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OF SHEPHERDS, CAVES, MOUNTAINS, MEMORY AND ALBANIA Norma Damiano, Claudio Pastore, Roberto Romano When we leave the tiny village of Vrane e Madhe, in Albania’s northern Alps, with its four houses in a cross formation, and we head onto the plain that turns first into steep woodland and then into rugged, isolated scree, we do not come across any other human beings aside from a group of speleologists looking for the void and for the memory of a shepherd. Dealing with these mountains, and with their unexplored caves, necessarily involves dealing with shepherds followed by sheepdogs exhausted from keeping watch over the flock. There is something unique about mountain shepherds: when you ask them about caves, they tell you about the mountain. They do so through the use of gestures that are different from those that you normally encounter in everyday life. They use their arms, making wide gestures as if they were sowing – like the ones farmers use when throwing down seeds and grain after the soil has been left fallow. It is as if they want to remind us that the planting of a seed begins from a hole in the ground. Panoramic view of the valley of Vrane e Madhe, Mal Shtrezë mountain
The only thing for it, then, is to put your faith in their memory, which is nothing but that of the mountain and which, in turn, is nothing but the coming together of steps, one at a time, heading towards the upland pastures. One morning on the Albanian mountains, under the boiling sun of a far-off August, we learned that every shepherd has his own altitude, his own territory, which he knows his way around and which he begins to resemble. He is at ease in the landscape, he encompasses it with his gaze and, above all, he reflects it – economical in his speech but overflowing with beauty. Everything he knows is enclosed in his memories. Lazhar is one such shepherd. He works on the slopes of Mali e Shtrezës. Every day in summer, he leads his flock to the pastureland, and he knows the mountain like the back of his hand. It was on one of these very days, when shooting stars light up the summer sky, that we met him as we were searching for a hole pushing out air. We came upon him by chance. And it was him who, stroking his
