The False Apocalypse Read online

  This discouraging atmosphere persisted even when Lino offered her hand in farewell. When they left the warm rooms of the embassy, they seemed to feel even more strongly the keen chill of that Tirana February. They set off for the Association’s unheated office, casting doubtful glances at each other.

  That evening, as he lay back staring at the wall of his home in the Kindergarten, Qorri tried to work out why the American ambassador had been so unresponsive. She had been particularly frosty when Charles Walsh of USAID was mentioned. Walsh was working to arrange Qorri’s meeting with Schifter. He had been the first foreigner who had tried, a few months ago, to convey to the local press the serious danger posed by the pyramids. Charles was very possibly the CIA’s man in Albania, and this made Lino’s coldness even more extraordinary. Did Foresti exert so much influence over her? Why did she disapprove of his prospective meeting with Schifter, and recommend he should also meet the State Department desk officer? It must be because the latter had direct contact with the embassy and received his information from Lino. Obviously this information did not suggest that Albania was going in the same direction as Walsh of the CIA might be reporting. Perhaps, thought Qorri, this was not simply the influence of Foresti, but of American lobby groups. Perhaps all this was his own paranoia. Perhaps the ambassador had nothing against the Forum. Diplomats seemed to cultivate a professional opacity. They often started a conversation with the purpose of confirming information obtained from other sources, and did not produce their own interpretations. Even when they might be aware of contradictions, they rarely expressed them. They represented their countries, and their need to watch what they said in public inhibited their spontaneity. But no, Lino was obviously not well disposed to them. Qorri recalled a more forthright German diplomat who had said to him. ‘I talk with you Albanians and listen to what you say but I never totally understand what goes on in your country. For me, there is always a wall behind you that I can’t see beyond. I don’t know what you do behind that wall.’ ‘It’s the same for us,’ Qorri had replied, ‘We don’t know what ambassadors say after they close the embassy gates and report back to their governments.’

  As these thoughts ran through his mind, his eyes wandered to a patch of plaster like a fragment of a map, which he tried to approximate to a familiar continent. But it insisted on retaining its own unique form.

  Chapter XI

  The Rogner Hotel

  Foreign journalists stayed at the Rogner, the first private hotel built in Tirana after the fall of communism. It occupied a site in a former park on the main Tirana boulevard, between the Prime Minister’s Office, built by the Italians, and the Palace of Congresses, built by the dictator. The people of Tirana protested that it usurped one of the city’s prettiest parks, and complained that whereas the two buildings on either side were built of costly marble, the Rogner was an ordinary construction covered in painted stucco. But the Austrian builders surrounded the hotel with greenery and soon it blended into the rest of the boulevard. There was no other hotel where foreigners could find familiar comforts. But at $200 a night it was also the capital’s most expensive.

  The Rogner’s spacious lobby was decorated with rustic wood-carving, in stylized reference to both Albanian and Austrian traditions. Behind the bar, two corridors led to the rooms where press conferences were held. In those days, both the lobby and the conference rooms were always crowded. The Forum too sometimes held its press conferences at the Rogner. That morning Room A was packed tight with the Italian, German, and American press, but there were also plenty of Greek, British, Scandinavian, and Spanish journalists covering Eastern Europe. The well-known correspondents of Euronews, Reuters, AFP, the BBC, and many Albanian journalists were also present following the events at Vlora and the arrest of the Forum leaders in Tirana.

  Kurt, Daut, and Qorri took their seats and the journalists positioned their microphones on the table in front of them.

  Kurt began by reading a statement that the three of them had drafted late the previous evening in Kindergarten No. 19. They called on people not to give up their peaceful demonstrations every day between twelve and two o’clock. Bearing in mind the prohibition of assemblies, they suggested alternative forms of peaceful and symbolic protest, with the slogan ‘flowers instead of stones’.

  They called on people to turn off the State television, which was spreading hatred and disinformation. They appealed to members of parliament to be aware of their responsibilities. They asked the police to protect public buildings, keep the peace, and not to strike their suffering brothers and sisters but to protect them from the real terrorists who were roaming freely on the city streets in cars without license plates.

  Questions followed. What would the Forum for Democracy do next? What did they predict happening in Albania? What did its leaders have to say about their arrest the previous day? Were they in touch with the demonstrators in Vlora? What plan did they have to recover the money lost in the pyramids?

  The question about the money was the most sensitive of all. Many people were demonstrating in the hope that the Forum would return them their money. Kurt replied that this was not the task of the Forum, but of the government of professionals they were proposing.

  A Scandinavian journalist with flaming red hair asked Qorri to explain the meaning of the slogan ‘flowers instead of stones’ when the government was using truncheons.

  Qorri took this question as a provocation, and was unable to reply as he would have wished. It was hard to explain to a Scandinavian that this was a Byzantine ploy involving the encrypted subtexts essential to any understanding of Albanian politics, and whose effect indeed depended on these meanings remaining encoded. He could not say that one reason for choosing this slogan was fear of being accused of inciting violence and ending up at the bottom of a ravine, and another was caution lest foreigners should gain the impression that they posed a danger to regional stability. The slogan was designed to make it increasingly possible for people to come out in public, and also to paralyse the police. In his reply, Qorri took refuge in contrasting the brutality of the government with the peacefulness of their own protests. The Forum was too responsible to respond to the government with its own kind of violence.

  At the end a British journalist came up and asked for an in-depth personal interview. Qorri accepted with pleasure, for with Western journalists he often reached a level of understanding impossible with diplomats. Journalists had a professional instinct for major events and radical positions, and spoke their minds in conversations, unlike diplomats, who were like answering machines registering grievances.

  Qorri set an appointment for noon at Bar West. Meanwhile, there would be a brief meeting at the Association to decide what action to take the next day. Qorri’s bike route from the Rogner to the Association led along the Milky Way, where he saw Noel’s door, closed as usual at that time. It was extraordinary that he had not been there since the night when Rama was attacked. Life had changed. Every moment of his life was now dedicated to this cause that had been lying in wait for him. Even a few days before, he could not have imagined staying away from Noel’s for so long.

  Chapter XII

  Thugs

  Bar West was more crowded than ever with opposition journalists and politicians. It was cold: there was no electricity, and the bar was warmed only by the breath of its many customers. As he waited for the British journalist, Qorri sat alone behind a glass partition in the centre of the café near the bar, where it was a little warmer.

  The leaders of the Democratic Alliance were deep in conversation at a table to the right of the door in the main body of the café.

  The British journalist arrived on time. He was a smiling, affable man in his fifties with thinning hair combed to one side. Before launching into his questions, he introduced himself, said he was trying to understand what was happening in Albania, and asked Qorri about his life. When Qorri mentioned his time in prison, he stopped him and asked more questions about the dictatorship.

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bsp; They were still talking about prison when a group of seven or eight men dressed in the military camouflage of the rapid intervention forces burst through the door. They were all tall, with protruding chests, revolvers visible at their backsides and truncheons hanging by their right thighs. They marched in with a challenging swagger and sat down in the main body of the bar, very close to Qorri and the British journalist, but separated from them by the glass partition.

  ‘Come here, mate!’ shouted one to the waiter, who hurried to take their order. They called for a full bottle of brandy, and the waiter scuttled off to serve them out of turn.

  These men had not come for a cognac and a coffee, and an expectant silence fell. The psychological mechanism was set in motion whereby the weak run for cover and lie low in the hope that the strong will not bother them. This merely emboldened the hoodlums to raise their voices even louder.

  The British journalist, perhaps because he felt the tension even more than Qorri, or because he saw Qorri was distracted, suggested they should move to the bar next door. They went out and sat down at an outside table at the neighbouring Marlboro where it was quieter. They were no more than twenty metres from the Bar West. With these paramilitary thugs before their eyes, it was easier for Qorri to explain that such louts were the true face of the regime. The journalist found this hard to grasp, and asked again about the historical background of communism.

  While Qorri was talking about the dictator Enver Hoxha, a hideous noise erupted in the Bar West. There were shrieks and the crash of breaking chairs. Qorri and the journalist stood up to see what was happening and at that moment the gang of thugs strode out. One of them, apparently the ringleader, struck the picture window with the butt of his revolver, and there came the noise of splintering glass. Qorri instinctively followed this man with his eyes, but the journalist said in a voice of alarm, ‘Don’t look at them, don’t look at them!’ so Qorri stared at the journalist instead. The hoodlums headed for the opposite pavement and disappeared in the direction of the Interior Ministry, from where they had apparently come.

  ***

  They found the customers of Bar West numbed, shocked, and humiliated. Neritan Ceka and Preç Zogaj had been the main targets. The thugs had quickly downed a glass each and then a second and a third, and then turned aggressively to the table of the Alliance leaders. As soon as they caught Ceka’s eye, they said, ‘Why are you looking at us?’ ‘I have no business with you,’ Ceka had replied. But they jumped to their feet and went up to their table. Ceka asked them who they were. ‘Stand up when you talk to us!’ said their ringleader. Without waiting for Ceka to move he grabbed him by the collar and lifted him forcibly to his feet. He slapped him on the face and then sat him down again, lifted him and hit him again. There were protests from a nearby table, and two of the louts drew their pistols and threatened to put a bullet in the head of anybody who intervened. Then their ringleader slapped Zogaj and swept away the glasses on his table.

  ‘We’ll fuck your mothers!’ was his parting shot to the bar in general, before he led out his henchmen and shattered the window with the butt of his gun.

  Listening to the story, Qorri did not want to believe that nobody had dared stand up to this collective humiliation in the very centre of Tirana. But he understood perhaps better than anyone the paralysing effect of fear. As a prisoner he had experienced similar feelings of powerlessness in front of the thugs of state power. Now, as then, his mind was torn violently in two directions. On the one hand, this was a time when they should have turned on these villains and make those hands holding the guns shake, but on the other hand he understood very well that their fear, however demeaning, was deeply rooted in the instinct for survival. And so nothing had happened, and violence and intimidation had won the day.

  The British journalist had vanished. But a foreign television crew was filming the broken glass, the visible evidence of the crime. Everybody watched the camera focus on the huge jagged hole in the window between the street and the café. The cameraman filmed with total silence around him. Was this hole big enough to express everything they wanted to say at that moment? As they stared, each person seemed to see in that hole a blow to his own conscience made by that steel revolver butt.

  This was 9th February 1997.

  Chapter XIII

  Clashes in Vlora

  The rebel city in the south kept alive the universal hope that the violence of the police would not triumph as it had done in the capital. Since the day of Artur Rustemi’s funeral, the people of Vlora had been protesting unhindered in Flag Square. These massive gatherings were carried by Euronews, CNN, the BBC, and the Italian television stations that were watched throughout the country, and gave courage to protesters in other cities. This was the clearest example that the media were not merely reporting events but generating them.

  So the government was determined to extinguish once and for all this smouldering hotbed of conflict. Unknown to the opposition in Tirana, early in the morning of the same day when Neritan Ceka was beaten up, the government had despatched large police forces to Vlora with instructions to quash the rebellion in the city.

  On the afternoon of 9th February, the people of Vlora took to the streets in protest as they had done every day, but found themselves facing a police cordon of a kind never seen before. About five thousand policemen with helmets, plastic shields, and truncheons formed a solid wall at the entrance to Flag Square. They looked more like robots than people. It was clear that occupying the square would be the measure of victory or defeat, and the mass of protesters surged forward. At the first contact between the two front lines, the police went on the offensive. Their plastic shields were more aggressive weapons than their transparency suggested, and could be used to push and crush people. The plastic -clad robots kicked, threw tear gas grenades, and hit out wildly with their rubber truncheons until the demonstrators were forced back to their homes.

  Rumours spread that there had been a lot of casualties, one fatal. But nothing could be verified. The wounded did not go to the hospital for fear of being identified.

  The police had orders not to leave Vlora. On the next day, 10th February, some of the victors strutted about the city with the self-assurance of men who had established law and order, boasting that they had finally broken the back of the rebel city. It was the kind of day, as the saying goes, when even the sun becomes your enemy. But the victors did not know that during the night, many of the beaten and humiliated demonstrators had stayed awake, hatching their plan of revenge. Throughout the night, strange couriers had darted through the back streets of the city, weaving the fabric of this plan. Meanwhile, not a single motorboat left for Italy. While the police from Tirana swaggered round Flag Square, the lanes of Vlora filled with swarms of angry citizens who poured into the main streets leading to the square. Soon the streets were packed.

  This time it was the police who were taken by surprise. The crowds they thought they had quelled the previous day surged towards them in fury. The protesters armed themselves with stones and with any solid object that came to hand. Some had guns. They wanted revenge for their humiliation of the previous day.

  Cowed by a hail of stones from all directions, the police chiefs did not dare to give orders to shoot. Nor did they have time to receive any orders of this kind. They had to respond or retreat at once. There were shots into the air from among the crowd. The police decided to withdraw, but their retreat turned into a rout. They ran for cover where they could. This left the people of Vlore free to exercise their muscle against the few policemen who thought they could stand up to them, but who were soon puzzled to find themselves huddled under their plastic shields at the foot of a wall, warding off stones that flew at them from every direction. The crowd, determined to seize and disarm them, tightened its encirclement and pelted them with stones until they dropped their guns, helmets and shields to the ground in token of surrender. When they stood up with their hands held high, the protesters hurled themselves against them, as if to tear the
m to pieces. But they merely stripped them of their clothes and left them free to go, walking shamed and half-naked through the city. The crowds collected the uniforms, helmets and shields in a great pile and set fire to them in vindictive triumph. A cloud of smoke rose in the shape of a giant cypress tree. The children of Vlora who had taken part in the battle danced with joy.

  Berisha’s police coup in Vlora had failed.

  The scene with the embattled police and the burning of their uniforms, plastic shields and helmets was filmed by CNN, the BBC, Euronews, and many of Europe’s leading television channels. Fuller broadcasts showed burning police cars from Tirana on the streets of Vlora, and a procession of demonstrators holding candles who went to Artur Rustemi’s house to tell his family that vengeance was theirs.

  Chapter XIV

  Prime Minister Meksi

  After Vlora’s victory over the police, the two neighbouring towns of Fier and Lushnja rose in revolt. In Fier, the protesters blocked the roads and burned police cars. In the evening, several thousand people headed to Vlora to join the rejoicing there. In Lushnja demonstrators occupied the main square and tried to set fire to the town hall.

  Berisha himself did not react to this escalation of the violence. He passed the buck to Prime Minister Meksi, who announced at a news conference that the government was drafting a law to provide for a partial state of emergency. He claimed that the attacks on the police stations and public buildings in Vlora were not peaceful protests but conspiracies aimed at overthrowing the State, ‘scenarios to destabilize Albania,’ as he put it in an interview that day with Voice of America. The police were not equipped to put down plots of this kind with force. The army would have to intervene to bring cities under control where daily life had been brought to a halt and all the roads were blocked. ‘This will prevent any escalation of the terror,’ the prime minister declared.