nje artikull interesant mbi Shqiperine ose me mire mbi Tiranen. t'me falni po eshte shume i gjat per tu perkthyer po me interes per tu lexuar.
ALBANIA
by Andrew Mueller
WHEN we take our seats in the revolving cocktail lounge on top of the
citys highest building, were overlooking a magnificent square, into
which
pour several lanes of expensive cars, mostly Mercedes-Benzes and Audis.
In the middle of this superb public space, theres a ferris wheel and
other rides for children, whose parents are catered for by the cafe
tables on the balcony of the opera house to the right. As the bar
rotates, we
get a view over a tree-lined district of bars, filled by
snappily-dressed young people. Further around, we look across a park to
gleaming hotels
along the main boulevard. As we complete our circuit, theres a vista of
semi-completed luxury apartment blocks, painted a beguiling tropical
mix of reds, greens, blues and yellows.
We could be in Miami, or Barcelona. But were not and, more to the
point, Im not sure wed swap if offere d the choice. Were in Tirana,
Albania, and its not what you might expect.
ALBANIAN organised crime has become a point of reference for all
criminal activity today. Everything passes via the Albanians. The road
for
drugs, and arms and people, meaning illegal immigrants destined for
Europe, is in Albanian hands.
Cattaldo Motta, Italian public prosecutor, August 2000
AND that, as long as were painting entire nationalities with broad
strokes, was an Italian talking. But Mr Motta is hardly alone. Lets do
some
word association. I say Albanian, you say. . . what? Gangster?
Asylum-seeker? Prostitute? There are viruses breeding in African rivers
which
have better public images than Albania. Indeed, in London schoolyards,
the adjective Albanian has passed into vernacular, descriptive of
anything shoddy, unfashionable or criminal.
Youd no sooner go to Albania than you would jump on the tail of a
sleeping leopard, and nor would anybody else. The current Rough Guide
to Eastern Europe doesnt mention Albania. Fodors Central & Eastern
Europe also gives it a swerve. Ditto the Eastern Europe edition of
Lets Go which does cover Bosnia and Belarus. Lonely Planet goes
there, but their Albania chapter kicks off with the reminder that This
pint-sized, sunny slice of Adriatic coast has been ground down for years
by poverty, blood vendettas, and too many five-year plans, and also
remarks that Armed robberies, assaults, mobster assassinations,
bombings and carjackings have been reported, and street crime
(particularly
at night) is a problem across the country. When I told my friends
educated, enlightened, citizens of the world that I was going to
Albania,
their responses were instructive: Was Baghdad not chaotic and dangerous
enough?; Can I have your flat?; Bring me back a, erm. . .
cabbage?
I wish I could say I knew better. Ive been lots of places, some of
them pretty awful. I know some of Albanias neighbours well enough to
know
the Serbo-Croat for Dont shoot!. And I thought Tirana was going to
resemble the less fashionable districts of Kabul. I packed water
purification tablets, insect repellent and medicines for stomach
ailments. I bought hefty books, which I imagined reading by torchlight
to the
crackle of gunfire. I took my laptop, reasoning that if it wasnt stolen
by bandits on the road from the airport, and I was able to find an
operable
power socket, I could get some work done in the evenings, which would
surely otherwise be spent brooding in my room with a chair wedged
under the door handle.
I even wondered, as photographer David Sandison and I waited to
change planes in Budapest, if it mightnt be an idea to pick up some of
the
Hunga rian salami in duty free, so we could be sure of something to eat.
Sandison, for his part, was gloomily concerned about his equipment
every photographer hed asked had assured him that if his cameras
werent lifted by Kalashnikov-wielding brigands, theyd be impounded by
hatchet-faced security guards the second he tried to photograph
anything.
Albanias fearsome reputation is the product of a modern history best
described as tragi-comic tragic if you had to live there, comic if you
didnt. Under the fabulously insane dictator Enver Hoxha, who ruled from
1944 until his death in 1985, Albania was so insular and paranoid that
it
fell out with every other batty communist state Hoxha left the Warsaw
Pact when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia, and stopped talking to
China when they started speaking to the USA (Revisionists! snorted
Hoxha). Convinced that the whole world coveted his loopy Ruritanian
fiefdom, Hoxha gaoled or killed thousands of opponents, banned religion
and foreign travel, and built hundreds of thousands of semi-circular
concrete bunkers all over Albania, facing in every direction. The whole
world, whose true feelings towards Albania were bemusement and
indifference, let him get on with it.
Hoxhas death in 1985 came at the right time for his country to
catch the wave of freedom that began sweeping across Eastern Europe in
1989. Instead, Albania spent the next decade turning from a Balkan North
Korea into a Balkan Somalia. During the 1990s, a substantial
proportion of Albanias population put their savings into pyramid
schemes. When the schemes reached critical mass and collapsed, in
February
1997, the country went berserk. Military installations were looted
more than 500,000 guns were suddenly distributed among Albanias 3.5
million people, minus the estimated 20,000 who seized boats and tried to
sail the m to Italy. Hardly had that fracas subsided when the 1999 war
between Slobodan Milosevics goon squads and Albanias ethnic kin in
Kosova dumped half a million refugees on Albanias northern doorstep.
That was the last time the worlds media paid attention to Albania,
so those are the images that stick the anarchy, the rioting, the
soggy-socked desperadoes tramping through mountains in search of safety.
This is what you prepare for as you pack the idea that it might be
quite nice doesnt come into it. But my first visit to Albania has
changed my view of the swarthy, tracksuited men selling bootleg
cigarettes to
hostile locals on Holloway Road. I never really thought they were
hardened criminals. But now I dont think theyre ambitious immigrants
pulling
themselves up by their bootstaps, either. I dont even think theyre
pitiable economic flotsam with nowhere else to drift. What I now think
they are
is abs olutely barking mad.
LAVAZH, says a sign painted in white. Lavazh, says another, daubed
in black. Lavazh, say a dozen or so more, in rapid succession. Were
in a taxi heading to downtown Tirana from the airport, and were reading
one word, written on just about every surface.
Restaurant? I wonder. Albanian for restaurant?
Coffee, decides Sandison. Theres that coffee machine, Lavazzo.
A good guess, but how much coffee can one nation drink? We pass 80
or 90 Lavazh signs. Eventually, I realise that most of them are
situated close to a shirtless youth with a hose. Lavazh is Albanian
for car wash and while, judging by the cars on the roads, supply
rather
exceeds demand, this is an encouraging indicator of an entrepreneurial
spirit; chalk up an early score against the popular image of Albanians
as shiftless scroungers. The hotel is another surpris e. Its as quiet
and comfortable as it looked on its website, with friendly staff. The
lampshades contain no microphones.
Measured against received wisdom, Tirana as a whole is similarly
disorienting. Some footpaths need maintenance, but I live in the London
Borough of Hackney Ive tripped over worse. We do pass a couple of
beggars as we walk to Skanderberg Square, the vast central plaza
named for Albanias 15th century nationalist hero, but youd find more
on the Strand. The streets are clean, and the traffic, by Balkan
standards,
only mildly chaotic. Nobody seems interested in robbing or arresting us
the only way we can get the vaguest thrill of Stalinist oppression is
to
stand outside Hoxhas old villa and wave cameras around ostentatiously
for about five minutes, after which a guard politely asks us to stop. We
are instantly embarassed by our ignorance (it will take us a few days to
become actually as hamed: this will happen when, after a long night in
Tiranas convivial bars, I get my 1000 lek notes mixed up with my 100
lek notes, and try to pay a taxi driver ten times what I owe him, only
to have
him return my money and carefully pluck the correct fare from my
wallet).
What startles us most, though, are the colours. When the worlds
media shipped out in 1999, Tirana looked like a huge London sink estate
with some self-important government buildings in it. Tirana still has
the self-important government buildings: the almost impressively ugly
mausoleum built to house Hoxhas remains, which is now an arts centre;
the dreary National History Museum and Palace of Culture on
Skenderberg Square, though the former is redeemed by the splendid
socialist mosaic along its front. But every other building that faces a
main
street has been painted in lurid pastel hues, and highlighted with
exuberant checks, zig-zags and s tripes. Tirana now looks like it has
been
assembled from giant liquorice allsorts. This fresh coat is the work of
Tiranas mayor, and Tiranas principal topic of conversation, a
39-year-old
conceptual artist called Edi Rama.
Edis a character, says Edi Muka. Muka, 34, is the director of the
2003 Tirana Bienalle, scheduled for September. He buys us coffee at the
cafe outside his gallery, across the road from Rinia Park, a shady green
haven from the sunshine. You never know what hes going to say, or
do, or wear next. That park over there was a shanty town two years ago
full of illegal kiosks and bars. Edi had them bulldozed, and now its
beautiful.
Edis a strange guy, says Nora Kushti, of the UNs Development
Program for Albania, but you have to be, I think.
I like Edi, says Eni, 23, a language student visiting home in a
break from her studies in Paris. We meet her in Quo Vadis, a bar across
the
street from Hoxhas unprepossessing villa, in the area of Tirana known
as Block. Once off-limits to all but Albanias communist elite, Block is
now as pleasant a cafe district as might be found anywhere in Europe.
All our politicians are shits, but Edi smells less than the others.
He has made things better, says Dorian, a friend of Enis at the
same table in Quo Vadis. But the contracts seem to go to the same
people.
Edi needs medical help, says Artur, a part-time lecturer, also in
Quo Vadis. Hes got a touch of the dictator about him.
When we do secure an appointment with the mayor, a couple of the
legends that surround him are immediately confirmed as truth: the
surreal
redecoration of the municipal offices (the walls are painted as brightly
as downtown Tirana, a chandelier in one stairwell has been replaced by a
string of garlic cloves), and the no less giddying pulchritude of Edis
female staff, who are breathtaking even by Tiranas standards (at the
risk of
outraged letters and/or a stretch in the doghouse, Tiranas women are
stunning, and know it, dressing with a blithe lack of modesty and
walking
with a knowing catwalk strut; Edis campaign against Tiranas infamous
potholes must have saved thousands of distracted male pedestrians
from undignified plunges into sewers).
It says much for Edi, and Edis private office, that neither are a
disappointment. Edi, a six-and-a-half-foot Balkan bear in an irridescent
blue
shirt and tartan trews, greets us from behind a polished wooden desk in
the middle of a marble floor, inlaid with the mayoral seal. Behind him
fly
Albanias national flag the splayed, double-headed eagle on a
blood-red background, which looks unfortunately like roadkill and the
flag of
the European Union, a universal Albanian aspiration. The walls are
covered in a sepia panorama of 1930s Tirana, and the green and gold
ceiling looks like it was looted from Uday Husseins bathroom.
I decorated this myself, he says, unnecessarily.
Edi seems tired. He has just returned from some sort of festival in
the Kosovan capital Pristina, where, to the delight of Albanias
television
news programmes, he made a guest appearance with an Albanian hip-hop
group, The Westside Family. He speaks slowly, in a guttural drawl
that sounds like an idling tank.
The painting, he begins, was because Tirana was in need of
signals of change and hope. After three years of chaos, people had lost
hope.
Also, its something that is not too much of a strain on our finances.
My budget is nothing point something.
Almost as if hes worried that this sounds t oo prosaic, Edi
assembles the first of many ambitious metaphors.
Its like youre on a boat cruising past a desert island, and you
see a fire someones making a signal. This is not exactly like
Robinson
Crusoe, though. . .
Edi pauses, sensing that the allegory is getting away from him. His
head disappears into his hands until he hits upon a way of bringing it
round
to an apposite conclusion.
Those fires, he decides, said Dont leave without me. Ours are
telling people not to get on the boat.
The smile at the conclusion of this Cantona-esque flourish is one of
triumph mixed with relief.
Anyway, he continues, invigorated, the colours are all my personal
choice. I didnt want different neighbourhoods lighting different fires.
The
colours were intended as a shock. People were used to sleeping after
they wo ke up their surroundings were grey, and unchanging. There was
resistance, but people got used to it, and the poorest country in Europe
became like a Montmartre cafe, with everyone discussing colours. It was
very strange.
Not everyone in Tirana is a fan of Edi. He has recently been the
subject of a government investigation into allegations of corruption.
Thats not all, he says, grinning mirthlessly. My opponents also
say Im the contact of al-Qaida in Albania, Im chief of a
money-laundering
racket, I used to sleep with my mother, Im homosexual, which is a big
offence here, Im on drugs. . . The point is that I am independent from
the
past. The crises here depend on the past all our parties have
historical and psychological links with communism or Balkan
totalitarianism.
I tell Edi weve met people who think hes not far from the lineage
of Balkan despots hi mself, and who believe he has an eye on loftier, if
more
modestly decorated, offices.
No, says Edi. Its not an honour to be a national politician. I
like being mayor. And Id never be mayor in a normal country. It would
be boring
and depressing. In a normal city, what difference can you make? Here,
small projects can have an enormous effect, like launching a computer
virus. This job is like adventure, like madness, like art.
With Tirana as a blank canvas, I suggest.
That, he corrects, would be a pretentious thing to say. Its more
like conceptual art. This is not Albanian politics. Albanian politics is
about
escaping the truth through a mixed salad of words. I dont have the
chances to prepare any mixed salads. But I am tragically optimistic
about this
city.
As were leaving, I tell him that, for what its worth, Ive been
pleasantly surpris ed by Tirana.
You know, he says, as my hand disappears into his immense, hairy
fist, journalists come here all the time and tell me that. And then
they
write shit. I am terrified of you people. Terrified.
THE awnings of the restaurants and shops of the Block district are, so
far, free of the logos of the western corporate monoliths, but
aspirational
names lessen the shock of their absence theres a wood-panelled Grand
Cafe de Paris next to a clothes store called Rodeo Drive, and a bar
called McMarriott, whose staff wear shirts embroidered with a golden M.
McMarriotts owners, you have to reckon, are going to be forced to
rethink their image one day soon.
The one Albanian word we see everywhere, on posters and stickers next
to a print of a red hand, is Mjaft!. Mjaft!is an emphatic Albanian
variant of Enough!. Mjaft! is also a consciousness-raising movement
which is acquir ing significant momentum. Since its launch earlier this
year, the young activists of Mjaft! have campaigned against all
Albanias chronic ills corruption, organised crime, the traditional
blood feuds
which still condemn rural families to avenge slights against their
ancestors with murderous violence, lack of infrastructure (for most
Albanians,
water and electricity are erratic). Mjafts tactics are borrowed from
the situationists of Paris 1968 via the Serbian student movement Otpor!,
which played a significant role in bringing Milosevic down. In May,
Mjaft! staged a bogus criminal street fair in Tirana, pretending to
offer
weapons, drugs and forged visas. They received several genuine
enquiries.
Albanias real problem is apathy, says Erion Veliaj, Mjafts
Campaign Director. Veliaj, 23, was raised in Tirana, educated in
America, and
worked in more than 60 countries for various NGOs befor coming home . We
meet Erion and Mjafts Arbjan Mazniku, 24, in the excellent French
cafe downstairs from their office. Like all Albanians we meet, Erion is
acutely aware of, and depressed by, his countrys reputation.
The worst thing is that people here have started to believe it, he
says. They read foreign newspapers, they see reports on Italian TV, and
they start to believe that we are all gangsters, and that were all
doomed.
Mjaft! are funded by various western governments the British
embassy in Tirana has kicked in an unspecified amount and by local
businesses. Edi Rama, campaigning for re-election in October, has been
spotted wearing a Mjaft! badge.
We dont comment about that, says Arion. We cant deny what hes
done. But Edi gets praised for fixing roads and painting buildings
thats what mayors are supposed to do. Expectations here are very low,
and t hats why he gets applause.
Erion and Arbjan are terrifyingly bright, and I suspect that if I
visit Albania 20 years hence, I might find myself addressing one of them
as Mr
President. Both could have walked into any NGO and been hired on the
spot. They must have grounds for optimism.
Albanias problem, says Arbjan, is that too many smart people are
leaving. All my friends left after school, and Im the only one who came
back. To me, it was a choice between leading a comfortable, mediocre
life in Canada or somewhere, and staying here and struggling for a
future.
Besides which, adds Erion, this is really good fun.
SO, what of the Albania of received opinion? What of this mythical nest
of gangsters and scroungers, plotting to steal our jobs, ravish our
women, drink our beer? If its any help, we are accosted one afternoon
in Rinia Park by Sokul, 3 1, recently back from America.
I was there for 10 years, he says. I worked in building.
Why are you back?
I had a bit of trouble. Drugs, man. Cocaine supply. I did five
years in Florida State Pen, then they deported me. You know, when I left
10 years
ago, this was total hell, dude. Now look at it. Wow.
So alls well that ends well?
No way, dude. Im going to get in the back of a truck and go to
London. I got to Brussels last year, but they caught me.
Why, for heavens sake? There are people whod row a milk crate
across shark-invested oceans to live in cities a hundred times worse
than
this.
Theres no work here, man.
Youre kidding. There are construction projects everywhere, hotels
opening all the time. Youre young, youre experienced, y ou speak
perfect
english. Get a job.
You gotta understand, dude. Minimum wage in the UK is four pounds
an hour. I get four dollars a day here. I go to London, Ill share a
room
with 10 other people, I can save some money, then I can come back, or
maybe find an English girl and stay. Theres some pretty girls here,
though. Wow.
I wish Sokul well, but I can see why he feels that Tirana holds
nothing for him. Theres a palpable sense of the rise of a generation
who see
what needs to be done as a challenge, rather than reason to swim to
Italy. In the bar of the Rognor Hotel, we meet Gazmend Haxhia, 35. He
manages the Tirana edition of the irreverent In Your Pocket travel
guide, and also runs Tiranas Avis franchise. Gazmend left Albania when
the
ban on foreign travel was lifted in 1990, and was the first Albanian to
graduate from New Yorks Columbia university. A ball of gregarious
energy, Gazmend would have done well anywhere. But hes chosen here.
Albania is still white sand. Theres such possibility.
Gazmend has been a tour guide, a translator, an aide to former prime
minister Pandeli Majko, and an entrepreneur.
Sure, there are problems, he says. Take the cars all those
Mercs in Europes poorest city? Okay, the older ones were stolen in
Germany,
or driven here by Italians whod claim the insurance, but police are
cracking down drive a nice car in Tirana, youd better have the
papers. The
institutions are becoming less corrupt. When you consider what this
country has gone through, whats happening is amazing.
Albania didnt join the 20th century until 1990. By 1997, it had
collapsed into anarchy. Six years later, its the kind of place where
people like
Gazmend want to raise their children.
In 1990, he says, people were amazed to learn that Hoxhas wife
had 20 pairs of shoes. We couldnt imagine such wealth. Thats where
weve started from. Things really are happening here.
That said, even the most ebullient Tiranese remind us that the
capital is an island of relative prosperity in a country which still
rivals Moldova
for bottom of most European statistical analyses, other than those
pertaining to unlicensed gun ownership. Doubtless there are dodgy parts
of
Albania, but there are dodgy parts of everywhere nobody judges Britain
by Middlesbrough at closing time. We dont have time to visit the
bandit country of the north or, more annoyingly, the reputedly gorgeous
beaches of the south, but in our ventures beyond Tirana we again fail to
find the Albania we imagined. The mountainside fortress town of Kruja
could have been transplanted from the Amalfi coast . The seaside resort
of Durres, where ships loaded with refugees left for Italy during the
bad times, has golden beaches crowded with day-trippers from Tirana. As
far
as we can tell, all the people who hire pedal boats are bringing them
back.
OUR people have become the masters of their fate, and now are building
and protecting a new life without oppressors and oppressed, without
enslaving treaties imposed by foreigners, without misery. They rise a
step higher with each passing year. All this has been achieved through a
fierce class struggle, overcoming the backwardness inherited from the
past with an iron will, foiling the plots of internal and external
enemies and
coping with the difficulties of growth.
- From 40 Years Of Socialist Albania
THE above words appear in a glossy book published by Hoxhas Communist
Party of Albania in 1984, appropriately enough. I bought it in a
shop in Tirana, a dding it to the souvenirs Id already acquired a
t-shirt from Mjaft!, some old communist medals from Kruja, an ashtray in
the
shape of an Albanian bunker from the Hotel Tirana on Skanderberg Square.
The party hack who penned this paragraph must have known he
was writing the most fearful nonsense, but the irony that he may yet be
proved right, if in circumstances hed have found incredible, is a
richly
appealing one.
If he or she is still alive, I can empathise with the bewilderment
they must feel. I fly home contemplating something which, five days
previously,
would have struck me as utterly risible. One day, Im going back to
Albania. Of my own accord. On holiday.
Krijoni Kontakt