The Pillars of Hercules

“In the next room was the former minister of education, Todi Lubonja, and his family, doing forced labor. His crime was that when he was minister he allowed Western music to be played, decadent music, and Hoxha was furious. That was in 1974. Lubonja was finally released in 1989.”

“What other famous prisoners were there?”

“The present President of Parliament, Pjeter Arbnori, a writer, was put in prison in the Stalinist time,” Nik said. “He stayed there for almost thirty years. Longer than Mandela! He finally founded the Albanian Social Democratic Party. He was imprisoned in 1954, released in 1984.”

“Were ordinary people imprisoned for political crimes?”

“There was a strange law here under the Hoxha regime,” Djouvi said. “If a man was regarded as a spy or an enemy his whole immediate family went with him to the camp.”

“Not just them,” Ahmet said. “It did not stop there. Other more distant family members were barred from higher education or other things.”

“They were pariahs,” I said, and explained the word; yes, yes, that was the word—political pariahs.

“It was illegal to flee the country,” Alma said. “But let’s say you managed it. After the police discovered that you had gone they arrested your brother—they punished another family member for what you had done.”

“Beards were banned,” Ahmet said—he looked as though he had the beginning of a beard himself.

“Have you heard of Disneyland?” I said. Of course they all had. “Workers in Disneyland are forbidden to grow beards. And that’s probably not the only obsession that Disneyland executives have in common with Albanian dictators.”

Long hair was also banned, and Western music, and blue jeans, and pornography. Until 1990 no one in Albania was allowed to own a car. As soon as the government changed people started letting their hair grow, and playing rock music, and wearing blue jeans. Stolen cars were being imported from Italy or smuggled over the Greek border by the thousands. All over Tirana there were men sitting on stools near stacks of yellowing two-cent porno newspapers.

“So tell me,” I said. “How did this horrible man Hoxha manage to stay in power?”

Djouvi said, “Hoxha made us believe that we were the best people in the world. There was crime and violence and poverty in every country except ours. We believed everything we were told. We did not question anything. We did not ask why we had water shortages in summer and power cuts in the winter. We had no taxes. We believed that we were the greatest country in the world, better than China which we had rejected, better than the Soviet Union, much better than the West.”

“At school we sang songs, praising Hoxha. What a wise and great man he was,” Alma said. “We all did military service.”

“We all had a weapon—everyone in the country had a gun,” Ahmet said. “Each person had a personal weapon and a bunker. My weapon was a Kalashnikov, in the—what do you call it?—national arsenal? There were many weapons here.”

It was hard to imagine anything so efficient as an arms industry in this country that did not even have tractors or plows or sewing machines.

“Weapons is the one industry that has not stopped,” Djouvi said. “The factory is in Elbasan. We made weapons, we had a Chinese factory and Chinese training.”

Nik said, “All children love guns. We loved taking them apart and fixing them.”

We talked some more, and I was resisting writing anything down, because I did not want to make them self-conscious, but at last I suggested that we meet again tomorrow, at the same place. It was cheap enough—coffee twenty cents, sandwich fifty cents, mineral water eighty cents, a beer one dollar. The waiter presented me with a bill for less than five dollars.

“We will see you tomorrow, at the same time,” Djouvi said, shaking my hand.

“Come by the hotel,” I said.

“It’s better here,” he said.

“Okay, but if I’m a bit late wait for me,” I said. “I want to stop by the embassy.”

A querying expression came into his eyes.

“It’s a good idea for Americans to register their names in the U.S. Embassy in some countries,” I said, and thought: Especially in this country. “But I’ll try to be on time.”

Off they went. The next day I found the embassy, which was a lovely building in the style of a Mediterranean villa, creamy stucco with green and yellow trim, on a backstreet of Tirana. I spoke awhile with the Deputy Chief of Mission, Douglas Smith, who had been in the country a year or so and was fluent in Albanian. He told me about the tradition of bloodfeuds in the hinterland, wondering out loud whether they were somehow related to the concept of besa, which was a solemn Albanian oath. The feuds had been stopped by the old regime, but there was apparently a resurgence of them, with the democratic reforms.