost in the lands of fairy-tales and who knows what kind of sylphs, dragons, divas and ghosts were going to come out of the forest to engulf me?!... Who knows?!...
I revaluated my situation and I couldn’t understand if I was dreaming or not, if I was asleep or awake, in this or in that world... I couldn’t explain to my self how I had arrived in this situation... It seemed as though I was robbed at my own home and so bewitched, I was left far away the humanity, in an extremely straight way, among an immense forest, me-the complete ignorant man... And that way couldn't lead you anywhere. It could only fling you in the death’s lap...
It seemed as if a coma had me in its power, from which I couldn’t extract a reaction to myself, neither the finest muscular movement, as if my reasoning was numb, my instincts too, and I had no desire to move in any direction...As if I were a dried tree with the legs amidst the asphalt... And what can you expect from such a tree in a crossroad, immense everywhere?!..
Suddenly something moved... Absolutely... I began to spy on it...
- Prrr, prrr!...
It was an empty sound, like that of a piece of leather crumbled from the trunk of a dried tree... Was it an extraterrestrial sound?... Maybe I have not good ears!...
- Prrr, prrr!...
The sound was repeated with the tempos and the dimensions of the real...It was an illusory sound, wasn’t it?!...
Excited by the sound-waves, I was constrained to turn sideways. And a lively ball that had rolled off the nearest pine close to the public road, appeared in front of my eyes. What was it? Was it a squirrel or a weasel?
The ball opened and an extraordinary little animal, with a small oval gray face, took shape. It jumped on the back legs and caressed the face with the forefeet. Its small eyes brightened like the just burnt cinders. It wheeled round itself, wagged and shook the tail, which was bigger than its body, as though it wanted to brag with its pride, that fleecy mass, which was standing upwards, arching like an umbrella over the little head.
- Prrr, prrr! Prrr, prrr! - The sound was heard again and it seemed as if the small creature or a voice that I had heard once talked to me.
I froze.
- You don’t know me?!... You act as if you have never seen me before?!... I think that you have forgotten me!...Hi, hi, hi – exploded that creature with a human voice, followed with a derisive laughter and I don’t know why I had the idea that a nymph, a jinn or the Beauty of the Earth itself was hidden behind that little creature...
That voice sounded known as well as unknown and when the waves were still sounding, the silhouette of a girl, whom I had met once, somewhere, suddenly greyed...
- You are that poppet, aren’t you? - I screamed instinctively and I felt a wave of warmth and vitality permeating into my freezing body.
- No, I am the Doe! – laughed the creature in front of my naive astonishment.
- The Doe?! Which Doe, because you are driving me crazy?! – I sprang in myself and I felt released of that numbness that had seized my whole being.
- You have to know that I revived you from that madness that had invaded you!... I am the Doe, the daughter of the Squirrel... I am the queen of this forest, - replied that jezebel, insulted in its dignity from my ignorance.
- Aha, you are the Doe! The queen of the forest! But it seems as if the death has devastated this forest, where are its habitants Your Majesty?! - I continued not less astonished and bewitched by the discourse of that mysterious creature which still I couldn’t remember where I had met in the past times, before losing the vivacity in that endless way...
- I am that Poppet, coming from the high mountains of Muji’s Fairy, I am not the Doe!... You forgot me very soon... For which Doe are you talking about, you good boy?!
- The Poppet?!... The Poppet or the Doe, my beloved, because you are driving me crazy, with forests’ kingdoms and legends’ high mountains?!...
- You should thank me because I cleared up your memory from the magic of madness, you sleeping beautiful boy?!... Neither that Poppet nor the Doe can you remember?!... You deserve to stay in this endless way, like the bride’s and groom’s relatives, frozen from the Fairy’s power in Muji’s high mountains! – interrupted me, really disappointed, the Poppet-Doe and immediately made a quick about-face, disappearing among the woods of the deserted forest...
The word “disappearance” itself used to terrify me; moreover I was really lost in a magical way that couldn’t lead me anywhere... Endless way... The death’s way... Suddenly the symbol of vivacity had appeared in this way and weirdly it was leaving me alone, with the veil of death, because I didn’t know how to deal with life...
- O God! Give me life to follow life! – I screamed with all my force and I rushed as fast as possible to the forest, trying to pursue the Doe-Poppet...
I was running blindfold from the exasperation when I felt my head bumping into the pine’s trunk.
- I am here, above the fir! – I felt the familiar facetious voice.
That voice made my whole being shudder and it filled me with life and vivacity.
As if God’s power rejuvenated me at once to triumph over the uniformity of death...
- Hold on, Doe! – I shouted elated and nebulously I hugged the fir.
- I am the Poppet, not the Doe, you unmindful boy! I am at the pine sideways...
- I am chasing after you, Poppet. I am almost catching you...!
- I am the Doe...! The queen of the deserted forest... The daughter of the Plumed-Tail Squirrel, - laughed and made fun of me that melodic voice and I was ready to explode from the anger, from the inability I had in those moments...
The Poppet-Doe or the Doe-Poppet reminded me an invention of my imagination that used to caper only in the desert of my ill fantasy. And I crashed in the abysses of desperation, so tired of that unlucky hunting. So it passed a long time of drowsiness and of fighting with the desert pines and firs and my hunt didn’t appear anywhere, except its voice that was echoing everywhere...
In an instant I decided to give up living my life and to be submerged in the death’s lap. It was exactly then when the Poppet-Doe appeared in front of me, more captivating... It looked like a sparkling lightning plume and it was sufficient to fire it and, with the speed of light, it would permeate into all the spaces between the eternal green woods...
Although I was haggard, practically lost in the doze’s arms, I gathered strength to view with love that fantastic creature...
- It’s me. I am of meat and blood, I have a soul and I am mortal like you, but I know how to survive...Here I am, touch me if you want! – said all of a sudden the Poppet-Doe, the Queen of the forest, with a soft voice, very fond, burdened with regret notes, but I had no energy to move the fingers...
I noticed curiously her lips, the white teeth, small and sharp like all the gnawers, its small oval face, a little pinched from the eternal gymnastics of its kind along the forest woods, the forehead hair, that starry view, that time after time used to disappear under the crest of pride, that showed a rare feature of that being: the savage freedom, and I thought how difficult its domestication was...
- You don’t love me anymore?! – it furrowed the face and meantime, rushed and grasped my neck like a fur with a magical warmth, which I had dreamt for so long...
What warmth...! It seemed as if I was hugging in my chest the Beauty of the Earth...
- Why, have I ever loved you?! – I murmured surprised.
- Always...but we have missed each other for so long...!
- Then, come, come with me! – I said and jumped with the idea that, being accompanied with this fabulous creature would drive crazy all my friends, who had acted high and mighty with those living creatures that moved around them...
With the passing of days, weeks, months and years my love for the Doe was not ending... Neither her love for me... It seemed as if the world was breathing from our love...
But happiness doesn’t last forever, as being a matter of another world...
Then I figured out that my friends began to trick on me... Maybe jealous of that rare creature that God had brought near me, surprisingly, in stead of congratulating me, they tried to diminish its values, exalting their inventions, some lionesses, tigresses, puppies, cats, mouses, foxes, chickens and every kind of ostentatious creatures, which were worse than lyrebirds, more talkative than parrots... Eh, the friendship...! It is better to be on your guard against it?!...
- The Doe...! A small and capricious thing... Wild, wild and mysterious, maybe it will never be civilized...! You would better choose a lioness... A lady in the jungle and in the zoo... Look how happy we feel with their grandiosity! – didn’t leave me alone the masters of the jungle’s queens...
- My happiness is enough! – I responded to the enviers....
- As you want, but the lionesses are the delicacy of this life! - they insisted.
- The does too... Everybody has his own likings... Then the forest can’t be enjoyed only with the lionesses... The roes are necessary too, even the... each creature has its own beauty and this makes more varied the forest’s life, with its presence... Even the does...! Even the does...! Even the does...! They are the rarest thing of the wild world! – I teased the evil friends, as far as to make them turn their back and disappear immediately, appearing next day even more annoying...
What have they got with me?!... As if my happiness was troubling them?!... Did the Doe’s particularity make them furious?!... Did they want to see me like themselves, near ordinary creatures or lonely?!... I had different likings...The Doe made me happy...!
Eh, this life! Overstrained... Cruel life! The man gets tired of its vicissitudes one day... Even the superman gets tired of intrigues... Once I got tired too... I was tired of intriguers... Those whom I called friends and mates... All my companions ... All my envious acquaintances... I was so tired of them...
With or without my desire, I decided to change, to deny myself again... Far away from intriguers and intrigues... I let the Doe go in the forest... Dolorously... I brought it back in the forest.... There, among the trees, among its species, the squirrels... And I turned the back to it, thinking to get separated from it forever, but I don’t know what used to keep me attached with the common past... A kind of unconfessed sorrow...
I used to get out sometimes close to the forest and hiss, keeping my ear to the ground and spying... I could feel how the forest gave the hissing back... The woods’ leaves would swish and the Doe, like a wind plume, trunk to trunk, appeared amidst the nearest wood’s branches...
- Prrr, prrr, prrr, prrr! – it used to greet me with its immemorial tongue.
Its eyes used to shine from the tears... It used to spring around and wander as if liking to remind me the past times and, while being faced with the glacier of my soul, slowly, so unhappy, it would turn back crestfallen in the squirrels’ kingdom...
Finally I felt that this adventure was torturing me... And I decided to follow the way of solitude, with an old longing in my soul, in the endless public road of desperation, among the forest, at the same time near and far away the Doe...
Lonely... Who knows...?
Tranlsated by: Lorena Uliu
By Shefki Hysa
The confession
Fatija trembled when the voice of the bride brought up the start of her thoughts. After all, a kind of sleep is even meditation, being lost in yourself darkness, where are accumulated the pains, the sorrows, all the sufferings and the troubles of life. There is no better cure for these incurable wounds, harmed unwittingly. You wander in your mind, you unwrap and spin that poor, slowly, like a coil of wool, like the old- age witch would long for. But what did the bride say? The poor thing supposes that the unfortunate old-woman is crazy!
- Did I hear your voice or I didn’t? - She said to the young lady who was grating some cabbages in a used copper pie- pan.
Everything in that cabin, where they had found a shelter after the horror that followed them until the gates of the Albanian border, was half. And, as if the horrible memories that went around time after time in the eyes of the mind weren’t enough, it was also the poverty, like a flock of thorns.
- I said a commission; a commission with some foreigners has arrived here- repeated the bride, in the face of whom, the mother distinguished compassion.
She felt creeps in her creasy, like a ball of rags, old body, arrant because of the gloom rather than the old- age.
- Did you say foreigners? But what do they want here? -almost screamed the old woman, full of shivers and without understanding if the presence of the foreigners brought this hatred or something else…
- They say that they are doing their best mother. They are collecting testimonies for the crimes of our murderers. They say that the world will condemn the Greek Zervist who set on fire, killed and destroyed Chameria- sweetened her voice the young lady, like she had in front her three years old son that needs to be fondled.
- The black goodness of the foreigner! The foreigner remains a foreigner, my daughter. This is from your mother… But what are they looking for? ... Can you say one more time because I feel like my ears are roaring! - emphasized the incredulous and curious mother, meanwhile converted like the fire that blows up in a flame that is thundering.
- The people have got together in Rexha Plaku’s house and they are telling the foreigners about the atrocities that the Greeks have done to us, how they killed and ousted us from our homes, how they plundered and burnt down our fortune, how they left us like refugees without a homeland - said tearfully the bride.
- Is it true?!- whispered hesitantly the mother as though a glimmer had inflamed the corners of the afflicted spirit.
She guessed that it had passed more than a year from that cursed day, when the death with the image of the perfidious Greek Zervists, had come upon their village there in Chameria, in every house, had furiously thrust their clutches in the life of innocent people, had slaughtered, massacred and covered with blood children, boys and men…The coward death wasn’t reserving neither the women!...
“Oh curse, only curse! - jumped the insurrectionary being.-Cursed in eternity! The foreigners! Those who killed us at night and cried us during the day! ... In this way and every time in this way… Maybe since this world was created… The foreigner kills with his knife and his smile too, with bullet and bread… Yes, yes even the bread of the foreigner harasses you! It can stick in your throat, and no one believes you… This is why the story with the foreigners is repeated and repeated… As it happens in our Chameri… No, foreigners I can’t believe you… At least me, the poor old woman, because you reduced me in this way, lonely…
The mother, a little infuriated, like those that feel fainted and lose their temper, was missed in front of the scenes of the tragedy that her torpid imagination made and remade constantly, until the bride’s voice moved her from that self-stiffness. She experienced day and night this stiffness, which brought in the eyes of her mind, as with magic, all the dead people and she flew at the death with the arms of the fantasy, took it away, far away, cleansed the wounds of the victims, talking and discussing with them…
After all, the immersion in the past, even though excruciating, was the only pleasure that consoled the mother, besides her three - years old nephew, whom she loved like the apple of the eye. He was like her son and if she enjoyed the apple of the eye it was owing to this inheritor…
- Did you say anything my daughter? Because I think I am becoming deaf my poor girl - was felt the mother and she noticed that even the young woman, although she still wasn’t thirty years old, was cockling and turning grey, like many other widows.
- I said that those foreigners don’t believe the witnesses of our people. They consider them fantasies…
It broke Fatije’s heart as though the knife of the Zervists had struck her. Her sight darkened and she was stunned again. This time, only her bride’s hands pull her out from this faint condition. It was a kind of logic asphyxia.
- Look after your son my daughter, - said the mother and stood up with some efforts. She didn’t move her hands, lapful on the apron as she was a pregnant bride, waiting her first baby. The only thought that buzzed in her head was that the foreigner remains a foreigner. And her whole body trembled as from the fever…
Walking in a path, she set eyes on the leaves of the nuts that were yellowing. A turbid autumn sky hung beyond her head. It was the autumn of 1946. The fires of Cham refugees still puffed lightly in Vasilikua, beneath Konispol. The tombstones whitened in Qafëbotë. The mold on those graves wasn’t dried up yet…
The old woman climbed down in the midst of the village, holding herself in the trunks of the nuts and olives. She tried to fall and she didn’t fall. The hopes kept her up …
She looked from far away the crowd and they saw her too. The foreigners, although everything was translated in details, continued to shake their head doubtfully. The murderous massacre, that tormented and victimized them, and that was described from the eyewitnesses seemed to be a fabled bugbear rather than a lived homicidal truth. The konispolits, crowded together in front of the commission, were getting angry by this indifference.
Fatija, who was imagining just a little the run of the conversations, appeared above the square. Surprisingly, a waking force somewhere inside of her interior, made her footfalls more secure. “The foreigner remains a foreigner” was the only chorus thought within her skull, clothed with the white wimple, tied in the gill. The hatred boiled her body, shrunken and crooked from the terror of the cruelty. So hirsute in appearance, she gripped with her hands that were trembling, the lap of the apron. The irritated people hushed and paved like she was bringing a big proof that contained all the proofs, facts and testimonies, those said and those that the people were going to say…In this way the foreigners couldn’t shake their heads with distrust anymore…
The eyes of all the people were fixed simultaneously on the lap of the apron, in an anxious waiting, as though she was having a baby right now, a baby that would grow up instantly to witness with the signs of the wounds, the screams of the terror in front of the tortures of the death, everything that the fervid Chams had seen, heard and suffered…
Even the people of the commission scented something. They hushed and stared at the old woman like a lively and fabled testimony, like a suffering, dolor and poverty node, which was imperceptible from their minds.
The mother was drawing near slowly, like a mortal ceremony. In an instant she hesitated: should she stop or should she go to the end of that hall where the foreigners were staying. Sometimes she warped her face, like in her bride hood from the pangs of childbirth, her only child who was massacred in front of her from the Zervist hangmen. None of the people that were surrounding her didn’t peep or say even a word.
When she approached the table of the foreigners, she was out of breath and the tears that had withered from her deep eyes a long time ago, crashed and tied up her throat. However, she looked up from her belly and gazed the infuriating foreigners. Suddenly a plume of hair tore off from her hands and fell on the paper-work with the ghoulish semblance of a peel that is flayed from a human head…
The foreigners hit the ceiling and backed with horror. A scream, like that of the raven, rose from the breasts of the people. The cynical view of the mother involved all the people and stopped at the foreigners. They didn’t speak, like being scared of a punishment that could appear in every moment.
- So you are collecting evidences against the criminals and their crimes? Here they are! They speak alone for the calamity that the perfidious people threw us, - she said and her voice broke as from a sudden blow. Some tears flowed down by the furrows of the weather- beaten cheeks. She hushed a little and then began to tell, more for herself than for the others.
- We heard the hectic sound of some shoes in the solid stairs. We froze. The foreboding of the bad or the shadow of that ominous clatter, which was flying at our two-storied house, like a solid castle in a cliff in shore there in Chameri, gagged us. We had a joy that day, I don’t remember very well but we were laughing with the little boy, who was dangling in the shoulder of my son. Even the little child stopped smiling. The whey- faced bride, like being simulated by something, grabbed the tongs in the fire- place and remained with the scared eyes fixed in the door. The tramp stopped for a little, the time that a man needs to breathe, in the ground upstairs, and then a kick hit and the door crashed like a thunderclap, against the walls. A leaf that had flowed out from the hinge slanted with a remonstrant crunch. Two bearded soldiers of Zerva, one taller than the other, appeared in the groundsel. The taller one had a red eye, infuriated from the beverage or maybe from the sleeplessness, like the view of a mad dog. Promptly he took the dagger from the girdle and so cross-eyed he threatened us that if we felt sorry for our skin we wouldn’t move or scream. The bride put the both hands on the face to smother the cry that she uttered from the panic. The other soldier, a thick- witted man that knew only to grin, put the point of the dagger in her throat in the moment that she was trying to hit him with the tongs. I rushed between the soldier and the bride and very frightened, I pushed them away from each other. My heart was beating like a drum in the breast. The little boy, who was in the hands of his father and scared from the brutal arrival of those foreigners, burst into tears with screams. Quit down that puppy because otherwise I will pluck his head like a bird - he grinned to my son and approached him with his eyes that were sparkling only badness. I threw myself again between the murderer and my son. They both had the same age of my son. Nameless and nor twenty years old they were cruel like a scion of the devil. They obliged us to go in the corner of the room, my son, the bride and me, trying to protect them with my body from the horrible cusp of the dagger in the hands of the cross- eyed man. The thick- witted man, who was keeping two guns and a dagger, hang around the house, with that abhorrent and voiceless smile, like a sufferer of apoplexy. The shabby floor of plane wood was whimpering and fulminating from those heavy shoes that those damning people were wearing. The cross-eyed man pulled over the heap with mattresses and quilts, the hampers, the buffets, messed the whole house and turned everything backward. He was searching for gold whereas the thick- witted man had his eyes on us as he was flying around, hitting with the toe cap the dresses of my set of clothes. My son hardly restrained himself but I stopped his run-up, nipping him to hush and staying in any case in front of him. The cross-eyed man, who wasn’t finding any worth thing, grumbled and grunted with a hollow voice. He was almost exasperated. His forehead became black. I followed with anxiety every move of him and in that moment I would like to have had a batch of gold for those bogeys so that they couldn’t touch my son, the bride and their child, my dear. I didn’t want the gold before the little child. But instantly the cross- eyed man sat up and ordered the thick- witted man to bind us. Oh, that instant! The eyelashes were wobbling from the deviltry of that criminal. How he squeezed the jowls and the teeth, how chuckled that peevish black hog! O my God, what a hideous creature on earth! He jumped over my son, slipped the terrified baby, threw it in the set of clothes and put his foot in the throat to suffocate it. My son escaped from the hands of the thick- witted man and hunched to save the child. He scuffled with the cross- eyed man, who flounced to him with fists and kicks. He grabbed my son from the hair and began to drag him by the room. My bride and me, bound together, screamed but it was impossible to save him. The thick- witted man held from the arms my son and the infuriating cross- eyed man hit him in the belly with his heavy shoes. His eyes were blooded from the rabies. When my son’s body fell in the ground, almost dead, the gluttonous cross- eyed man stabbed the dagger in his heart, pulled it, and so covered with blood stabbed it again and again… Even the thick- witted man blazed up… With the bayonet…They made his body holey… The bride lost consciousness immediately whereas I was watching as in a haze, with my broken heart, almost exhausted, how my son screamed: Oh, mother, they killed me”!
How trembled and curled the corpse, still warm, how dribbled the blood, sprinkled the wall and the murderer’s clothes, poured on the floor, some of it exuding through a slot downstairs, in the dark of the cot whereas the other part shrank and froze in my feet…
But was this enough?! The thick- witted man didn’t take away that bogey laugh from his lips whereas the cross- eyed man gabbled, grinning near my nose, with the blood of my son dripping from the knife…I was parched. With the wall-eyes from a horror that one has never heard or seen, from that very arduous dread for the shoulders of a grey- headed mother, I had lost, almost completely, my tenderness… I was like a living cadaver… Whereas the bad men, who still wanted to torture me, after they had slaughtered my son like a cattle, peeled his head and put the bloody skin on the lap of the apron… Even that apple of the eye darkled and I couldn’t see anymore… When I recollected myself, they had gone…
I washed with my tears the house that was covered with blood and I took the way beyond the border, at least I could save the bride and the little boy from the clutches of the pestilence that Zerva threw us, with that band of cursed recreants…
The crowd that was listening to the story terrified, without understanding, blazed in a rebellion whisper that surrounded the mother. So integrated, that close group of people, aforetime violated, irradiated the feverish desire for justice, in front of the table of the commission…
The foreigners that had already recollected themselves, as if they absorbed in every cell of their body the atrocity that these people had suffered, the revolt that the unrequited maiming caused to them…The justice was among them, massacred…
They took some pictures as if they wanted to fix in celluloid the human anger, wrote something in their papers, closed them hurriedly into some black briefcases and left the pace with a car…
Mother Fatija took with caresses and sorrow the skin of her son’s head, winded it on with caution and care, and put it in the breast, unbuttoned the shirt and put it near the heart, as if she wanted to give her life from her life…
She took a look at the people one more time, with the tearful eyes and so, with the hands on the breast she turned her body, ready to go…
The people paved without saying a word. She was going. However she remained like a fresh incurable wound in their hearts, one more wound near the just hurt wounds of the innocence that enlightened their faces…
Translated by: Lorena Uliu
The confession
Fatija trembled when the voice of the bride brought up the start of her thoughts. After all, a kind of sleep is even meditation, being lost in yourself darkness, where are accumulated the pains, the sorrows, all the sufferings and the troubles of life. There is no better cure for these incurable wounds, harmed unwittingly. You wander in your mind, you unwrap and spin that poor, slowly, like a coil of wool, like the old- age witch would long for. But what did the bride say? The poor thing supposes that the unfortunate old-woman is crazy!
- Did I hear your voice or I didn’t? - She said to the young lady who was grating some cabbages in a used copper pie- pan.
Everything in that cabin, where they had found a shelter after the horror that followed them until the gates of the Albanian border, was half. And, as if the horrible memories that went around time after time in the eyes of the mind weren’t enough, it was also the poverty, like a flock of thorns.
- I said a commission; a commission with some foreigners has arrived here- repeated the bride, in the face of whom, the mother distinguished compassion.
She felt creeps in her creasy, like a ball of rags, old body, arrant because of the gloom rather than the old- age.
- Did you say foreigners? But what do they want here? -almost screamed the old woman, full of shivers and without understanding if the presence of the foreigners brought this hatred or something else…
- They say that they are doing their best mother. They are collecting testimonies for the crimes of our murderers. They say that the world will condemn the Greek Zervist who set on fire, killed and destroyed Chameria- sweetened her voice the young lady, like she had in front her three years old son that needs to be fondled.
- The black goodness of the foreigner! The foreigner remains a foreigner, my daughter. This is from your mother… But what are they looking for? ... Can you say one more time because I feel like my ears are roaring! - emphasized the incredulous and curious mother, meanwhile converted like the fire that blows up in a flame that is thundering.
- The people have got together in Rexha Plaku’s house and they are telling the foreigners about the atrocities that the Greeks have done to us, how they killed and ousted us from our homes, how they plundered and burnt down our fortune, how they left us like refugees without a homeland - said tearfully the bride.
- Is it true?!- whispered hesitantly the mother as though a glimmer had inflamed the corners of the afflicted spirit.
She guessed that it had passed more than a year from that cursed day, when the death with the image of the perfidious Greek Zervists, had come upon their village there in Chameria, in every house, had furiously thrust their clutches in the life of innocent people, had slaughtered, massacred and covered with blood children, boys and men…The coward death wasn’t reserving neither the women!...
“Oh curse, only curse! - jumped the insurrectionary being.-Cursed in eternity! The foreigners! Those who killed us at night and cried us during the day! ... In this way and every time in this way… Maybe since this world was created… The foreigner kills with his knife and his smile too, with bullet and bread… Yes, yes even the bread of the foreigner harasses you! It can stick in your throat, and no one believes you… This is why the story with the foreigners is repeated and repeated… As it happens in our Chameri… No, foreigners I can’t believe you… At least me, the poor old woman, because you reduced me in this way, lonely…
The mother, a little infuriated, like those that feel fainted and lose their temper, was missed in front of the scenes of the tragedy that her torpid imagination made and remade constantly, until the bride’s voice moved her from that self-stiffness. She experienced day and night this stiffness, which brought in the eyes of her mind, as with magic, all the dead people and she flew at the death with the arms of the fantasy, took it away, far away, cleansed the wounds of the victims, talking and discussing with them…
After all, the immersion in the past, even though excruciating, was the only pleasure that consoled the mother, besides her three - years old nephew, whom she loved like the apple of the eye. He was like her son and if she enjoyed the apple of the eye it was owing to this inheritor…
- Did you say anything my daughter? Because I think I am becoming deaf my poor girl - was felt the mother and she noticed that even the young woman, although she still wasn’t thirty years old, was cockling and turning grey, like many other widows.
- I said that those foreigners don’t believe the witnesses of our people. They consider them fantasies…
It broke Fatije’s heart as though the knife of the Zervists had struck her. Her sight darkened and she was stunned again. This time, only her bride’s hands pull her out from this faint condition. It was a kind of logic asphyxia.
- Look after your son my daughter, - said the mother and stood up with some efforts. She didn’t move her hands, lapful on the apron as she was a pregnant bride, waiting her first baby. The only thought that buzzed in her head was that the foreigner remains a foreigner. And her whole body trembled as from the fever…
Walking in a path, she set eyes on the leaves of the nuts that were yellowing. A turbid autumn sky hung beyond her head. It was the autumn of 1946. The fires of Cham refugees still puffed lightly in Vasilikua, beneath Konispol. The tombstones whitened in Qafëbotë. The mold on those graves wasn’t dried up yet…
The old woman climbed down in the midst of the village, holding herself in the trunks of the nuts and olives. She tried to fall and she didn’t fall. The hopes kept her up …
She looked from far away the crowd and they saw her too. The foreigners, although everything was translated in details, continued to shake their head doubtfully. The murderous massacre, that tormented and victimized them, and that was described from the eyewitnesses seemed to be a fabled bugbear rather than a lived homicidal truth. The konispolits, crowded together in front of the commission, were getting angry by this indifference.
Fatija, who was imagining just a little the run of the conversations, appeared above the square. Surprisingly, a waking force somewhere inside of her interior, made her footfalls more secure. “The foreigner remains a foreigner” was the only chorus thought within her skull, clothed with the white wimple, tied in the gill. The hatred boiled her body, shrunken and crooked from the terror of the cruelty. So hirsute in appearance, she gripped with her hands that were trembling, the lap of the apron. The irritated people hushed and paved like she was bringing a big proof that contained all the proofs, facts and testimonies, those said and those that the people were going to say…In this way the foreigners couldn’t shake their heads with distrust anymore…
The eyes of all the people were fixed simultaneously on the lap of the apron, in an anxious waiting, as though she was having a baby right now, a baby that would grow up instantly to witness with the signs of the wounds, the screams of the terror in front of the tortures of the death, everything that the fervid Chams had seen, heard and suffered…
Even the people of the commission scented something. They hushed and stared at the old woman like a lively and fabled testimony, like a suffering, dolor and poverty node, which was imperceptible from their minds.
The mother was drawing near slowly, like a mortal ceremony. In an instant she hesitated: should she stop or should she go to the end of that hall where the foreigners were staying. Sometimes she warped her face, like in her bride hood from the pangs of childbirth, her only child who was massacred in front of her from the Zervist hangmen. None of the people that were surrounding her didn’t peep or say even a word.
When she approached the table of the foreigners, she was out of breath and the tears that had withered from her deep eyes a long time ago, crashed and tied up her throat. However, she looked up from her belly and gazed the infuriating foreigners. Suddenly a plume of hair tore off from her hands and fell on the paper-work with the ghoulish semblance of a peel that is flayed from a human head…
The foreigners hit the ceiling and backed with horror. A scream, like that of the raven, rose from the breasts of the people. The cynical view of the mother involved all the people and stopped at the foreigners. They didn’t speak, like being scared of a punishment that could appear in every moment.
- So you are collecting evidences against the criminals and their crimes? Here they are! They speak alone for the calamity that the perfidious people threw us, - she said and her voice broke as from a sudden blow. Some tears flowed down by the furrows of the weather- beaten cheeks. She hushed a little and then began to tell, more for herself than for the others.
- We heard the hectic sound of some shoes in the solid stairs. We froze. The foreboding of the bad or the shadow of that ominous clatter, which was flying at our two-storied house, like a solid castle in a cliff in shore there in Chameri, gagged us. We had a joy that day, I don’t remember very well but we were laughing with the little boy, who was dangling in the shoulder of my son. Even the little child stopped smiling. The whey- faced bride, like being simulated by something, grabbed the tongs in the fire- place and remained with the scared eyes fixed in the door. The tramp stopped for a little, the time that a man needs to breathe, in the ground upstairs, and then a kick hit and the door crashed like a thunderclap, against the walls. A leaf that had flowed out from the hinge slanted with a remonstrant crunch. Two bearded soldiers of Zerva, one taller than the other, appeared in the groundsel. The taller one had a red eye, infuriated from the beverage or maybe from the sleeplessness, like the view of a mad dog. Promptly he took the dagger from the girdle and so cross-eyed he threatened us that if we felt sorry for our skin we wouldn’t move or scream. The bride put the both hands on the face to smother the cry that she uttered from the panic. The other soldier, a thick- witted man that knew only to grin, put the point of the dagger in her throat in the moment that she was trying to hit him with the tongs. I rushed between the soldier and the bride and very frightened, I pushed them away from each other. My heart was beating like a drum in the breast. The little boy, who was in the hands of his father and scared from the brutal arrival of those foreigners, burst into tears with screams. Quit down that puppy because otherwise I will pluck his head like a bird - he grinned to my son and approached him with his eyes that were sparkling only badness. I threw myself again between the murderer and my son. They both had the same age of my son. Nameless and nor twenty years old they were cruel like a scion of the devil. They obliged us to go in the corner of the room, my son, the bride and me, trying to protect them with my body from the horrible cusp of the dagger in the hands of the cross- eyed man. The thick- witted man, who was keeping two guns and a dagger, hang around the house, with that abhorrent and voiceless smile, like a sufferer of apoplexy. The shabby floor of plane wood was whimpering and fulminating from those heavy shoes that those damning people were wearing. The cross-eyed man pulled over the heap with mattresses and quilts, the hampers, the buffets, messed the whole house and turned everything backward. He was searching for gold whereas the thick- witted man had his eyes on us as he was flying around, hitting with the toe cap the dresses of my set of clothes. My son hardly restrained himself but I stopped his run-up, nipping him to hush and staying in any case in front of him. The cross-eyed man, who wasn’t finding any worth thing, grumbled and grunted with a hollow voice. He was almost exasperated. His forehead became black. I followed with anxiety every move of him and in that moment I would like to have had a batch of gold for those bogeys so that they couldn’t touch my son, the bride and their child, my dear. I didn’t want the gold before the little child. But instantly the cross- eyed man sat up and ordered the thick- witted man to bind us. Oh, that instant! The eyelashes were wobbling from the deviltry of that criminal. How he squeezed the jowls and the teeth, how chuckled that peevish black hog! O my God, what a hideous creature on earth! He jumped over my son, slipped the terrified baby, threw it in the set of clothes and put his foot in the throat to suffocate it. My son escaped from the hands of the thick- witted man and hunched to save the child. He scuffled with the cross- eyed man, who flounced to him with fists and kicks. He grabbed my son from the hair and began to drag him by the room. My bride and me, bound together, screamed but it was impossible to save him. The thick- witted man held from the arms my son and the infuriating cross- eyed man hit him in the belly with his heavy shoes. His eyes were blooded from the rabies. When my son’s body fell in the ground, almost dead, the gluttonous cross- eyed man stabbed the dagger in his heart, pulled it, and so covered with blood stabbed it again and again… Even the thick- witted man blazed up… With the bayonet…They made his body holey… The bride lost consciousness immediately whereas I was watching as in a haze, with my broken heart, almost exhausted, how my son screamed: Oh, mother, they killed me”!
How trembled and curled the corpse, still warm, how dribbled the blood, sprinkled the wall and the murderer’s clothes, poured on the floor, some of it exuding through a slot downstairs, in the dark of the cot whereas the other part shrank and froze in my feet…
But was this enough?! The thick- witted man didn’t take away that bogey laugh from his lips whereas the cross- eyed man gabbled, grinning near my nose, with the blood of my son dripping from the knife…I was parched. With the wall-eyes from a horror that one has never heard or seen, from that very arduous dread for the shoulders of a grey- headed mother, I had lost, almost completely, my tenderness… I was like a living cadaver… Whereas the bad men, who still wanted to torture me, after they had slaughtered my son like a cattle, peeled his head and put the bloody skin on the lap of the apron… Even that apple of the eye darkled and I couldn’t see anymore… When I recollected myself, they had gone…
I washed with my tears the house that was covered with blood and I took the way beyond the border, at least I could save the bride and the little boy from the clutches of the pestilence that Zerva threw us, with that band of cursed recreants…
The crowd that was listening to the story terrified, without understanding, blazed in a rebellion whisper that surrounded the mother. So integrated, that close group of people, aforetime violated, irradiated the feverish desire for justice, in front of the table of the commission…
The foreigners that had already recollected themselves, as if they absorbed in every cell of their body the atrocity that these people had suffered, the revolt that the unrequited maiming caused to them…The justice was among them, massacred…
They took some pictures as if they wanted to fix in celluloid the human anger, wrote something in their papers, closed them hurriedly into some black briefcases and left the pace with a car…
Mother Fatija took with caresses and sorrow the skin of her son’s head, winded it on with caution and care, and put it in the breast, unbuttoned the shirt and put it near the heart, as if she wanted to give her life from her life…
She took a look at the people one more time, with the tearful eyes and so, with the hands on the breast she turned her body, ready to go…
The people paved without saying a word. She was going. However she remained like a fresh incurable wound in their hearts, one more wound near the just hurt wounds of the innocence that enlightened their faces…
Translated by: Lorena Uliu
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