On the Road of Time – Chapter 14 - Part 02

We had pasta for lunch every day and every lunch began with the cry “Me ton Marko embros!” (Forwards with Marko!) It was almost like a greeting, like saying “hi” or “hello.” It was most unfortunate for those who reached for the food before the slogan was done. The penalty was confiscation of their macaroni. A fence of barbed wire divided the courtyard from the barracks. Exit and entry into the buildings was through a large door on which barbed wire was nailed. People required command approval to enter or leave the buildings. Lined up in columns of four, we were expected to keep an orderly formation and a fast pace. We were divided into platoons, brigades and battalions. Our commanders were usually older boys from among us. We ranged in age from three to fourteen. The chief among us was Marianthy, of course. She was a Prosfiga (settler), an heiress of the so-called Greeks who were expelled from Turkey in 1923 and were settled in Macedonia. Assisting Marianthy was Evdoxia, a meek brunette in her twenties from Rupishta, Kostur Region. In an attempt to trace our steps from sixty years ago, we got lost in between the buildings. Not speaking Albanian, we tried asking questions by hand gestures but all we succeeded in doing was attracting onlookers that were passing by. Then a middle aged man signalled us with his hand to stop and asked us something in Albanian: “Mir dita i civete… si shkoine… mire” (Good day… how are you… what are you doing… good…) is all we could figure out from using our Albanian dictionary. The person asked me something in Albanian. I said, “I do not understand what you are asking.” “Italiano…” he said. No, I shook my head. Almost every older person in Durres speaks Italian. “And you,” I asked, “do you speak Macedonian?” He said “no” in Albanian. “Milate Elinika?” (Do you speak Greek?) I asked. “Milao,” (I speak) he said. Greek was a good language to know in Albania because you were most likely to be understood by more people if you spoke Greek than any other language outside of Albanian. In the southern part of Albania, for example in Bilishcha, Korcha, Elbasan and Tirana, we were immediately able to find people speaking good to average Macedonian. But Greek was spoken almost everywhere by almost all Albanians aged 18 to 70. Many people worked in Greece, some for five years and others for ten or more and hence had some knowledge of the Greek language; enough to be understood. “Are you looking for someone?” the man asked. “Yes Sir, we are looking for the cigarette factory,” I replied. He looked at us with a surprised look, shook his head and thought for a moment. “There is no cigarette factory here. Look at the type of buildings that have been built here… hotels, restaurants...” he replied. “Yes, but some time ago there was a cigarette factory around here somewhere,” I insisted. “Perhaps some time ago there was one, but there isn’t one now. Where are you from?” he asked. “From Macedonia,” I replied. “You came all the way from there to look for a cigarette factory? Who are you? Factory owners? Tobacco manufacturers?” he asked. We looked at each other. I extended my hand and said: “Thank you Sir, you have been of much help. Forgive us for wasting your time.” “Wait,” he said, “I am new here. Let me ask the person who is coming our way.” He explained our difficulties to the person in Albanian and then he said: “The person says that there was a cigarette factory somewhere around here, but he does not know for sure where it was located. He said it was probably demolished and replaced by one of these tall buildings…” “Was there a park with thick walls at the entrance to the factory? Looking like a fortress?” I asked my wife. “Yes there was…” she replied. “Sir, I believe that the entrance to the factory was from the park…” I said to the man. “Ah, you mean from ‘Rruga Anastas Dursaku’…” he replied. “And where is this ‘Rruga?” I asked. “It is behind these buildings. You see that tall white building?” he asked. “You mean the one with twelve stories?”

I asked while pointing at it with my hand. “Exactly that…” said the man. We smiled at each other and split up. We soon arrived at the tall white building. There were piles of building materials scattered all over the place and the area looked like a maze with buildings popping up everywhere. So instead of looking for “Ruga Dursaku Anastas” we now found ourselves lost in this maze unable to find our way out. The day was soon coming to an end and without street lights it was going to be difficult to find our way out. Finally we found a way out but were unable to find “Anastas Dursaku Ruga” or the cigarette factory. We took the road back to the hotel; tired from our day long journey. We were somewhat disappointed in not finding the place where we, as children, had lived sixty years ago. I made my disappointment loudly known as we took to the main street. A man and woman, arm in arm, were coming towards us on the other side of the street. The man walked upright and was sure of his step. “That man there,” I said to my wife, “might be a military man…” “And how do you know that?” she asked. “Only military men, officers, walk like that with a straight posture and a flat step. I am pretty sure he is a military person… Look at his flat stride. Wait; let’s ask them where to find this ‘Ruga Anastas Dursaku’ place. Let’s go, don’t wait for them to pass us by. Greet them in Albanian,” I said to my wife. “Mir mbrama,” (Good evening) said my wife Ditta, with a wide smile. “Mir mbrama…” replied the man and the woman, who stopped walking. They looked at us while we looked at them, all four of us keeping silent. “Excuse us, we are from Macedonia…” I said as the man interrupted. “Oh, Macedonia!!!” said the man out loud and began to speak Albanian. We didn’t understand a thing. He stopped talking, obviously expecting a response from us. “Ruga Anastas Dursaku…” I said. “Ruga Anastas Dursaku?” he asked. “Yes…” I said. “You speak Russian?” he asked. “Yes Sir, I do speak Russian,” I replied. “In that case let us speak Russian. I understand you are looking for ‘Ruga Anastas Dursaku,’ said the man. I noticed his Russian was fluent. “You need to go to the end of this street. When you reach the wide intersection, there you can see the traffic lights from here, immediately turn left and you will enter the street you are looking for. And what are you looking for there? Do you have relatives living there?” he asked. “No, we don’t have relatives living there. We are looking for the cigarette factory,” I replied. “Cigarette factory? Yes some time ago there was such a factory but it’s now closed, abandoned. There was word that it was going to be demolished. They will be building something new in its place. And why are you looking for this factory?” he asked. “Near it there was a grey three storey building…” I said. His wife, who probably understood some of our conversation, nodded her head several times, repeating… po… po… po… and then after that she spoke to her husband. (“po” in Albanian means I understand.) “My wife says that we should sit down somewhere. We would like to invite you for coffee or tea… Over there, there is a very nice café… Is that okay?” he asked. “Yes, okay but it will be our treat…” I suggested. “Okay,” he said, “but in Macedonia. Please,” and pointed with his hand in the direction of the café as they took the lead ahead of us. A young waiter with a great big smile and good manners greeted us at the door. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt with long sleeves and a bow tie. We followed the waiter into the café, walking over a thick soft Chinese carpet. There were five tables, all covered with snow-white tablecloths. There was a barely audible air conditioning unit humming in the corner. It was cool inside after being baked by the summer heat outside. There were bright paintings hanging on the walls. The bar was well-lit and decorated with various bottles with foreign labels. A middle aged man stepped out of the bar and, in a very friendly manner, greeted us and our hosts Ismet and Marieta.

This is how the man and woman introduced themselves to us when we first shook hands. In the manner that we were greeted and by the tap on the shoulder, we gathered that our hosts were close friends of the bar man. Ismet said something to him in Albanian in which the word “Machedone” (Macedonian) was included several times. The bar man looked at us with wide open eyes and a big smile while repeating po… po… po…meaning he understood. From the conversation we heard in Albanian we only understood the name of the street we were looking for and the words coffee and tea. That was the extent of our understanding of the Albanian language. We ordered tea. “Do you drink Russian or Chinese tea in Macedonia?” asked Marieta. “We have all kinds of tea, but we prefer mostly our domestic tea,” answered my wife Ditta. “Tea is also good when it’s very hot outside, and today it is hot,” said Ismet. Ismet’s friend served us our amber colour tea in person in glass cups. I tasted peppermint with the first sip and then mint and thyme. “The taste is similar to our popular tea,” I said. “My friend served us Macedonian tea. He gets most of his tea from Macedonia. He buys it in Struga,” said Ismet. “Po… po… po…” said the bar man in Albanian, greeting us with a wide smile and a low bow, and then he left and went behind the counter. “So you are looking for a grey three-storey building on Ruga Anastas Dursaku Street?” asked Ismet. “Yes… we are looking for that building…” I replied. “Why?” he asked. “Because we lived in that building…” I replied. “When?” he asked. “We lived there from the end of May to the end of November 1948… We were around eleven years old then. There were also younger and older children… There were many, many children…” I paused. Ismet translated what I said for his wife and when he finished he leaned on the table and covered his face with his hands. The silence was long. Marieta spoke next: “Were you together with your parents?” she asked. Ismet translated. “She is asking if you were accompanied by your parents.” “No madam, we were without our parents. Children only… We did not know where our parents were and they did not know where we were…” I replied. There was silence again. I suddenly had an involuntary, difficult and painful sigh… Ismet finished his tea, moved his cup and looked in our direction. Lost in his thoughts he stared at us for a long time... “Yes...” he said in a stretched out tone of voice. I gathered from his thoughtful gaze and from his quiet tone that something was happening. We looked into each other’s eyes in silence. I felt that he wanted to say something, to reveal something he had experienced a long time ago, something deeply engraved in his memory. Then he spoke: “Did you say that you lived in that three storey building sixty years ago? In 1948?...” “Yes…” I said. “And there were many children and you were only eleven years old?” he asked. “Yes…” I said. “I was twenty years old then and served in the army. I was a lieutenant. I was the commander at the border checkpoint. The village Lobanitsa was on the other side of the border…” he said. As the man spoke my own memories began to open up. “They arrived after sunset, soon after dark… There were many, many children; I believe there were two thousand. They arrived with women who were looking after them. We were informed by high command prior to the arrival that some children were coming but we had no idea that there would be so many and so young. Our orders were to hold them all night at the village Trstenik and…” said the man as I interrupted. “And riding on horseback you brought back those who attempted to escape, wanting to return to their homes, right?” “Yes, that is correct…” he replied. “And you also ran to put out the great fires that were burning the piles of fern, right?” I asked. “How do you know all that?” he asked. “Because I was one of the children who wanted to run away and return to my home and who started the fern fires…” I replied. We looked at each other, adjusted ourselves and our smiles soon diminished…

Ismet wiped the sweat from his forehead and after being silent for a while, began to speak again: “About a year later, on the morning of August 9th, 1949, the duty officer woke me up and with a disturbed voice informed me that Greek military aircraft were flying in our direction. I jumped out of bed, quickly recovered from my heavy sleep and without my uniform I ran barefoot to the barracks. But before I had a chance to activate the alarm the barracks roof was sprayed with machine gun fire from the aircraft flying above. A few minutes later they started dropping bombs on the villages Trstenik and Kapeshtitsa. After that the aircraft turned right and flew along the Albanian-Greek border, machine-gunning all of our watchtowers. I immediately notified battalion command in Bilishcha by telephone. After the planes left Greek artillery batteries, stationed outside the village Krchishta, opened fire on us. From what I could see with my binoculars I saw Greek military units charging towards us from Faltsata Hill. Again I contacted battalion command and told them what was happening. Immediately after that the platoon was ordered to combat readiness and if Greek troops entered Albanian territory we were ordered to immediately open fire on them. Trstenik was only fifteen kilometers distance from Bilishcha. We had no bunkers or trenches. We had to fight the Greeks in the open, a fight that lasted a short time but killed almost half of our platoon. The Greeks occupied the village Trstenik and began an assault on Kapeshtitsa where we withdrew. There we were joined by armed villagers from the nearby villages. And even though the road from Kapeshtitsa to Bilishcha was under constant bombardment by the Greek air force and artillery, two units from Bilishcha ran to assist us. A fierce and uneven battle soon followed us against a bigger and better armed enemy. We could no longer hold our position and the village Kapeshtitsa fell to the Greeks who continued to fire on us but with a smaller force, while the main force stormed the road that led to the village Smrdesh, located on the other side of the border. Units of DAG (Democratic Army of Greece) attacked the Greek Royal units from the flanks. New forces arrived from Bilishcha and our (Albanian) artillery began to barrage the Greek Royalist units. By the evening there were many Greek dead and wounded left on our territory. From a captured lieutenant we learned that the purpose of the Greek Royal units entering our territory was to capture the village Smrdesh and then to surround the DAG fighters west of there who were holding positions in the hills above the villages Kosinets, Lobanitsa and Mount Mali-Madi. Then,” continued Ismet, “I was twenty years old and that battle was my baptism as a fighter. Although I came out unscathed, I lost many of my Albanian friends there…” he concluded. We all went quiet for a while. Ismet asked for another cup of tea. He drank it very slowly. I got the impression that he was thinking about the past. He was thinking of the time in the meadow not far from the border, outside of the village Trstenik where, in the evening of March 25, 1948, along with his soldiers, he kept us until the next night when the trucks came to take us to Korcha. “So, you are one of them, huh?...” he asked. “Yes. They drove us all night from Korcha and brought us here on trucks and at dawn they placed us in some houses by the sea. They were two storey houses. The first storey was built of stone and the second of planks of wood. That’s what I remember. We called the place “Pesutsite” because of the large body of sand that divided us from the houses. We watched the boats from there... It seems to me that today we passed by the large body of sand but we did not see any of the sea. There were high rise buildings in the way which did not exist then. “And did they move you here from the ‘Pesutsite’?” he asked. “Yes, I believe it was at the end of April. We walked all the way from Duresi. We walked all day.

They placed us in some single storey houses not far from the city centre. Today, driving through downtown, I recognized the building with the clock. Then it was the tallest building in the vicinity. Now it’s one of the shortest... Around the middle of May they moved us to some white buildings by the sea. They were around here but I don’t see them now...” I said. “And you are looking for the building in which you lived then?” he asked. “We want to see it. It is part of our childhood and is embedded in our memory,” I replied. Ismet looked at the clock. I got the feeling we were holding up these people. “Sorry,” I said, “we took so much of your valuable time…” “It was our pleasure,” he said and while looking at the clock he tapped it with his finger and said, “tomorrow morning at this time,” pointing at 9:00 o’clock, “I will be waiting for you at the crossroads at the beginning of Ruga Dursaku Anastas and we will find your building... your former home...” The owner of the cafe did not accept our offer to pay for the Macedonian tea. “It’s on the house,” he said and, with a great big smile, walked us to the door. We said goodbye to Ismet and Marieta and promised that we would be at the designated place at precisely 9:00 am the next day. Somewhat relieved that there was a chance that we would find what we had come for, we headed towards the hotel but we did not go inside. We were held back by a wave of people walking. There were many, so many that it seemed like all the people living in this town were coming our way. The entire long and wide seacoast promenade was filled to the last centimetre with people. All the benches were occupied by older people. We could see them talking but their voices could not be heard over the river of people walking by dressed in modern summer clothes from every country in Europe.

There were young couples vocal and smiling, embracing one another and sharing kisses in public without any care of who was looking and what others thought of them. They did things their own way and had their unique vision and understanding of the world. They made use of and enjoyed the world’s pleasures now, this moment with a burning desire. They exploited the beauty, pleasantness and sweetness that life had to offer. They enjoyed their experience of kissing, sharing smiles, sights and passionate looks. They lived life for now, for this moment. There were also children of various ages walking or running alongside their parents. Entire families were enjoying the walk. Seed and sundry vendors were also part and parcel of the wave of people on the promenade. Swept by the wave of people walking, we walked over to a great big modern gas station located at the entrance of the port. We then turned and walked over to a newly built concrete dock that was embedded deep into the sea. The promenade ended there. On the other side of the dock there were heaps of soil and broken concrete blocks and beside them there was construction machinery. It looked like they were going to build more tall buildings here. We turned back and looked for a place to sit and rest for a while, but we had no luck. The place was bustling with people. We passed café after café, restaurant after restaurant, pizza parlours, but everywhere it was busy. No one was wearing a hat and none of the women wore a coat or a head kerchief. These Albanians here did not look anything at all like the Albanians in Macedonia. We sat on the concrete wall which separated the sea from the mainland and once in a while we were sprayed by droplets of salty seawater. The full moon shone on us from high above and from its reflection in the water. A light breeze blew, cooling off the warmth from the previous day’s leftover heat. The promenade began to slowly empty. The full moon began to fall and the stars seemed to fade, but the insatiable lovers sitting on the benches and on the concrete wall remained in their warm embrace…