On the Road of Time – Chapter 14 - Part 01

On the Road of Time – Chapter 14

Later Done told me more about his stay in Prenies. “In the dormitory in Sinia, a city in Romania where we were stationed, every day we were encouraged to call out the slogan, ‘Forward with Markos’, at the top of our lungs until we developed a good appetite for it. Then one day the head of the dormitory informed us that some dignitaries from our struggle had come to visit us. In those days we called the Greek Civil War ‘our struggle’. The head of the dormitory told us to gather in the great hall after supper, but only those who were older than fourteen years of age were invited to attend. The rest were told to return to their quarters. The place was packed; there was not enough space for everyone to sit. Even thirteen year olds showed up, some taller than the fourteen year olds with gentle fuzz growing on their chins and under their noses. A portrait of Markos in a military uniform hung on the wall behind the stage. He was wearing crossed belt straps on his chest and creased boots on his feet (every time I looked at the portrait the boots looked dirtier). Three people went on the stage and one by one they each gave a speech. And as far as I can recall their talk went something like this: ‘I,’ said the tall skinny man, ‘am Porphirogenis, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) and together with my comrades have come here to bring you greetings from your fathers, mothers and brothers who are heroically and selflessly fighting for freedom and democracy against Anglo-American imperialism and its domestic servants who are now sitting in Athens. The struggle,’ he continued, ‘is very difficult and for it to be successful we need new fighters.’ The moment he finished saying this we all jumped up and began to yell in Greek: ‘Imaste etimi!!! Imaste etimi!!! Imaste etimi!!!’ (We are ready!!! We are ready!!! We are ready!!!) We were yelling at the top of our voices, punching everything around us and pounding on the floor with our feet as if the floor was the enemy. We gave them our answer. We were ready to fight. Porphirogenis continued to speak for a long time but his words were lost in our shouting, calling out that we were ready to do battle. We could see satisfaction on his face but the man had difficulty relaxing. Apostolou greeted us next. He was a representative of the Provisional Government of Greece in Bucharest. He was not as talkative as Porphirogenis. He said what he said and after the applause ended they introduced our comrade Evdokia Baleva, more commonly known as Vera. Her speech, from what I recall, went something like this: ‘Dear and very beloved children, the pride and joy of your fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, who today are fighting against our wretched enemy to the death and winning everywhere, raising the flag of victory, which is very close. I, together with my comrades who stand beside me, bring you great greetings and appeal to you to be ready to help so that we can defeat the enemy and free our people from enslavement and suffering…’ Even today their words resound in my mind. I don’t remember everything exactly, but I remember that they all talked for a long time. Their mouths were filled with big, enraging, important, beautiful, clever and inflaming words. They spoke without interruption and their voices were filled with anger. They raised their clenched fists and made threatening gestures with their hands. Their fingers were pointed at us, seemingly saying ‘YOU and YOU and YOU, what are you waiting for? I just have to close my eyes and I can see those people in front of me. I can see their angry faces overflowing with unquenchable hatred for the enemy and their faith in victory. I can hear big, sharp, inflaming and damning words coming out of their mouths, words which cut like lightning and echoed like thunder in our minds, strengthening our faith and inflaming our fighting spirit. Influenced by their words we all became even bolder and yelled even louder. We yelled that we were ready now, that we were prepared to fight, that we wanted to go now and that we wanted to immediately go to battle.

Some of the children from the back rows then began to sing: Во борба, во борба, во борба, (To battle, to battle, to battle,) Македонски народе, (Macedonian People,) За света народна слобода... (For the Holy Freedom of our Nation…) And before those in the back had a chance to finish, another group erupted singing a different song: Напред, напред Македонци, (Forward, forward Macedonians,) За слобода и за живот сите напред!!! (For freedom and for life all forward!!!) We used to sing those songs at home. We learned them from our partisans who spent time in our villages during their short rests, when they stayed in our houses. They stayed long enough to get a wink of sleep, eat some bread and cheese prepared by the warm hands of our mothers. We learned the songs from them and practiced them on our own. We then sang them in our native Macedonian language schools, after they were opened. After that we sang them out loud in the dormitories and even outside when we went for walks in this foreign country... By then we were older and could sing even louder... So the comrades who came to visit us ended the first part of the gathering with us singing songs and shouting slogans. The second part also ended with songs and slogans. This time they placed a table in front of the stage with an open book and beside it were several sharpened pencils. By now we were all ready to go, to join the war and do battle with the enemy. We lined up in front of the table and wrote our name and surname in the book in Greek, our Greek first and last name of course, and a bit further to the right we wrote ‘volunteer.’ That evening our comrades made a copy of the book and left. A few days later all the ‘volunteers’ were taken to Arad and from there to Tulgesh. How many were we? Three hundred and fifty children, not children, soldiers ... We exercised up and down for several days, marched a few strong marches and sang battle songs. After that they gave us military uniforms, one battery powered flashlight, a towel, some thread, a needle, a handkerchief, a pocket knife with a spoon and fork and then they boarded us on a train and as such we became soldiers and were no longer children... Yes, we were children of war. When the Great War ended we were twelve and thirteen years old and then every day all we talked about was fighting and the war. Our life and our environment had prepared us for war; to be soldiers. A day rarely went by when there were no soldiers and no Partisans in our lives. We talked about the same things that the adults talked about. We sang the songs the adults sang. They had real guns, so as young children we carried sticks and poles on our shoulders carved to look like guns and played war with them. We grew up in a war in which we thought and dreamed at night only of victorious battles. What do you think a child would think about surrounded, day in and day out, by armed men, calls for war, slogans and battle songs? That year, before they assembled us and sent us out from our homes, we breathed the same air as our Partisans, we hung around them, we touched their guns and machine guns and we grieved that we were not older so that we too could walk with them in the mountains and in the forests. The roaring, muddy and dirty waters of the war river flowed before our very eyes. The songs and slogans were not strange to us. And there, in far away Romanian cities, we took the war with us and preserved it. Even our tutors constantly spoke about the war. We built the war with songs and slogans and by speaking about our heroic and victorious battles. We strengthened our spirits every day by playing war and we filled our days and nights with dreams of battles and war. This is how we mended our destiny. And when the comrades came, we suddenly grew up. They did not need to convince us because they found us already convinced. All they had to do was give us the word; toss a little lit matchstick at us and our fire would be ignited. And our fire was ignited as we pushed each other to get in line to sign the book.

The train took us to Bulgaria and we got off at Berkovitsa, just outside Sofia. I don’t know whether this was some kind of town, or camp, or shelter but it had a hospital because there were many wounded. Those who had already recovered were waiting their turn to be transported back to the battlefields. They loaded us on trucks and drove all night. Before dawn they unloaded us behind the Markova Noga barracks, near the village Dolno Dupeni. There we spent the day under the shade of a willow grove.

We crossed the border during the night under the light of a full moon. We arrived in Medovo late at night and spent the rest of the night there. They woke us early the next day and counted us, prepared us and sent us to Rudari on foot. In Rudari they gave us guns and we began exercising. A few days later they regrouped us into various groups; telegraph operators, powder monkeys, archers, saboteurs... We exercised every day and one day women came from the hills up above. They were carrying shovels, axes and pickaxes. They looked very tired and exhausted. They stopped and watched us exercise for a while as we fell down, rose up, ran, jumped and leaped over trenches. Then suddenly we heard a voice crying from their direction calling out: ‘Iane, my son!!!’ There was only one Iane among us in the group. When he heard the voice calling his name he turned towards the women. His rifle fell out of his hand and with a quiet voice and huge surprise he whispered: ‘Mother?…’ We stopped exercising and, surprised, we all turned to look… Some among us saw our mothers there that day... The same day they took us away from that particular area but not from the watchful eyes of our mothers. The mothers were very upset to see us being brought back and used like this and protested. Protests took place in most of the Prespa and Koreshtata villages. The mothers were so upset that their voices were heard by the leadership in the village Vineni. There, those who had decided to turn us into soldiers reacted to the protests and decided to pull us out of the exercises in Prespa. My feeling was that they took us away to simply hide us from our mothers… They took our guns and made us hike nearly all night from the exercise range to where the trucks were waiting for us. The next day we spent the day in a forest. In the evening they loaded us on trucks and brought us here. We arrived at dawn. We learned from the people that this place was called Prenies. Here the barracks, store houses and horse stables were overcrowded with people. The majority were women, old people, babies, infants and crippled people. They had been brought here the year before when the battles for Gramos began. All the women wearing black and the very old men were suffering here… Together they shared their pain for their loved ones who had lost their lives, for the ones that were crippled and maimed, for their abandoned villages, for the loss of their property… Their pain was clearly visible on their faces. Not once did I see a woman laugh and I never saw a man laugh either. They just sat on the half-rotten beams, always in thought, silent, swallowing their bitterness, grieving, grieving with both their thoughts and words, grieving about their villages, about their houses, about their orchards, vineyards, gardens… And when someone spoke, they spoke the words ‘they were coming’, letting everyone know that the trucks were coming. That’s when everyone ran to the road chasing after the trucks, begging the drivers to bring them candles. They told the drivers to pick up some candles from the Orthodox churches in Pogradets, Korcha, or Bilishcha. They told them that they could always find candles in Orthodox churches. They ran beside the trucks to hear some news, both good and bad. They begged the drivers to slow down, to stop if only for a moment… What did we do in Prenies? Every day we exercised but without weapons. Not because there were no weapons. There were weapons alright! Rifles, machine guns, automatic rifles, hand grenades. All these weapons and ammunition were hidden in some tunnels waiting to be used. And while the weapons waited, we were growing up, learning how to fight. From time to time we went and cleaned the weapons to prevent them from rusting. Every day we were ready to receive them. But instead of giving us weapons, during the night, sometime around midnight they would wake us. But not all of us, they would wake as many as they needed. The days and nights in Prenies when someone did not die were very few.

The burials took place only during the night. We dug holes with pickaxes in the hard, stony ground during the night and after that we placed the dead body wrapped in an old blanket into the hole and we covered it with soil. Besides us, no one else was allowed to be at the burial… That’s how it was… It was a cursed time then, turned ugly by horror and fear. It was a time full of weeping for the most beloved. It was a time when some wanted badly, and as soon as possible, to lie under the hard stony soil. It was a time of confusion, anxiety and hopelessness. It was also a time of enduring the impossible... And now, as the years rush by unnoticed, I often wonder whether we learned anything from that time and if we have become smarter as a result... Time is passing and progressing, the years are piling and the memories are fading. There are many names, faces, eyes, cheeks, events, places, experiences, happenings, that time devours and ruthlessly shakes off and casts into oblivion. But there are also things that can never be forgotten. Some, buried so deep in the memory, will be remembered to the last days of our life. They appear to us when we walk, when we sit on the bench in the park, when we take the first sip of our morning coffee. They take us to the place we left behind so long ago, a place from which we can’t detach; a place that is an inseparable part of us. I remember it was late August 1949. We were in Prenies and, as we did every day at the same place and at the same time, that day too we were exercising throwing hand grenades and after that attacking the trenches and bunkers. When the commander was happy with our performance he let us rest for a while. We took our rest on the rubble under the hot sun in an area where neither grass nor trees grew. That day I was lying on my stomach with my chin in my hands and my elbows on the ground. When you lie like that all kinds of thoughts tend to cross your mind. For a moment I noticed that a woman was coming down from the direction of the village Shkumbin. She was carrying a bag on her shoulder and an earthenware jug in her left hand. I thought to myself there is a nice housewife bringing food to her husband in the field. And for a moment I thought I saw my own mother. Every day at noon the woman hung the bag on her shoulder, took the earthenware jug full of water in her hand and went to the field, or to the meadow, or to the vineyard to deliver lunch to her husband. Every day I put my hands over my eyes and imagined seeing my own mother in her. She had the same hand and body movements and walked with the same ease as my mother. There were movements in this woman that were very similar to those of my mother’s which gave me an irresistible desire to suddenly run to her. In my own imagination she was my mother but in reality I know she was a stranger, an Albanian woman. Then one day walking slowly, very slowly she came towards us. Before coming too close she stopped and said something in Albanian. We stood up, brushed the dust and dirt off our bodies and stood there in silence. She motioned with her free hand for us to sit and we all sat down. She sat down beside us. She tilted the earthenware jug on her knee, took the bag off her shoulder and took out something that was wrapped in a white towel. ‘Take it,’ she said in Albanian and handed the earthenware jug to the person closest to her. After that, gently, almost timidly, she began to unwrap the towel. She unwrapped one half, paused for a moment, seeming as if she forgot something, then unwrapped the other half exposing a red pumpkin, full of aroma, slightly burned at the edges and still warm…. The surrounding air became intoxicated with its aroma which, with our eyes closed, we breathed in. The sweet and attractive aroma was sumptuous and delightfully zesty and had all the aromas of a bakery. And while we were breathing its aroma and swallowing its sweetness, the woman took her cutting knife out of her pocket, which was tied on her belt with a string, and cut the pumpkin into pieces, handing each person a piece as she cut them.

Half of my hand was filled with a warm and fragrant piece of pumpkin. I broke a piece of crust from the side and with it I scooped a tiny piece, brought it up to my lips and left it there for a long time, breathing its ecstatic aroma deeply as deep as my chest could open. After that I took it with the tip of my tongue and swirled it around my mouth savouring its awesome sweetness and swallowing it very slowly, keeping my eyes closed while savouring its flavour. And just as she came quietly and shyly, the woman left silently and without saying a word. We on the other hand, sitting at the bottom of the hill where we practiced throwing hand grenades, looked up and remained silent and sad. We watched the woman walk up hill into the distance and for a moment I couldn’t help myself but think that I had just seen my mother... I never forgot the Albanian woman and I still have the desire to kneel before her and kiss her hand. After that I never saw her again but I do remember her as if it was yesterday. She wore a colourful headkerchief on her head, had a pale but good-natured face and her eyes were filled with pain. I can still feel the warmth of the hand with which she gave us the piece of pumpkin. Her hand was warm and her look sad, just like my mother’s... And what else do I still remember? I remember the sharp whistle I heard the day I turned sixteen years of age. They woke us up abruptly that night, handed us guns and hurried us onto the trucks. Then, after driving all night, our people intercepted us on the road outside of Korcha, but they were not carrying weapons. ‘Where are you going?’ someone asked. ‘We are going to help our fighters at Gramos!’ someone from our side yelled out. ‘Back, go back,’ a man with a bandage on his head was heard yelling. ‘There is no more Gramos… Gramos fell…’ They returned us to Prenies the same day. About twenty days later they put us on an airplane and sent us to Poland. There the Poles sat us down and told us that we could conquer the world by learning… That cannot be forgotten. We were very enthusiastic and great believers in victory. That’s the way it was. All who were there during the bad times have their own story. Every one of the many thousands who became homeless during those days has their own story to tell. I was there for nearly a year and I just told you a brief part of my story, exactly as I remember it… Unfortunately a lot has been forgotten because people tend to forget with time and memories become blurred, sometimes unsure, sometimes insecure and suspicious… The human mind at one point in time is full of fresh memories, these memories, however, slowly and with time tend to disappear, to wither away… But even though some of these memories disappear there are memories that are still there, which remain imbedded deep into the recesses of the mind that cannot be torn out or uprooted… And now, with the passing of time, I am often reminded of what I have experienced in Prenies. I see the trucks coming, the crowds dashing, the people rushing, I hear their shouts, cries, pleading and cursing… I see myself as a guard. I see myself and my friends in the middle of the night carrying dead bodies from the barracks and horse stables and burying them in shallow graves in the hard ground… That is exactly how it was… That is how it was and that is how it should be written down so that it will be remembered so that it will become marked in ink and will be remembered forever…” On the Road of Time – Chapter 15

There was a beautiful view of the harbour from the second floor of the Crystal Hotel in Durres. On the right was the sea where four ships, one behind the other, were waiting in line to take their turn to dock in the harbour. On the left there were tall buildings ten to twelve storeys high or even higher, which did not exist here sixty years ago. This was the new face of the town in the vicinity of the port. A wide, open street could be seen splitting from the small city promenade and extending outwards along the seacoast. On the west side of the hotel were skyscrapers. Sixty years ago this was a big swamp overgrown with various reeds and grasses and filled with decaying algae whose stench spread far and wide. The street “Makadam” that once existed here is now gone. Also gone are the ten or so burned military trucks that were left on the side of the road. Past the road, on the right side, on top of the tall hill is Zogu’s, the Albanian king’s, white palace. At the bottom of the hill were white villas with extensive orchards in which orange, fig, lemon, tangerine and palm trees grew and many roses adorned the gardens. This area, away from the city, from the noise and from city poverty was once settled by the rich. Now it is abandoned, left empty, left to the elements and to the tooth of time. I remember us sneaking under the barbed wire and secretly entering the villas through windows whose glass had been broken. Inside it was a wasteland. The former owners, the majority of whom were Italian merchants, ship owners, restauranteurs, hotel owners, public house owners and small industry owners were expelled by the People’s National government and their properties were confiscated. Now the villas are gone, they have been replaced by skyscrapers. The entire place from the seacoast to the bottom of the hill has been replaced with skyscrapers, which on the ground floor have restaurants, cafés, pizzerias, banks and offices occupied by domestic and foreign companies. Between the buildings is the wide avenue called “Rruga Tautantia”, built on top of the old “Makadam” road. It is a straight road, leading west from the newest part of the city, extending all the way to the sea. The road is decorated with tall palm trees on both sides. I drove slowly and carefully, watching the Mercedes pass me by on both sides of the street. Wherever I looked, parked or in motion, Mercedes were everywhere. And now among them and in between them was our little red Saho. The avenue further down was still under construction and we did not know where it was going to end. There were piles of crushed stone on the coast, on the opposite side, and leaning against the hill base was the new University building, now under construction. In front of it was a nicely arranged parking lot. Sunlight was reflected off the building’s white marble facade. New buses were picking up and dropping off students, taking them from here to the city centre. The space beyond the building, as far as the eye could see, was a flat and level sandy plain. This was the beach to which they brought us in the summer of 1948 to exercise and practice our military skills and to swim and sunbathe. This level plain must be the new urban beach where, in the near future, people, not in the hundreds but in the thousands, will be coming to swim and sunbathe; bringing plenty of money. The foot of the hill is divided into plots. Most of the plots, now under construction, have been overlaid with stone in preparation for laying the foundation of future hotels with their own beach space in front of them. We turned back and took the road in search of the houses where we once lived from May to the end of November 1948. To better navigate this new part of Durres we chose the white Albanian Navy barracks, the cigarette factory and the skin tanning factory from which to establish our bearings. We remembered those places. The two and three storey buildings in which we were placed were located at the edge of the city near the port.

We remembered there was a road on the north side that went up hill to the royal palace. There was a park with palm trees and lanterns on the opposite side of the building where we were lodging and behind it was a fortress in which, they say, many prisoners were locked up. The cigarette factory was close to our building and the barracks were located next to “Makadam” road, about fifty meters from the seashore. There was a courtyard between the barracks and the buildings and in the middle of the courtyard was a tall wide-branched willow tree. The willow tree had a broad shadow but was too small to shade the 1600 children who were accommodated at the shelter. Standing under the shade of this willow tree we waited, like beads on a string, for “Marianthy”, that’s what they called her, first to inspect us, see if we were standing properly in line and then give a speech about DAG’s (Democratic Army of Greece) great victories. After that, at precisely 12:00 noon, the box hanging on the branches of the willow tree would begin to speak. It was a great big radio from which we heard more hissing and scratching noise than actual words. It became a habit for us to listen to the big box every day in the hottest part of the day and to hear it telling us about the great, difficult but victorious battles fought in Gramos. The haunting voice on the box never ceased to say, that every hour, every day and every night the Democratic Army of Greece won every battle everywhere. At the end of the broadcast we would hear Marianthy applaud with all her might and yell out “Me ton Marko embros!” (Forwards with Marko!) We too had to cry out and repeat what she said, in a single voice, while squeezing our left fist tight and raising it to our temple.