In the following lines you will read an autobiographical excerpt from the book "Beautiful Land, Ugly People" (Tokë e bukur, mërgëzë të shëmtuar) by a former victim of the Hoxha regime in Albania, Kasem Hoxha.
Originally from the village of Markati in Saranda, Kasem, after ten years of harsh torture and imprisonment in the communist prisons of Albania, escaped from the Spac prison, then managed to escape to Greece, where he remained for a time in Lavrio. In 1988, he married a Greek wife in Greece and then, after managing to receive political asylum in the USA, settled there and raised his family.
In one of his many notes, he mentions a shocking incident he experienced with a fellow prisoner from Dervitsani, named Telis (a reference to the well-known Dervitsani resistance fighter of the Hoxha regime, Aristotelis Xeras), who was brutally tortured by the regime's agents in Spats prison.
The incident follows in simple translation, trying to preserve the meaning from the original albanian text:
"I got up and took my friend in my arms, slaughtered, lying on a blanket. I spoke to him but he was unconscious. I had no one to alert, because all his flesh was wounded and blackened from the blows.
Did our mothers know what their children, who had grown up in misery and toil, were going through? Did the world know what was happening on the land that called itself socialist, an Enver and a party that were giving "lessons of freedom" to the world proletariat?
This is freedom, this is democracy, this is humanism?
I warmed his flesh with my breath, rubbing it for hours, until he came to. Telis half-opened his eyes and gave me a sweet look. This look seemed to express his gratitude for the care and service I gave him at that tragic moment.
Telis Moved a little and a loud groan came out of his chest.
-"Finally," I said softly over his head, "my friend, my brother, with whom I lived the most difficult moments of my life."
Telis told me: "Fuck, I don't want to live like this anymore" and started the hunger strike.
-"Kasso," he replied, as if God had spoken to him. "Kasso, thank you very much!
-"No, Teli, take courage, brother, don't give up on yourself, you're 24 years old, your life is ahead of you," I was trying to give him courage.
-"No, brother, you can't stand it, I want to die, I want to bring peace to my soul and bones, I have no strength and I understand that I will die!"
It was impossible to free him from this pessimism that had taken over his existence. It was impossible. The End had decided it.
Telis refused to eat bread, going on a hunger strike in his cell! Wasn't there anything scarier than watching a 24-year-old boy die?! Two days passed, five days passed, and on the seventh day, the Prison Inspectorate took him out of his cell.
I don't know how the situation went during those days that I continued to be in the cell?! When I came out after a month, I had turned into a ghost, but with a strong soul, I found Telis in the prison yard, walking on all fours (literally), completely naked! I approached, grabbed his shoulder, lifted him up and asked him why he was acting like that!
"I don't want to be a human anymore," he replied. "If the police are human, I don't want to dress like they do, but if they are indeed human, I will accept that I am better off as an animal and as an animal I will sit and walk," and he continued walking in the same way in the yard.
No light-hearted prisoner laughed, not understanding the meaning of this "great" man's action!
As soon as the police realized that a prisoner was mocking them and insulting the system, they came running and whipped his naked body with a black whip, dragging him back into the cell. But the commissioner called him crazy and ordered him released.
Telis came to the room beaten, tired, hungry, without any hope and lay down on the bed, where there was a torn straw mattress.
At noon I begged him to come and eat some bread and after my many pleas, Telis laughed and said:
-"Thanks, Kasos. I've done the math! By the time I get down the floor and go to the kitchen and go back up to the third floor, it wasn't worth it, because this fatigue would burn 500-800 calories. But if I eat 200 grams of bread, it doesn't even make 300-400 calories! Eat and don't eat, because it's for dying. It's better not to eat at all, to die faster, than this suffering!"
Όσο κι αν τον παρακαλέσαμε εγώ και οι φίλοι του, αυτός είχε αποφασίσει να πεθάνει. Το Κομάντο της Φυλακής όταν τον είδε πως θα πέθαινε, τον πήρε δήθεν πως θα τον πάει στο νοσοκομείο και τελικά τον άφησε στην φυλακή των Τιράνων. Τον Τέλη τον ξάπλωσαν ημιθανή σε μια γωνιά όπου ήταν γεμάτο φυλακισμένους. Ο Τέλης δεν σηκώνονταν, ούτε για να φάει, ούτε για να πάει προς νερού του, ούτε για αερισμό, αλλά σκεπασμένος με μια κουβέρτα από τα πόδια μέχρι το κεφάλι, περίμενε τον τελευταίο παλμό της καρδιάς του.
A man who was sleeping next to him saw that he had not moved at all for over 20 hours! He approached, uncovered him and was horrified when he saw his face without blood and his eyes eternally closed. He had frozen!
The prisoners approached and wept in front of this drama!
One of the prisoners informed the police, who took his body in a blanket, about his grave, which no one knew where it would be!
Aristotle Xerras was one of the most important figures of resistance in northern Epirus against the communist regime in Albania, who sacrificed himself for Hellenism and his democratic sentiments, in a cruel way, but which to this day reflects the harsh reality of that dark era.
The Chronograph
