Andrzej Stasiuk - On the Road to Babadag

Jani and his buddy waited for us in the bar, which was a single small stone room with a Greek woman, over fifty, at the counter. She listed for us all the churches that once stood here. She served us cheese, paprika, bread, and raki. She didn't want money; she wanted to talk, to tell. It didn't bother her that we all had to guess at what we were saying to one another. Others came, to look at us and shake our hands. Jani and his colleague drank one Albanian brandy after another and chased them down with Tirana beer. We wanted to stay longer but were afraid for our guides, who measured time in shots of liquor. People came out of the bar to stand and watch us leave. The men talked and talked. We were in a cornfield; people tore off golden ears and stuffed them in our pockets. Now it was downhill all the way, and we coasted in neutral to save gas. Jani put on monotonous, trancelike music, some kind of Turkish techno, and he and his buddy started dancing in their seats. They pitched and twisted as if they were riding camels. Jani let go of the steering wheel and raised his arms in fluid circles. Sometimes they turned to make sure we were having fun too. Then, to the dull desert rhythm, they began to yell, "Ben Laden! Ben Laden!" and with such swaying, with open windows letting in the hot air and dust, we reached Korçë. But that wasn't the end of it, because we absolutely had to visit a shop belonging to a friend of Jani, and of course we had to drink beer. We sat on benches among herbs, tomato plants, and the buzzing of flies, and Jani explained to us that the owner was a police officer but had decided to start his own business. The black-haired man smiled shyly, gave us cigarettes and hard red apples. The fiancé of the Slovak woman slept, his head between two white round cheeses.

Of the old fortress in Krujë, all that remained was a stone tower, a few walls, and an outline of foundations. The rest was reconstructed in 1982 by Pranvera Hoxha, daughter of Enver. She was an architect and had power, and this was how she imagined medieval Albania. It was here that in 1443 Skanderbeg hung the flag with the black two-headed eagle and declared the country's independence. He challenged Turkey, before which all Christian Europe trembled in those days. Callistus III spoke of him as "Christ's athlete," though George Kastrioti in his youth had converted to Islam, hence the name Skander. He lost, of course, and Albania had to wait until 1913 for its independence. All this, the whole tale of many centuries, with the flags, likenesses of heroes, statesmen, documents, and a copy of Skanderbeg's helmet, could be found in the building of Enver's daughter. At the entrance, guarded by a soldier with a Kalashnikov, stood a line.

We walked back, down a long, narrow street of ancient homes. There were about a dozen, and in each the old times were sold, thousands of objects, tens of thousands. In chaos and dimness, put in piles, set in stacks, hung in bundles, the entire past of Albania was gathered here. Carved chests, heavy dark tables, narghiles, curved knives, necklaces of silver coins, hand-sewn dresses permeated with age and decay, dioramas of Istanbul and Mecca, pieces of harness, mountaineer shoes desiccated and flaking, oriental filigree, sabers, wood furniture, bone utensils, objects made of horn, divans, blackened iron pots — a kind of dusty supermarket of a culture, all worn smooth by the touch of generations, not the least bit fake, only recently pulled from the dark and given a wipe for sale. We stopped at each treasure den in turn, but the variety of stuff and its barbaric splendor pushed us away. At one point, the power went out. The sellers led us deep into a black maze and with flashlights showed us items. A golden circle jumped from object to object, from one fragment of the past to the next. Out of the gray murk, a gleam, the shred of an outfit, an ornament, the metallic blink of jewelry, and it was like trying to learn about a world you couldn't completely believe in. Part museum, part flea market, part archive-storehouse. The helpless beam of light, wandering lost, turned it into a metaphor for Albania. In one of the shops, on an archaic ottoman, lay the owner. His boots upright beside him as he slept.

In practically every antique store there was a corner where the latest history was piled in a heap. Paper, mainly, likenesses of Enver; tomes and albums in which the leader posed against the background of his accomplishments: Enver before the multitude, Enver before a new housing development, Enver before a tilled field or a factory. Besides paper there were medals and ribbons with the obligatory red star. Only these things were left, and were for sale. I don't know if anyone was buying them. For an album about the life of Hoxha, one merchant wanted thirty dollars. He gave the price and wasn't interested in bargaining. He repeated his "thirty" and finally, impatient, turned his back. "Albanians don't bargain," Astrit told me later. "Particularly with a foreigner. They think all foreigners have more money than they do, and if you try to pay less, it's an injustice."

There were bunkers here too. Everywhere, in every shop — dozens, hundreds of miniature bunkers in white stone. They could serve as ashtrays, paperweights, knickknacks. A souvenir of Albania when you left.

Albania is loneliness. I recall a late afternoon in Korçë. The market, a relic of Ottoman days, was empty now. All the antique Mercedes had left, as well as the horse-drawn two-wheel carts. A woman had swept the square of its litter. That day the sky was gray, and when the crowd dispersed and the colorful riot of commodities disappeared, the gray flowed down and filled the empty place. The abandoned market was inert, as if no one had ever come by. Then, in the farthest corner of the square, I saw three men. They were squatting around a tiny grated fire and roasting ears of corn. You could hardly see them against the gray wall. The gathering dusk erased their profile. You could see only the flame, a red, uncertain flicker in the wind.

One day Astrit and I were talking about emigration routes in Europe, the never-ending westward flow from east and south, the guest-working nomads from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Romania, the indigent coming to make conquest of the land of the Germans, French, Anglo-Saxons, and all the rest, to find employment in Cape Saint Vincent, Cape Passero, and the fish-processing plants of Iceland. I told Astrit about Poles and Ukrainians at German construction sites and farms; I sang the old ballad of how hard it is for the worse off to live in a better-lit place. All to balance somehow his Albanian tale. When I finished, he said, "It's not the same. You don't know what it means to be an Albanian in Europe." We changed the subject.

"These remain from '97," Rigels said. It was in Gjirokastër, and I had asked him about the ruined ground floors of some of the buildings. No doors, no display windows, only huge holes at the base filled with rubbish, bits of furniture, stones. In the spring of 1997, the financial pyramid collapsed. The government of Salieri Berisha maintained to the end that everything was under control, and in a way it supported the activity of these fictional institutions. Tempted by the geometric rise of wealth, people sold everything they had — homes, apartments — took loans, and put the money in accounts so it would shoot up like the mercury in a thermometer when you run a fever. Tens of thousands of Albanians lost everything. "So what happened then?" I asked Rigels. "The shops, the little bars, belonged to the government?" He smiled. "No, they belonged to those who had something. The ones who robbed, who destroyed, they had nothing. It was revenge taken for the possession of anything."

I tried to imagine. We were sitting in a pleasant bar in the bowels of an old fortress overlooking the city. We drank white wine. Rigels greeted acquaintances. Nearby, teenage boys were drinking beer and talking about girls, and I tried to picture how five years ago kids their age had drilled the air with Kalashnikov rounds in a moment of joy because justice and truth were finally theirs. A few, from windows, shot neighbors they had never liked. I pictured this reckless revolution of people who had been robbed blind. Revolt in Gjirokastër and Vlora, in the south, while Berisha was north. The geographic divide so strong historically, it spelled civil war. The president in the north ordered the armories opened, in the hope that his compatriots would launch a crusade to crush the rebellious south.