On the Road of Time – Chapter 11

On the Road of Time – Chapter 11

The Grand Hotel is located in the centre of Korcha. The whole city and surrounding area could be seen from there. The city, from the seventh floor, looked like it was sitting in the palm of a hand with its two way streets running from north to southeast. The second highest building in the vicinity was the belfry of St. George Orthodox Church, located in the very centre of the city. Without wasting time, because it was raining hard that day, we left the hotel quickly and, passing by St. George Church, we took a road that led us to the southeast side of Korcha. We were looking for the house where residents of Korcha had taken us when we were children, frozen and crying on March 26th, 1948. I remember a young woman of average height separating me from the group of children, stroking my head, saying something in Albanian, putting her hand on my shoulder and leading me in front of a table where, in a large ledger, she wrote my name, her first and last name and her address. After that she spoke to someone and after signing the ledger the person gave her a sheet of coupons. She stroked my head again, grabbed my fist in her hand and took me away. We walked for some distance on a dimly lit cobblestone lane. I remember looking at the houses and to me they all looked alike. We stopped in front of a wooden door, she knocked several times and then a tall, thin woman opened the door. Her face frightened me. For some reason I thought she was very strict and a bad woman. I crossed the threshold of the house scared and with a step of uncertainty. The tall woman pulled me onto her lap, kissed my forehead and took me to the fountain to wash. While I was washing, she talked and I talked but I did not understand what she was saying. Her voice was warm, soft and gentle. After washing I was taken to the sofra (low table) and ate dinner with her children. In all the days that I was there they treated me as one of their own. I was happy and pleased to be there because I was treated with kindness, tenderness and warmth, being embraced as one of the woman’s own children. Early in the morning the children went to school. I, on the other hand, followed the woman around all day. Holding my hand she would take me to the bakery to get bread. There was always a long line of people there waiting, mostly older men and women. They stood in line silently holding out the sheet of paper from which the woman on the other side of the counter cut out coupons with her scissors. Then, with a big knife, she would cut a slice of cornbread sitting in a large pan. The bread was not swollen, cracked and thick like the rye and wheat loaves we made at my house, it was more like a large rectangular slab baked in a shallow pan... All the days that I spent in that warm home together with these good, peaceful and kind people, I ate corn bread. Day after day three times a day, for breakfast, lunch and supper I ate cornbread. For breakfast and dinner I was also given a chunk of dried marmalade and a cup of tea. I received exactly the same sized portions of food as the others in the house. In fact, all the people waiting in line outside the bakery also received the exact same sized portions. And now after many years have passed, not without excitement, I am reminded of the corn bread. I feel, smell and taste it as I did in those days. In another part of town is the house where Ditta (now my wife) was accommodated. From what Ditta remembers the house was white and had a balcony. The yard was fenced with a wrought iron fence and roses bloomed everywhere. I remember that “my house” (if I can call it that, because I felt then and I feel now like it was my house) was short and had only one floor. Its roof was covered with ceramic tiles and its courtyard was surrounded by a high wall. There were many varieties of flowers and roses in the yard. The neighbouring houses were very similar and looked almost the same as my house. I remember the streets were narrow and laid with cobblestones. So, now sixty years later, in which house was I accommodated?

Who were the strangers who took me in and treated me warmly, kindly and gently as if I was one of them? On which door should I be knocking? We described what the house looked like to the people who now live in those neighbourhoods. An older woman said she remembered such a house but it was demolished some time ago to widen the road we were standing on. “And the people?” I asked. She shrugged her shoulders gesturing that she either did not know or could not say? No, I had no luck finding my house. And no, I did not find my angels, the people who looked after me. For years I carried with me the wish to go to Korcha, to find these people and say “faleminderit” (thank you in Albanian) in their language and “blagodaram” (thank you in Macedonian) in mine! That tall good-hearted housewife and mother, that dear lady who did not separate me from her own and looked after me as if I was her own, I did not succeed in finding, to kneel before her, to kiss her hand, and to say: “NANE, FALEMINDERIT!...” (“mother, thank you” in Albanian). We left and took the wide street that was being prepared for paving. About a hundred meters down the road it merged into another road which followed the canal. I remember there was no canal then but there was a river nearby. I remember the landmark and the mulberry tree growing there. The river is now gone and its bed is overgrown with grass and shrubs. It looked like the water had been diverted. We took the narrow wooden bridge and crossed over to the other side. I remember there was a street there that followed a wall which led to a hospital. Now there was no street and no exit. There was a tall building covered with black sheets of metal behind which I believe was a yard or shops, but there was no access to it from here. We took the road that led to the hospital. We decided to look for the hospital. An old man approached us and asked something in Albanian. I said, “I don’t understand Albanian,” and asked if he spoke Macedonian or Greek. “Yes, I do,” he said. “We are looking for the hospital,” I said. “Hospital? What hospital?” he asked. “Somewhere in this part of Korcha there was a hospital in which Partisans from Greece were treated,” I said. “Are you Greeks?” he asked. “No. We are Macedonians,” I said. “Macedonians? From which Macedonia? From Greece or from the Republic of Macedonia?” he asked. “From the Republic of Macedonia, but we were born…” I said and was interrupted before I had a chance to finish my sentence. “I understand…. I speak Macedonian,” he said in a stretched out tone of voice. “Why don’t we sit?” he proposed. “So, you are looking for a hospital… but first let me ask you, how are things in Macedonia? We hear on the radio that you fight a lot, you argue. And what are you going to do? Are you going to give up the name?” “And what do you think? Should we give it up?” I asked. “No, you should not give it up. Defend yourselves… A name cannot be given up… The hospital did you say? There is nothing left of what you remember. There is not even a footprint left from those days, except…” the man paused, coughed and resumed talking “except for me…” “You have been there?” I asked. “Yes. I used to work there as a plumber and an electrician. And not only that, I also substituted as a nurse, a stretcher carrier, an assistant to the stores, a cleaner and a kitchen helper… Those boys and girls gave me a reason to live and took my loneliness away. Without them I would have been completely alone. I am still in contact with some of them and I sometimes speak to them, we are not separated for too long ... They still remain part of me, part of my life. Part of that will never be separated from me...” concluded the old man. “The hospital is gone for sure?” I asked again. “Yes, it’s gone. Don’t waste your time,” he answered. Taking a shot in the dark, I said to the man: “Here somewhere I knew some people and I am looking for them. Their house was around here somewhere… It was a small, clean, short house with a cobblestone courtyard full of rose bushes.

There were also other types of flowers planted in pots.” “Was the lady of the house tall, with a long nose and a hidden smile and her husband carried a handgun?” asked the old man. “That is correct…” I said while thinking about it. “I know them,” said the old man with confidence. “Then let us go and visit them,” I said. “Unfortunately they moved. The man was a Major in the military. The word is he died in some camp. There was a time here in Albania when many camps existed and people were often sent there. Their house was right there, right in the middle of this street. They demolished it about a year ago and are still rebuilding the area. They took the houses down with bulldozers.” the old man concluded. “What a shame,” I said while taking a long breath and coming to the realization that I may never find them… “And the children?” I asked. “They had two sons and a daughter. One of the boys was my age. Then they all used to go to school. We didn’t go to school. Every day we gathered at this bakery and waited there for our day to come when we could return home…” “I don’t know their fate. Perhaps they are still alive. Only God knows. Only he knows why these evil things happened to us in those days that nearly ruined us, turned our hearts and minds upside down. I have not heard about them and neither have I asked because it was asking for punishment. You ask and you go to prison. Of course I knew the Major. He was strict but a good man with a good heart… Why don’t we go home to my place? Nowadays no one drags us to the police station if we are caught speaking to strangers or inviting them to our home. So come, let us go for coffee and lokum (Turkish delight). There is plenty of coffee and lokumi nowadays. There is plenty to eat, we are not hungry and we don’t need to stand in line in front of the stores for our food.” said the old man. We did not go to his house but Tahir told us he lived in a modest house. He lived alone. “I used to unload your wounded with these two hands, or I should say our wounded. I washed them, I changed their bandages, I comforted them and held their hands before leaving for the battlefield, begging them to be careful. But they were not careful and within a week or so some would be back in worse shape than before, maimed, mangled and mutilated for life,” the old man said with a sad look on his face. “Where did you learn Macedonian?” I asked. “Here in Korcha. My neighbours were Macedonians,” he answered. “And Greek?” I asked. “I learned Greek from my other neighbours. I used to play with them when we were children. And with games one can learn a language. We also had Turks here so I learned a bit of Turkish too. The entire city is a mix of people but we have no problems, everyone respects everyone else’s languages and religions. Do I have photographs of that time? No. Nothing is left. They took everything during a raid…” answered the old man. After being lost in thought for a moment, the old man continued:

“I remember the names of many wounded fighters. I also remember the places where they fought battles, where they were wounded and how they were brought here to Korcha to be treated. Initially the largest group of wounded we received was about two hundred, it was during the beginning of August in 1947 after the unsuccessful battle for the city Grevena. After that a smaller group was brought in followed by a larger group in October after the battle for the city Metsovo. Then in December another group was brought in after the unsuccessful battle for the city Konitsa in Epirus. All the wounded received first aid here in Korcha. The lightly wounded we kept here, the badly injured we sent to Elbasan, Tirana and Durres. Severe cases that needed complicated surgery were sent to Belgrade and Budapest. Not a day passed in the fall and winter of 1947 that we did not receive wounded. Then between June and August 1948 we accepted an average of one hundred wounded per day. That was the time when the great battles were fought on Gramos. I often heard the names Kopanche, Gorusha, Bel Kamen, Aliavitsa, Charno... from the wounded. We also received many wounded in September 1948 after the battles in Mali-Madi. But the largest number of wounded we ever received, I remember the number 1500, was in February 1949 after the unsuccessful battle for the city Lerin. We offloaded so many trucks... everything was full. The hospital had no place to put them. The hospital rooms, corridors and even the basement were filled with wounded. But the trucks kept coming, bringing more and more wounded. We offloaded them and laid them in the yard on the snow and in the cold. We had to quickly clear the high school next door to the hospital to make room for them. We threw out the desks and put the wounded in the classrooms, hallways, corridors and even the stairs. There was no space left unoccupied. We had no beds or stretchers so we had to lay them on the bare floor. Here we gave them first aid, covered them with blankets to warm them and gave them some food and tea. We had no idea they would bring us so many wounded young men and women. Almost all of them were bandaged with dirty bandages, pieces of shirts, blankets and basically anything that they could lay their hands on. The wounded would tell us that their wounds were first dressed in the battlefields by older women who carried them on stretchers or in blankets to the road where they were loaded on trucks and sent to a designated area. There they would be examined by a doctor and the heavily wounded would be put back on trucks and sent here. The lightly wounded, capable of walking, were sent to the border on foot, the rest were carried on stretchers… After offloading the wounded we washed the trucks spilling the blood, filling the yard with gelatinized, frozen clots that did not flow but rolled on the frozen ground. It was cold. It was February. We sent them to Elbasan during the night. Were there many? How many? How many is many? There were many! It is difficult to say how many was many when there was so much pain, so much suffering, crying, moaning, whining, cursing, swearing… We took them to the doctors in wheelchairs, carried them, or walked them. Where were the doctors from? They were from Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland; but most were from Hungary. Before this they all worked at the hospitals in Spain, providing care for the Spanish fighters. They were all experienced doctors. Were there days that no wounded arrived? No. There were no such days. Every day new wounded arrived. There were also the repeat wounded, the ones we would send to the battlefield and sometimes, the next day, would be back with new wounds. Did you get any wounded that were old? No. They were all young people. There were no old people… Did any high ranking officials come to visit the wounded? I have never heard of anyone like that coming to visit the hospital. At least I never heard of or saw anyone like that…” answered the old man.

The day passed quickly and I did not notice that it was getting dark. The street lamp came on and dimly illuminated the old man’s face, who by now had a hoarse voice from talking. It was hard for me to ask him more questions because, besides his voice being broken, every word he spoke was bitter and painful for him. His hands shook. Without me having to ask a question, the man extended his hands towards me and said: “Here, with these hands I offloaded them from the trucks, I carried them, I embraced them, I changed their dressings, I brought them to the toilet, I washed their faces, I fed them, I gave them water to drink and comforted them when they had unbearable pain. And to the best of my ability I spoke to them, I encouraged them; I consoled them so that they would heal quickly and their suffering would end sooner, at least for now. And what did I not promise them, begging them to be strong and to endure their pain with courage. And when they cried, I cried along with them. To lessen my own pain…” Then, after some silence, he asked: “Where are you staying tonight?” “At a hotel,” I replied. “If it is not satisfactory for you there, you are welcome to come and stay with me,” he said in a slow tone of voice. “Let us go then…” We walked the old man to the door of his house behind St. George Church. “Will you come in?” he asked. Without saying a word I hugged the man firmly. By what other means could I have expressed my gratitude to this man and to the hundreds of other Albanians? In what other way, other than speaking words of gratitude, could we express our warm, gentle, cordial and sincere appreciation? Every spoken word is only a reflection and expression of respect that surges with the noblest sentiments of gratitude, love and admiration... We were humbled before the greatness of their hearts and souls… We said goodbye to the kind old man and gave up on our wish to find the hospital. But if we could not find the hospital then, at least, we should be able to find the place where the hospital once stood. We wanted to meet the people who treated and perhaps the people who were treated there. To be given the opportunity to feel, at least in our imagination, their pain and suffering and their joy of being returned back to life... Thanks to Tacho and Iovan, activists of the organization Macedonian Alliance for European Integration in Albania, we found the hospital and visited the place the next day. A spacious former Italian hospital, now forgotten, was standing on the outskirts of town, surrounded by tall pine trees. This was the place where many wounded, thousands of Macedonian and Greek young men and women, fighters of DAG (Democratic Army of Greece) found relief. The place is abandoned now, left to the elements to take their toll. There is nothing there now to indicate that in the interior of this building, lives were once saved. The once full, bustling hospital rooms and corridors are now empty, ruled by a deep, dead silence disturbed only by the quiet cracking and squeaking of broken glass, open windows and semi-unhinged doors… disturbing the loneliness that was causing us a nagging sense of anxiety and pain. Long cobwebs hung down from the ceiling in the corners. Dust was raised with every step we took. We quickly came out, mute, bringing with us the sense of loneliness that weighed on us, that sat heavy in our hearts. It seemed like someone was groaning, yelling, calling out, begging... We came out quietly, in silence, with a lump in our throats... Silence, solitude and more silence followed... Feeling anxious and with my hands shaking, I decided to take some pictures of the old hospital building to capture and preserve its present character before it is demolished and completely disappears forever... There was one more place here in Korcha which I cherished in my memory and which had left an impression on me... “Here, right here,” I told my wife, “under the shade of this mulberry tree all the children from my village used to gather in the morning every day...

Here,” I said to her, “we gathered and waited ... waited for the trucks to come and take us back home. We scratched little red lines on the stone wall with a broken piece of ceramic tile marking the days that passed. Then we counted the marks to see how many days we were there and every night we dreamt of the trucks waiting for us. We waited for the trucks because we were told that in twenty days they would return and take

us back... I do not know why or who told us that but we waited for the trucks here every day... One day, before nightfall, the trucks did come. It was raining, pouring but we were all very happy yelling “quickly, quickly, run, get on, get on, we are going home.” They loaded us in the dark in large trucks and took us away and we were so happy and full of joy thinking that we were finally going home, returning to our own homes. The trip was long and lasted all night. Then at the break of dawn we were offloaded somewhere by the sea. I remember that there was a lot of sand and then we realized that we were not going home, far from it… And from that day forward we were no longer the children of our mothers and fathers… We became known as the children of the Greek Partisans, the children of General Markos, the children in Evgenia’s group, in Maria’s group, in Lina’s group, in Tina’s group and we were not called “children” but “this” and “that” group; to come, to go, to get in line, to breakfast, to lunch, to supper… we were in a group that had no children’s names, but a number inscribed on a small metal plate with the image of Markos. We wore the metal plate on a chain that hung from our neck... I wore the number 2884. After that, far north, we became children’s home number 1, number 2, number 3... and after that we were divided by class... rare were the letters we received from home... “Only if I were a bird…” wrote our mothers. The great desire to see us, became a fantasy for our mothers, a desire to turn into birds with strong wings to fly to us and be with us and cry with happiness and joy and, with their tears, cleanse their eyes, hearts and souls... Unfortunately they had no wings, but had strong arms and strong shoulders to carry wounded, to carry boxes of ammunition to the hilltops and to carry long beechwood logs for building bunkers. They had strong hands to hold shovels and pickaxes and to dig trenches. And up above, from the hilltops looking down, it seemed to them that they could see us, their children at the bottom. But the way to the bottom was long and the light, filled only with wishes, was disappearing… “Let our children be alive and well, and if God is willing they will return to us,” they whispered and consoled themselves with great desire and hope... Only in Him, they believed only in God and all the promises the others made were only offers of good intentions that led to more suffering. “...If I were a bird then I would fly there...” wrote our mothers but they had no wings to fly. But others, who were never mothers, did fly, they came to see us, to see how much we had grown and if we were ready to do battle... They gathered us, by the hundreds and sent us to battle, and to us, the smaller ones, they left us their wish that we would grow quickly...