The False Apocalypse Read online

  Aleksandër Meksi had taken no part in politics in the time of communism; he had been a specialist in Byzantine history at the Institute for the Protection of Public Monuments. He first appeared on the platform when the Democratic Party was born, and with his spectacles, moustache, and bald egg-shaped head he stood out among the communist intellectuals who were prominent at these events. He looked like a member of the pre-war intelligentsia, a suspect class for the communists, and indeed his family origins lay there. He seemed a person of sensitivity and refinement, lacking Berisha’s hunger for power, and certainly not a man of violence. Only after he became prime minister did the public learn that Meksi’s biography had indeed been tainted in the eyes of the communists, but he had done his utmost to hide this, to the point that the only persecution he suffered was a delay in the approval of his party membership. When the regime fell, he was still a probationary member.

  It was nothing new for an intellectual to apply for party membership, and it became it common after Enver Hoxha’s death in 1985. Hoxha’s successor, Ramiz Alia, was known to be more moderate and instead of persecuting intellectuals, had preferred to keep them close by enlisting them in the party. He knew that they did not believe in communist ideals, but made it clear that they could only advance their careers by joining the party. Hoxha had been suspicious of intellectuals to the point of paranoia, but Alia was ready to offer them this kind of deal. Qorri had been in prison during the last two decades of the regime, but his discovery of this trend led him to suspect that with the passage of time the intelligentsia had become even more morally degraded.

  Nevertheless, the PD’s opponents did not rank Prime Minister Meksi, the former probationary party member, on the same level as Berisha, the former party branch secretary. They nicknamed President Berisha ‘the caveman’. He had emerged from the nowhere-land of his home province much earlier, in Hoxha’s time, when a much higher degree of fanaticism was required. He never made any distinction between his personal ambitions and ‘the ideals of the party’. His colleagues at the hospital recalled that as a party secretary in the 1970s he had torn the students’ flared trousers and cut their long hair. Anecdotes circulated about his manoeuvres to ingratiate himself with the higher echelons of power. Hoxha’s widow, whose arrest he demanded when he took his first step on the road to president, used to tell her friends how Berisha on one occasion wormed his way through the back door of Enver Hoxha’s house, with the help of the children, and had shaken Hoxha’s hand. Thereafter he never greeted anyone without saying, ‘Enver Hoxha touched this hand.’ How could this man suddenly turn into a rabid anti-communist? His opponents insisted that his ambition knew no moral restraint. His troglodytic energy had brought Berisha to the leadership of the anti-communist movement, in preference to moderate people like Meksi. Now as a fervent anti-communist, he still identified his personal ambitions with the ideals of the party he led.

  Meksi’s friends reported that when they visited him in the prime minister’s office, he gestured to them to lower their voices because he was bugged by the SHIK. He had been appointed to this post, they said, because Sali Berisha saw in him the right person to give a more cultured look to his government, but also someone who would never escape from under his wing. And Meksi had been able to preserve his image as a tolerant intellectual. Berisha by contrast had come down from Albania’s wildest mountain region of Tropoja where a fight to the death is part of a manly code of honour. But some also accused Meksi of being a subordinate who put up with the ridiculous, bullying behaviour of his boss for the sake of personal gain, a puppy who wagged his tail for big bones. They saw him as a repellent, cowardly, and shameless person, a greater evil than Berisha himself.

  The small number of Meksi’s friends who were still on speaking terms with both camps told the Forum that the Prime Minister was trying to play the last card left in his hand. By declaring a state of emergency, he remained Prime Minister. But Berisha had two cards to play. Firstly, through Meksi’s statement he was threatening to use the army to suppress the revolt, but secondly, he was preparing to dismiss him to cool the temperature. The power in his hands seemed to give him the advantage in a game with its many imponderable factors.

  ***

  The day after Meksi’s statement, Qorri went to his nearest newspaper vendor. The papers were sold at a street corner, spread out on the pavement. A larger group of people than usual were staring despondently at the headlines, reading a selection before buying the paper of their choice. Print runs were higher than ever before, and Koha Jonë had reached a 100,000 copies. The names of the daily papers had become symbols of opposing political sides, and the headlines in huge fonts inflamed passions more than they conveyed information. Not since the fall of communism had the population of Albania been so glued to current events.

  The newspapers all commented on the events in Vlora and predicted that the parliament would declare a state of emergency that afternoon.

  Qorri usually cast an eye first at the pro-Berisha papers. ‘Vlora heads for martial law’ was the main headline of Rilindja Demokratike, the PD’s newspaper. ‘Interview with Prime Minister Meksi: Albania needs good governance not instability’. ‘Citizens, avoid all acts of violence and terror!’ ‘Far-left leaders trample on freedom and break the law.’ ‘Yesterday at the Hotel Rogner --Terrorist leaders call for further violence -- Forum declares war on the State.’

  ‘Police assaulted, forty-six injured’ was the headline of Albania, which continued on other pages with stories headed ‘Battle of stones’, ‘Violence returns to Vlora’, ‘Vlora --state of emergency’, ‘Forum for Democracy escalates situation’, ‘Forum Representatives Defend Police Assailants, Attacks on Police Stations’.

  The Forum had the majority of the newspapers on its side, compensating to a degree for the entirely pro-Berisha State television.

  ‘Albanian flag raised in Vlora’ was the banner headline of Koha Jonë: ‘Dictatorship Shoots to Kill in Vlora’, ‘Protests Continue in All the Streets of Vlora’, ‘Flags at Half-Mast on All Houses’, ‘Protesters Tie Black Bandannas Round their Heads’, ‘Opposition --National Mourning, Meksi -- State of Emergency’, ‘This is a Crisis of Politics.’

  ***

  Contrary to expectations, after two hours’ debate the parliament voted against a state of emergency in Vlora. Parliamentary speaker Pjetër Arbnori said that the ‘Albanian constitutional package’ did not allow the government to declare a state of emergency in a single district. The rumour that relations between Berisha and Meksi had deteriorated turned out to be correct. It was clear that Berisha would jettison Meksi. But would that be enough? People like Meksi and the boss of Gjallica, who had been arrested a few days previously, were now small fry. Hatred now focused on Berisha and his immediate circle.

  Chapter XV

  From Fatos Qorri’s Diary

  Wednesday, 12th February

  We gave another news conference at the Rogner today and explained again our position on the uprising in Vlora and why we are not condemning it. We appealed to people to express solidarity with Vlora and continue to protest between the hours of one and two o’clock.

  Some pro-government newspapers insisted on asking what policy we have for the return of the money. That’s why people have protested, they said. We repeated that this is outside the scope of our programme. People expect an end to the crisis and we say that the solution starts with the departure of the culprits from power. A government formed after early elections must decide what comes next.

  One journalist persisted with a question laced with his own remarks. According to him, we were creating commotion not to solve the crisis but to exacerbate it until we could seize power. But if the crisis is prolonged, he said, the Albanians will lose more than they gain. It was difficult to counter this argument. There was no denying that both sides are motivated by a desire for power. But if only power is at stake, we would do better to stop our campaign, because for me it is not just about money or power. It is a question of
freedom.

  See what happened after our news conference.

  After we finished at the Rogner, we went to the Association for our daily meeting. Close to midday, we were getting ready to go out and join the people when the caretaker came to tell us that police had arrived at the gate and had blocked the exit.

  We went out into the yard. The iron gate was closed, and two policemen stood on guard to make sure it was not opened. A whole crowd of policemen hung around outside the railings. They had arrived in two blue minibuses that were parked a little further off. Among the police was a tall, striking figure in plain clothes with a short black-leather jacket. With his jutting chest and a growing belly that protruded outside the open zip of his jacket, he looked like one of the thugs who assaulted us in the Bar West. I had seen him before. Whether he worked for the police or the SHIK, he was clearly in charge of this operation. I had been told that he was a relative of Sali Berisha, some said a nephew, a character with irrational and frightening personal devotion to his patron, a mixture of bodyguard, strongman, and local patriot. Everybody said he had been the ringleader behind the assaults on Edi Rama and Ndre Legisi.

  But besides these warders of our improvised prison, our guardian angels were also in attendance beyond the railings: several foreign journalists were there with video equipment. One came up to the railings as soon as he saw me. I went up and greeted him. He told me that he had seen large police forces on all the roads leading to the square, shoving, threatening and beating the people of Tirana. He wanted to know why, in my opinion, they were not allowing us to leave the building. Before I managed to reply, Berisha’s strong man came up to us.

  ‘This journalist wants to know why you have shut us up in here,’ I said to him.

  ‘We’ve locked you in for your own protection, in case anything happens to you,’ he replied.

  This answer struck us as ridiculous but at the same time significant. Once again, as at the police headquarters a few days before, I realized that the regime was incapable of responding to changed circumstances. On the one hand, it could not stop itself imitating the regime of Enver Hoxha, but on the other hand, it could not, for a thousand reasons, behave in exactly the same way. Ludicrous responses of this kind were the result of this dilemma. Who, under the old regime would have said, ‘We’re protecting our enemies’ lives’? Hoxha’s police would not have locked the gates, but would have broken them open even if they’d been locked, and we would have been dragged out, thrown into cars and put into cells, and we’d have ended up with death sentences. As for foreign journalists, Hoxha called them spies and didn’t even allow them into the country. Berisha is imitating Hoxha, but is scared to use violence openly and is doing all he can to show the West what a democrat he is. Quite apart from the fact that he is a hostage to Western economic aid. It is as if the spectre of the dictatorship is trying to make an appearance, but evaporates in terror as soon as it sees the foreign journalists’ cameras. Yet this amateurism could still lead to a tragic end. Perhaps the reply of Berisha’s thug also concealed the threat that, if we go on like this, he and his friends might do us some harm.

  These cameras help us maintain our courage. We know that Euronews will report what happens, as it did the demonstrations at Vlora and the attack on Ceka. These cameras put to flight the spectre of Hoxha, whose regime was so terrifying precisely because of the media blackout. They banish its ghost even from the stubborn skulls of these attacking louts, not just our own.

  That is why this matter is not just about lost money or even lost power, but a threat to freedom.

  They let us out after three hours, when the critical moment had passed and people had gone home for lunch.

  I am writing these notes after finishing a press statement condemning the transformation of the Association’s premises into a prison for the leaders of the Albanian opposition. I ended it by repeating our appeal for all Albanians wherever they are to persist in taking to the public squares from noon to two o’clock, and calling for the right to legitimate assembly.

  Thursday, 13th February

  This morning before entering the Association I sat down for a coffee by one of the kiosks in the park opposite. We didn’t have any meeting planned, but we usually go there even when nothing is on.

  As I sipped my coffee, a message came that something was happening in the building. I got up at once and went across the road. There were two police vans and an unusual crowd of plainclothes men who we now recognize as SHIK agents. As I drew nearer, I saw a crowd of people shouting in the courtyard where we were locked in yesterday. Somebody said they were political prisoners, supporters of the PD. They were complaining about the Association and its chairman Kurt Kola making common cause with the communists, their former persecutors. Some were holding placards. I noticed a correspondent of the State television, a PD militant, with a drooping moustache, talking angrily into his mobile phone and asking for cameras at once.

  It did not seem to me a good idea to go in while this hostile crowd blocked the entrance. I was also curious to hear what they were saying. A grey-haired, former prisoner was making a speech reciting the crimes of the communists. Then the State-television cameras arrived. The crowd in the yard, as soon as the cameras focused on them, brandished their placards and shouted in chorus, ‘Down with communism!’ ‘Down with Kurt Kola!’ ‘Long live the Democratic Party!’ ‘The Association is ours!’ I went nearer to see if I knew any of the former prisoners who were protesting. The first person I saw was one of the most repulsive spies we had ever had in the prisons. It makes one both weep and laugh to see how these narks have found a refuge in the ruling party and have turned into the most radical anti-communists. Nor is it obvious that their hatred is simulated. I don’t know what to say.

  The former prisoners grew more savage with every impromptu speech. The fixed stare of the camera seemed to stoke their fury. Suddenly one of them shouted, ‘Let’s get them out of here, let’s get them out!’ I don’t know if this was planned or not. In an instant half the crowd had stormed the steps. I didn’t know who was inside: Kurt certainly. I heard muffled noises, and before long Kurt and Petrit Kalakulla emerged. The Democratic Party prisoners spat at them and punched them.

  I turned to a policeman, ‘Why are you standing here doing nothing? Can’t you see, people are being beaten, this building is under attack?’ I hadn’t noticed that one of Berisha’s hoodlums was standing close to me, the same one who had locked us in the day before. He came up to me and muttered insults as if to himself but loud enough for me to hear, ‘We’ll fuck your sister in the arse.’ ‘I don’t have a sister,’ I said, turning towards him, and felt a kick in the back of the knee. I saw I was surrounded. But one of the protesting former prisoners, who had evidently not expected this affair to go so far, intervened and said ‘No, no, don’t hit this person,’ and escorted me to the opposite pavement. I didn’t know what to do next. A journalist appeared, having recognized me from the previous day, and bundled me into his car.

  ***

  This has been a heavy blow from an unexpected direction. Kurt, Daut, and I met a few hours later at Bar West. We felt totally powerless to respond. Our first idea was to appeal to powers stronger than Berisha, to the foreigners of which he was scared. I decided that we should go together to the U.S. Embassy with Shane Muda, the secretary of the Association.

  I had already visited U.S. Ambassador Marisa Lino with Kurt, Daut, and Gonxhja a few days after the creation of the Forum. I remembered our chilly reception in her warm office.

  The police in front of the embassy directed us to the steel gate at the back, which resembled the side entrance to a prison. We sent notice of our arrival and waited, and suddenly the goatee-bearded photographer of Albania, who was said to work also for the SHIK, came up to us from the opposite pavement. I think he has the name of some mythological bird, maybe Feniks. With total lack of shame he came up to us and photographed us several times without asking permission, although he knows me. If we had told him to g
et lost he would have said he was doing his job. Having pinned us to the embassy railings through his lens several times, he went away satisfied.

  After a while, an official responsible for human rights came to the door. I had met her once, when she had just come to work at the embassy and had asked me for information about human rights in Albania. She was a listless woman whose tedious questions bore no relation to the reality of the situation. Later she said how pleased she was to be in Albania and to have met President Berisha himself, who had welcomed her with such courtesy.

  She stared at us but gave no sign of inviting us inside. We had to talk standing where we were. She said that she had been informed of what had happened and did not want to hear any more from us. We put a copy of the statement we had drafted into her hand and went away. It seemed to me totally absurd that we had knocked on the door of the U.S. Embassy, crying for protection like beaten children. The statement we had delivered to the embassy was in fact addressed to the Albanians. It described the incident with the PD’s ‘Black Guard’, which under police protection had forcibly entered the premises of the Association, assaulted its chairman and evicted him together with Petrit Kalakulla, the chairman of the Democratic Party of the Right. We appealed to the Albanians’ civil courage, asking them not to yield to these semi-fascist acts. Who knows what the diplomats say to each other after we come to their door complaining that Berisha has thrashed us. They probably can’t tell the difference between the goodies and baddies, but think of us as playing one part one day and another, the next.