Covid Feuilleton #10

[Fier, 5/14/21]

By February of 2021, there weren’t just rumors of certain countries reopening soon, but online whispers the entire world might be locked down presently, thus stranding everyone indefinitely wherever. It wasn’t that farfetched. With hardly any flights in or out of most countries, hundreds of thousands of tourists had already been stuck, resulting in loss of jobs, unpaid mortgages and drained wallets, not to mention separation from family. Millions of third-worlders working abroad also couldn’t go home.

That dream Namibian safari which took so long to save up for suddenly turned into a sustained elopement with lions, hippos and wildebeests. It’s never too late to learn Khoekhoe. Endless summer in an Icelandic village at the end of the roughest road became the longest, darkest winter catching up on Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab and Yuval Noah Harrari.

Though there were repatriation flights arranged by governments, their announcements were usually abrupt, seats were limited and prices often too high. At least no one had to claw and kick compatriots out of the way to get onto a plane, while avoiding being sucker punched in the face by a stern captain.

Vietnamese working illegally in China simply trekked home, if they were close enough to the border. Hundreds of thousands, mostly legal, were stranded in South Korea and Japan, with many also losing their jobs in these Covid-ravaged economies. Out of food, they had to be fed by Buddhist temples.

There’s a 3/28/20 BBC video of two young English women living in a Sydney garage, and three more Brits stuffed into a camper at a Kiwi campsite, with their money quickly running out. A Brit working in China was traveling when Covid erupted, so ended up spending a year and a half in Tonga, a white-sanded paradise which quickly bored her, because no one likes to be stuck anywhere, she stressed.

Even if never taken advantage of, freedom of movement is essential to one’s well being and self-respect. Monotonous months cooped up in an office cubicle is made more bearable by the prospect of two weeks far away, or just weekend drives to nearby towns. As a teenaged worker at McDonald’s in northern Virginia, I’d treat myself to ballgames in Baltimore, an hour away in my used Mustang II. If carless, a grinding Greyhound trip to relatives means freedom. Even before conception, life is movement.

After five weeks in Egypt, I decided to fly to Albania, because it had no Covid-related entry requirements. Most crucially, Americans could stay there for up to a year. With adjacent North Macedonia and Montenegro still wide open, I could run around a bit without too much effort, and should Italy reopen, I could take a ferry to where I had spent the best two years of my life.

Every nation’s history is determined primarily by its geography. Though the Albanians are smack in the middle of Europe, they’re somehow seen as borderline Europeans, or not even European at all, by morons, obviously. Squeezed between Greece and Rome, they were often dismissed as just a bunch of mountainous, barely civilized tribesmen. With their mass conversion to Islam under the Ottomans, they became even more alien. (Keep in mind, though, that 17% of Albanians are still Christian.)

Though they’ve produced two Roman emperors, Diocletian (244-311) and Constantine the Great (272-337), and the founder of modern Egypt, Muhammad Ali (1769-1849), Albanians are still perceived as inferior and even stupid, an absurd judgement, frankly, for during my six months in Albania, I was surrounded by some of the most gracious people I’ve ever met. Gentle and intelligent, they’re simply beautiful. I saw better books sold on Tirana sidewalks than in most American bookstores. There was much that was eye-opening, and that’s why one travels. Nowhere is as expected.

[Sarande, 5/26/21]

In my Tirana building, a man said I shouldn’t hesitate to knock on his door, one floor up, if I ever needed help with anything, and he said this on our third encounter in the hallway, after only one conversation. In Gramsh, a town of less than 10,000, I wasn’t sure where to wait for a van to Korce, so I asked two passersby, in English then Italian. Scrupulous, the second even instructed a third man to look after me on the van itself, and none of them wanted anything from me. Before getting off in mountainous Moglice (pop. 1,000), this last man pointed forward then gave me a thumbs up, with a nod and a smile, to indicate I was fine moving forward. He even said something to the driver.

In early 1991, the Hoxha statue in Tirana’s Skanderbeg Square was finally toppled. In 1994, Paul Theroux landed in Durres to find a country that was still traumatized and beyond destitute, “My first sight, as I walked off the ship, was of a mob of ragged people, half of them beggars, the rest of them tearful relatives of the passengers, all of them howling.” Swarmed by beggars, Theroux finally made it to a bus station that resembled a junkyard. Approached by “a ragged young man,” Theroux assumed he just wanted money, but he was there to point the foreigner to the right bus. Theroux:

I climbed in and sat by the back door.

“It costs fifty leks,” the young man said, and seeing that I was confused, he took out a scrap of red rag that was a fifty-lek note and handed it to me. “You will need this.”

Before the door clapped shut I managed to give the young man some Italian lire in return, perhaps its equivalent […] He had given me, a stranger, what was in Albania a half-day’s pay, knowing that I would never see him again.

Visiting Durres a couple times in 2021, I’m happy to report it’s become a cheerful city again, with a wide seaside promenade where mothers push strollers, kids play and everyone can enjoy the soothing breezes from the Adriatic. Pleasant cafes, restaurants and hotels hug its coastline. The Covid plandemic has certainly put the kibosh on this recovery, however. Hopefully, it’s not reversed, or Greatly Reset.

[Gramsh, 6/29/21]

During Communist days, Albania’s secret police was called Sigurimi, or “Safety,” a nauseatingly sick name for a sinister outfit that terrorized so many Albanians. Arrested by the Safety goons, you could expect to be tortured, if not killed. Even if given a trial, you would have no chance to defend yourself, for its only purpose was to make a spectacle and lesson out of you. You were there to be condemned.

Visiting the former Sigurimi headquarters, now a museum, I was particularly haunted by a photo of the first Albanian female writer, Musine Kokalari. Though born in Turkey and educated in Italy, Kokalari was deeply attached to Gjirokaster, her ancestral city. Kokalari’s first book, published in 1941, was a collection of stories inspired by Gjirokaster folklore, and also its Tosk dialect. I mention this to stress that Kokalari was no internationalist (or globalist), despite her relatively cosmopolitan biography. A nationalist, Kokalari would risk everything for Albania.

Though Kokalari said in 1943 she only wanted to immerse herself in literature, and have nothing to do with politics, she had a change of heart a year later, when she cofounded the Albanian Social Democratic Party. The murder of her two brothers by Communists, and their threat to gain power, forced her off the sideline. Having lived in Italy under Mussolini, she was also anti-Fascist.

Political active for just two years, Kokalari would pay a monstrous price. After Communists gained power in 1946, they put Kokalari on trial as “a saboteur and enemy of the people,” then jailed her for 18 years, under the most barbaric conditions. Prevented from writing, of course, she had to perform back breaking labor day after day. Released, she had to live in tiny, out of the way Rrëshenm where she worked as a street sweeper for 19 years, until her death from untreated cancer.

Although already tortured and humiliated in jail, with her horrific fate sealed, Kokalari’s calm, nearly radiant face in the famous photo betrays an odd combination of strength and innocence, as if she could hardly believe she was being punished so sadistically, in a country she so loved, for loving her country. In the background, her cowed countrymen lurked.

Though individuals squashed by history is the most common plot, some populations are reminded of this constantly, while others are allowed to forget, for years on end. Smug, they laugh, until their house, too, collapses on teir children’s heads.

It’s bad enough to be a little guy among giants, Albania is also located at a crucial junction. In the past, it was between Catholics and Orthodox, then Islam and Christianity. Now, it’s between Uncle Sam’s hushed puppies and the Slavic world, though much of the latter has been bribed, cajoled and seduced into Sammy’s pocket.

Fearful of Slavs, particularly Serbs, Albania embraces Uncle Sam unequivocally, so there’s a George W. Bush Street in Tirana, a Bush statue in Fushe-Kruje, a Donald J. Trump Boulevard in Kamez and even a George Soros Street in Gjirokaster. Visiting Obama in 2016, Prime Minister Rama declared, “Albania is a pro-American country [and] a serious NATO partner.” No less affectionate, Obama swooned, “Albania is an extraordinary ally. I wish to thank you for what you have done. Under your leadership, Albania is now a reference point in the Balkans and one of the most responsible actors in the region.”

As many countries have discovered, getting into bed with Uncle Sam is a risky proposition, and that’s before he lost control of most bodily functions.

Albanians don’t deserve another historical nightmare. None of us do, though with Americans, you can’t say they’re blameless. Having served empire and Jews for so long, to the detriment of so many millions, they’ll finally realize what it’s like to be on the gang banged end of such love.

[to be continued, of course and unfortunately]

[Kukes, 5/18/21]