The Burrnesha Archive

The Burrnesha Archive

Isla Badenoch

The Burrnesha Archive

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation

This novel has been published as part of a Master’s Thesis project in Visual Culture and Identity in the School of Design at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Spring 2016 All images and text created or sourced by Isla Badenoch © Isla Badenoch, 2016 All rights reserved Printed in Copenhagen, Denmark at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, bound by Co’libri. Sponsored by the Frøken Marie Månsson’s Legat Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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For Diana (Lule), Bedri and Shkurtan

Author’s Note This novel is a personal record, a biography and a history of three individual Burrnesha in Northern Albania. It is based on real people, situations and events and is thus entirely factual.

Approaching a small silent mountain village. Dead eagles. A prison camp. Washing strung up across the barbed wire. Men’s clothes.

The crumbling walls of an old socialist tower-block. The bottom floor of the building is barred. A broken opening in the coppercoloured metal, climb through. A shadow casts across the strong-

smell of cigarette smoke as the floor is littered with cigarette butts.

A fire has broken out here, the walls streaked with smoke. Take the

cigarette from the crumpled packet and light it. A dirty mattress behind the broken wall. Between charred sheets lie several objects.

Dead eagles, women with rifles, the shouts of military commands

and the sound of folk pipes. A male voice clears his throat, you cough. In the village, surrounded by beautiful snow-tops of the

Accursed Mountains sat above vivid green lakes, the landscape is hard and life here is tough. The buildings are run down. They

seem abandoned but then someone appears, it is inhabited after all.

Women stay inside during the day like nuns, hidden in secrecy. The men are outside smoking or talking. Many voices, in conversation

in a language that is understood by you and yet it is foreign to me. Lean in, look closer. Rings around your fingers. An old wrist-

watch reaches for the lighter first. Now take the cigarette from behind your ear and light it. Breathe in the sweet familiar rush.

The lighter is in your hand. Singing begins to echo again between the burnt-out walls. Colour, scents, characters, family, unfamiliar.

I remember, clearly.

A male voice clears his throat. Hands light a cigarette. The year is nineteen fifty-seven. I am six years old, born here in the mountains of Tropojë where the wolves, bears and eagles live. I always feel at home when I see the eagles. I brought my binoculars with me to

spot them. I started smoking this year, just turned six years old.

I haven’t stopped since. Only my grandmother knows. I smoke everyday. Women don’t really smoke here. The year is nineteen fifty-seven.

Then her husband, co-mayor of Durrës, picked us up in his blacked out Chrysler and took us to his ‘forbidden food’ restaurant. What is that? Well, illegal foods such as shark. He clicks his fingers rudely at

the waiting staff and signals – “turn the volume up”. Upon which he bursts out into singing Adele’s Hello blasting from one of many tv’s playing in solidarity in the background, fixed to the overly decorated walls. The framed photographs of famous Albanians and International guests of the restaurant. Continue to eat your forbidden food politely, if you laugh you won’t be able to stop.

My grandmother took me to a wedding and a funeral. I smoke and drink with the men at weddings, funerals and occasional village meetings, but my grandmother’s role at such functions is to serve us food and then to leave. Her place as a woman, when she can’t

roll her own cigarettes. I would have become a Hollywood actress, no doubt, I was beautiful. But I like smoking too much and don’t ever want to marry. I can’t. No need for a husband to tell me what to do. I probably would be shot by him anyway. A woman should be handed over to her husband together with a cartridge, so that

if he is dissatisfied or she tries to flee at any point he is entitled to shoot her. When I was a child I used to get into fights with the boys and girls, I would usually start it, maybe if I hadn’t had a cigarette.

The link between smoking and lung cancer is one of direct cause

and effect it has been found. But tobacco firms have rejected the findings saying they are merely a matter of opinion. I have smoked everyday since nineteen fifty-seven. The prohibition of smoking in theatres, cinemas and public transport is not on the agenda. Aged sixty-five and dressed entirely in military attire apart from a tie with a race-horse betting scene. Upon the tie shouting men and women in top-hats and tail-coats waving their handkerchiefs rapidly at their favoured horse to win.

We meet in the middle of the road – directing the traffic, shouting, gesturing and smoking in unison. It’s not her job, she just likes being authoritative. I call her he, she calls her she and he depending on how he-she feels. Smoking, always smoking. Noise and traffic.

So much pollution its hard to breathe, getting under your skin,

I am Albanian in the making. I would have become a Hollywood actress. No doubt. I was beautiful but I hated the attention I got from men, I was one myself and I don’t believe in that, sorry. We don’t really agree with homosexuality here. Most of us old people are used to things being banned or restricted, all these modern liberties are foreign to me.

I am religious and feel that there are two separate parts to our species. Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, a man and a woman are two very different things.

If a girl refuses to marry the bridegroom chosen by her parents, to whom she may have been betrothed before birth, she must shear her head and turn herself as far as possible into a male. I am sexless as an anchorite. She is expected to take part in tribal wars.

Masculine labor is demanded of her. We had one such girl with our caravan, she was an excellent shot, for weeks I thought she was a man. So at seventeen I cut off all my hair and men never looked at me the same way. It was liberating. I am myself.

The prohibition of smoking in theatres, cinemas and public transport is not on the agenda. We don’t have the best public transport even if you could smoke whilst using the buses and trains. You can’t get a bus or train easily here that’s for sure. Unless you get up at five am. They’ve built a railway apparently across the country, the communists and public workers. Only by the time they’ve finished, it’s nineteen ninety-one – communism has fallen.

They turn back round to look at their work, only to find that all the rail track has been stolen.

Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, a man and a woman are two very different things. Standing to the right next to a doorway, that’s me when I was in the military. There’s so much traffic in the city, now that everyone can have their own car. I prefer to ride my bike. We don’t have the best public transport even if I wanted to use it. Taking the bus isn’t much fun either it can be pretty busy, everyone going to their work who can’t afford their own car, or maybe they’re just old like me. Most of us drive, though not everyone can read so not everyone has a license. There’s not much

work here but everyone wants to live in the city, to be modern.

Working in the fields makes me happy, that’s why I wanted to be free, to be with the livestock.

I painted the colour in myself, you can hardly tell I don’t think, that was in nineteen sixty-seven. I boiled up Hoxha’s flowers to make the colour, grind his bones to make my bread.

See this photo? It’s a replica from the Marubi Photo Archives, I painted the colour in myself. Every time we went to the photo archives it was shut. A metal gate with one word recognizable – Marubi – down a rundown back alley in Shkodër. An amass of photographs live in a tiny flat inside. Apparently, because it is staterun, they can open and close when they like, not really interested in people seeing the photographs taken by the “Father of Albanian Photography”– who sits to the left with his face resting on his hand.

See this photo? This is me before I cut off my hair, I painted the colour in myself, you can hardly tell I don’t think. Sorry about the biscuits I didn’t realise you were diabetic. They have a painting of a Danish castle on. The children when I arrived home rushed to see them, they were so happy, thank you. We don’t get much food up here in the mountains other than what we grow ourselves. Some things imported, now that we can.

We sit in the hotel room talking about the new Tirana master plan for the city centre, how every mayor that comes into power doesn’t wish to continue the building work of what the last Mayor started, wanting to have their own name remembered and so knock it down or it remains half-built. Meanwhile I draw, in my slippers and woolly hat, I always wear a hat. I look over to see what it is – a seaside scene, two men fishing. I am going fishing on my friend’s boat. The boardwalk goes on as far as the eye can see, wooden slats and a metal hand rail to stop you falling in. See this photo?

I painted the colour myself. Guess how old I am here? Sixty-five or sixteen. See what I mean? I was beautiful, Hollywood would have loved me, but I love Albania, I would never leave and it has

been good to me, I’m happiest here and I represent the family.

See this photo? I painted the colour in nineteen sixty-seven. We weren’t allowed to have colour photographs then – the dangers

of colour photographs. So I boiled up the different flowers you had everywhere during the National Labour Day to make my own colour. I’ve never been good at doing what I’m told, fighting the boys and making them cry. Black and white photographs were expensive to produce and considered a luxury item – so instead everyone had black and white. I’ve never been good at doing what I’m told.

There would be so many flowers to celebrate Enver Hoxha.

They made great pigment so I boiled them up and turned them into colours to paint over all my pictures. I am an artist and photographer so when I go on holiday, which is quite a lot these past years, I take my disposable camera. Digital is a bit expensive,

but now we can have colour. Always taking pictures and making art before I cut my hair and after. We are the world’s first atheist state. The Albanian Constitution stipulates: the state recognizes no religion, and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people.

I believe in God – Adam and Eve and two parts to the human, man and woman, the Garden of Eden. I couldn’t express it for years of my life, but those years I was happy, I had a role in communism and people respected one another. I heated up one cup of water.

I didn’t want it too hot, but I figured that warm water would help pull out the color from the flowers. Bind them down. Nobody notices. I dress in a shirt and tie most the time anyway, when

everyone would dress smart. Now it seems less care is put in. Sat at the café with windows everywhere like a Greenhouse or a Garden of Eden in Durrës with metallic furniture and menus with lists of

fruit juices (we have just bought a new juicer machine) but I stick to coffee. Man, camera right, lights the cigarette for Diana. It’s

a sign of true friendship when another man lights your cigarette.

I’ve been coming here for years, sitting and drawing, the view is

beautiful, ships coming into harbour – stock and tourists, a busy port – been one for years and years. In fact back in ancient times it

was the road to the Ottoman Empire, Roman Empire, Communist Empire. They built that highway to Kosovo from here so that if there’s another war, the Americans can get to Kosovo quickly.

Before it would take you days to get there through the accursed mountains. My accursed mountains. It was just on five-thirty p.m.

It has to be that time because the Albanian power supply tends to go on the blink just after six p.m, and broadcasters who want to get their message across only have the erratic period between their listeners’ arrival home and the quiet expiry of the glorious people’s voltage as they all switch on their lights and radios.

I live above a kebab shop now in Durrës, they’re good to me there, always happy to see me and sit and talk over coffee. You can’t smoke in there. I guess because they’re cooking. Smoked kebabs would do quite nicely for me. See this photo? These are the sort of

operational facts of life you learn to live with after twenty-six years of broadcasting the voice of London to the one and a half million of your compatriots still locked in one of the tightest dictatorships in Europe. The youngest of the London production team doubles

up on Sunday evenings as the disc jockey and lets young Albanians break away from thoughts of Chairman Mao and Secretary Hoxha and deviate to the neo-colonialist outbursts of Lennon, McCartney and maybe Elvis? But usually hear on the radio Hoxha’s favourite music. The traditional Albanian iso-polyphony it’s called.

An Albanian folk music so old it is preserved by unesco as an intangible cultural heritage. I don’t really know how that works when it comes to voices. Probably the only thing we heard on the radio during Hoxha’s reign.

Some called them a sworn virgin in English, I don’t like that term.

Apparently there were some in Kosovo who became like me at fifteen. Traditional Albanian polyphonic music can be divided into two major stylistic groups as performed by the Ghegs of

northern Albania and the Tosks and Labs living in the southern part of the country. The term iso is related to the ison of Byzantine church music and refers to the drone accompanying polyphonic singing. Rendered mainly by male singers, the music traditionally accompanies a wide range of social events, such as weddings, funerals, harvest feasts, religious celebrations and festivals.

Sorry about the biscuits. When we met in a home for the mentally ill and elderly in Shkodër, I brought Danish biscuits as a gift. I didn’t realise you had diabetes. The nurse says she will see to it that there are no sugar level problems. I have a sweet tooth you see. For me it was as soon as I was born, I felt that I should be the brother out of the twin. From then on I have been free to be myself.

She was fifty years old when I met her and had short hair, a man’s shirt and she wore trousers, the one in Kosovo, who became like me at fifteen. She lived with an adopted sister and her short hair was tied up in a man’s handkerchief. He earned his money singing these

Albanian folk songs and beating the drums performing only for women. Playing on the radio whilst we drive in the darkness with car headlights flashing in my eyes, dangerous drivers overtaking on single lanes. The roads badly taken care of with the odd piece

missing entirely as cars swerve at each other narrowly missing, or in a lot of cases, fully colliding. That’s why I ride a bike.

I liked that Eurthymics song, Sweet Dreams, as I have a sweet tooth.

I dance involuntarily whenever there is any kind of music on. I’ll come with you to the mountains. I am the only one left here – I represent the family. You see these rings? They are for my mother and father, I never take these rings off. You are the first person I have told that. You see these rings? I carved this eagle out of wood for them, I will give you one too if I have time to carve it before we leave.

Durrës café on the promenade, where we talked through the translator of her sixteen-year-old son, and where, as a regular, we are treated with the utmost respect. Diana is served coffee first of course, he says to me how women are still served last – traditions ingrained into the minds of the nation. It’s a long drive to Kosovo to get to back to the mountains of Tropojë. Lule constantly pretends to play the pipe nearly the whole way. I would never marry, I would probably be shot because I’m always moving, singing, dancing.

That bullet in the dowry would have been used on me by now, that’s for sure.

I will take you to where I grew up. Where the wolves, bears and eagles live. Keep looking out the window and you’ll see it. Keep looking. Sweet dreams are made of this. It’s a seasonal beach bar, overlooking the Adriatic Sea. A refined beach-front hotel just six kilometres from Durrës Castle and only seven from the Durrës Amphitheatre. I’m already staying in a hostel, but thanks.

I’ve brought everything I need in this bin-bag. It’s got gifts for you in too, but you must wait until we get to the mountains. Patience.

A flag, a carved wooden eagle – I made that – crackers and oranges.

These hands can peel the skin of an orange in one, foul, swoop, and my binoculars too, to look for the eagles. Why do you kidnap

my child? cried the eagle. The child is mine because I saved it from the snake which you didn’t kill, answered the youth.

I learnt how to play the pipe and the guitar by teaching myself, oh and also the piano, jazz piano. I was around sixteen. The year is nineteen sixty-seven. The pipe is easiest as at least you can bring it

with you everywhere to practice. It’s also easy to practice without even holding a pipe – just fiddling with your fingers as though a pipe sits between them, like this, see? Albania’s on the blink. I like listening to all kinds of music. Mainly classical but I love to dance.

That makes Elvis a hero.

A jeni sonte i vetmuar, ju humbas mua sonte? Jeni te keq kemi përvjedhur larg? A humbur kujtesën tuaj për një ditë të ndritshme me diell. Kur ju puthi dhe e quajti you dashur? I don’t know the words in English but I can imagine what they say. And sing along anyway.

Albania’s on the blink. Nineteen sixty-seven. The youngest of the London production team doubles up on Sunday evenings as the disc jockey and lets young Albanians break away from thoughts of Chairman Mao and Secretary Hoxha and deviate to the neocolonialist outbursts of Lennon, McCartney and Elvis. Ten years

before I cut my hair, I hear Hoxha’s songs a lot. On the radio or at the celebrations, re-written to celebrate him and sung the traditional way, rewriting tradition. Maybe unesco are preserving him too?

Nineteen fifty-seven, I started smoking, I am six years old. I love to dance, hips and all, with my hands. I don’t know what he’s saying but I like the sound of it. This year Elvis Presley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for the third and final time. He is shown only from the waist up, even during the gospel segment, singing Peace In The Valley. I didn’t see it but I heard about it.

We don’t get much choice on what to watch even if you are lucky enough to have a tv. Ed Sullivan goes on to describe Elvis as a:

real decent, fine boy. We’ve never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we’ve had with you. You’re thoroughly all right. In the mid nineteen-fifties, rock and roll was increasingly being attacked and there was growing opposition to its supposedly negative influence on America’s youth. I love America. With all the gyrating hips – it was too sexual for the timid fifties. We’ve never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we’ve had with you.

Elvis, being the star that he was, became the target for this outrage.

Following Elvis’ second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, in which he performed this rousing version of his hit Hound Dog,

angry crowds in St. Louis and Nashville burned the star in effigy.

With all the controversy swirling around, cbs censors demanded that for Elvis Presley’s final Ed Sullivan Show appearance he be shot from the waist up. No hips allowed. Seen only from the waist up, Elvis still put on an exciting show. I didn’t see it. Did you see it?

I remember, clearly.

But it was his rendition of such Presley hits as Heartbreak Hotel and Hound Dog that stirred up the studio audience. Their screams and applause clued the television viewers as to what Elvis was doing out of camera range, almost subverting the censors’ intent. The wildest explanation was offered by a former director of The Ed Sullivan Show, who said that during his second appearance, Elvis

apparently put a cardboard tube down the front of his trousers and manipulated it to make the studio audience scream.

To avoid a repeated occurrence of that behavior, Sullivan supposedly insisted on the above-the-waist coverage for Elvis’ final appearance.

None of these explanations offers any real insight but all add to the folklore surrounding this event, thereby enhancing Elvis’ image as a notorious rock ‘n’ roller. Not our folklore. I don’t what he’s saying but I like the sound of it.

Are you lonesome tonight,/ A jeni sonte i vetmuar, Do you miss me tonight?/ Ju humbas mua sonte?

Kjo asht shpata qe u rrin tek koka,/ This is the sword that hangs above the heads, Are you sorry we drifted apart?/ Jeni te keq kemi përvjedhur larg?

Gjithe amriqve o qe ka bota./ Of all enemies around the world.

Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day?/ A humbur kujtesën tuaj për një ditë të ndritshme me diell?

Enver Hoxha, Tungjatjeta!/ Long live Enver Hoxha!

When I kissed you and called you sweetheart?/ Kur ju puthi dhe e quajti you dashur?

The hostel was pretty dirty, but friendly too. Arriving alone, it was best to get some sleep. A shared room but no-one else is there yet.

A suitcase sat on the floor with a piece of music on it.

He is an Italian-Albanian composer who arrives back from rehearsals at the National Theatre. Working with an iso-polyphonic choir, updating it to modern times. An opinion on the matter of Hoxha’s old songs.* First things first: Anyone dressed like a medieval shepherd should not have the first clue on what a political party is. Having these archaic tribal characters sing about the glories of

Marxism-Leninism is a deliberate anachronism. It’s completely out of place. And what’s with the depiction of Enver Hoxha as a fierce warrior? Sharpening his sword? Could there be a more absurd mental picture than the tame bourgeois old man in the gray suit barbarically threatening the world with a sword? *Enver Hoxha e mprehi shpaten,/ Enver Hoxha sharpened his sword, Edhe nje here o per situaten./ Once again for the situation.

Kjo asht shpata qe u rrin tek koka,/ This is the sword that hangs above the heads, Gjithe amriqve o qe ka bota./ Of all enemies around the world. Enver Hoxha, Tungjatjeta!/ Long live Enver Hoxha! They aren’t preserving him./ But communism was good to me.

As if the performance were not derogatory in itself, these singers are subjected to another indignity: in the end, everyone in the choir is seen wearing wildly different costumes, which in fact represent the main regions of Albania with their respective micro-cultures.

The spontaneous regimentation of these singers from such diverse

musical and thematic traditions into a single choir is just about as natural as a Russian, Chinese, Sub-Saharan African, Italian, and Arab child, respectively, coming together and holding hands to sing Kumbaya My Lord. The same longevity themes are pounded on anew, with greater force with each passing year in order to counter Enver’s growing fear of death. These farcical songs are all

so emotionally flat that they sound virtually interchangeable. The lyrics may have well been all written by the same author or by the same committee. Gone is the finesse, the originality, the pride.

This prolonged desecration has delivered a devastating blow to folk music in Albania because people simply don’t respect the medium anymore, after decades of continuous subjection to such

Orwellian performances as the ones you have just seen. Seven Commandments for seven years. All animals are equal. Folk song used to be a means of resistance to oppressors and commemoration of freedom-seeking revolutions. Then, from nineteen forty-five to nineteen eighty-five, it became the jewel on the crown of Albania’s most ruthless dictator. But that’s just my opinion.

Accidents happen they say. It brought people values, brought them together. Hoxha’s daughter built him a pyramid – like an Egyptian – hoping they’d honour him. It was his museum. Now its run down and the National tv use it apparently.

Arriving to the airport after a three am flight via Frankfurt, this time not being abused on the plane (still little respect for women it seems, though some things readily translate between cultures), we meet her and are thrown into the truck with National Television of Albania plastered on the side. Like a safari driving wildly around the pot-holed highways to Durrës.

Shouting in the back amongst the cameras whilst two large Albanian men talk loudly in front. We can’t watch tv here. We might not be able to heat our homes but we all have a tv and a phone. Mobile phone shops, wedding shops and cafés to smoke in

fill our streets. We put food on the table but don’t have much of it to choose from. I can’t eat the biscuits sorry. Albania’s modern life can be described through it’s cafés. When Albania opened its borders in nineteen ninety-one, the Dajti Hotel was a hub of social life. The café with a parquet floor and high windows offered a tranquil place to talk politics. Tirana’s elite drank coffee in the

pyramid, the former Enver Hoxha museum. I can teach you some Albanian phrases. Upon this stone, I am Burrnesha. They give us everything when we visit. So poor, but they would give us things like walnuts they had grown, coffee and cheese. Always welcoming even though we were trying to stop them from killing. One is in charge of a family, they are all women. The head of the household stands in the foreground, the women behind her.

Women would move to the household of the family she married into. Never again seeing her own. No longer her blood. Serving

to the family. Beautiful brass coffee grinders were made in Tirana until the fall of communism. I always drink coffee – once I think I must have had about forty-five in a day, sat all day in the same café. Nineteen sixty. I’m nine years old and just moved to Durrës.

The coffee here is good, Turkish. The Ottoman empire has invaded, but the mountain regions seem to remain unaffected. The accursed mountains – hard to get to, even now, that’s why it is so dangerous up there. I’ll take you to where the bears, wolves and eagles live.

My home. Albania’s surprising side. The misconception of Albania as purely full of crime and Mafia-driven. He believes it’s because communism is no longer there to stop organised crime. She saw it as no different to back then. He didn’t want to comment.

I meet with friends a lot. I have lived here since I was nine years old.

I happen to keep bumping into them and once ended up staying in this café for the whole day. Around forty coffees I think it was.

According to the Kanun – the head of the house belongs to the eldest living under the roof – as long as it’s a man. He can possess his own weapons, a saddle horse, his own mattress, a blanket and coffee utensils. The coffee is good. An espresso, thanks.

The coffee here was good, Turkish. I’ve lived through communism and it’s better here now. More choices and opportunities for young people. But most of them leave. I understand that. You have the option to leave now. Back then you couldn’t. I leave to travel but always return. I don’t need to sleep much anyway. I don’t think I slept for a week after that day. The Turkish coffee is strong at the best of times. Sometimes I put some rakı in it. Always an espresso.

With several sugars. Good strong coffee. There is really nothing quite like it. Once we were in the mountains – it was hot in the

summer so we needed to get up at three in the morning to make our way across the path and tend to the sheep. I seemed to have scarce laid down when knocks aroused me, and I was told coffee was ready – and the horses. Giddy with sleep, but terrified of waiting

for the sun, I crawled out of half-consciousness. The regulation two nips of black coffee woke me a little. The effect of the coffee wore off before I was half-way down. I reeled with sleep, and fell heavily with a clatter that woke me to the half-dazed chill-grey of the sleeping world. I don’t need much sleep anyway. Nineteen

ninety-one. Beautiful brass coffee grinders. This is odd. I’m sitting in a bar in Tirana, Albania, and there’s not a gangster in sight. We are blamed for Italy’s mafia. A twenty foot-long counter packed with an array of enticing meats, a friendly man who grills them on request. Everyone speaks English, and everyone is unfailingly nice.

Could it be that there’s a mismatch between Albania’s reputation for – how to put this politely? – unconventional economic activity, and the modern-day reality? A narrow-minded view of Albania.

I like listening to all kinds of music – mainly classical, but I love

to dance so Elvis is a hero, Elvis is a friend of mine. My daughter made me this cd for the car as a present, knowing that I’m driving across the mountains all the time. Once in New York, filming and lorry driving. We had these stamps with Elvis on recently. I posted

them to my friends. Sixty years of his life. I outlived Elvis. Doesn’t that make me more of a King? Posted them to my friends back in the mountains. Even though we weren’t allowed colour in our photographs. I painted it in anyway.

We can find out about that time now they’ve released the files. I wanted to discover how, at the age of twenty-three, he had ended up on communist Albania’s vast register of incarcerated citizenry, a political prisoner reduced to a name and a number. A search for the truth led him from the secret police archives to the local phone directory, where he found another name and a number that held the promise of an answer.

Their property had been confiscated when they were imprisoned.

Often, their families were also packed off to labour camps. Those relatives who remained behind were usually ostracized. Released into the chaos that followed communism, the prisoners lacked the resources to build new lives. Some have made their homes in abandoned buildings, and still fear eviction. I live above a kebab shop in Durrës. The family home is in the north, in the mountains.

I can’t live there on my own.

A brief history of Agony Aunts. In sixteen ninety-one, a thirty-twoyear-old man called John Dunton was having an affair and realised there was no one he could ask for advice about it without revealing his identity. Most of us would have shrugged and struggled on, but in Dunton, a printer and bookseller, the entrepreneurial as well as adulterous spirit was strong. Realising his dilemma could not be unique, he launched the Athenian Gazette and opened its pages to the readers. Thus the first agony column – and interactive magazine – was born.

It proved so popular that Dunton had to do what many advice columnists would do after him and hire writers (of both sexes) to help him. One of them was that infamous pen-for-hire Daniel

Defoe, who in seventeen-o-four started up the Review and became its “agony uncle”. More and more publications warmed to this natty device – which attracted readers while getting them to do half the work of filling up pages. By the seventeen-forties, however, female

advisers had come to the fore, and the popularity of Mrs Eliza Haywood, romantic novelist and editor of the Female Spectator,

and Miss Frances Moore, editor of the Old Maid, established the tradition of advice column.

In nineteen sixty-eight, at the height of the Cultural Revolution when relations between China and Albania reached their zenith, the Albanian Labour Party undertook an overtly ambitious initiative to celebrate the magnificence of their leader, Enver Hoxha. Hundreds of young people were forced to join the Albanian People’s Army.

Put to work. With enormous stones and white paint they spelled out the first name of our dictator on the side of a mountain.

The pre-Victorian agony aunts and uncles could be surprisingly liberal and outspoken. Dunton once advised a woman fearing a lonely old age to get herself down to the docks when the fleet was in and hook a sex-starved sailor. Nothing simpler. Others campaigned for better rights for deserted wives and other mistreated women.

The Victorians, of course, were working under a very different regime, and every syllable of their responses to readers’ queries rings with the repressive certainty of the age: You have foolishly lent yourself to a clandestine courtship and must withdraw from it promptly, the anonymous aunt, in the London Journal in eighteen fifty-seven, snaps. The serpent found his way into Eden, and why not into the park adjoining your father’s house? Do not add guilty weakness to your folly. The Garden of Eden.

I think the goose is Albanian. The Albanian woman doesn’t smile at it and learns right then how to call out to an animal in order not to let them kill the goose. This family does not seem as much crowded as the postman told, but not sure whether they are troublesome or not. I was a postman for a time. Though your post would have been read. No such thing as “private” anymore.

The hunger strike and the self-immolations in central Tirana this autumn swept the former prisoners into the headlines. The preVictorian agony aunts and uncles could be surprisingly liberal and outspoken. I would never leave. These mountains are mine. See

there? That is the mountain pass where you can climb all the way to Thethi. The car is stopped. I picked up the log to carve for later.

In nineteen ninety-nine, after the fall of communism, the army attempted to destroy the letters on the mountain using napalm.

In twenty-twelve, the inhabitants of the mountain village returned to unearth the letters and rewrite the name. After repeated acts of cleaning, uncovering, and painting, no longer the emblem enver, but returns as the English adverb never. Albania’s parliament has passed a law opening up communist-era secret police files to people who were spied on. Everyone spied on everyone else. It just

depended on who you knew as to how good the quality of your life was. Some people had a great time during communism.

The Sigurimi relied on a huge network of civilian informers to muzzle any dissent and maintain the communist regime in power for decades. At least seven thousand opponents of the regime were killed and more than one-hundred thousand deported to labour camps. The harsh conditions there often proved fatal. They used enormous white rocks to spell never. But I never told lies. That didn’t seem to matter though did it? I think the goose is Albanian.

We shared the hotel room together. I was with my sister luckily, so I had someone to talk to. But she also had a cold and cough.

He went out and got some food for us. Not that safe if you don’t know where you’re going. The mountains are being blown up to try and get rid of it all. But not these ones. Only some mines have been left behind and they don’t quite know where. We’re near Kosovo too, you see. For now I will show you where the eagles live.

Tropojë district has had a long reputation as one of the wildest and most conservative regions in Albania, virtually out of control of every government whether royalist, communist, or republican.

A warning to travelers advising against all travel to the north-east border areas between Albania and Kosovo because of the risk of

unexploded ordnance placed during the Kosovan War and the poor condition of the roads. The Americans have built a road there now.

It’s only half finished as they ran out of money – as you can see the carriageway ends up as a single lane. The traffic driving straight at you from nowhere in the middle of a mountain, with a fivehundred foot drop. Not everyone has a driving license either. It’s more important to drive than to read. But you can’t really take your test if you don’t know how to do that. Education was better in my time. Now I don’t think they care. As long as we can drive.

I work for the Communist regime like everyone else. I’m eighteen and work in the administration for my village. Monitoring

everything. I’m being imprisoned for seven years. Seven years of my life for a crime I did not commit. I don’t understand what I did wrong. It was something to do with money. I stole ten-thousand Lek they said. But I would never do that. It’s brought shame to my whole family but I have to do as they say. What they could do to my family is unthinkable. Ruin their lives forever, but for us the shame of it is worse.

Every man’s honour is his personal affair and no-one may interfere with or constrain the defence of that honour in any way. An offence to honour is never forgiven. An offence to honour is not paid for with property, but by the spilling of blood (or magnanimous pardon). During those times they could easily destroy your whole family. Even those not even born yet. I heard a story of a young doctor couple – very clever. They said something against the regime and were put on a pig farm, made to work and live with the pigs.

It was meant to be for ten years, but it turned into twenty-five, turned into forever.

Staying in the town’s hotel, we meet in the café over blueberry tea and in a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. Smoke formed from the tables full of small groups of men who talk in hushed voices, leaning in closely to discuss further. A local chef joins us. Journalists come here a lot, rude and try to exoticize us. As though we are some kind of freak show. But here I’m myself. I’m just myself, nothing more, just like anyone else. Trying to make ends meet – I do it for my family, my poor brother. I hate the sheep and curse every one I see, they killed my brother. The Seven Commandments.

One. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Two. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. Three. No animal shall wear clothes. Four. No animal shall sleep in a bed. Five. No animal shall drink alcohol. Six. No animal shall kill any other

animal. Seven. All animals are equal. I was imprisoned for seven years of my life for a crime I did not commit. Luckily, for some reason I was released after two years.

But it was for two years that everyday I wanted to die. To make my punishment worse – they put me in the women’s prison. It was humiliating. I am humiliated. I’m an outcast here and nobody knows how to treat me. It made me feel awful. The shame of it. I want to die. But afterwards I vowed I would only work for the good

of my family after dishonouring our name, live for them. Every man’s honour is his personal affair and no-one may interfere with or constrain the defense of that honour in any way. An offence to honour is never forgiven. An offence to honour is not paid for with property. But by the spilling of blood (or magnanimous pardon).

The hard rock of the walls.

Three brothers began to build a castle high up on the Albanian hilltops. They worked all day but every night the walls would fall down. They met a wise old man who said that someone needed to be sacrificed for the walls to stay upright. They decided after much difficulty the biggest sacrifice would be one of their wives. So they agreed, whichever wife who brought them lunch the next day would be the one and agreed to keep it secret from them. The two eldest brothers warned their wives. The youngest, honest brother, did not. The following day as hunger approached, so too did the youngest brother’s wife. Her name was Rozafa – they explained the situation that she was to be sacrificially buried in the walls of the castle and she agreed but on certain conditions. I plead, when you

wall me, leave my right eye exposed, leave my right hand exposed, leave my right foot exposed for the sake of my newborn son.

When he starts crying, let me see him with one eye. Let me caress him with one hand. Let me feed him with one breast. Let me rock his cradle with one foot. May the castle breast be walled. May the castle rise strong. May my son be happy. Rozafa wanted to be able to look after her newborn son – so asked for her right eye to see him, her right breast to be exposed to feed him, her right hand to caress him and her right foot to rock his cradle. The castle stood.

The hard rock of the walls.

Nothing to look at than the reflections of clouds on the ground when it rained. I was imprisoned for seven years of my life for a crime I did not commit. I remember the hard rock of the walls.

A suitcase of shame. Shame to my family. I am humiliated.

Six. No animal shall kill any other animal. Seven. All animals are equal. I am sixty-three. I live in the mountainous region of Tropojë.

It would take hours to get to her home so we met in Bajram Curri. A hard life led but powerful energy – with kind eyes, quiet confidence, shadows of the past within the caring hands driving the yellow VW bus towards the ravine, Agony Uncle.

Still struggling to move on from the tyranny of Enver Hoxha.

We’re going into a derelict building right in the middle of Tirana.

Hidden behind trees. This is where the Sigurimi were housed listening to the everyday lives, listening for descent. Recorders and cassette players. Camera lenses. A switchboard. Double-o-seven.

We’re so used to seeing this in movies that its difficult to take in that it’s real. We have to remember what this stuff did. It destroyed people’s lives.

The debris of the past is still unsorted. Controlling everything. The width of your trouser legs and the length of your hair. You look old enough to have lived in this time. Correct. How do you feel looking at this stuff? What a horrible life we have had.

I love Albania. I would never leave. Hundreds. Can you imagine?

Only through comparisons can you understand what has been going on. These are the albums of the photographs of bugged objects. Finally we have been given access to these secret files.

Briefcases, ladies’ handbags, women’s shoes, men’s shoes, a pipe, all pre-fitted with bugs. Like an old spy movie. It was incredible.

My mother is flabbergasted. Tirana in the mid-Eighties had been utterly dead. The only excitement came when an overweight man in brown flares and a garish rainbow-stripe jumper propositioned her in the loo’s of the Tirana International Hotel. She fought him off, and he was arrested in minutes. She has no doubt he was sent to a prison camp, or worse.

Amazed by the valiant hunter’s deeds, the people of the land elected him king and called him Shqipëtar, which is to say “Son of the Eagle”, and his kingdom became known as Shqipëria or “Land of the Eagles”. The two heads on the eagle represent the north and the south. The eagle on my head always, see the symbol on my hat? The town itself (when I arrive before four), you have mosques, and bazaars, storks’ nests, and picturesque desolation: it is a poor place, suffered in the latest Albanian rebellion, a mournful

air of decay. A doctor of quarantine in these coasts, lives in a twostoried wooden house overlooking town, plain, and sea; and by means of a walled courtyard has made himself a very comfortable place for such an out-of-the-way part of the world. The difficulty of attaining the usual degree of travelling cleanliness. I will take you to the mountains. The pass consists of mere shelves or ledges, of crumbling earth, don’t look down, perpendicular rocks of fallen masses of stone.

It’s hard to get cigarettes out here in the mountains. When my friends come from the towns or cities to visit they usually bring some with them. I can’t remember when I started smoking but I smoke all day long. It is part of who I am. It helps me think clearly. Sitting with the men in cafés talking, drinking coffee in a cloud of smoke-fog. It’s a social thing to do. No matter where you go in Albania you will find a café to sit and smoke in. There were cafés with dancing bears. Captured bears are still a key part of the business model of a respected restaurant in Tirana. Now many customers only want to continue to visit the restaurant, if no more bears are put on show there. I grew up where the wolves, bears and the eagles live.

To travel across the country is tough as the road systems are poor when you get into the valleys. Rock falls and debris from the rivers,

once they unfreeze, find their way onto the roadways. Then there’s no way in or out until the road is cleared. No way in or out.

Looking after my deceased brothers four children means not being able to leave the mountain village for a long time. To travel across

the country is tough as the road systems are poor when you get into the valleys – mainly from the winter. You can almost drive through all the different seasons in the space of about five minutes here. From the bottom of the valley where we are now, then up towards the mountain, a line of trees green and healthy. Drive a little further and the next trees are leafless and lifeless. Finally you approach snow-topped pine trees in the full bloom of winter.

We can stop here if you like. I come here with my niece for lunch.

They shoot the deer themselves, the deer that we’re eating. There was outrage at one thousand lambs being slaughtered to celebrate Albanian independence – celebrations at which the cooked lamb will be served to guests on two tw0-hundred metre-long tables.

King Zog was returned to mark the anniversary – exiled from when Hoxha came. Albania shouldn’t have a King. Maybe Elvis. He died in nineteen-sixty. King Zog, that is.

We aren’t vegetarians here in Albania but the slaughter of so many lambs wasn’t something we wanted to celebrate. We have lots to celebrate. I am proud of my country. Mother Teresa. Belushi – his dad a restaurant owner and an Albanian immigrant – from Qytezë – and his mother was also of Albanian descent. They live in

America now. Americans built the road to Kosovo from Durrës so that if another war broke out they can get straight there, fast.

It’s a road we’ve been along before. And have you tried the sheep’s cheese, it’s delicious? But the prime minister’s office could not be contacted for comment.

We drive together to the mountains through Kosovo across the border. Rather than waiting in the queue with the rest of the cars, she gets out and walks across, straight past an office full of border police. The police surround her. She lights a cigarette, puffing away on it in response. They all start joking with one another. Masculine bravado saves the day. The id reads one thing, they read it differently.

We are a traditional folk, because we have nothing to hold onto but

our traditions. Maybe that makes us old-fashioned. Adam and Eve and two equal parts. But it’s what makes me Albanian. As long as we can put food on the table that’s all I care about. People can live how they want to now, but it’s hard. We have the freedom to vote, drive, conduct business, earn money, drink, smoke, swear, own a gun. I taught five hundred women to shoot a gun. We carry guns because of the wolves too, to scare them from the sheep. The dogs we keep are as big as the wolves, you’ll see them. We let them out at night. Nobody dares mess with another family’s dog. They are as much as part of the family as anyone else. I represent the family here. A woman is a sack made to endure.

I know we are all on a mission from God. It’s one hundred and six miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. She gave her the sunglasses to keep. They looked good, like mirrors. You see this photo? Worn whilst waving on the passing traffic on the ravine bridge, just like Diana when we first met. Scare the crows. Scare the wolves.