The False Apocalypse Read online

  This square had acquired a symbolic meaning on 20th February 1991, when the demonstrators at the students’ campus shouted ‘To the square!’ and took possession of it in spite of the dogs and tear gas of the police. Then came the event that marked the end of the regime: the dictator’s statue was toppled. It was this spectre of occupation and overthrow that scared Berisha. He would not allow his opponents to take the square at any price.

  Before reaching the church, I met the Forum leaders who were just setting off to occupy the square. I joined Kurt, Gumeni, Meidani, Kalakulla, Petrit Ishmi and many others on the central reservation down the middle of Kavaja Street. How far would we get? We were exposed to attacks from all directions. We kept our eyes peeled and each of us tried to keep calm in his own way. People emerged from the side streets as we passed and followed us, filling the roadway. If this had gone on, Kavaja Street would have turned into a human river pouring uncontrollably into Scanderbeg Square.

  But we had not walked more than 200 metres before three blue police minibuses came out of the street that ran diagonally in front of us and blocked our way. Several groups of police leaped out, led by an officer who looked very young to have such a great belly. ‘Paulin Sterkaj,’ said someone, ‘chief of the Specials.’ At the moment of confrontation, both sides froze. Sterkaj apparently had orders not to let us pass that point. He stood in front of us and ordered us to turn back. ‘We’ll keep going,’ someone replied. The police were apparently waiting for the first opposition before they went into action. Pairs of policemen instantly gripped us by the arms and bundled us into the first minibus.

  From inside the bus I watched what was happening. A group of plain-clothes men, their faces savagely distorted, were beating up Kastriot Islami, the former parliamentary leader of the Socialists. This was no doubt their revenge for his statement a long time ago about breaking the Democrats’ heads. These plain-clothes men are the most frightening and dangerous of all, because you couldn’t tell if they were police or paramilitary gangs. On the opposite pavement ‘normal’ police hurled themselves against the street vendors, throwing their stalls and goods in the air. Our minibus set off.

  At the second turning I realized they were taking us to the Tirana police headquarters, the same place where twenty-three years ago I had signed the document of my arrest that led me through countless prisons cells. History was repeating itself. Was this again a frightening departure into the unknown?

  Perhaps because of this memory, I expected us to be separated and sent to dark solitary cells in Tirana prison. But they put us all together in a kind of corridor on the first floor, apparently a public waiting area.

  This corridor and the evident nervousness of the police who received us there were somehow reassuring. Most of the officers were veteran policemen who did not seem happy to see us there. Some were clearly bewildered, and became even more confused when after about fifteen minutes other policemen brought in Kastriot Islami, who was howling due to the bloody wounds to his head and face

  We did not know what they intended to do with us. None of the policemen gave any explanation. Gradually it dawned on us that that they meant merely to keep us there until after two o’clock, when we had scheduled our protest to finish.

  We were relieved not to be spending a night in the cells. Now I knew there was no going back to the time of Enver Hoxha. But even this relief set in motion a fear of a different kind. They could not put us in prison, but were we now less safe than ever outside? The State could no longer imprison and shoot its opponents by legal means, but was there now a new danger of ‘accidentally’ being murdered?

  Tirana was no longer as quiet as when they brought us in. In our absence people had still responded to the call for protests. Police cars coursed up and down Kavaja Street, where the pressure of the crowds to enter Scanderbeg Square had been greatest. Later they had arrested other people trying to reach the square from Myslim Shyri, parallel to Kavaja Street. Where this street came out near the Appeal Court, there had been an unpleasant confrontation between a large crowd of women and the police, who had pushed them as far away from the centre as possible into the villas of the former leaders’ block. People had also gathered round the Shallvare apartments and in the afternoon protests had broken out at the Central Post Office. Police with helmets and rubber truncheons had used force to prevent the crowds from reaching the square.

  Tirana became calmer at about one thirty or two o’clock in the afternoon, when Kurt, Petrit Ishmi, and I were released. They started with us, I thought, because we were former political prisoners and the anti-communist government wanted to show that it retained respect for us. But soon we realized that respect had nothing to do with it, because the car set off without asking us where we wanted to go.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ I asked the driver.

  ‘To the Socialists’ HQ.’

  ‘Why should we go there? Take us to the Prisoners’ Association,’ Kurt said to him.

  ‘I have orders to take you where I said,’ the driver retorted.

  It was a short distance from the Tirana police headquarters to the Socialist Party. The car stopped outside the door, which was locked. Scanderbeg Square was visible from there, just as deserted as it had been that morning. We got out of the car and set off on foot towards the Association’s headquarters, which was not far. But we had not gone twenty yards before a character appeared with a television camera on his shoulder and the second correspondent of Voice of America put a microphone in front of us and asked us what had happened. The cameraman, whose channel we could not identify, filmed us as we spoke. We walked a short distance, with one of them asking us questions and the other filming, and then they went away.

  We crossed the empty square and turned into Elbasan Street, which passes in front of the headquarters of the Democratic Party. As we drew near, a 4x4 drew up beside us. We turned our heads instinctively to see why. The driver, a man of about thirty-five with short hair and a moustache, barked at Kurt who was closest to him.

  ‘We’ll fuck your mothers! We’ll fuck your sisters! Arseholes!’

  Was this some kind of ambush? I looked round to see what was happening nearby. Kurt retorted, ‘Get lost, you filthy scab!’

  ‘You wait and see!’ said the man with the moustache. He revved the 4x4 and left us behind.

  The car had no license plate. It must have belonged to the semi-legal fleet supposedly shared by the Interior Ministry and the SHIK.

  ***

  At eight o’clock I turned on the evening news to see how the State television would describe the day’s events. Our abortive rally was the lead story. The usual announcer said that, reportedly, the Forum for Democracy had appealed to the people of Tirana to take to the square in a protest gathering. Meanwhile the screen showed the eerily empty Scanderbeg Square that I had seen that morning and again at two o’clock. The announcer went on, ‘See how the people of Tirana’s responded to this appeal. The only people near the square are Kurt Kola and Fatos Qorri, taking a stroll round the Socialist Party headquarters.’ This was the film shot by the cameraman escorting the Voice of America correspondent. So this was why they had taken us out of the police station first and dropped us by the Socialist Party building.

  Chapter X

  Foresti

  After the skirmishes between the demonstrators and police at Vlora and Artur Rustemi’s murder, events became even more unpredictable. Berisha had on his side the police, the army, Albanian Television, and the entire psychology of fear inherited from fifty years of dictatorship, yet the support on which he had built his power was slipping away every day and his future looked increasingly uncertain. Would he stand firm or was he already tottering? One thing was sure: it would be hard to bring Berisha down, and hard for the Forum to rise to its own feet, without a helping hand from the West.

  So for the Forum, it was just as important to win Western support as it was to encourage protests. Berisha too needed Western support, and to suppress these same protests.
For centuries the Albanians, weak themselves and struggling for their survival, had been awed by the power of the West. The West was now the shrine at which Albania’s politicians worshipped. They longed for the West’s blessing and feared its excommunication. They also knew well that the West’s greatest worry was any threat to peace and stability in the region. And so both sides, in addition to force, used the rhetoric of peaceful solutions and dialogue. This sort of Byzantine cunning had worked well under communism. Berisha, although his actions ratcheted up the conflict every day, spoke incessantly about the need for calm and stability. The Forum knew that it had no hope of success without instigating protests, but still harped on about ‘dialogue,’ ‘discussion’, ‘tolerance’ and ‘consensus’.

  Meanwhile, the needle on the West’s dial was still not twitching in the direction the Forum hoped. The embassies were with Berisha. In the wake of the Yugoslav wars, regional stability counted for more than human rights. The equilibrium was delicate. The destabilization of Albania could upset the delicate balance in Serbia and Macedonia, where Albanian separatist movements were ready to explode.

  The most active member of the diplomatic corps was Italian Ambassador Foresti, a short man, always elegantly dressed, and with a sensitive but animated expression. His fine-boned face was adorned with a dapper, slightly greying moustache that seemed to maintain the tension between the fragility of his diminutive frame and the incessant energy he radiated through his eyes and gestures.

  The West considered that it had left Albania in Italy’s care. Italy had taken the initiative to intervene with the Pelican aid operation immediately after the fall of communism. Italian investments in Albania were also the largest. Foresti had many ties not only with political leaders, but also with business and the emerging Albanian civil society. He had travelled around the country more than anyone else. It was rumoured that he had a collection of more than 300 Albanian socialist-realist paintings, given as gifts by the artists or bought at knockdown prices. He appeared frequently on Albanian television and in the press, giving advice in interviews. Some called him the State’s eminence grise, and he enjoyed almost the authority and privileges of a governor. Berisha, who adamantly refused to sit down and talk to the opposition, found it very difficult to go against this man’s advice.

  Foresti had good reasons for his explicit support of the government. He considered its years of work as his own achievement. Thanks to his political ties, many Italians had invested in the country. But above all, he supported the government because this was in the Italian interest. Any destabilization of Albania, such as the opposition’s attempts to unseat Berisha seemed to entail, could create a new wave of refugees heading for Italy. So Foresti stated openly that he would not talk to the opposition. Its leaders were not invited to receptions he hosted, and to other diplomats and foreign journalists he reviled the Forum as a revanche of the communists.

  Foresti was also known to be the best friend of American ambassador Marisa Lino, who had been appointed shortly before the crisis of the pyramid schemes. Lino was also of Italian origin. As dean of the diplomatic corps, Foresti had introduced her to the intricacies of Albanian life.

  But it seemed that it was more that the worry of destabilization that made Western diplomats resistant to movements for change in Albania. Deep down, the anxiety of people like Foresti about the country’s stability involved a contempt for the backwardness of Albanian society. They were politically correct in their interviews with the Albanian media, but in private asked one another if the country were really ready for democracy.

  Ambassadors, when they were appointed to Albania, imagined that their task would be merely to look after the interests of their own states in proper diplomatic fashion, to keep low profiles, and show respect for Albania and its people. But as soon as they landed at Rinas Airport, they found themselves the focus of extraordinary attention. The arrival of a new Western ambassador was the leading item on the evening news and on the front page of the papers. The astonished ambassadors ascribed the local people’s exaggerated goodwill to the role of the West in the fall of the Berlin Wall or the quantities of cash they were supposed to bring with them. But they soon realized that there was more to it than this. It was not long before they were receiving invitations to heart-to-heart meetings with politicians, at which they learned that these politicians loathed one another and saw it as their duty to apprise the ambassador of their rival’s mendacity. Meanwhile waiting journalists interpreted even the ambassador’s routine engagements according to the interests of their own parties. So, like it or not, the ambassadors found themselves front-page news, enlisted as referees in the Albanians’ power struggles. Some hesitated to play the part asked of them, but before long, and often out of necessity rather than any enjoyment of their almost untrammelled powers, the ambassadors accepted this role.

  But Foresti took a special pleasure in his function, convinced that the Albanians needed him as a mentor; someone stronger and more mature than themselves. Churchill once said that the Italians were a puerile people in need of a fatherly hand. It was now the Italians’ turn to apply this principle to the Albanians, who were still in a state of infancy, and moreover had been horribly abused under communism. Foresti, whenever he tried to resolve conflict among them, could sense the anxiety that was the dictatorship’s traumatic legacy. Who was better placed than the Italians to help the Albanians overcome this trauma? Could they be left to find their own way, as some Westerners imagined? No, this would be a very dangerous experiment. Isolated from the world, had they not constructed the most monstrous communist regime in Europe? Moreover, their long-term and short-term interests rarely coincided, especially at times of political crisis. If these grown-up children were left to their group therapy without supervision, they would destabilize the region and become a haven for Islamist terrorists. The interests of the West demanded that Italy should take charge and become the arbitrator the Albanians so desperately needed.

  ***

  Qorri, Kurt Kola, and Daut Gumeni were invited to visit the Austrian Embassy in those first days of February. For Qorri, visits to embassies were like trips to islands of another world within his own city. Everything there was different and better, just like in the West, from the furniture to the central heating that was so rare in Tirana. This made him withdrawn and reticent. Moreover, at some embassies he had met with a frosty reception, even colder than the usual diplomatic formality required. He was convinced that there was an element of disdain in Foresti’s icy hand.

  The Austrian ambassador and his secretary received them. Qorri looked at their suits, ties, and stiff collars, and could not help glancing at their own clothes. Kurt was wearing a dark grey suit whose trousers were obviously more worn than the jacket. Gumeni’s blue double-breasted suit was distinctly old-fashioned, and he himself was in casual clothes hardly appropriate for an embassy.

  The diplomats’ expression of polite boredom remained unchanged throughout the meeting. No smile or spontaneous gesture ever conveyed the slightest emotion. The representatives of the Forum talked about the police violence, the arrests, Berisha’s authoritarian character, the urgent need for intervention in this worsening crisis, and the government of professionals that would have to prepare for new elections. They were met with piercing, suspicious looks and the first question fell on them like a cold shower: ‘But what did the opposition do to warn people against the pyramids?’ The subtext was that the opposition shared the responsibility for the crisis and should work together with the government to resolve it instead of inciting people to protests. The representatives of the Forum talked about the manipulation of the elections the previous year, which was one of the reasons people were so angry, but the ambassador seemed barely able to recall these events of only seven months ago.

  ‘I don’t think we saw protests then. It seems that people are protesting about their money, not their freedom, doesn’t it?’

  Only when they rose to leave were they granted one little smile.<
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  A similar scene was enacted in the American ambassador’s office a few days later. Yet they were pleased that Lino had finally invited them. They waited in an anteroom until the door of her office opened and found themselves in front of a woman in her fifties, her face familiar from television. She was friendlier than the Austrians, and asked them into her warm office. This made the representatives of the Forum more forthcoming. Qorri sat down, casting his eyes round the American landscapes hung on the walls.

  This time they had brought with them Blendi Gonxhja who was trying to take on the role of the Forum’s secretary and interpreter. In fact, Gonxhja had come with them because he was close to the Americans and kept company with Charles Walsh, the head of USAID, whose office was in the former Enver Hoxha Museum. However, the ambassador seemed to take a dislike to this smiling lad with his slightly vampiric protruding teeth, who interpreted Kurt and Daut into halting English. Strangely, when Gonxhja mentioned Charles, the ambassador’s expression became even colder.

  Qorri’s frequent contacts with foreign journalists had improved his English. The well-worn phrases to describe the crisis and the Forum’s proposals for solving it now came to him instinctively. Lino asked more questions than the Austrians, and asked the three former prisoners about their long years in gaol. Unlike the Austrians, she also gave them some advice, ‘The U.S. Government is following events with concern, because this country has suffered a lot of violence and conflict. So dialogue is very important.’ But the Forum sensed that she was on the side of their opponents. They expected her face to brighten when Gonxhja said that some American friends were preparing a meeting for Qorri in the United States with Richard Schifter, Clinton’s adviser, but Lino expressed no enthusiasm. On the contrary, she coldly advised Qorri also to meet the State Department’s desk officer for Albania.