Lazer Pepaj – Journalist and Missionary of the future

Lazer Pepaj was born in Shkodra on 9th November 1990. He passed his childhood in Ashte village of Shkodra, where he finished his primary and secondary school. He belongs to a patriotic family and tribe with ancient traditions.
Lazer Pepaj while he was 16, in October of 2007, went to USA where he had three older brothers. He settled in Florida, in Jacksonville. He attended there the high school. In 2009 he returned in Albania, in homeland, to attend the studies in the University “Luigj Gurakuqi” in Shkodra, in the Law Faculty. During this period he administered the business of the family with the label “VP Capital-CO“.
Lazer Pepaj is the youngest of five brothers, but responsible in family life and work as the older ones. He, beside the studies, business, has never neglected his intellectual formation, as part of intellectual elites of Shkodra and Albania. His desire to study and work was rooted by his parents, the father Zef Pepaj and the mother Lene Pepaj. So, the family with its traditions of culture and love for education is not only boost, but also strong support for any initiative in his life. However, Lazer Pepaj as a man that has known the life of immigration since teenage age knows that only a personality with multiple values can face the life successfully in civilized countries like USA. Only a man with overall knowledges can sit with dignity and pride in front of peers of civilized countries. So, conscious for the intellectual values, he is dedicated to the world of knowledge, not only to fulfill his figure as an intellectual person, but also with the desire to represent worthily his country, Albania, towards world democratic civilizations.
Lazer Pepaj, beside the study of the world’s recognition, a big part of his time he dedicates to the business with the desire to ensure his welfare and that of the family, but also with the goal to help somehow the poor people with his work. He has a charitable and missionary soul. Frequent movement in different countries have given him the opportunity to recognize better the life and to see that with the viewpoint of a missionary man, ready to give its contribution to peace and development.
Lazer Pepaj desires to dedicate also to journalistic. With his articles, he approaches and compares different realities, tries to reflect the beautiful image of the homeland, Shkodra, with its cultural and touristic values, in the eyes of the foreigners. Lazer Pepaj wants to see his own country, Albania, in Europe, along the strongest democratic states of the world. With his work as publicist he is now one of the most zealous collaborators of the prestigious magazine “Eagle’s Wing”.
The intellectual Lazer Pepaj has known well the rare values of American democracy and one of his objectives is to lobby to root these values even for the countries in development and those with problems, as the Balkans countries. The fact that he wants to lobby for the values of American democracy has approached him with the intellectual staffs of the intellectual organization Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity, a lobbing mission designed by the prominent former US ambassador Richard Holbrooke. This mission that among other things lobbies to improve the democratic image of the Balkans countries, is part of UN and partner with many world organisms that work for peace and prosperity.
The intellectual Lazer Pepaj as a dedicated missionary toward World Peace now is also honorary advisor of Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity.

Endri Hysa
Advisor of DMPP

Remco Vos – A strategist of great development

Remco Vos was born on 22 February 1976 in The Netherlands. In 2000 he was graduated in the University of Logistics and Economics, Utrecht, The Netherlands. He has a B.S. Degree in Logistics and Economics. In 2005 he is graduated in the University of Phoenix, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He has a M.B.A. Degree in Organizational Change.
Mr. Vos has attended numerous executive and professional level courses and programs, such as the young Executive Program at TNT Logistics HQ and the Mini Master Program through Rabobank. He has been Member of the Round Table and other business groups.
He is a solid entrepreneurial type, and has a background in international logistics business development, strategic forecasting, transportation and start-up operations in multi-national marketplace. He has a stable professional experience as a Change Agent and Team Leader in business planning, turnarounds, corporate acquisitions, diplomatic resolution, and industry networking initiatives. He assures a reliable development and execution of successful, high-impact business plans and processes with a seasoned approach and ensures rapid delivery of corporate alignment and accurate documentation. He offers expertise in handling process improvements and major corporate projects with top management and key decision-maker at all levels of matrixes organizations. He also offers effective hiring, management, deployment, coaching and development of top-notch staff talent. Mr. Vos is also an expert in superior motivations of teams to achieve peak performance, generate extensive financial reports, streamline business processes and meet aggressive business objectives. His career encompasses also multi-tasking talents in team building, organization, need analysis, accurate documentation, and attention to detail in time-sensitive situations. He has a long experience working with executives, senior management, professional peers, and external assets in virtual and multi-site locations. He has an extensive exposure to cross-cultural practices and international business protocols, particularly in Europe, and U.S.A. He works eligibility in European Union. Now, he is a proven business builder.
He is expertise in many areas such as: Strategic Planning, Change Management, Relationship Building, Mergers & Acquisitions, Performance Metrics, Financial Analysis, Team Leadership, Special Projects, Regulatory Compliance, Budget Administration, Internal Controls and Site/Business Set-Up.
During his life, Mr.Vos has had many work experiences.
From 2000 to 2002, he has been Country Manager/ CEO-Scandinavia. He hired to oversee all account operations for a major client, Compaq Spare parts, throughout Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
From 2002 to 2007, he has been owner in Vos Transport BV, Deventer, The Netherlands. He bought this company and turned it around into profitability. He inculcated a positive work environment with a strong management team, top quality benchmarks and high employee morale. TNT Logistics (now Ceva), Houten, The Netherlands.
From 2007 to present, he is owner in Vos holding, Epse, The Netherlands. He founded this consulting firm and holding company to continue professional growth. He manages all aspects of business development, P&L, strategic planning, resource allocation and client satisfaction. He performs due diligence on, evaluates and generates proposals for potential acquisition of small and medium businesses in different industries. He executes multiple consultancy projects for clients in logistics and transportation. He invests in businesses.
From 2009 to present, he is CEO and owner. He set up this business according to the request and specifications of a former and personal client in the Netherlands: DSM Melamine BV.
From 2010 to present, he is CEO and owner in Logistics Cost Consult (LCC), Tequesta Florida.
But Mr. Vos cannot stop here. Having a humanitarian soul, he has done some activities to help people in need. His will is to reach the peak in humanitarian activities. He wants his name to be in the minds and in the heart of other people. For all that he has done up to now in his life, his dedication in work and humanitarian aids he wants to give, Mr. Vos deserved the title Honorary Ambassador of the international lobbying organization Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity with headquarter in Tirana, Albania. The Ambassador Remco Vos has proved to be a worthy peace leader and missionary.

Arjona Firaj
Advisor of DMPP

Peter Steenbakkers – The model of welfare manager

Peter Steenbakkers is graduated in Business school the Netherlands OCR National Road Haulage Operations Oxford Cambridge 1990-1999.
He is a solid entrepreneurial type, has a rich background in international logistics business development, strategic forecasting, transportation and start-up operations in multi-national marketplace. He has a stable professional experience as a Change Agent and Team Leader in business planning, turnarounds, corporate acquisitions, diplomatic resolution, and industry networking initiatives. In his work he assures a reliable development and execution of successful, high-impact business plans and processes with a seasoned approach and ensures rapid delivery of corporate alignment and accurate documentation. He offers expertise in handling process improvements and major corporate projects with top management and key decision-maker at all levels of matrixes organizations. He also offers effective hiring, management, deployment, coaching and development of top-notch staff talent. Mr. Peter is also an expert in superior motivations of teams to achieve peak performance, generate extensive financial reports, streamline business processes and meet aggressive business objectives. His career encompasses also multi-tasking talents in team building, organization, needs analysis, accurate documentation, and attention to detail in time-sensitive situations. He has a long experience working with executives, senior management, professional peers, and external assets in virtual and multi-site locations. He has an extensive exposure to cross-cultural practices and international business protocols, particularly in Europe, Dutch citizen. He works eligibility in European Union; he is fluent in Dutch, German and English. He is a proven business builder as well.
He is a qualified master in many other areas such as: Strategic Planning, Change Management, Relationship Building, Mergers & Acquisitions, Performance Metrics, Financial Analysis, Team Leadership, Special Projects, Regulatory Compliance, Budget Administration, Internal Controls and Site/Business Set-Up.
Mr. Peter has attended numerous investment and financing courses, such as Goldmann Sachs Multi Million Dollar club and Rabobank entrepreneur of the year 2008.
During his life, he has had many work experiences.
From 2000 to present, he is the founder of the company named Founding of Steenbakkers Transport BV. He founded this company as self-employed driver on a single truck.
From 2002 to present, he is the leader of Founding of Steenbakkers Holding BV. This company is 100% owned and active in private equity, real estate investment.
Mr. Peter Steenbakkers, due to his great career, through dedication, honesty and his hard work, has had the opportunity to be in collaboration with others all over the world. Now, he is Honorary Ambassador of the international lobbying organization Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity with headquarter in Tirana, Albania. Mr. Peter has shown not just to be a successful businessman but he has also strong feelings as a humanitarian and peace missionary.

Loalda Duka
Advisor of DMPP

Erion Nikolli – eminent humanitarian and missionary of Peace

Erion Nikolli was born in the village Orosh in Mirdita. He carried out the 8-year education in his birthplace. He carried out high school for mining technician in Reps of Mirdita. He carried out his university studies in Tirana since 1988 until 1992 for Mining Engineering, the Faculty of Mining Geology.
During 1990 has participated in the in the organization of the December Movement and in the beginning of 1991 has created the first independent collegiate union. He made recognition of this union in many European Universities as: University of Warsaw, University of Bratislava, University of Prague, University of Budapest, University of Vienna and University of Wiesbaden.
In 1992 he continued the studies in Germany for German Language. At the same time he has played football in Germany. He has been in Vixen football club.
Since 1994, for six months has carried out a special course in Stockholm for Stenology. Later, he has gone in Netherlands where he has been involved in business activity for a long time in Benelux zones (Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg). He has contributed with much support and humanitarian aids for the refugees who came from the war countries of ex-Yugoslavia. He has also contributed for the Red Cross, not only by financial side but also by increasing the activists number.
During 1999, when the war in Kosova exploded, Erion Nikolli has assisted too much the refugees escaped by this country to be stabilized and accommodated in some countries as in Belgium, in Netherlands and in Luxembourg.
Erion Nikolli, during 2011, as a missionary of Peace and humanitarian, with his funds, has helped with food and clothes in north-east areas of Albania.
His work as a businessmen and missionary of peace has given him the opportunity to get acquainted with many eminent personalities of the world, personalities of world art and cinematography as: Roger Moore, Steven Seagal, Al Pacino, etc.
The missionary Erion Nikolli has partnership and friendly cooperation with many businessmen with world fame as: Franck Muller, the president of the famous watches’ company Franck Muller; the president of the company Intelligence IT, partner with SAP company, which has with more than hundred countries contracts for university programs; as well as with many industrialists with great activities in Europe and world.
Erion Nikolli is also representative of an investors board from Netherlands in Albania, but at the same time operates in other countries of Europe as regards to businesses.
He has acquaintance with many world politicians, with senators and congressmen, with different diplomats, with consuls and ambassadors of United Nations and of many west diplomacies.
He is collaborator of Albanian media, especially of the magazine Krahu i Shqiponjës (Eagle’s Wing).
Erion Nikolli, for his great values as an eminent intellectual, as a journalist and businessman with strong feelings as a humanitarian and peace missionary, lately, during 2012, has deserved also the title as Honorary Consul of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity, an international lobbying mission of United Nations, partner with many world prestigious diplomatic and humanitarian missions.

Endri Hysa
Advisor of DMPP

How to become a diplomat

(The world of a Missionary of Peace)

In the period when thought and human reason possessed the world around, was also born the desire for good inter-human relationships. So, the wise, intellectuals, despite the banal quarrels for wealth and power, dogfights and battles through endless wars that destroyed the values created by humanity, started to talk for a world in harmony and peace between individuals, families, tribes and human societies, as God had commanded. So, they theorized for a model Earthly Paradise, according to the model of Paradise that holy books preached. Thus in this variety of theorizes, was born the “middle gold” theory which approached to people an ideal of relationships that if it was applied and transformed in demeanor culture, would take toward the so much dreamed, Earthly Paradise. The ideal of “middle gold” was welcomed by many ideologist of this world and became as an essential shaft of many philosophical trends, however most of the time as once and now was and remains simply an ideal. People who accepted this ideal as a way of behavior, that transformed in part of their culture, behaved respectfully to each-other, applied all the codes of ethic of inter-human relationships, so, they demonstrated to be peaceful human. So, tending toward the harmony of relationships, with the desire to estimate not to harm the human creatures, scholars, ideologists, philosophers, as without understanding were transformed into the first diplomats of human world. They were the first ambassadors of peace.
So based on long experience created by the first diplomats of peace, idealists of the “middle gold” theory, located at the core of interpersonal relations, was also born the diplomacy. This is my viewpoint issued from the studies of human knowledge and from my experience. Anyone can also make opponency for its accuracy; however, I insist that the events happened more or less this way, regardless of the period when diplomacy became the main code of interstate relations. Diplomacy by many people is understood simply as an interstate issue and that’s all, but I say it is much more, it is a long process, part of inter-human culture that continually smoothes it and keeps in the parameters of harmony and peace that God has given to his creatures with the model of Paradise.
So, to be a diplomat, according to me, means to be a proponent of Peace, otherwise you are and remain a piece of official that have usurped this feature from your state just for personal privileges. And such a thief official doesn’t care for real diplomacy, doesn’t sacrifice for it, but for his interests may even cause war instead of peace. And such are a good part of today diplomats, irresponsible officials for authority that was given and which they misuse from the ignorance as well as from spiritual wickedness changing the tables of dialogue with the so-called diplomatic incidents, peace with war. Because it is known that where diplomacy ends, war begins. Someone probably doesn’t agree with this way of my reasoning. I have to bring arguments to convince him. For me, not only philosophers, ideologists and theologians, but also artists and all the creators of those values that are called art and literature, are diplomats, ambassadors of culture of a people in front of their cultures. Let’s turn back to antiquity, there where the first treasures of human cultures are. It is known that all wise people bow with respect toward the ancient and modern art, also to the naive and primitive one. All the people all fascinated toward the creations of popular epos, sagas, myths and legends, moreover toward the works of Homer, Iliad of Odyssey or Aeneid of Virgil or many other works of later authors, who with their talent and flair have humbled many kings and emperors. Are not these creators of artistic values a model of ambassador that should be taken as an example in inter-human and interstate relations? For me yes. An example: In the years of communist period that we experienced, our dictatorial country didn’t have diplomatic relations with many western countries like USA etc., however, noone could stop me that secretly find the radio waves “The voice of America” (Zëri i Amerikës), or of BBC and listen with pleasure the music of Beatles, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and many other singers. I didn’t know English and despite this fact, I felt fascinated by their art. Not only me. Many other of my contemporaries. Although our dictatorial state had forbidden the arrival of these diplomats in Albania, we lived secretly with the values of art of these artists, so, with the greatness of these ambassadors of world culture. They were spiritually among us, regardless that dictatorship had forbidden their existence and physical presence.
So, every creator, every artist, author of books, films, music, pictures and sculptures is in itself a born diplomat, an ambassador of the culture of its people toward the world culture. In all the times the flairs of these artist diplomats have mitigated the cruelty of dictators, have triumphed over the tyrannous ignorance with the diplomacy of artistic values and have changed the course of wars toward the tables of peace. Be an artist and for sure you become a diplomat… be a man of knowledge, appropriate the theory “middle gold”, respect and don’t despise, harm people and certainly you have learned to behave as a diplomat! So, it is so easy and simple: Love the culture of your people, also love the cultures of other countries and willy-nilly you are involved in diplomacy! And this is not only my thought, but also my activity. Loving Albanian culture, promoting its values, creating new values with my talent and flair as a journalist and writer, facing the values of art and literature of my people with the values of culture of other people, I gradually learned how to become a diplomat. So, with much creative work in many years of my life, I became ambassador of Albanian culture, as Ismail Kadare, our writer with world values. Someone might oppose that my viewpoint for diplomacy is rather naive. Only politicians and states between them can make diplomacy, piffle of this nature. Instead, I can tell you and argue that all Albanian diplomats all together haven’t done the half of the work that the distinguished writer Ismail Kadare has done with his work for the internationalization of the Albanian issue in the world. Ultimately, without elongated too much, I can tell you that the writer Ismail Kadare, as many personalities of art, world literature and culture, is the ambassador model that represents Albania with dignity. I walk in his footsteps, therefore I see myself in the ranks of diplomats and ambassadors of Peace. I am its missionary and warrior. I am part of the World Earthly Paradise, just as God has commanded!

Shefki Hysa
Writer

Peace cannot be brought by anyone

(Thoughts abort the book with publicistic writings “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” of the author Paulin Rranzi)

A society, a political class or expressed more specifically, people of any layer, a nation, if they live in their country in peace, make them more noble, more human, more solidary and visionary, and above all, happier. Thus, a distinguished personality, Benedict Spinoza, said: “Peace is not the absence of war, but it is virtue, a certain mental condition, a tendency for good will, confidence, and justice.” In this sense I think that such publicist books like “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” of Paulin Rranzi, not only are very important for the health and renewal of Albanian society and politics and should be published more, because they unfold the meaningful message that peace in a country can’t be brought by anyone, but are personalities that came out by people of this country that with their name and valuable contribution in certain fields of life create wide spaces for peace, tolerance and understanding. Thanks to a dedicated work in the summary with writings in portrait form, the author has illuminated different sides of the character of 10 Albanian personalities, who are distinguished for their valuable contribution in certain fields of social and political life in Albania and beyond. All the writings are traversed by another interesting message: ardent love for Chameria and Kosovo, which won its independence, but with war against the Serbs, in which as it is known, NATO gave an extraordinary help, because the Serbs exerted an unprecedented genocide against the Albanian population. While the missionaries of peace want the independence of Chameria to come true thanks to dialogue, understanding and tolerance, so, in a word, thanks to peace between parties. The author of the book to structure his work and to gather an abundant material has used, as to say, “up to the core” as main source the outstanding impressions of the tireless writer and journalist of Cham origin, Shefki Hysa, who has known all the personalities of the book and had friendship with them. Thanks to this material, that relates to the overall and diverse life and activity of personalities missionaries of peace, which he has drawn its portraits with mastery and publicistic pathos, the author from this material has managed to gather many situations, expressive details and tenuity. These artistic tools on one hand arouse the interest and curiosity of the reader and on the other hand deepen and make more prominent the lines of the portraits of missionaries of peace. In the writing “Man in love with peace”, dedicated to the former president of Kosovo, deceased Ibrahim Rugova, the reader will be known not only with an intriguing situation, with endless efforts, wisdom, agility of the journalist Shefki Hysa to interview the Gandhi of the Balkans in the summer of 1991, but also with their warm political conversation, from which are revealed the viewpoints of Rugova for Kosovo’s independence, his noble and peace-loving spirit, simplicity, modesty as he reached to make friend the Cham journalist and then introduce him with a rare diplomat of that time, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Even in the writing “The dissident that commiserated the political opponents”, dedicated to the deceased Pjetër Arbnori, or as he was called by all, Mandela of the Balkans, is noticed that the vital material that the author used to give form to the figure of this remarkable personality is the result of impressions and memories of the known writer and journalist from Chameria, Shefki Hysa. When the deceased Arbnori became Chairman of Assembly he had close relations with Shefki, who at that time worked at the administration of the assembly. They became friends and collaborated at the field of edition. Thanks to this collaboration, Pjetër Arbnori published some books, which were welcomed by the readers. Meanwhile with his help were brought in homeland the bones of the great Cham writer, Bilal Xhaferri.
In the book, the figure of Arbnori is drawn with love as the figure of a man, artist, with rich spiritual love, noble, approachable and communicative with simple people, debonair, funny and benevolent. But let us leave the word to the author by detaching a short passage from the book that the reader to understand better who was Peter Arbnori: “The writer Pjetër Arbnori felt delighted as a naïve child in front of the book. Burnished it with hands and fell in tears. It was his first edition and he was not very young, but 57 years old. Understandably, he would feel excited by all those things he had passed in his life. He was as human in that behavior, as with that longing ignored even his position as a senior politician. He could have been serious with a bureaucratic mask in his face, but not. He was man. He was a great man.”
After these two very impressive articles in the book follows two other stories that portray two deputies of the Albanian Parliament of Cham origin. The first writing speaks about the deputy Shpëtim Idriz, who just to lobby about the Cham issue is secedes from the group of socialist deputies, that’s why the author entitles this writing “Leader of Chameria- dream and reality”. The figure of this politician is given with the most substantially qualities and virtues as a man that does a lot for his homeland, visionary for its future, persistent and dedicated to the solution of this big issue till in the highest international instances. In the second writing, in the center of the publicistic optics of the author is the other deputy of the assembly, Sir Tahir Muhedini. His motto is transformed in the title of this writing “Our Will – Chameria”. Even the figure of this deputy is given in the book with the characteristic features of patriot, of good and peaceful man, that upon the interests of the homeland doesn’t put anything else. The author doesn’t forget to mention that deputy Muhedini comes from a Cham family massacred by Greek bandits, tells about the tumultuous life of this family when she settles in Albania, so for the sake of Chameria will, both deputies merge both of their parties in a single one, to lobby and try together that the issue of their native country to be resolved as soon as possible.
In the writing “Literature and Man” the author of the book draws the artistic portrait of a personality of Albanian letters, Hysen Sinani, describes trips to Greece in immigration of this man with rich and peaceful spiritual world, although suffered and autodidact, then he submitted the creativity of sir Sinani a quick literary analysis starting from his first novel “George”, that saw the light of publication before the arrival of democracy and pointed out some ideological problems for that time until to numerous translations of this author from different languages, which, however, have in the center the message of peace. With special respect is written in the book for an interesting figure of Cham origin, for Ibrahim Daut Hoxha, for his patriotism related with Chameria and for the unique contribution of this personality in many areas for his hometown. We can say that the writing is a complete biography of this man less known to the reader of today, but with many deeds to his beloved Chameria, starting from the exaltation of brightest figures of Chameria, making poetry for it, until to historic works related with this Albanian territory and the collection of the rich folklore of this territory. He has written a number of works for these issues, which with no doubt will remain in the archives of various works dedicated to Chameria.
Another side of the life of Ibrahim Daut Hoxha is given by the author with historical truth, understandably helped by his close friend, writer and journalist Shefki Hysa, related with numerous difficulties and barriers that Ibrahim was forced to overcome and that the class struggle revealed in front of him. But, that rigid fighter was brave, courageous, enough smart and visionary, therefore he knew to face and threw them away.
At the writing “The art of symbolism of peace” speaks about the life and activity of a Cham known sculptor, Idriz Balani, who lives and continues to create in Durres. The uniqueness of this sculptor and the art that he elicit from his hands is that his works always transmit messages of peace, kindness and tolerance. As we are talking about this, even I that am writing these lines am a friend of Idriz and together we have been on a visit to Kosovo. It’s true what the book tells that Idriz doesn’t detach the love for Chameria from the love for Kosovo. I have seen this with my own eyes and moreover this is proved by many sculptural works that he has created in Kosovo along the works for Chameria, the portrait of her famous son, Bilal Xhaferri etc. Thus, “an intellectual like Idriz Balani knows not only to create, but also to well manage his art, as a unique value in the service of civilization. He knows well that the symbolic of art is expression of peaceful world of the artist and to know to administer an artistic world, means to be, personality – missionary of peace.”
While reading the writing summarized in the book “Poet sacrificed for Chameria”, dedicated to a real artist, to the poet Namik Mane, you don’t have how to not feel emotions interweave with a deep pain for this simple man, this patriot of the highest scale, heart of compassion and with a rare spiritual world, who, as an progeny of a very well known family in Chameria, his heart couldn’t have been pit from where to stemmed love and pain for the evil fate of what the poet calls: “Chameria, Chameria/Pergola with my tear.” The verses of Namik Mane derive precisely from this heart-shaft, because he can’t understand himself without his homeland, for which, the poet says: My chest burns of so many years/From a longing that has no dimensions/And may the oceans be dried/Don’t fit my longing/Only you can keep it inside/In thy chest, Chameria!”
The author of the book unfolds with sever and harsh colors the tableau of life of this man with noble and peaceful spirit, the sufferings and hardships that his family and he suffered from the communist persecution. It is needless to add that his life if we speak of a figurative parallelism closely resembles the fate of his homeland. Being close friend of the legend of Chameria, to the poet Bilal Xhaferri, Namik Mane in the most difficult moments recalls his unforgettable friend, as he recalls his other friends, who stayed close and always helped him. After Bilal, he is the poet who has sacrificed more for homeland and his beloved hometown Chameria, so its contribution will remain unforgettable. In the book is also included a writing entitled “Message of light and peace”, which talks about the creativity and the messages it radiates, of the writer and researcher Sazan Goliku, nickname of the famous Albanian author Pandeli Koçi. Through a detailed and serious analysis by professional side, the author highlights the characteristic features of the poetry of this creator, which is distinguished for its conciseness, diverse thematic it conveys, for the curve of the verse and above all for human and noble ideas that are brought forth in it. A special place in the writing is dedicated to the hard work of Sazan Goliku for the study of literature that publishes in Kosovo, whether for adult or children. Furthermore, Sazan Goliku in this direction remains the initiator of the study of this literature with an abundant, diverse and enviable production. The book is closed with the writing “Writer and origin” where is unfolded the panorama of life and wide and manifold activity of one of the most prominent missionaries of peace, well-known writer and publicist of Cham origin Shefki Hysa. This writing compressed with facts and arguments leaves a scar for the hard and dedicated work that this personality has completed with devotion and dedication for the benefit of Cham issue. After is described the troubled life of Shefki and his family, class persecution and continued efforts of this young man with strong character to be formed each day as an intellectual and personality, the writing later passed on some features of his abundant creativity and in many areas until to numerous translations and edits. Thanks to acquaintances and numerous friends, Shefki thanks to his perseverance accomplishes some very important activities for the Cham issue as bringing the bones of the great poet Bilal Xhaferri in homeland, continuation of the publication of the magazine “Eagle’s wing”, the direction of the Cultural association “Bilal Xhaferri” etc. An innovation was the creation of the international organization “Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity”, conceived as a mission of peace, which lobbies for peace and prosperity in the Balkans and worldwide, according to the best model that offers American democracy for countries in development. Look what is further said in the book for this personality: “It was this new venture, which would focus more the writer Shefki Hysa in the work of tirelessly missionary for Peace and Prosperity. As a missionary of peace, he began to create many new connections with the intellectual world, inside and outside Albania. Thanks to the continuous and full of successes work, his name and biography are included in many prestigious encyclopedia of the world”.
This book of the author Paulin Rranzi that contains enough interesting information and not very familiar for the Albanian reader will surely be browsed with curiosity, because it is in the benefit of the peace and echoes the human and understandable messages, tolerance, cooperation etc., for which nowadays all the layers of Albanian society need more than never.

Sokol Jakova
Writer

A book for peace is a book for God

(Notes about the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” of the publicist Paulin Rranzi)

While reading the book of the publicist Paulin Rranzi, Personalities – Missionaries of Peace, I reminded the word of the president John Kennedy: “If humanity does not vanish war, war will vanish humanity”. This prophetic warning of this great missionary of peace make us read with honor and curiosity every book, article or literary work that is dedicated to peace secular aspiration of men in every place of the world. The author of this book had clear the idea that the existence and human development can not be understand without the understanding and agreement between the members of a family, of a social group and especially between nations and states. The idea of peace is inseparable by the ontological concept of freedom. The author has come to the conclusion that there can be no real peace between the right and injustice, between the oppressed and oppressor, between the hungry people and affluent. Thus, in the presentation of life and missionary activity of personalities that are presented in this book, the author emphasizes their real values as human who at the core of activity and creativity have the ideal of peace and freedom, prosperity and social harmony. It is true that the term “war for peace” can be called contradictory but means and ways in which is fought have determined the degree of humanism and rationality with which is intended the realization of peace ideal.
The book is opened with the writing “Men in love with peace (Gandhi of the Balkans – Ibrahim Rugova)” that breaks down the features and outlook of Kosovo leader through the meeting and interview with the writer and journalist Shefki Hysa. Ibrahim Rugova, till in the first steps of his political activity tried to solve in peaceful way the big problem of the existence of his people. Even though in front of a politic of a chauvinist – communist – fascist state, he stayed with consistency, without being swayed by the visible and invisible whirlpool of the policy and diplomacy traditionally rooted with anti Albanian direction. He has been a follower of the paradigm of the great ancient philosopher, Sokrati: Peace with others comes only from inner peace, so, from the lack of violent impulse and aggressive tendencies of the individual or a nation.” From another point of view is analyzed the political and literary personality of Pjeter Arbnori, who although suffered almost 30 years the calvary through the jails of dictatorship, kept the kindness and love for democratic and human peace and spirit even when he was elected and worked on top of Albanian state. The figure of the writer Bilal Xhaferri, that traverses as a golden thread the pages of this book, is that of man who held on his back since birth, strikes of destiny and our history. He made no error, no fault, only if it is called so being an untired worker, free thinker, brilliant creator of higher levels of Albanian literature, militant to death for the overthrow of stalinist – enverist dictatorship in Albania and for liberation of Kosovo from Serbian bloody hooves. Peaceful spirit and soul of freedom were merged into a single, to be deposited as hot magma into the solid structures of the verses and stories in his books.
Chameria, Albanian province cruelly martyred and without nation, is on the focus of this book through confessions for some personalities that are subject of the writings. But we don’t encounter any spirit of revenge and hatred for the perpetrators of genocide toward cham population. It is required only justice on the basis of acts and documents universally approved and especially by the united Europe, where we tend to be part of it formally. So, there can be no peace, emphasizes the author Paulin Rranzi, without being put into place the justice; can not be maintained the normality and dignity of a nation, where killers are honored and are raised memorials and their sons still make open calls for war and carnage. The writer Hysen Sinani notes in the preface of the book that “there are represented all the regions, from south to central Albania and till to Kosovo”. This geographical range gives the book Albanian size and expresses the great truth of the peaceful character of the Albanians even in the most severe existential conditions and circumstances.
When finished reading the book of Paulin Rranzi, you are convinced that only a democracy lively and rooted in the soul of the people can allow an essential and quiet cleaning, therefore the achievement of a peace, where true freedom flourishes.

Lekë Mandreja
Writer

Characters – the first Albanian Missionaries of Peace

(Impressions from the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” of the author Paulin Rranzi)

The book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace of the author Paulin Rranzi surprised me very much. It was really amazing the way that how this young author compare characters from different fields of life and make them speak the same international language: Language of Peace.
Once finished reading the book you could not stay without saying: Yes, these are the Albanian model of warriors of peace! These are the first Albanian missionaries for peace, the author Paulin Rranzi himself, who resemble the best models of warriors of peace worldwide. These are also the first characters of Albanian contemporary literature dedicated to the world peace.
This reasoning gives the right to come to the conclusion that finally even in Albanian modern literature blew the wind of Peace messages sender. The epoch of Skanderbeg, our national hero, who the old and new west literature reflect in many works as a great warrior, savior of European civilization, savior of human Peace, is being regenerated. Who are these lucky personalities that were transformed into first Albanian characters dedicated to Peace? I will not exaggerate if I say that, if not all, the majority of them are my acquaintance or friends. Let me start with the president Ibrahim Rugova. Once he was one of the best writers of Kosovo, my contemporary and colleague. He leaded The League of Writers and Artists of Kosovo and meanwhile I was chairman of The League of Writers and Artists of Albania.
Rugova was a prominent activist in the politics of Kosovo. Even I didn’t remain back in Albanian politics. But more than politics, what united me and Rugova was the literary creativity, ideals to serve humanity as warriors of pen. Be understood that Rugova worked a lot as a politician till he transformed in the symbol of Peace for Kosovo and the Balkans, the same as Gandhi for India. It is a great honor for the young author Paulin Rranzi, who has treated the figure of Rugova under the viewpoint of the missionary of peace.
Pjetër Arbnori, Mandela of the Balkans, as the author qualifies him, was one of the most prominent men that Albanian nation has brought out in XX century. In the early ‘90th he was deputy of Democratic Party, whereas I was deputy of Social Party. He was dissident writer that came from the prison of former communist dictatorship, whereas I was a writer that seemed to have served communism. As to say, we were political opponents; however we became friends, especially during the years 92-96, when he was chairman of the Assembly of Albania. In that period a part of democrats behaved roughly with former communists, the same as the communists of the years 45 behaved with former rich people, representatives of the reversed former classes.
On the contrary, Pjetër Arbnori behaved friendly with me, treated me as an opponent of political beliefs not as an enemy, as some others tried to act. An example: I remember that the publisher Shefki Hysa, our mutual friend, asked me to do a foreword for the book of new talent and I did it. The book was published with my foreword and was welcomed by the readers. It was also reflected in media and television. Then, TVSH worked as the only television in Albania. A young journalist in one of TV shows treated the values of the book, adhering my evaluations for the author in the foreword that accompanied the edition. For this action the journalist was fired from work with the motivation as a propagandistic of a figure that belonged former communist regime.
Poor journalist complained to the publisher Shefki Hysa and he, indignant rightly, discussed the problem with his friend Pjetër Arbnori, chairman of Assembly, institution from which depended RTSH. Pjetër Arbnori, after listening to his friend Shefki Hysa, said that Dritëro Agolli with his values as a writer, despite left beliefs as human, was a national wealth that didn’t deserve to be infringed, on the contrary should be protected and evaluated. He immediately called the director of TVSH and ordered to bring back to work the journalist, and even to do a special emission for the figure of the writer Dritëro Agolli. And so happened.
This was Pjetër Arbnori, a figure that with his work fed social peace, didn’t undermine it as did some fanatics representatives of Democratic Party that urged class hatred.
It is known that I belonged to communism, however I wasn’t a blind fanatic of communist regime, I was part of its utopia, part of that beautiful dream, of those ideals that communists had to transform the world in a social paradise where would predominate peace and human equality that was never realized in practice. Communist ideals were misused by the communist dictators and in the name of those ideals was raped intelligence and political opponents, was exerted genocide against a part of humanity. I was a writer, I didn’t belong repressive clans of former dictatorship. My creativity is censored from the communist censorship, maybe a little bit, but is censored the same as the dissident literature of Pjetër Arbnori, Bilal Xhaferri and many other writers, although I was also chairman of the League of Writers and Artists of Albania. I was Dritëro Agolli, I was myself, I was part of the world of creators that in soul and in actions are opponents of all powers. Based on my ideals as a writer, despite the directives of the former communist regime, I have helped and encouraged talents like the writer Namik Mane, former political persecuted, the writer Shefki Hysa (without mentioning some others), who are two of the most characteristic characters of the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” of the author Paulin Rranzi.
The figure of my friend Shefki Hysa unites all the characters in this book. He is the founder of all this Odysseus that Paulin describes, is not only missionary, but head missionary of this mission shaped in the form of a publication in the service of Peace. I really estimate his figure, as he estimates me. Dritëro Agolli has served Peace with his pen. And if one day the author decided to publish a second volume of this publication, I have the belief that my personality would be included in the book as a message sender of Peace. Ask my precious storyteller Shefki Hysa for this and I am sure he will prove my hypothesis. He will prove it that as a talented writer belong to divine race of creators and like all divine knows very well the character of his friends. I am one of his declared friends. I am Dritëro Agolli. I am myself. I could have been part of Democratic Party, as many former communists. I didn’t. I accepted to remain socialist, part of better people that tend from left beliefs. The same as progressive leftists of the entire world who aspire social peace. I never betrayed my beliefs and ideals, I never went after a power for any personal benefit, on the contrary I put in the service of my nation, as the best Albanian democrats that turned the sight toward European civilization.
So am I, Dritëro Agolli, missionary of peace, that’s why I attentively read the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace”, that’s why I enthusiastically wrote these rows for its rare values. I am Dritëro Agolli, a missionary of peace still undeclared. Do not forget. Respect the warriors of peace for their sacrifices in the service of worldwide future paradise.

Dritëro Agolli
Writer

Lekë Mandreja, Albanian Journalist

Ambassador Lekë Mandreja, Albanian Journalist and Writer

The world of Missionaries of Peace

(Notes about the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” of the author Paulin Rranzi)

Since on the top, it must be said that the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace”, of the author Paulin Rranzi, is somehow special for its genre and original by its form and the treatment of the matter. The volume is modest; in it are included 10 titles of writings. They are as a bouquet of flowers from the Albanian land, each of them with its special beauty, almost different and unlike, as in a mosaic where the particularities of each colour gives the appearance of the whole. This bouquet is tied with a blue ribbon in which are written the words: Peace, love, harmony and goodness. What makes this book special is the variety of individualities, qualities and peculiarities that are distinguished in the activities that they conduct in their lives. We find there personalities of politics as the unforgettable Ibrahim Rugova, Pjeter Arbnori, new politicians Shpetim Idrizi and Tahir Muhedini, writers and artists with prominent creativity like Hysen Sinani, the poets Namik Mane and Sazan Goliku, the writer and social veprimtari Shefki Hysa and the well known sculptor Idriz Balani. The uniqueness of the author is the typology of the writing and the conveying to the reader truthfully and with realism, simple without the exaggerations of philosophy, point of views and actions of these personalities. Ibrahim Rugova and Pjetër Arbnori, are shown through personal impressions, friendship, connections and affection that the writer Shefki Hysa has had for them, but let us understand each other, the author is not only the person who conveys the narration of Hysa, but also a careful analyst that knows to distinguish the special from the general and present it with the art of the word. These personalities are seen in some partial aspects and not with the completeness of their work, are chosen those aspects that being reflected give us their full image. The readers, despite what they know about the life of these personalities that have entered in the frontier of the legend, are also told and shown as in a film watched for the first time, unknown features and qualities that characterize the substance, essence of philosophy and their humanism. Unlike Balkan atavistic mentality of revenge and national hatred: they have suffered, but don’t hate, are persecuted but they forgive the persecutors, are denied the rights, civil freedom and the right of the speech but they don’t want and don’t aspire the same for their beginner. All their work and life radiate peace, harmony, humanism, goodness and human love. As such they become an example to be followed and source of inspiration for the reader and future generation. In some other writings, the author hum the gender of the essay, which relies on the impressions and meditative reflections from the reading of their creativity and free interpretation, outside the framework of academic canons, thus highlighting the inherent values in that creativity. The essays “The poet sacrificed for Chameria” (Poeti i sakrifikuar per Çamërinë) and “Messages of light and peace” (Mesazhe drite dhe paqeje), dedicated to the poets Namik Mane and Sazan Goliku, are research studies where the analysis is harmonized with the synthesis which led to logical conclusions about the multi-faceted poetic and artistic values, and the philosophical messages which convey to the reader with their creativity this two poets with different individualities.
Thus, is conveyed to the reader the message of their creativity and the curiosity is revived to get acquainted even closer and better with the deed of these two authors. In other writings as “A life full of challenges”, dedicated to the researcher, historian, encyclopaedist and the folklorist Ibrahim Hoxha and the sculptor Idriz Balani, the author in writing uses the monographic narration, with simple style, but unravel and dynamic, revealing page after page the titanic intellectual and human greatness and the efforts, and why not, heroic efforts of Ibrahim Hoxha, the cursed man by the regime, who with work and extremely human efforts overcame the deprivations, discriminations, scorn, unemployment and poverty, he succeeded to create the opus of his deed with many values. Despite the qualities and the individual character inherited by the family he was given this force by the affection and dedication for Chameria and national issue. After this narration the reader remains surprised and with multiplied esteem and appreciation for this personality of Chameria. With such warm and esteeming notes is presented also the creator of many sculptural deeds, Idriz Balani.
Maybe it must have been said since the very begging that the Cham writer and activist, Shefki Hysa, for the sake of relations, fellowship and personal friendship with Mr. Paulin Rranzi, has given to Chameria and Chams another friend. Not an ordinary friend but a creator and activist, a missionary of peace which is the aspiration of everyone from us who have experienced the horrors of the war. This healthy friendship has already given its fruits which are reflected in this publication. From ten writings in total that has the book with 170 pages; six titles which make quite one hundred pages are dedicated to Chameria. The author handles the Cham cause and issue as an inherent, evident and actual problem that seeks solution and that this community has all the right in its side. He handles Cham issue through experiencing the pain for the unprecedented genocide, human remorse for the sufferings and afflictions this community suffered, with the dedication of the missionary of peace and he embed this sensation in the reader’s mind and heart, as a memory which should not be ruined, as a personal experience of the afflictions and sufferings that Chameria suffered, without reason, but just because they were Albanians! In the book Chameria is a linking leitmotif, it is elsewhere, even when there is talked about Dr. Rugova, even about for the Mandela of Balkans, Pjetër Arbnori and some more when is talked about personalities who are sons of this region.
In the elaboration of the political platform of the two parties which were joined together later on to form PDIU, a new political formation, qualitatively more prominent and more representative and worldwide spectrum, the author fully reveals the way and the work for the resolution of this cause. Making this program known for the reader, in a certain way are put under responsibility the political leaders of this formation for the obligation of implementing it, but also as a permanent commitment toward their electorate which is going to appreciate them under this base.
Even though there is not a special handling about Bilal Xhaferri, the prominent figure of the Albanian anticommunist dissident intellectual, he is present and appears as a far in the time obscurity in which he lived. The writer Shefki Hysa was dedicated to this son of Chameria not only by giving back from America his bones to rest in homeland, but also as a sequential of his patriot and political will through the publishing of the magazine “Eagle’s Wing” (Krahu i Shqiponjës).
In the end, I cannot let without mentioning that the author, despite the unravel style in function of elaborating the figure of every personality, is distinguished for the usage of the literary language, with correctness and wealthy lexicon that make the reading fluent and more pleasant.
The book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” (Personalitete – Misionarë të Paqes), is an achievement of the author Paulin Rranzi. I believe that as the first swallow, it will be followed by other books in service of peace and the prosperity of our nation.

Prof. Dr. Resmi Osmani

The model of future intellectual

The Ambassador Lekë Mandreja

Lekë Ndue Mandreja was born in Rrëshen on 31 August 1959. He comes by a family with patriotic traditions. He spent his childhood on his birthplace, was grown up fed with the best traditions of the refractory Mirdita region during centuries from all kinds of invaders. He finished his primary school, 8-year school and high school in his birthplace. His father, Ndue Mandreja, educated for military art, was fired from his job by the communist dictatorship structures in 1955 for political reasons as great-grandson of the first assistant of the king Ahmet Zogu and since that time he worked in different mining of the country. Leka, after carried out the job experience, 12 months worker at Spaç mining, in 1978 started university studies in Institute of Agriculture of Kamza for Forest Engineering. After finishing university, he was appointed as a specialist in the forest enterprise of Mirdita.
In 1985 he made his postgraduate studies in the field of forests.
In 1987 he made his postgraduate studies in the field of city decoration, to be acquainted and to grow up decorative flowers.
In 1990 was appointed director of the Communal Enterprise Dwellings of Mirdita.
In 1993 was elected placeman of the Party Liberal Democratic Union in Mirdita.
In 1995 he emigrated in Italy with the desire to have a better living.
In 1996, Lekë Mandreja got married and together with his wife they have a son, who was born on 1 March 1997, in the second year of their marriage. His wife has the university degree, graduated for economy – finance – bank and has carried out some different post graduating courses.
In 2007 Lekë Mandreja came back from emigration and was appointed director of the Directory of Forest Service in Rrëshen, since June 2010.
Currently, he is engaged in business with the desire to strengthen his own family economy and to help somehow as a patriot Albanian economy.
Lekë Mandreja is not just an ardent patriot, but also an intellectual devoted toward democratic processes and the economic development of Albania.
He writes and publishes different articles with social problematic and critic writings for art and literature as well.
In 2011, Leka entered in the best collaborators’ queues of the prestigious American-Albanian magazine “Eagle’s Wing” (Krahu i Shqiponjë). Now he is one of the most experienced journalists in the field of protecting human rights. He is one of the most dedicated activists of Chameria Cultural Community.
By nature Lekë Mandreja is an idealist missionary dedicated toward world peace and he tries hard to affect somehow for the construction of a legal state in Albania under the standards of American democracy. Leka is charitable as well. He tries to help social layers in need.
As an intellectual in pursuit the excellence in human and for his nature as charitable missionary, Lekë Mandreja joined in 1012 the staff of the international lobbying organization Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity to contribute even more alongside the Peace warriors. He is now one of the most determined activists in protecting civil human rights everywhere in the world. Lekë Mandreja is vice chairman and Goodwill Ambassador of this mission which lobbies for Peace in the Balkans and World, offering to the developing countries the model of American democracy as the best model for peace and prosperity.

Endri Hysa

Kosova – The Example of Peace in Balkans

17 February 2012. The Republic of Kosova celebrated the 4th anniversary of Independence. It celebrated in Prishtina, and in Tirana as well. The Kosova’s Embassy in Tirana organized the celebrations in the environments of Sheraton Hotel. Kosova celebrated in the heart of mother land, in the heart of Albania. There participated the most senior politicians and officials of Kosova and Albania. There participated also the representatives of the diplomatic corpus.
Four years of independence from Serbia. Kosova in these 4 years told the world how the peace can be constructed and kept in a problematic region like Balkans.
Excerpted by force from mother land since in 1913, in hundred years under Serbian dominion, Kosova proportioned the patience and wisdom for the sake of Peace, an element of the gen of Albanian man and, leaded by legendary leaders like the wise President Ibrahim Rugova, Gandhi of Balkans, it resisted to the assimilation, saved its Albanian blood.
Kosova, with the determination of wars – heroes as Adem Jashari, faced the Serbian genocide. Kosova, with the wisdom and diplomacy of young leaders as Hashim Thaçi and Hajredin Kuçi, won the sympathy of USA, UN and world opinion and made its Independence a true fact on 17 February 2008. It fought and won under the observation of international opinion without sacrificing the principles of Peace. The peaceful Kosova quietly challenged the aggressive Serbia and won. It won the right to govern, won the Independence the same as one hundred years before…
17 February 2012. Kosova – The Example of Peace in Balkans celebrated together with its friends in the heart of Albania, the mother land. The Kosova of Peace told the World how the Peace can be won and protected in front of the most powerful aggressors as Serbia. Kosova and its children is an ideal model for all world warriors of Peace.

Dr. Shefki Hysa

The Vice Prime Minister of Kosova and Dr. Shefki Hysa

Mr. Hajredin Kuçi, Vice Prime Minister of Kosova and Dr. Shefki Hysa, Governor of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity

The Ambassador of Kosova and Dr. Shefki Hysa

Mr. Gani Veselaj, Ambassador of Kosova in Tirana and Dr. Shefki Hysa, Governor of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity

Dr. Shefki Hysa, Governor of Diplomatic Mission

Dr. Shefki Hysa, Governor of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity

Three brothers, the inception of a legend

(Marin, Paulin and Ernest Rrazi – a world of challenges)

One day, my friend, Aleksandër Zefi or the Elder of Shkodra as his acquaintances used to call him, told me:
– Chief, when will be the case I want to introduce you with some good friends, very rare friends, as you like them to have. They are three brothers, businessmen from Kaç village of Shkodra.
– No objection, if you like we can meet even today, – I replied.
– Ehe, where to find them today because the live in Italy, – replied the Elder as embarrassed.
– Well, when they will be in Italy then, – I said without discussing any longer.
A couple of weeks had gone when suddenly the Elder came at my office with another person, a boy about thirty years old, apparently with a medium body and with black beard. Me and the Elder hugged each other without giving too much importance to the companion.
– This is Nesti, Ernest Rranzi for whom I have told you, – opened the discussion the Elder presenting me the boy.
I remained for an instance with the shoulder mounted.
– He is my friend, one of the three brothers who live in Italy. Do you remember, I have told you something about them…
– Aha, yes! – I reminded and shook the hand to the newcomer.
– I am an intellectual as well despite my beard, I like to have this beard, – said Nesti as he wanted to justify his look which did not gave you a good impression immediately, while he was shaking my hand.
– Even the scientist do like having beard, it is a normal thing, – I laughed and kept on shaking his hand as I wanted to show some affection, as we were old friends.
I invited them to sit down and started to discuss slowly. Nesti told me that he was the younger of the three brothers. He was born in Kaç of Shkodra on 3 October 1981 in a family with political problems as the majority of Shkodra’s families which were opponents of the communist regime. In the middle of the years ’90, with the idea for a better life, he had gone in the tracks of his brothers emigrating in Italy. They were get together and worked hard in migration. Was the will of God and they went ahead. They became rich. They made their families in Italy. There they constructed even their business. Later on they came in village, in Kaç, and constructed new homes. In 2005, in their zone, they created an Albanian firm with the given name “Tre vëllerizit shpk”. They invested and set up also a factory with the name “Marina” for the production of mineral water and soft drinks.
Now, their Italian and Albanian have more than 100 persons employed from the village, district, Albania and Italy. So, the three brothers helped also their co-villagers and their acquaintances. Nesti kept on talking and his life with such an interesting flow, imposed me respect. I thought that the Elder was not wrong in selecting his friends. So, the three brothers must be indeed good friends as it was spoken. Nesti told me that the older brother, Marin, leaded the business in Albania while Paulin, the second one, who was even the most versatile in relation with foreign partners and investors, leaded the businesses in Italy. They had their firm in the environment sector in the region of Lombardy and some common firms with Italian businessmen.
Nesti himself took after the environment sector. The collaboration diplomacies with banks, partners and investors were carried out by Paulin. He was born for this affairs. And he was successful. He was full of ideas and realizations.
I was listening the confession of Nesti and I imagined the hard work the three brothers used to make. United in a work force such harmonic, those three were certainly as a inexhaustible energy source, as a gigantic hydro power plant turbine put in movement by the river of their wisdom and the experience they had facing the life’s challenges in migration.
Nesti told me that by nature they were people with charity spirit and that they liked too much the idea to work for Peace, but they did not know how to do this. Albeit they had the opportunity they wanted to collaborate with the organization leaded by me. So, to be members of Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity.
I replied that I felt honoured to have those successful boys as collaborators in my mission for peace. I told him that it was my desire to know also Marin and Paulin.
Ernest Rranzi, be understood, was too much pleased by my reception and conversation. They greeted each other as they were old friends, with the promise that they would collaborate for long in the noble mission to return back peace everywhere in the world.
It is known that good people find very easy the opportunity of collaboration. Without passing a month by the meeting with Ernest, came to know Albania the investor Jennifer Lim from South Korea accompanied by her two advisors. Among others I planned even a visit in Kaç village in the factory of the three brothers from Shkodra.
The Kaç village is situated somewhere after Bushat, in the lowland beside the Vau i Dejës hydro power plant. So, it is a part of the municipality of Vau i Dejës. The land where is situated the village, one of the most fertile area, was full of constructions, from the most beautiful. Somewhere between them was set up the buildings complex of “Marina” factory, distributed in one area of some hectares. Its first view is impressive. It was really an investion with values for the area.
In the factory entrance Marin was waiting for us, the older of the three brothers. After we greeted with each others, he accompanied us in the inner environments of the buildings complex. It was indeed a modern factory, with equipments and machinery of the last type which must be envied even by the best European investors. As it seem, the three brothers were boys with a bright future.
Marin Rranzi, with a sportsman body and with a debonair view, accompanied us from one department to the other and explained everything with his coarse and slow voice, although there was no room for explanations, the work used to talk itself.
The investor Jennifer Lim was marvelled by all those he she saw and she was felt as in her home. She said that she knew very well the process of the production of mineral water because even she had such a factory in Korea. So, there was the opportunity to collaborate together in the future. Even the lunch prepared for us, after the visit in the factory, was a surprise. We had lunch and discussed very long in a picturesque local somewhere in the green grove in the shore of the hydro power plant lake.
Marin talked time after time for their life and work. He talked about the roots of their family. He confessed that they had the origin from the Rranzaj’s mead of Bushat. So, they are local indigenous for more than 600 years. They had moved only for a period of time obligated by the persecution of Turkish invaders and were placed in Orosh of Mirdita, in Gjakova of Kosova and later on they turned back in Dedaj of Mirdita. About one hundred and fifty years before they turned back and were placed definitively in Kaç where they are situated even now. So, that land where their house and factory stood they had inherited grandfather after grandfather. Generation after generation they were an intellectual family that had combined the job of state official with the opportunities that the agriculture and livestock economy in the countryside provided. Their grandfather Gjergj Simon Rranzi was a real patriot, as well as their ancestors.
The father of three brothers, Jak Rranzi, of the birthday 14 May 1941, was electrician. He worked about 30 years in different areas of Shkodra distinct, whereas 5 last years, before he retired, he worked in the water company of Vau Dejes. He was eligible man and worked very much and couldn’t bear injustice. He often rebelled and talked a lot against bureaucratic actions of communist rule, although he was a member of the Labour Party. It hurt in his soul that wrong policies of the communist state were making the Albanians poorer and poorer. He said that even in Kosovo under Serbian rule, people were richer: every house had its own tractor. Apparently in 1973 he fed up with rebellious behaviour, therefore the communist leaders dismissed from the ranks of the party and for their family started the political persecution. Many times he was threatened to be arrested. However people appreciated very much his word and kept as one of the most honourable men of the area.
Jak Rranzi died in 26 June 2010. He left his wife and eight children, five girls and three boys who loved each-other very much. They escorted him from this world with the memorial epitaph: “In June our father died. In the hands of his sons he died and to Christ Jaku went. In glory and parris, may his name never be blotted!”…
Now five sisters and three brothers find consolation in their mother. She is called Gonxhe and is about 65 years old. The entire life she has worked in cooperative and after 1990, with the advent of democracy, she devoted to her children and home. Marin Rranzi spoke even for himself. He confessed that he was born in Kaç on 12 January 1972. After high school and army, as the communist system collapsed, he as many other Albanians, with the dream of a more beautiful life, took the path of exile. He worked in Italy. The three brothers raised their business in Italy and Albania. Marini says that the three brothers are truly successful in business, but their work has not been easy. They have made all sorts of jobs from the most tedious in emigration, until they were employed in the Italian company “Teknova Ambiente”, which is now their property. So, they have worked day and night very much until they came to light. Now Marin Rranzi is returned with his whole family in birthplace and is committed to managing the business, which they raised with savings of their work in emigration. Marin tells that the three brothers with their work also help the fellows. They also work for the welfare of the village. They have realized with their investments the lighting of the streets and environments; have also built the bridge that links the village with other areas. So, they are a great help for local government of Shkodra. No wonder the three brothers are well known with the speaker of Parliament, Mrs Jozefina Topalli and the President of the Republic, Mr Bamir Topi, who are grateful politicians that have appreciated very much the contribution of Rranzi family into Albanian life.
Paulin Rranzi, the second brother, came to the headquarter of the organization Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity with the desire to cooperate as a Missionary of Peace. At first glance he is an impressive young man of athlete stature above average, with typical behaviour of the diplomat. During the conversation it is immediately understood that he is an erudite intellectual with comprehensive information on life and the world. We were met and known about 15 years ago, but the interest he was showing for the mission he is leading now, urged and deepened the formerly friendship in a new way toward common ideal: Personalities – Missionaries of Peace. He very quickly became part of the staff of our mission.
Here is how can be shortly portrayed the biography of this young man with dreams, desires and numerous ideals for a fighting life in the service of Human Peace: Paulin Rranzi was born in Kaç of Shkodra distinct on 12 March 1978. He is graduated for justice. Now he lives in Bargamo of Italy. He is one of the most successful Albanian businessmen. He is leader and shareholder in some companies that operate in different areas in Italy and Albania. He is member of the board of directors of the international organization Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity. Paulin Rranzi, with his work as a Missionary of Peace and humanitarian, tries to help people in need. Thanks to the commitment for Peace, he has established friendships with many prominent personalities in the world, especially with those of Vatican. Paulin Rranzi, as journalist and writer, has published a series of writings on the progress of peace in the world and its missionaries. So, he is not only businessman, but even worthy member of the intellectual elites in Italy and in Albania, willing to sacrifice as all the best patriots for the Albanian national issue and World Peace. Paulin, as all missionaries’ personalities, is keen on family life and speaks for his children with that great compassion that characterizes the large-hearted fathers.
As a Peace Missionary and charitable personality, Paulin is decorated with the Cross of Merit by the international organization AMES, based in Italy. Three brothers, Marin, Paulin and Ernest Rranzi, with colours of their life more or less the same, in the eyes of the people interested to cooperate with them, with that world full of challenges and adventures tend toward the same ideal, towards the dreams to change and improve the lives of individuals that surround, recall the legend of the three former French musketeers. The three brothers, as three modern musketeers, fight together for justice, peace and development, for an earthly paradise in Albania, in the Balkans and in the world…

Shefki Hysa
Writer

The journalist in disposal of Peace

(The world of the Ambassador Khairuddin Shadani)

Ambassador Khair Uddin (Khairuddin Shadani, as he likes to call himself in media, press and websites) was born in March 3, 1982 in Pakistan. He grew up in his birthplace where he made the first steps in different fields. He is a promising leader and accomplished executive with proven expertise in public diplomacy & media industry. Khairuddin Shadani is an international relations expert, journalist, analyst and human rights & social activist; whereby his service has been acknowledged by national and international stakeholders and is specialized Public Diplomacy, Organizational Planning, Lobbying, Conflict Management, Media Planning & Media Relations, Marketing Campaign, and Sponsorship & Fund Raising. He is a member of various diplomatic and media forums across the world.
Khairuddin Shadani is the founder of Planet Diplomat. Planet Diplomat aimed to be world leading independent, non-partisan and non-profit think tank organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as international diplomacy, conflicts management, political & social strategy and peace & international development. The mission of Plant Diplomat is to encourage interaction of the diplomatic community and global information sharing in order to strengthen international peace, development and United Nation’s global agenda. The objectives of Planet Diplomat are: Engagement of diplomatic community, policy makers & decision-makers in peace-building and global development; Collaboration with leading development organization, identifying shared principles, policies and practices to strengthen United Nations global agenda; Root cause identification and advocacy for resolving international conflicts; Exchange of values and intercultural dialogue, fostering mutual understanding between communities and cultures.
Khairuddin Shadani is an Ambassador at Facebook Ambassadors Program. The Facebook Ambassadors is a volunteer agenda of the public/open Facebook Community and is being developed to demonstrate best practices in social networking and to promote approved and official Facebook projects, programs, pages and applications. This Facebook Community Project is not affiliated or associated with Global International Cooperative who has released the terms (idioms) and intellectual property but it has been developed by Facebook, this Facebook Community, and the public domain under Creative Commons open license.
Also, SPMUDA International appointed Khairuddin Shadani as Ambassador of Peace & Humanity for United Arab Emirates. SMPUDA is an organization of 475000 card bearing members across the world.
Ambassador Khairuddin Shadani is also consultant of International Relations at Alnahham Media Production since July 2011 up to now in United Arab Emirates. Alnahham’s Services include media production, media planning and buying, strategic planning and consulting, creative and design, translation and localization, trans-creation and cultural adaptation, direct marketing, events and grassroots marketing, market research and media/community/public relations. Its services are marketed across traditional and non-traditional channels covering print, television, online, radio, outdoors, grassroots, events, mobile and social media platforms. Alnahham’s integrated marketing approach layers campaigns across complementary channels utilizing an effective mix of tactics targeted uniquely at each ethnicity. Alnahham believes in establishing true partnerships with clients and Agency partners to grow their brand, customer base and market share in targeted segments. Team of Alnahham consists of the finest creative and cultural experts who are passionate about the clients, partners, markets and communities that they serve every day.
In September 2010 Ambassador Khairuddin Shadani established Diplomatic Media & Public Relations. Diplomatic Media & Public Relations (DMPR) is a dedicated platform, aimed to provide integrated media and public relations services to the diplomatic community, multinationals businesses and public sector organizations. Its multiple affiliations and forums make us a one-stop solution provider and value-added service supplier in the industry. This media associates are well-practiced journalists with high-profile media careers in leading media corporations. Having an inside understanding, we keep our finger on the pulse, staying abreast regarding activities across the industry. This makes the information of this media an information bank as contemporary as possible.
At 2012, Khairuddin Shadani was given again the title Ambassador by Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity, Albania. It is an international organization initiated with the idea of the American Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and established by a group of diplomats, journalists, writers, artists, and prominent Albanian and foreign intellectuals. The motto of this mission is: – Peace, Progress and Prosperity! It is known that Peace is achieved with hard work, devotion and love by missionaries dedicated to human and God’s ideals. This mission and its representatives are addressed to each citizen of the world by calling: Lobbying, Lobbying and only Lobbying for Peace!…
So, Ambassador Khairuddin Shadani is a peace-maker who has dedicated his life to Peace Promoting through his great and tireless work. He is indeed a peace’s warrior!

Brunilda Liko
Journalist

The dissident that commiserate the political opponents

Mandela of the Balkans- Pjeter Arbnori

When discussing for the Albanian intellectual elite, my friend, the writer Shefki Hysa, unequivocally stated that one of our most prominent intellectuals was and remains Pjeter Arbnori, although he has already died. He never mention the word death, because, in his opinion, Pjeter Arbnori, this versatile erudite, has left behind a work as large and enduring, as due to it he has passed the threshold of immortality. So, for the writer Shefki Hysa, the life and work of the personality Pjeter Arbnori are immortal values in the precious treasure of the Albanian national culture.
Although the current policy is silent on this figure, trying to cover with a sinister veil of forgetfulness, my friend the writer Shefki Hysa smiles with a sort of enigmatic irony that is not known to whom it is addressed and, as always visionary, argues that personalities like Pjeter Arbnori emulate even with their physical absence. It is known that his soul is already part of the Divine Universe and is present in our world in the form of an angel, often justifies the writer Shefki Hysa. The little-soul politicians, part of the evil world, for sure that the presence of angelic deeds throttle them. And obviously the mischief of these souls set in motion that ancient mechanism that keeps alive the duality between good and evil. Only in this way can be explained the silence of the figure of the writer and dissident politician, Pjeter Arbnori – Mandela of the Balkans. Yes, yes, Mandela of the Balkans, is the famous Albanian Pjeter Arbnori, as is the former president of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova – Gandhi of the Balkans! – My friend Shefki Hysa says without hesitation. Don’t you believe?! The intellectuals Arbnori and Rugova are two personalities missionaries model of Peace in the Balkans, just as the Indian Gandhi and the African Mandela worldwide. Tell me about one another intellectual who resembles a little bit with their work in Albania, Kosovo and the Balkans, the writer Shefki Hysa insists. And indeed that nobody comes to mind to challenge him and my friend Shefki Hysa, this word’s magician hypnotic with the magic of his speech. Enough to put him in sensibility and Shefki Hysa brings a thousand arguments to defend his thesis: Arbnori – Albanian Mandela of the Balkans.
In January 1992, when it was newly established Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri” dissident poet Namik Mane urged his friend Shefki Hysa to be interested in creating any acquaintance with the former political prisoner Pjeter Arbnori. It was rumored that he was a special writer, for the nature of his creativity (it was said that he had written some anti-communist works in prison), althought he had not published anything yet. He had made about 30 years political imprisonment, just as the South African leader Mandela, and now he was one of the main regional leaders of the opposition, Democratic Party. He represented the opposition of Shkodra, but in the intellectual circles was claimed that for the ideas, ideals and skills Pjeter Arbnori could become one of the main leaders of this political force, which may soon come to power.
Shefki Hysa didn’t made the word two his colleague, Namik Mane. He found the opportunity during a cultural activity that the leaders of the Association of the former politically persecuted organized and he became acquainted with Pjeter Arbnori. He listened attentively with his debonair appearance and entirely came alive when he recognized that it was created a publishing house with the name of the dissident writer Bilal Xhaferri, which would exalted not only the values of his work, but all the best values of the Albanian dissident writers. He shortly told that he was recognized with the creative activity and the anti-communist ideas of Bilal Xhaferri in prison and he felt amazed by that extraordinary talent, his bad luck, exile and death abroad. Then he said that he had also written a little in prison, secretly, with codes. He was even re-sentenced with ten years when they seized the manuscript of a novel with anti-communist ideas. Now he was dealing with a novel he had written in prison. It was still with handwriting and during the evenings he tried to oppress with an old machine of the brand “Olivetti” borrowed to a friend. As soon as he finished it they would sit to discuss.
They agreed to meet soon.
Two months later, on March 31, 1992 Democratic Party won parliamentary elections and took the power. Pjetër Arbnori, deputy of Shkodra, was elected chairman of the Albanian Parliament. Many intellectuals labeled this choice as a good omen for the Albanian culture.
The poet Namik Mane exalted to the colleagues for his foresight. Especially to the writer Shefki Hysa, who didn’t stay without humorously tamper him: “All the people already know, Namik Mane, that you are the most intuitive type that the world of letters has ever known”!
The poet Namik Mane jumped upwards badly inducing.
“You say it in jest, but I’m really foresayer. Look Pjetri, your friend, became someone in Albanian policy. If you remember, even for our poet Dritero Agolli I had once said that he was a great poet and person, with a great heart, but you didn’t believe, till you became friend and closely knew him. At the beginning you praised only Ismail Kadare! Am I or not a visionary?!” And to not defrauded to the poet Namik Mane was a really intuitive man. Sometime, in the mid-60s’s, he was interned together with the dissident Bilal Xhaferri in Hamalle of Durres, after the escape of Bilal he didn’t burn his poems, although he risked of being imprison, but hid them with the idea that there would come a day that will be overturned the communist dictatorship and they would serve as evidence of dissent and as rare value for future generations. And so it happened. Behold, he was now a respected personality even for the fact that he had preserved some of the best creations of Bilal Xhaferri, not only his own.
Not even two weeks had passed from the day when Pjeter Arbnori was elected president of the Assembly of Albania when he announced the publisher Shefki Hysa that he wanted to have a coffee together. Preferably to meet in Durres, in the beach neighborhood, where he was temporarily housed in one of the apartments of a government residence.
Naturally, former political prisoner was still homeless, without a home of his own in Tirana. The publisher Shefki Hysa decided to deepen the friendship with the writer Arbnori. He discussed even with the poet Namik Mane and left that initially he went to meet him, since he was from Durres and the evening was the most appropriate time for friendly conversation face to face. Namik went two consecutive nights, but didn’t find him. He was said that he came back later. Shefki Hysa then decided to go and to meet him a Sunday, noon. And so he did.
Finally they met. The writer Shefki Hysa shortly told him about his origin as cham, then he explained the mission of the Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri” in the service of Albanian and worldwide cultural values. Pjeter Arbnori talked about his life. He told that he was born in Durres on 18 January 1935. He had passed an ordinary childhood. He finished the high school in Shkodra, brilliantly, in 1953. Perhaps for this reason he was allowed to work as a teacher, in Shkodra and Dukagjin, but was soon dismissed from work for political reasons. He finished the military duty and then worked as a laborer in Xhafzotaj and in SMT of Shijak. He entered the University with false documents and for two and a half years he gave the exams of five years taking the diploma with the motivation excellent in 1960. Since the age of 14 he began taking part in illegal groups against dictatorship. With a group of friends he distributed tracts with anti-communist content. He created a social democratic organization with an anti-communist program, but, in 1961, he was discovered and arrested. It was spring of 1961 when he was condemned to death for activities against the communist state, for agitation and propaganda. Later the death penalty was turned in 25 years imprisonment. Having done 18 years imprisonment he was also sentenced with other 10 years as anti-communist agitator and for the writing of the novel ” The house left half” (Shtëpia e mbetur për gjysmë) and other creations that were discovered by the guards.
After leaving the prison, in 1989, a year before the collapse of communist dictatorship and democracy arrival, a period in which was softened somewhat the oppressive ferocity of dictatorship because of economic problems that the country experienced, was forced to enter as a pupil to become a carpenter.
Once the democratic movement began, he took an active part in all demonstrations of Shkodra. With his initiative and of other anti-communist people in Shkodra knocked the bust of Stalini. He attended the first anti-communist movement in Tirana. On December 12, in the tribune of the founder rally of the Democratic Party, in Tirana, he handed Azem Hajdari and Sali Berisha a message from democratic and anti-communist Shkodra. On December 13, 1990 he was one of the main organizers of the anti-communist demonstration in Shkodra, where was thrown the bust of the dictator Enver Hoxha. For his continuing anti-communist activity he was elected chairman of PD for Shkodra. Later he was also elected as a MP. Without passing the year, there were new elections and he was re-elected MP.
PD won the most seats and it is known that it took the right of the government of the country, for the first time as an anti-communist democratic force, on March 31, 1992. Finally he was believed the task of the Chairman of the Assembly of Albania and the former political prisoner, entered as a leader in the office of former dictator Enver Hoxha, the former leader of the Communist Party. So, the headquarter of former central committee of the APL was already turned in headquarter of the Albanian Assembly. And the headquarter was directed by him, a former political prisoner.
Behold, the power of God had brought that he teaches good works in the service of Peace intellectual people, peace missionaries, emphasized Pjeter Arbnori in a moment with an appearance somewhat of a winner. Maybe it was the first time that he was opened so in good faith, as the creator in the eyes of the creator, because instantly he took the look somewhat tired with that voice with delaying tone. Then Pjeter Arbnori, like all creators, with emotion about the fate of his work, spoke for a novel that liked a lot. Its events took place somewhere in Nazi Germany, during the period of Reich the third. They were events more or less the same with those that had experienced Albanians during the rule of the dictatorial communist regime. So, he treated Nazism and Communism as two parallel world with the same content, regardless the particularities. In essence, were the same dictatorship that ruthlessly suppress any divine and human worth. They were a modern day savagery, the same as the barbarity of ancient barbarians, so not in vain he had titled it “When the Vikings flock” (Kur dynden Vikingët)…
Pjeter Arbnori, after a little thought, said he had deliberately shifted events in Germany, with the thought that even if this work was discovered in prison, the censors didn’t take it and didn’t punish him again. It was enough that he was sentenced for 10 years more for the novel “The house left half” (Shtëpia e mbetur për gjysmë). It is known that censors of the communist dictatorship appeared as anti-nasist and when they read a material with anti-nasist spirit, they would rub their hands from pleasure, instead of censored it. But destiny wanted not to let that work be discovered, which like many others he had written across the white sides of the newspaper’s pages “Voice of people” (Zëri i Popullit), organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania.
He handed the novel written with a typewriter in a paper of official format. There were about forty pages, adjusting here and there with blue ink pen. His hand easily trembled of emotions just as he suffered from parkinson.
The publisher took the printed sheets and glanced the two-three first pages. It was understood since the first lines that it was a work written by a master. It began with a saying of the indian Nehru: “Fascism and communism are brothers”. The publisher Shefki Hysa felt excited as an archaeologist who suddenly discovers a rare fact that affects the course of human history. Instantly he reminded the phrases of some pseudo politicians who had begun to advertise that in Albania there were no genuine dissent. And those who made such statements should be the neo-communist of the post-communist with the desire to reduce and diminish the values of the former politically persecuted as true catalysts that accelerated and brought the collapse of the Albanian communist regime.
On the contrary neo-communists claimed that they set in motion with their wisdom the mechanism of the decomposition of dictatorial system. So, they claimed that they collapsed communism not the dissent… They were the thought and the movement of the Albanian dissidence.
However the publisher Shefki Hysa, while carrying on his hands the manuscript of Pjeter Arbnori work and while watching with the eyes of the mind how his youth was vanished in prisons, turning into this old gray beard and fallen hair man that was in front of him, thought otherwise. Here was the vivid model of the Albanian Dissident, Pjeter Arbnori.
So, it had existed, was rooted at the tired intellectuals in the province, at the individuals rebelled in the spirit through towns and outlying villages, to the internees, prisoners and all the non-satisfied, that the regime had denied the possibility of self-expression. He was at Bilal Xhaferri and Vilson Blloshmet, poets who paid fiercely their rebellion against the dictatorship…
Exactly, with the publication of their works, works as the one he had in hand, Shefki Hysa publisher would give a blow to the pseudo- politicians trends that together with the Albanian national wealth unjustly wanted to take also her dissidence.
The book “When the Vikings flock” (Kur dynden Vikingët) of the writer Pjeter Arbnori was published in August of 1992. The writer Shefki Hysa was in the role of editor, publisher, also wrote the foreword for the novel. Pjeter, graciously acknowledged all the comments and suggestions, he also made the processing of the material as the editor required and the novel was really a surprise for Albanian readers. The only thing that the author adamantly asked was the presentation on the cover of the book of the black broken cross of the Nazi grafted with the five-pointed red star of communism, which was realized according to his imagination and the appearance was really impressive. The book was published with a circulation of fifteen thousand copies and was welcomed by many readers. The writer Pjeter Arbnori felt delighted as a naive child in front of the book. He touched it and shed tears. It was his first publication and he was not young, but 57 years old. Of course he would feel excited with all those he had passed in life. He was so human with that behavior that with that longing he ignored his own position as a senior politician. He could have been hold heavy shade with a cold mask of bureaucrat in his face, but not. He was man, great Man.
Seeing the very friendly relations with that complex personality the publisher Shefki Hysa, as never before felt proud for the commitment toward the work of this man. Deep himself seemed to have performed a sacrifice in one of the holy temples of God, in church or in mosque, a sacrifice for which he believed would not go awry. Sublime sacrifice.
He was proud that he had also written a preface with the whole soul, felt as if it was one of his creations. He wrote:
Once you read the title of the book “When the Vikings flock” (Kur dynden Vikingët) of the writer Pjeter Arbnori, the mind goes immediately to the barbarian invasions since the ancient times. Not without pain he imagines all the extinct civilizations, people dismantled, races and languages assimilated. Vandals keen on zulm, have swallowed the soul, not only the matter, unable to be human, to resemble somehow those who tried to subdue.
But the author what flock is talking about? Maybe for the communist plague? The note “Written in Burrel prison” since on top as a significant subtitle, promotes the thought that, in this book, the object of the rebel writer and worthy political opponent of the former dictatorship, should be exactly that hell climate that possessed all the communist east and in particular Albania. But in the first sentence of this novel you face with Reich the third of the former Nazi Germany. So, it comes to Hitler’s dictatorship, one of the most perfect models of the inhuman oppressive machine of the Stalinist type. The movement of the events through the labyrinths of Nazi Germany, is nothing more but the author’s message, sent from the prison of Burrel for the similarity of Nazi and communist crimes in family, social and political life. Moreover, the curiosity to discover the relationship between symbolism and reality that itself carries the sentence “Vikings flock” rises. Why not “Vikings flocked”? Where is the secret and priority the use of the present tense of the verb flock, in comparison with the past tense that might fit the period of the events’ developments.
Vikings still flock? To what extent and what are the consequences of flock?
Such questions harass awhile, but are quickly forgotten in a very emotional reading in front of that strange space that unfolds alive among the eyes, as the tempting and inviting shores of the Odyssey’s sirens or as the magic islands of Circe whereupon experiences only anxiety, pain, revolt and horror for that human ugliness that occupies the path. So, this piece extract from the preface shows that the writer Shefki Hysa has seen into with a sense of artist in the magical world of the work of the creator Pjeter Arbnori – Albanian Mandela of the Balkans, as he often called him in the conversations with his friends. The politician Pjeter Arbnori appeared simple and ready in the eyes of the friends, ready to respond with sacrifices to the sacrifices that they made for him. He honored and respected very much the writer Shefki Hysa. He suspended or hastened the end of each official meeting when the secretary announced that in the office lobby was the writer Shefki Hysa. He went himself to the lobby and took him as an old friend, although he was almost twice older. He expected him the first than any MP or staff official of the Assembly. They talked long and advised each other particularly for the development of literature and for the Albanian and world culture problems.
In 1994 the publisher Shefki Hysa prepared for publication another book of the creator Arbnori. It was the novel “Beauty with the shade” (Bukuroshja me hijen). This was also a work written in the prison of Burrel. It was an idyllic creativity, a flight of imagination of the author beyond the prison walls and the slavery where had pent-up physically and spiritually former communist dictatorship. The new publication was really liked. It was something unexpected and unthinkable for the Albanian reader, something that he could not expect from the world of a former prisoner. There could not be perceived that an ex-convict elderly to write with such feeling, passion and lyricism for human love. This novel was a surprise even for the writer Shefki Hysa. Here’s how he wrote in notes accompanying that publication:
You have to be a man with a very sensitive heart, being a writer truly gifted to have both patience and fantasy to neatly braided with the pen tip the idyllic and glittered veil of a summer beach, pent-up inside the cells of a tremendous prison like that of Burrel. It is unbelievable, but true. Former political prisoner Pjetër Arbnori, in terms of wild terror, through the darkness of the illuminated cell only with the light of the eyes and fire of memories of early youth that fails to besmirch the psychological or physical violence, which hunger doesn’t quenches, striving not only to survive, but also to sharpen the thought and feeling so then to clot in a special art. This is the romance “Beauty with the shade” (Bukuroshja me hijen). Her fate is a part of the author’s fate, of those people that recently came to light, from the fence of barbed wire, with soul still intact, thanks to the explosion of the dormant energies.
You read this romance and can’t stay without shuddering not only from the lyrical hectic state and the messages it conveys, but for the fact how it is created within the recesses of the edifice of the fear of the notorious prison of Burrel. We don’t exaggerate at all, if we express figuratively, that this artistic values is conceived and grown like the pearls within the mussels shell of deep submarine. The pearl’s hunters know what they do to find and extract by submarine depths and to put in the service of man such treasures. So, this romance that has nothing to do with the horrors of prison, rather it is a successful try of the author, as desire and whim, to sing the immemorial human feelings as man himself, love. Although in an area where have entered and failed many writers, Pjeter Arbnori, in his own way, with the hue of his emotional world, finally, manages to weave a new hymn to the love, this time with the most Albanian features. Those who will read this romance, will be convinced that after the publication of the novel “When the Vikings flock” (Kur dynden Vikingët), the Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri” displays another artistic proof for the undeniable talent of this author, already not young in age, but in soul. “Beauty with the shade” (Bukuroshja me hijen) is a challenge for skeptics, nihilists, mediocre. Even in the darkness of prison, he kept in his soul and work the purity of light, when many other writers, though they lived in the light, the darkness of dictatorship took place in their lives. Pjeter Arbnori will have his place in our literature. He as a tireless hunter will surely continue the search of such pearls in the painful seas of creativity for the pleasure of those who know the value of miracles. And the future will reward him, engraving his name in the memory of time. Those were what Shefki Hysa wrote for the work of his friend. Notice how he characterizes, the myth Pjeter Arbnori, with a magical ability to recreate the freedom even there where its presence may not be perceived, in a notorious prison like the prison of Burrel, spawned of the unique ferocity of the former Albanian communist dictatorship.
The journalist Shefki Hysa, as head of the Chameria Cultural Community, asked the politician Pjeter Arbnori to go for a visit in the town of Konispol, neglected by the government of former communist dictatorship and he immediately accepted. It is known that Konispol is the northen province of Chameria remained within the Albanian border, the only area that symbolizes the Cham culture and traditions in Albania. And the back was deliberately turned to the economic development of this region. Konispol City was deliberately left in limbo, without funds of investments for roads and public works. It was treated as a backward commune, instead of being a developed municipality, as it had even the earlier traditions. The Mayor and the residents of Konispol welcomed the writer Pjeter Arbnori as a king. The general high school “Bido Sejko” organized the discussion of his creativity and turned that day into a holiday with music and dance. It was tabled a rare lunch with Cham traditional dishes and the politician Pjeter Arbnori was delighted by that reception. He didn’t know how to thank the organizers and especially the writer Shefki Hysa. In 1993 the journalist Shefki Hysa, together with a group of intellectuals, friends of Cham ideal, created the Community Cultural of Chameria (Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri”). One of the main objectives of this organization was the return of the bones of the dissident writer Bilal Xhaferri in Albania, who had died in the USA. To accomplish this mission successfully without bureaucratic hurdles of the Albanian state, Shefki Hysa thought to seek help from the politician Pjeter Arbnori. And so he did. After he discussed and got the word of the politician, he put the mind at work. He came up with the idea to quickly raise a commission. As committee chairman he proposed the writer Pjeter Arbnori, president of the Presidium of the National Assembly. After this action he drew up a financial project for submission to the Ministry of Culture. Pjeter Arbnori, as chairman of the committee for the ceremonial of the return at home of the bones of the dissident writer Bilal Xhaferri, naturally signed the project. Ministry of Culture agreed to fund. The main newspapers published the news under the title “will return home the bones of Bilal Xhaferri” and with the content: “The President of the Republic, Mr. Sali Berisha, at the request of Publishing House” Bilal Xhaferri “and the Cultural Community of Chameria, has decided that the Albanian state will return home the bones of the prominent dissident writer Bilal Xhaferri, exiled and died in the USA, a refugee from the former dictatorship. Following consultations between institutions charged by the President and with the relevant personalities, was approved the Organizing Committee for the ceremonial of the return home of the bones, decoration and re-burials of the anti communist writer Bilal Xhaferri. The journalist Shefki Hysa, once funding was secured, he went in the USA, to arrange in Chicago the ceremonial of the exhumation, to return in Albania and rebury the bones, with all the honors, as it belonged to the outstanding figure of Bilal Xhaferri. This was truly an unprecedented victory for Chams. Finally they were making one of their missions a reality. On May 3, 1995, President of the Republic, Sali Berisha, decreed the decoration of Bilal Xhaferri with the medal “Martyr of Democracy” (Martir i Demokracisë)… Three days later, on May 6, 1995, after many vicissitudes that passed in Chicago, the USA, the journalist Shefki Hysa, president of the Cultural Community of Chameria, brought in Albania the bones of Bilal Xhaferri. In Tirana a splendid ceremony was organized which was attended, under the direction of Pjeter Arbnori, all the highest state authorities, politicians, writers, artists, journalists, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, friends and colleagues and relatives. The ceremonial was organized in the International Center of Culture. Tirana, the capital, the place from where the dissident writer had been expelled from the former dictatorship, had now sat the black and red flag at half. Finally, the tomorrow on May 7, 1995, the bones of the deceased Bilal Xhaferri were buried in Saranda. The echo of this activity, largely reflected by the Albanian Radio Television, the Albanian and foreign press, went throughout all the areas where the Albanian fellow were, in Kosovo, Macedonia and all over the world and once showed again the Cham’s children knew to keep up their ideal. The writer Pjeter Arbnori appreciated very much the tireless work of his friend, the journalist Shefki Hysa, not only in conversations with intellectual elites, but also in formal settings and in the press. After the end of the ceremonial, in the closing meeting with members of Cultural Community of Chameria: artists, journalists, writers and intellectuals of other fields, Pjeter Arbnori addressed the auditor:
“Dear friends of the deceased Bilal Xhaferri!”I express not as Chairman of the Presidency of the Assembly, but as your friend, as contemporary and inmate of great people as Bilal Xhaferri, the poet, prose writer and prominent dissident publicist, as Mr. Shefki Hysa qualifies him, so dedicated to the mission he has set himself for the exaltation of this brilliant figure that communist dictatorship tried to undo and threw away in the oblivion bin, as it did with many other patriots, as it did with Pjetër Arbnori. I express as honorary member of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and as chairman of the Committee for the Organizing of Ceremonial of the returning home the bones of the deceased Bilal. You charged me this task and I think I have done it well. From my experience I say that is not easy to deal with such complex figures as Bilal Xhaferri. It is one of the most difficult missions that a man who understands can take. Mr. Shefki Hysa had the courage to charge himself this mission and managed to wake the memory of the Albanians for the extraordinary talent Bilal Xhaferri, managed to bring back home and he is resting in peace at birthplace, in Saranda. I think that with this human act, Mr. Shefki Hysa, Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri” and Cultural association “Bilal Xhaferri” have fulfilled their mission for the Cham issue, have served Chameria as nobody else, of course with our help and yours. However, in my opinion, the mission “Bilal Xhaferri” can be called fulfilled in its core, regardless the additions and decorations that time will bring and other patriots that will follow Mr. Shefki Hysa”.
So, finally, thanks to the commitment of intellectuals as Shefki Hysa, the voice of Chameria had begun to be felt and to echo even in the Albanian life. Goodness is rewarded with goodness; this is one of the mottoes of the writer Shefki Hysa, who is guided by the principle that if you did a favor, he double bound. Perhaps this behavior is also one of the secrets of his success. After the completion of the “Mission – Bilal Xhaferri” the writer Shefki Hysa felt as proud and anxious. He didn’t know how to reward his friend, Pjetër Arbnori, the generous help he gave. The publication of another book seemed a little, very little, although Pjetër assured him that as every Albanian patriot, he had his own obligations for Chameria. However Shefki Hysa had as a pledge in the heart the inability to restore the honor. So was he… In 1996, Pjetër Arbnori had ready for publication the novel “Whirlpool” (Vorbulla). The publisher Shefki Hysa took it, edited, prepared for print and sent it to the printing press. It was one of the most voluminous works of the author, over four hundred pages, one of the most accomplished. The novel “Whirlpool” (Vorbulla) came from the press in January of 1997, with a circulation of ten thousand copies. It is known that 1997 was one of the most turbulent and vicious years for Albania, however “Whirlpool” (Vorbulla) was welcomed. This work was liked by the readers perhaps by the fact that it described the historical whirlpool that often interlock Albanian life, just as the political-economical whirlpool that had caught by the throat Albania in that year of mourning. Here’s how the pen of the writer Shefki Hysa characterized this work. “It is said that the world was born from chaos, that light was born from darkness. But it cannot be accepted that life arose from death. Life is the world full of light. Life is constantly risked by death, as well as the world by chaos, as light by darkness. However life is in the world from thousands of years ago. Life survives, especially, at man – the only reasonable creature and the most endangered of this world. To man is threatened everything. The threatened man coexists with risk, resist to risk. Everywhere risks and overall risk by its kind. In the whirlpool of history are appeared not only individuals, but also warrior people. Race threatened by other human race. People risked by other people. Among the risked, the Albanian people remain the most risked. Maybe they remained since the times of Prometeu. Albanian- is the model of the risked man. Even risked by themselves. Grandpa after grandpa swallowed in the drifts of death whirlpool. You can’t say that fire re-lit by its ash, but Albanian fervid through wars, from the barbarians’ invasions and the Empire of West and East, is reborn from his ashes. The Albanian hero is reborn so many times by the death that fell on his head. Israelis, biblical persecuted, through the waves of humanity history survived. They were again persecuted, almost up to extermination, by the Nazi. Mankind did homage to Israeli pain. Albanian pain, rather, is turned back. Albanians had to reappear as many times from the ruins of empires. He has rediscovered himself, as archaeologists discover ancient statues after the excavation extremely fatiguing. Empire after empires have collapsed on the head of the Albanian and he is revamped, giddily, with wounds, through empire dawn and could resist heroically, from one death to the other, from one circle of hell to another, while he reborn again back. Such heroes embody the novel “Whirlpool” (Vorbulla) of the writer Pjetër Arbnori. Heroes reborn from the whirlpool of human hell. After reading the “Whirlpool” (Vorbulla) everyone can say that Arbnori has artistically recreated a historical reality detached by the dawn whirlpool of the period after Prizreni League. However, despite the hue and the unique originality of the events and episodes that are confessed in the work, its heroes recall the resistance fighter of all Albanian millennia, even the hero reborn from the era of communist hell. So, “Whirlpool” (Vorbulla) is a cut of Albanian millennia history, regardless the time position it is experienced, is a synthesis of the turbulence of the past and future, imitation as well as artistic generalization. A work created in unusual circumstances, born like a swirl of light in the darkness of prisons, with unusual characters, which resemble, more or less their creator. Arbnori was reborn from hell, being miraculously escaped by the death’s shackles. The red hell devoured many victims, as the unfortunate characters of tales that, to get rich or to have the Beauty of Earth for wife, take that “way in which you go and never return”. On the contrary, Arbnori, through this way ended in “Hereafter” of communist prisons. He survived all the horrors of the circles of hell and finally found the path of return loaded with victory and with all those treasures – his literary work, among them the novel “Whirlpool” (Vorbulla), and the Beauty of Earth – the honor the writer deserves.
“He survived the plague epidemic,” is said in such cases. He survived, as the almost mythical characters of “Whirlpool” (Vorbulla). For the sake of art and the ability to reborn, he will be engraved in the memory of generations”…
Believe it or not, but for me, as I said earlier, as many other creators say, the writer Shefki Hysa is a word wizard, a magician that let you mindless with the ability to hypnotized with the power of words. You can understand this after you have read the texts of his pen. It is the opportunity, dear readers, to judge how the writer Shefki Hysa artistically reflects the rebirth of the phoenix Pjetër Arbnori from the whirlpool of the Albanian communist hell.

Paulin Rranzi
Writer

A message of special type

Notes about the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” of the writer Paulin Rranzi

The book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” (Personalitete – Misionarë të Paqes) is a compilation of writings on specific figures of politics, art and Albanian literature. This collection looks like a monographs rather odd in the way it is conceived at the beginning and how it is composed later. So, in the form it differs from all summaries of different literary, artistic or scientific biography, it even differs with a monography on a particular topic that actually has this book and serves as a liaison yarn among various figures, as is the idea of the mission or missionary of peace. However, when you have read the entire book and have experienced for a little time the taste that reading has left you, you smile and it looks that you have in front of you a beautiful work carried out with collage techniques. It seem so, as to say, from the literary and vital material that the author Paulin Rranzi has used, by mixing within an idea, that of the mission of peace, three or four different areas of practice and human creation. Perhaps, this has made this summary more diversified and more attractive.
It is acted simply and carefully for the choice and the composition of the object of the book: the author has a close friend the writer Shefki Hysa and by the empathy he has for him, he looks round him events and personalities that can better serve his idea to join in a monographic narrative missions and Albanian missionaries that consciously have served this high and human eternal purpose: peace. Watching the book from this perspective, it doesn’t seem redundant the frequent quotation of the source of inspiration of the author, because it serves more as an element of truth in the stories that follow. Furthermore, I would say, in the confession about the meeting with Rugova, this “inspiration” of the author is exciting. And, in fact, the head “Rugova” is among the most beautiful and among the most significant of the book, along with that of Pjeter Arbnori and especially that of Ibrahim Daut Hoxha, which contains in itself a whole history for a life of sacrifices.
In the professional selection of the missionaries is noticed an equal ratio of selection between the literary and politicians, although some of them happened to be literary-politicians, who are really distinguished for their peaceful disposition in politics, as it comes to Ibrahim Rugova and Pjeter Arbnori, who also give the predominant hue to this book. An outstanding value this book gains by diversity of forms that, in my opinion, reminds the collage. For those personalities where takes place more their life through memories or episodes experienced by the author, the form is that of emotional narration. For others, where the idea of the peaceful message is extracted by their work, the form is somewhat cold, of academic style. Such, indeed, written as rarely before in our political journalism, are the descriptions for the politicians Shpetim Idrizi and Tahir Muhedini, where their political ideas are presented in a manner sufficiently clear and attractive to read. But there are also mixed forms of narration, like that of Namik Mane, where the quoted verses bring the breeze of a touching peace. A very special thing impresses very much in this book. There is not a special chapter for Bilal Xhaferri, but he is present throughout the book with his peaceful spirit and soul, adding it to the work, as without being felt, the missionary and inspiring force. The summary of Paulin Rranzi has, or seems to have, even a geographical distribution thought in the selection of personalities. Perhaps this is totally random, but in fact there are all the territories represented, from the south, in central Albania to Kosovo. Of course, the many are Cham, but this is justified, when it is known that more than all Albanians, the message of wisdom, patience and peaceful politics comes from Chams. Therefore, even those in this small book for Albanian missionaries of peace, stay enough good and as in their own house.
The book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” (Personalitete – Misionarë të Paqes), of the writer Paulin Rranzi, in his inside is crossed by a message of particular type, as it is the message of peace that carries in itself each of the characters as visionaries and peaceful at every step of their activity.

Hysen Sinani
Writer

Albania since you were born, statesmen have shitted on you

A blind logic or…
It is said that once, Fishta was so much tired by the impossible desire to see Albania as a Heavy Madam that, in a desperately moment he expressed that he was not an Albanian anymore. Later, Konica, extremely disappointed believing that all his efforts and his devotedness like an patriot were going damage in this homeland that was not walking with the steps of the west progress, screamed with rage: Albania, I have shitted on you!…
And the spoiler’s devil’s advocates, undeclared co-owners with the pharaohs of Pharaoh’s Albania, applauded, continue to applaud and will go on to applaud unless the apologists of Albanian wisdom oppose toward their eternity. Devil’s advocates (advocated of the demon), endless spoilers said, say and will say: Well, compatriots, here it is how much the famous like Fishta, Konica and others in the tribune of the Albanian thought do love Albania! Turn them yours backs and pray for endless eternity of you politician’s idols. Pray for the statesmen’s race who administer the fates of your children and your children of children generation after generation!… Do you believe the psalms of the devil’s advocates?!… I myself cannot believe the fact that such expression against Albania that look more like aberrations of desperate moments, can hold the authorship of the great Albanians, Fishta and Konica. I think and reflect that maybe they are result of popular anger, not toward the motherland, Albania, but toward its administrators, rulers-officials-statesmen whom time after time, perhaps since life was born, they have saddled to this blessed land and they rape it in the most devil manner as now and again you create the idea that this place is the Hell itself. And it is known that Hell worries and enslaves you in that level that you feel comfortable as a part of its misery if you are without brain, and if you are wise it even displeases, disappoints and rebeles you as much as it pushes you to confront its pardons or to escape as soon as possible if you can. If you are unable to be rebelled, the Hell drives you mad; sometimes even the wisest is pushed to lose the logic… So, Fishta and Konica have been depressed so much in any moment and have exploded like spokesmen of popular anger or, the anger of popular wisdom has blindly looked on behalf its intellectual leaders…

Blessed or…
I believe with all my soul that Albania, our Father and Mother, is a land blessed by God because, do we want or not, it is one of the most ancient settlements of the Life, placed between the most ancient civilizations, in Mediterranean, (the Middle of the Earth, of the World, of the Globe – Mediterranean). So, somehow like a center of the human’s roots. And it is known that Mediterranean is the Paradise of this world, it has the most wonderful climate as it was the Womb of Life itself. Isn’t it in Albania a climate with more than three hundred sunny days just in a space of about fifty kilometers? Let’s say, in space between Tirana and Durrës you can find the mountain, the field, the river and the sea where life is luxuriated in all its forms. Isn’t this the image of the human dream? If you have a two money cost mind in your head, immediately you understand and you can cried it out till the sky’s cup: Albanian is the Paradise!… It is a place blessed by God!… And so it should be, but in Albanian reality happens in a different way. Surprisingly, Albanians have always been and are (wish to never be anymore) the poorest Mediterranean, the most despised, the most enslaved, the most traumatized as much that the Paradise given by God seem to be the Cursed Hell and they eternally dream how to the opportunity to migrate and to make a living, another homeland, further and more further than Albania. So, in reality Albania appears as a cursed place. And this is a killing appearance that lies, deceives, drives you crazy and pushes you to feign all sorts of urban legends which estimate all sorts of false idols on the back of the Albanian poverty. It pushes you in a free charge path, in aberration after aberration which at the end just perpetuates the power of our politicians-pharaohs… Oh God! Why such an ill luck for the miserable Albanians? Why our Albania cannot take after Greece and Italy, to be a modern state, a sweet shelter for its citizens (not just for statesmen!)? Even its executioners, Serbia and Macedonia (pseudo-state), are walking with European steps, whereas Albania is reduced as a bandits’ jungle where statesmen-leeches get fat with the blood of eternal enslaved Albanians!…

Our vote – The power of false idols
You don’t believe it?! You think that I am exaggerating, that I am overdrawing or I am holding a grotesque position toward the Albanian politics? Believe me, if you have felt how politicians treat us, as a votes’ greenhouse, they come so humbled like saints, ask so tenderness like idols and take so easily our votes to use them afterwards with diabolism as bets over our backs! We cultivate and raise votes in our being to feed the pharaoh politics. You don’t believe me?!… You cannot believe me unless you are frazzled in the hell that Albanian politics plants in our fatherland and motherland, in Albania, after it gets fat with our votes… You cannot believe me unless you are deaf-and-dumb and blind, or part the power of such false idols…
I have said once (in another writing, hope in another life!) and I am repeating again that Albanian politics has chosen the pharaoh governance model obtained by Ancient Egypt with the only difference that once there used to govern just a pharaoh, whereas in Albania govern many pharaohs leaded (formally) by the Head-Pharaoh. And this model has been chosen with the full consensus of the position and opposition (remind the famous consensus of our politics in the moments of how many crises that our country has had in the post-communist era, after 1990).
To be more precise I am widening the time space of pharaoh governance with the phrase: on the ages of ages (still I cannot see an opportunity to overthrow the Albanian pharaoh!). And, if you do not remain sake, I am adding the fact that already we are being governed by some female pharaohs! And the male politics has promised not a little to them: more than thirty per cent of the power! We must not forget the seduction power of female pharaohs over the male pharaohs (imagine for a moment even that power which pounce the donkeys over assess) and together we will understand that we are in front of an Absolute Power that aims the eternity of the Pharaoh Desert named Albania. And we plant votes in our souls and pharaohs, devil’s advocates and female pharaohs are fed and powered without limits with the votes of our souls.

Us, the eternal deceived…
Still don’t believe in me?!… Then, I am telling you something more concretely about my relations with the politics… When I was too young, still snotty, I don’t know why I dreamed to be a writer. I read and read and I was totally lost in that magical world of books and the writers resembled with some great magicians who came down in earth by the stars’ world and did miracles for the ordinary people. It seemed to me that if could be a writer I would belong to a special race that, with the force and the magic of the word I could clean up even the alleys of my village by stones who used to bleed mine naked feet and those of my contemporaries, I could satiate with the most delicious bread and dish all the hungry villagers who used to work every night and day in the wheat’s fields and hardly could find any morsel of moldy corn bread… I thought that if I could be a writer, with the magic of the word I could kill all the dragons and monsters of the world and I would make so many wonders… And once I became a writer… And since the very beginning I run into some kind of devil’s advocates who started to advice me how I must write in order to not risk the fates of the homeland (of the pharaoh’s power) and my future. I should be in conformity with the rules they dictated (in that time they were red and they were called communist, now they are blue and pretend to be democrat), otherwise, I knew my destiny, I would end up in rope (today unemployed in a big road). I think you know that these devil’s advocates who protect the pharaoh’s power are called censors. And I must praise their power and that way I would be well paid like many graphomen or, I would sing for the Albanians’ wounded souls who dream through centuries and centuries for a civilized Albania as the neighbor states, shelter of the human aspirations, to suffer after that the bad fate of many eternal dissident writers with the pharaoh’s politics. And I chose to sing for the free spirits, to enrich them with the virtues of all the world… And, for the good or bad fate, I was always under the violence of the devil’s advocates-censors… Anyway, I am not repentant… I am continuously leaded the by souls of Homers, with the thought that I belong to a divine race which once will achieve to defeat the injustices that the pharaoh’s politics feign over the Albanians back… I believe in the ideals of the great Albanians rebelled toward the tyrannies… I believe, and that’s why I am deceived like all the honest Albanians…
Do pharaohs want my votes and those of my friends? Certainly! That’s why devil advocates do keep them! They well paid and trained to collect our votes with scones and violence… Scone?!… Do not be deceived that you are really eating their scone. It cannot be eaten by and even by me, who pretend to be a wise man. They do know very well our human weakness and play like the cat with the mouse with it. And we, instead of the promised scone, do eat the lies and violence after they do take our votes as always… So, we are always deceived, a human weakness of the honest people, they always win and drink our blood, a devil power of the dishonest leaders…

Pharaohs and devil’s advocates, the eternal winners…
I am originally by the province of Chameria, the second Albanian’s Kososva, stolen by our southern neighbors, Greeks, the same as Kosova before which was grabbed by Serbians and today it was given us back by Americans, the justice makers of this monster’s world. I believe that the Albanian politics would help me to return back in Chameria, in my birthplace, where even the graves of my ancestors have been violated. And, with hope, even this is a weakness of good people, I start negotiating with the politics. I love Chameria and they the Chams’ votes. The politicians of the PD, PS, LSI and of all the parties and colors, of the Position and Opposition, every election eve, send me the heralds, I mean the devil’s advocates, and they promise me the wonders of the fairytales of one thousand and one nights in exchange of the votes of my Cham’s friends. And I, the eternal deceive, with the hope that really would happen any wonder, I put in line my friends (be understood, they believe me and I shamelessly utilize their trust and the humanism of my soul) and we fill the sacks with vote’s presents to all the politicians (it is so striking that the Santa Claus exists only for pharaohs and devil’s advocates!), we bring them in power to have them afterwards turn their back and beat us for four years and if we dare to rebel toward them, they will re-deceive and will re-take our votes endlessly every time they have to reorganize the elections of their happy future.

Where is the end?!…
The happy end is always reserved for the powerful men. Thus, pharaohs-devil’s advocates! What can we do, they know how to behave as the powerful men of Albania by lying and deceiving us, the powerless, by betraying and selling the national ideals to our neighbors, the eternal chauvinistic who love Albania as a reserve for their nationalist desires… You would say, what about Europe?!… Po Evropa, do thoni ju?!… It is unfair like all the powerful ones who sit around the tables only with the other powerful. Who is that hangman who has respected its victim, except using it for its perverse pleasures?… Europe, friend of Serbian a and Macedonian hangmen and it’s is easily understood that it will open the doors for them, and not to the victim Albania, at the same time also victim of its pharaoh-devil’s advocates betrayals!… So, there is no happy end for us, Albanians, until we will be eternal slaves of our votes…
My appeal: We must become powerful and one can be strong by abstaining. We must not give even a vote more for this political class. We don’t have to go to elections… And this way they never will fill the boxes just with the votes of their followers. And that time the politics would remain shitted if front of Albania… And the world would understand that something is changing even in Albania… Never know?… In this world are the powerful, the justice makers like Americans, who certainly will note our massive abstaining and will impose changes to this unappreciative politic toward its people, over the back of which is cradled and grown up…

Shefki Hysa
Writer

The donkeys

The calendar of the table marked the year 2013. It was a bad year, rambunctious as a hundred years ago, but Rrapush Kalemi didn’t care for the disorder of the country because he was shocked by the chaos in his head. Surprisingly, in dreams, every night he saw himself transformed into a donkey. However, even if his being really entered into the skin of that domestic animal, he still would not have believed it. And how could be believed something like this?! He was number one of the Presidential Staff… You could say that he came after the President to the hierarchy level. The officials feared him more than His Excellency himself, the President. No, Rrapush couldn’t have been and even couldn’t become a quadruped, regardless of that inexplicable feeling that abducted him during nights and left in the world of dreams in the form of a donkey…
Yes, yes, a donkey… Long ears like the people differently named it. It was a handsome donkey with a shiny gray hair that you had the desire to ride. And what did he say! More precisely what did he think because such visions he didn’t dare to assert himself and no longer to express them to others. They would say that Rrapush was mad and the news would immediately be spread. Was he really mad and didn’t understand?! No! Absolutely not! Only that he was made somewhat manic after a fixed idea… The idea of being a donkey… But this doesn’t mean that he was mad… Being a slave of an obsession, to his knowledge, was not madness… But not only he, was a maniac… He had noticed that even his friends and acquaintances, even strangers, categorized the employees of the public administration into donkeys and horses… Did this mean that all people were distracted? … No! … Elsewhere slept the rabbit… Maybe his craze was the result of a blow to the cerebellum? The truth is that he had slipped a couple of times in the polished parquet of the presidential halls and was hit behind the head… Even once, when the president sought him, in the rush, was overthrown by the stairs… Another time he had hit his head badly to the ivory lampshade of the work table in the office of the President… Eh! He was full of troubles. There were concerns over his relationship with the President… It was widely acknowledged that His Excellency was a difficult man… However. In the dream he was revealed a snorter hefty donkey, healthy and strong as a stallion horse… In a word, mare donkey, so was called that man in the village, who was resolved since he was younger, foal, and was better fed to be the father of mules… That is to impregnate the mare and they to give birth to that hybrid, which was neither horse nor donkey, neither male nor female … was simply mule, untamed mule, strong and irresistible, as in those poems of Dritëro… So Rrapushi imagined himself night to night as a donkey… Noble donkey, not as everywhere else… Because Rrapush, perforce, even though he had to admit that he was a donkey, is understood by the evil, if biological circumstances forced him to display once with the face of that poor animal, again he would know to choose. He would be a donkey or nothing at all… So, untamed donkey… Because he was untamed, even at work… Untamed chief, that all the subordinates feared him… as much as he trembled in front of His Excellency, the President… Seven pairs of sweat flowed Rrapushi in front of Him. Those moments when he had to face with his Chief better to turn hooked to sweat, to leak and summon the carpet, than to shrink and shrink from that presidential insults river. He couldn’t forget that black day when His Excellency, a year ago, had shouted as a lion and the number One of the Presidential Staff, Rrapush, had labeled a donkey. And precisely in the eyes of that Lilliputian, that thimble, the smallest official of the staff… Small in body and on duty… — – — Donkey! Donkey with D capital letter! Donkey head over heels, so are you … Donkey and nothing more… Donkey… Donkey… Donkey, – The president kept screaming and the office repeated even stronger the scream.
– As you order Mr. President! I am a donkey and nothing more, – Rrapushi instinctively had reiterated twisted by that presidential unprecedented attack.
– Good that you finally figured that out, – His Excellency blows and suddenly opened in the face and laughed and laughed so much that great office, that a clap of war horns could hardly fill, echoed and echoed anew.
Rrapush was drawn back and gathered just like mice, had wanted to slip out the door and shut away in his office, as he did after such storms, but the president prohibited him. Apparently he had not yet emptied his anger. This meant he had decided to give a good lesson. And the storm would continue. A long storm, the evil impressions of which would probably forever be carved in his memory… Rrapush sighed leaning back as the slave in the waiting of the punishment lashes of his master. And indeed the punishment of that day couldn’t get out of the conscience of Rrapush. The year was ending, many others would pass, perhaps the entire life and he would imagine even in sleep the accursed laughter of that winter day. Rrapushi remembered that, after being hackles to Floriri, as he was the cause of that shower that the President gave to him, he was crouched in his luxurious office, killing the mind to understand what had happened. But his brain was still confused. As he became calm he dialed the number and called the chief’s library to bring the largest dictionary of the Albanian language, the thickest with red lids. He asked the biggest one to be sure that it contained the word donkey. Let him learn from the dictionary the correct meaning of that word. To be known with its scientific meaning. Not in vain the President had labeled him donkey. He definitely would have a flair from that animal. His Excellency never errs. Rrapush was instantly filled out, was sniff in his face and yelled as a lion cub, when the chief’s library appeared at the door, as far as the dictionary fell from the poor woman hand and fell on his feet. He yelled even louder from the pain, trying to take posturing of the President. Let that female know, that the One was he, Rrapush, and no one could even go through mind to make him foolish. The beauty in front of him was pale and decreased even more and looked like a teenage girl in fault that extends the lips to get a kiss instead of slanging-match. Rrapush bowed and squint as he was giving her a kiss as of octopus, spanks her and promptly threw her out of the door. Hurriedly, going crisscrossing by the office, he browsed the heavy dictionary and somewhere, on top of one of the pages, encountered the words: closed mouth, donkey… Here then, here is that magic word “donkey” used by the president. Uttered through lines do do do do, don, donate, donation, done, donkey… DONKEY. Ungulate animal, kept at home for the load, with smaller body than a horse, with larger head, with longer ears and usually gray hairs. The ears of the donkey. Donkey foal. Load the donkey. The donkey calve. I tumble the donkey. Works as a donkey, works very much. Bear as a donkey, bear very much. Sing as a donkey, sing very badly.
2. Big donkey. Clot from the mind, a fool, and noodle. Did what that donkey did. What a donkey he is. Donkey with ears. White lips donkey. Doesn’t limp the donkey by ears. Being brainwashed. Wait donkey for the grass to sprout!… The horse works, the donkey eats…
Hm, he did. However if you seek you can find even positive values at this animal, thought Rrapush trying to find out the optimistic side of this reality. He kept silent somewhat with the eyes on the dictionary and then furrowed the lips. He didn’t like the expression: the horse works, the donkey eats… So, the donkey eats thanks to the horse. It is a vermin. So he, Rrapushi, is a vermin… unable… able to be fed just by the horse’s work… with the work of that smallest worker in the body and on duty. But this was insane… This was supposed to say the President that had offended him in front of that gamin. Maybe His Excellency had problems with his brain?! Rrapush shook terrified by this rebel thought… Did he pronounce it with loud voice? Even the walls have ears in the Presidency; they report to the President for that craze and woe him, Rrapushi… The hole of the mouse cost millions and it is difficult to save the head.
But how, he treated so lovingly that nothing… he called him even with caress: Where are you little Flori, my Gold… And burdened him to make the most difficult documents… And not only the most difficult. The whole correspondence of the President passed through the hands of Gold, besides the diplomatic posts, which were treated by the department of foreign relations… whereas Rrapush, number One of the Presidential Staff, was a donkey… And this is just because he had not resolved some paperwork, which had occupied his desk… But he didn’t know about the paperwork and just for this insult him?! Ultimately he was leading and not an office’s mouse, not bureaucrat like that Gold… Rrapush was the One, excellent administrator, with the vision of a future leader, able to restrain the Presidential Staff, to tremble in front of him as in front of the President himself. It wasn’t surprising that some day he, Rrapush Kalemi, take over His Excellency, though he didn’t know to write. Those of the Staff could deal with the paper and pen, therefore they were paid, to serve the President, to defrost the knowledge, their talents and intelligence for His Excellency… He, Gold with his friends… But what can we do to the President? It’s his right to shout and praise whoever he wants… But is Gold equated with him, the one, Rrapushi? And what is the worst to evaluate even above? Long live the Prime Minister, that for his sake you enjoy all those privileges, my donkey… You and all those donkeys that are behind you. All of you together don’t worth even the quarter of Gold. Because the whole work of the Presidency holds the back of the little Gold and of 3-4 others like him. They die on the job and you, friends of my friends, just give orders… argue and worry with each-other who to command more. Three – four working horses, as Gold … and the strongest commander, as always, Rrapushi, the biggest donkey… Or not Rrapush Kalemi?! –expressed ironically the President by rounding the thick eyebrows that made even more vinegary the mock arrows that the mouth of His Excellency said.
-As you order, Mr. President! – was shaken Rrapush as bitten by the pain of insulting more that the usual cynicism of the President to him.
-How, as you order?! What sense does the expression “as you order”, poor you, when you remained your entire life a donkey? Learn something by Gold. I have told you so many times; burden him the work, when you can’t do it. Don’t be ashamed for your ignorance. Ultimately so is this world constructed: the wise are forced to be counselors of the fools, the wise servant of the mad or as the enlightened sovereign says, the people, the horse works and the donkey eats. Or not Rrapush Kalemi?
-As you order Your Excellency! – was humbly hooked Rrapush, not forgetting to throw a sight to the Gold, just as telling: “You pay me to head once this insult, you little thing!”
-Mr. President! You don’t see that you are burdening a little too much? – said the reckless Gold.
-Come on, your back holds. Not in vain you are a chosen horse. The good horse adds himself the forage, -said the president smiling, friendly shaking his shoulders.
What is this misfortune? How he treats me, his vicegerent, and how does he treat that dwarf, that runt, just because he has a little bit more brain, the no one, blew Rrapushi all hatred for Gold, swearing that he wouldn’t leave him without breaking his saddled for the humiliation.
-and now go away because enough did I stay with you. The state’s works are waiting for me, Flori! It’s not easy thing to be a President… and to have round you some donkeys like Rrapushi, – said His Excellency with a tone kind of a cocteil, where the smile of debonair, the mock and the order of the almighty of the country were mixed together.
-As you order Mr President! –recently echoed the crawler refrain of the chief assistant.
-Again just like a donkey, he! Didn’t you forget that damn expression?! When you mooing you don’t know how to finish. And when you don’t know how to shut up, even though you say something wise sometimes, it kills the ear like a mooing of the donkey.
-As you order M…Mr – stutter Rrapushi and going away he slammed to the door.
-Outside, donkey! –said the president with the face black as winter.
They went out immediately. The vicegerent followed by Gold. The stately gate roar behind them.
-And look! Shut up! Did you see anything, no I didn’t! Are you clear, Gold?! –said Rrapushi outside the office of the president. – Otherwise poor you!
-I know. Revenge waits for me, – Gold said quietly.
– Hell, say! Hell waits for you, you little yellow! And the yellows don’t have any value in hell, Gold! –Rrapushi grin, by deliberately prolonging the voice to make him realize that he didn’t care for the color that he had in the eyes of the president.
It must have been a year since the day of that presidential’s spark and Rrapush’s eyes thundered whenever he reminded. In his conscience was already entrenched so much the idea of being a donkey, that not only the subordinates, but all the acquaintances he investigated carefully, without making them understand this, and according the characteristic that they showed, he classified them in donkeys and horses. Surprisingly by the calculations, which he did, came up the number of horses was about four times smaller than the donkeys. So, said bluntly, in four donkeys, would barely see a horse that humbly pushed away the joyful company of the donkeys, who, gladly, ate, drank, mooing and slandered in despise the slavery of the horses. The donkeys knew to behave with courtesy and collectivity towards each other, respected with fanaticism their community and knew what essential meaning had the life in the community. Wasn’t it a pleasure to pasture in the herd in a meadow with wet grass, green trifil and several of other spring flowers, plowed meadow, planted and maintained with the work of the poor horses, that didn’t know what was the satisfaction of the modern parasite life?!
Eh! This was the paradise! And what would you have more in the real paradise than those white mouth donkeys, that the teeth and hair shone, forgotten towards love toys, that the big naive eyes shed tears by lust, when confronted with the fierce looks of men… Eh! The female donkey like that of Shaqir Qorri that with a tail moving drove crazy all the donkeys of the River Coast. Eh! No one could resist her. Neither Rrapush Kalemi. He fainted when the sloe turned the eyes, her crafty smile roke his heart as a knife blade in the hands of the butcher… Not to even think if he makes love with her. Oh, God! To become crazy by her fury. Once was Rrapush encompassing with her and still felt like someone had hit… If that day that Sloe bring the trouble at the door of Rrapush, as some past times, would come again. For this he prayed to God day and night. To see himself in the hug of the donkey sloe, somewhere there on the meadows of Dajti. And this desire was turned into a fixation, to that number one of the presidential staff, as it was turned into a craze to be a donkey.
But Gold’s back was scratching too much?! Did that horse think that the friendship with the president gave any advantage over him, Rrapush Kalemi?! Rrapushi was his chief, not everyone… Gold should have clear this, as the sunlight… and not to dare and mock, as he sometimes as ever tried. He pushed the door of the office and entered without saying to enter.
-Hi, chief?! –he entered directly to the theme, as they were friends and not superior and subordinate.
Rrapushi saw squint and scratched the voice as to remind the little surbodinate to hold on to speak in front of him as all the other did, when they talked, as Rrapush himself held on in front of the President, but Gold didn’t hear by that ear.
-Do you know that fable of Driteroi, “The horse and the donkey”, chief?! –grin Gold.
-The fable “The donkey and the horse” –corrected Rrapush, pressing the authoritative voice.
-No, I don’t remember it, with all the respect for the author… he was my friend once… now we have been forgotten. It is understood, the work, duties, presidential loads have pushed us away.
– Then listen carefully, chief: The horse and the donkey…
-You wanted to say the donkey and the horse… -interrupted Rrapush and raised the eyebrows like the president.
– Chief! Don’t interrupt me, please, – insisted Gold and recited:
The horse and the donkey.
– Tale-
Passed in a narrow mountain trail
the donkey before, after donkey the horse
Both well loaded with sacks
from the heat tortured and sweat
The peasant wanted soon in the village to arrive
and spank the horse with a stick
Por the horse finally lost its patience
Raised the tail and shook the saddled.
“Keep the hands, that I throw the saddled to the floor,
Why do you put before me the donkey?
And where can I go, poor me,
when my path has taken the long-eared?
Put me before not to suffer
and then beat the donkey as you want!”
-Hmmm! – scratched the voice Rrapush, then raised the sight squint and saw into the opponent. – What do you want to say with this, Flori?!
-Not me… What did Dritero want to say…
-So, go and ask Dritero what he wanted to say because I don’t have time for puzzles! –closed the conversation harshly Rrapush…
– No problem, chief… I just said you for information… for knowledge…
– I want the information only by official sources, not literary. Are you clear?! – roar Rrapush, but Gold was found outside the door, in the corridor full of mazes…
– These horses do like what they are! – thundered Rrapush, although he was alone in the office. – Let’s see what the dictionary say about them? The horse… the horse… the horse…, – he whispered, browsing noisily the sheets of the book … – Horrify… horror… finally I found:
HORSE- m, p HORSES, the horses. 1. Strong and agile equine pet, with great body, covered with short soft hairs, with long crest tail, which serves to ride in, to carry something or to pull the carriage etc. White horse (piebald, gray, Arab). Wild horse. Emasculate horse. Horse of race. Carthorse. Racehorse. Saddle horse (burden) horse to load. Saddle the horse. Ride the horse. Descend from the horse. Works as a horse, works very much, without thinking for himself…
2. Fell from the horse. Fell from the high position he had, was removed from the high duty he had.
No, Rrapush didn’t fall so easily from the horses… It was enough to have 3 or 4 horses like Gold in the Presidential Staff and he would know how to saddle, the same as the president… He would act under the example of His Excellency… The horses were loved… the president didn’t have in vain when he praised Gold… Mischievous president… He knew the value of the things… Why even Rrapush Kalemi didn’t know? The horse works, the donkey eats. Ha… ha… ha! What a struck expression! The horses were loved. You don’t have what to say. Good horses like Gold. Look, what does it say below? The good horse (red) has a habit. It means that…. Gold has drawbacks… The horse of the others let you in the middle of the road. This Gold is the horse of the president? Yes, so it is and this Gold can let me, Rrapush, in the middle of the road… I should attract him, otherwise…
Everytime the president went abroad, Rrapush sat in the presidential coach and, stately, His Excellency, called the members of the staff one after the other and, strict, firm and thunderous, as a small Zeus, brought them to account for their activity, as they almost did the pee. Great men and women became as the first grade students that come to school without homework and cry in front of the teacher… Rrapush was pleased with these scenes and, so immersed in the tremendous luxury that surrounded him, in that great office, once dreamt to replace the president himself. But Gold changed his mood. He entered without trembling the eyelash and, unlike the others who had slave view, in that office, that killed with the noise of the lantern and the fabulous splendor of the antiques, said some fables and poems, with the sole intent to make Rrapush nervous, vicegerent of His Excellency, the president.
-Chief! – started Gold as always with laughter.
-Yes?! – Rrapushi barely raise his head from the paperwork.
In those moments he nearly ate Gold alive.
-Do you know the fable “The donkey with lion’s skin”?
-Let’s hear it once…
-Of course chief… Once a donkey, tired from the load, left the village and entered in the forest. In the street he found a lion’s skin. He took and wore it with the thought to appear as a lion in front of the other animals. And so it happened. The animals,when they saw him, made him many honors and treated with all the goods, as he was their king himself, the Lion. The donkey, as he ate and was satiated, forgot that he was masked and, of satisfaction, started to moo as the forest shook. The animals knew who he was and paid the fraud, beating with wood, so much as the donkey repented, but it was late…
-What do you want to say with this you, Flori?! – Rrapush was irritated.
-What can I say, chief? What the author wanted to say… Just for information…
-How many times have I told you, Flori, bring me only official sources not literary… Are you deaf? You know the law of the chief, don’t you?
-Of course, chief…
-It is worse that you know and don’t follow it… I will once repeat it to you so you can remember… Open the ears…
1. The chief is right.
2. The chief is always right.
3. In the impossible hypothesis, that a subordinate is right, are immediately considered articles 1 and 2.
4. The chief doesn’t sleep, he rests.
5. The chief doesn’t eat, he tastes.
6. The chief doesn’t drink, he digest.
7. The chief is never late, he is on time.
8. The chief never leave the work, it’s the other’s requirement for his presence.
9. The chief never read the newspaper, he is informed.
10. The chief doesn’t familiarize with the secretary, he educates her.
11. Who enters the office of the chief with his own ideas, should go out with those of the chief.
12. The chief thinks for everybody.
13. As much you think as the chief, so much you make career.
14. Chief is chief even when he makes you angry. (it’s a bullshit)
Thus this is the chief’s code, never forget it, if you want to survive. Are you clear, Flori!? – showed off Rrapush Kalemi.
-I have just a remark, chief, I survive thanks to my back, – emphasized Gold while going out.
-We will see how your back holds, if I become the one, you little thing, – Rrapush’s thunderous was felt together with the noise of the door.
-Eh, you will let me without work, nothing more, Rrapush Kalemi, – whispered Gold, not believing very much in the magical power of the presidential office to metamorphose the donkey into a horse and Rrapush into a president.
2
Many seasons passed, more water flowed from sources to streams and rivers, and suddenly, surprisingly, rrapush Kalemi was announced President of the country. His Excellency, former president, had retired, leaving as inheritance the presidential office to Rrapush Kalemi. Now Rrapush Kalemi killed and cut not like the chief of the staff, not as a vicegerent, but like His Excellency himself. Rrapush Kalemi now was the president. Was metamorphosed in the most surprising way… Perhaps the presidential office had this magic power and nobody would notice the long ears of Rrapush Kalemi.
-Flori, that donkey, who has occupied the president’s office, seeks you, – Gold felt a voice, who was still dazed by surprise.
It was the driver of the president with a sad face.
– It seems he wants to deal with me, still not putting his ass in the presidential chair, – Gold wrinkled the lips venomously.
– Well he has swear to you, Flori, – smiled the driver. – Good luck…
Gold knocked on the door of the Presidential office and entered without waiting to be invited. Rrapushi was enjoying the revolving chair, immersed in it as a child in the park. He was furious by the sudden arrival of Gold, as far as he shouted out loud.
-Flori, never enter without permission at the president’s office! And now I am President, Rrapush Kalemi …
-All the media say this chief, that you are the president, I don’t believe that you called me to say who you are…
-Shut up your mouth, you little thing! The president calls you whatever he wants, – Rrapush interrupted him, trying to imitate the ex-president.
-I am called only for work, only to draft the document, Mr. Preeesident, – weighed the voice Gold, without supporting the brutality of the president Rrapush.
-How do you dare, you nothing! How do you dare to oppose the president! Do you know I call the guards and cast the irons? I rot you in jail, that I do! – stood up the president Rrapush, hysterical crying, but Gold didn’t care.
-It is possible chief!
-I am a president, you damned! But do you know what? Get away from work, since now! Get away from my eyes because you made me blind, Gold! – stressed Rrapush as triumphant.
Of course, chief! I knew I had mine only the ass… the chair is yours and you have the right to take it whenever you want… according to the chief’s law… – Rrapush expressed sadly and went without talking much.
Behind him followed the wild yawp of the new president. Submitted the office, was greeted with the colleagues, who still didn’t believe how could Gold go away from work and left behind the Headquarter of Presidency to come on the street. Passed several days and Gold, very sad by the blind revenge of Rrapush, randomly wandering the noisy street of the capital. One afternoon, in the artificial lake promenade, was faced with the former President, who was walking accompanied by one of the loyal guards. They hugged.
-How are you, Flori, how do you do with Rrapush? – the former president beat his shoulders with vivacity.
-Not bad! We argued and he fired me… He enforced the ancient code of the chiefs, – answered Gold smiling.
-What!? He has fired you?! All the life a donkey remained the damned Rrapush? – wildly woo the former president, the old man lion, then, after he thought for a moment, cynically shook his head and formed a mobile phone number.
-Rrapush, what news do we have from there…
-Silence, Mr. President! There were a lot of messages for you from the neighboring presidents, – felt the familiar, trembling and rushed voice of Rrapush Kalemi.
-Ok, I understood… Send me in the evening to “Rogner”, what about Gold… how is Gold, Rrapush?
-As you order, Mr. President! Gold is safely… I just split by him. I am sending you immediately.
Gold beat the forehead of surprise, whereas the former-president laughed.
-I have told you Rrapush, Gold is a good horse. Get used to manage the good horse. Don’t put it away by yourself.
-As you order, chief! We will put the horse forward to make the works go well.
-Keep up the good work, Rrapush! Finally you have understood: the horse always forward, – emphasized the former president with praise tone and closed the mobile phone.
-Eh, this crazy world! – sighed Gold.
-Don’t be surprised, Gold! The power has these. And now let’s greet each-other and run home because that donkey will send the presidential car immediately, – said the former president and hugged neck on neck.
Then they split. The retired president infringed the eye.
Gold took a taxi and went back home. The car of the president was waiting there.
-What has happened, Flori, that our honorable president was doing the pee from fear? You have tricked him, methinks, – rubbed the hands the happy driver.
-It is understandable, the power has these, – Gold infringed the eye.
-The power has these… our eyes have seen a lot of things, Flori, – rubbed the hands the driver and infringed the eye as to imitate the former president.
While the President’s car was launched towards the Presidential Headquarters.
3
President Rrapush Kalemi finally appeared in the presidential chair in front of the mythical table where the plans for national economic progress, national security, constitutional justice and future projects were knitted. In this workshop were compiled and signed all the presidential orders for the today and tomorrow of the state. Here was the “Olympics” of the Republic and Zeus was already Rrapush Kalemi. This was his dreamed kingdom. He had in his hands the sun, rain, hail, snow, wind and lightning. As the Zeus of mythology. He could smile and the sun would shine the way, otherwise the lightning of the anger hinge over the top and poor you… But how many devices had around this table and above! As it was a pilot’s cockpit of a giant spaceship.
-Hi, hi, hi! – As in movies, – Rrapush laughed.
He was still not persuaded that his dream had come true. He pressed a button and suddenly was heard a voice.
-Hello! I am the minister of defiance.
-Hi, hi, hi! Beautiful thing! – whispered Rrapush, and then weighed the voice.
-I am the president. Anything new there, Mr. Minister!?
-Generally good, Mr. President! Only that we lack the funds to purchase new weapons. NATO has put us the duty the modernization of our military.
-What about the reformation?
-Not bad. We are dealing with the new structure of the military.
-Good! Very good, Mr. Minister! Continue the implementation of tasks! – interrupted Rrapush with a commanding tone.
He was in the role of the General Commander of the Armed Forces. Reprint the button, the light turn off and the voice was silenced. He pressed another button.
-Hello! The minister of economy, – echoed another voice.
-President is speaking!
-I am listening, Mr. President! – The voice beyond felt excited.
-How is your institution going on, Mr. Minister?
-It isn’t going well, Mr. President! The energetic system is down, old, is ending. Subscribers steal us and we can’t oblige them to pay. We don’t have even the weather as allies. There is no rain and the lakes are dried up. Hydropower risk to come out of work. Mines are closed. Are gone. Residents of the towns near them risk of hunger. If the uncontrolled displacements begin will cause many social problems, especially in the suburbs of the capital… We hold out a little with the Telecom, although the network cable is broken. Poor job of my predecessors. Even the opposition doesn’t let us calm accusing us for robbers. No light, no water, no bread, no roads, no phone, no money… we are going crazy.
-Bring me urgently a detailed report with concrete measures to change the situation! – was exacerbated Rrapush and closed the line.
He continued to dial other numbers but no one answered. When he was losing patience a strict voice answered:
-Hello! Minister of Public Order!
-I am the president! How is there going on?
-As you know, the opposition is embroidered with the rallies. They got our breath. Day and night on guard.
-You are strong, you face the difficult situations, – answered Rrapush and closed the mobile phone.
-Eh! Grumpy year… As the year 13 a century ago… Hope God blessed them because people have sold their soul to Satan, – sighed Rrapush with a bitter taste deep in the consciousness.
He glanced the numerous files waiting to browse, but did not want to deal with them. There would find a lot of problems too that would make nerves water for that day… Albania had already turned into the most distorted country in the world… Cities were defiled with the mud of the sewage, boulevards and sidewalks pit of pits and pond of ponds where the unemployed, hopeless, drunkards and drug addicts nap. They wallow in the sludge and sludge and filth their mouth brought out. They quarreled, revenged and killed in the darkness and poverty… Life flowed laborious as a hellish river especially for the homeless, who became dark and light at the foot of the buildings built outside the urban laws with stolen money, drugs and blood money. In the countryside the situation even worse: Poverty, illiteracy, Bandit and darkness… it is better away from those files. Eh! He reminded an expression: “Beware not to enter the stake, if it entered, it will leave a sign”… And he didn’t want a sign that day and he wanted never neither in the body nor in the spirit… Was or not the president of the country? His subordinates could keep the signs of the stake, Gold with his friends, people, who didn’t have power to protect… The horses could hold the sacks of Albanian troubles.
Someone was knocking at the door.
-Come in! – The president woos.
The chief of staff appeared finicky. It is said this is neither jennet nor mare, but fox, instinctively flashed in head to Rrapush. He needed to find a special language for him.
-Yes?!
-Your Excellency! I have the obligation to inform about the staff’s situation, although, is understandable, you are aware… – the chief wrenched all her body.
-Yes?! – continued the president with the same condescending tone, as to confuse him, though he knew that cunning lady didn’t let herself so easily.
-Well, I thought to remind you that we need more skilled guys like Gold; I suppose you know him…
-Yes!?
-If Your Excellency agrees, we employ another as well as him…
-As to say working horse…
-If you call the so…
-How to designate otherwise, when the owl knows that Presidential staff consists of donkeys and horses, Mrs. Fox!? – President exploded with anger.
– … …!?
-Can’t you answer? Learn then, that there is lazy donkeys and working horses… Plenty of horses do we have… What is the ration between them?
-I believe, some twenty with the eighty percent in the favor of the donkeys, said the chief flippantly, to make the president understand that she had the situation in her hands.
-Hi, hi, hi! And look how well you know that staff has donkeys and horses? You know even their percentages. Learn that horses cost, they are too temperamental and costly…
-If you allow me, Your Excellency, I would say that the so-called donkeys would cost more. A horse works as for four donkeys and is paid a half donkey. So, a working horse with a ridiculous salary is commanded at the same time by four donkeys… pretty expensive the command. In the labor market you can find best and cheapest horses… great unemployment, as you are aware, Your Excellency…
-The employment policy is my problem, madam. You accurately complete the documents that will be required, well-manage the files of the donkeys and horses behind the bars of your office… Well-manage your cage, Mrs. Fox!
-As you order Your Excellency! Organigram demands to be a fox as chief of staff and so I am. So, I fulfill the job’s criteria. I don’t know if Your Excellency is within criteria, because, of what I know and if you permit me, the president must be a lion, under the laws of the forest and the jungle…
-Madam, we are not here neither in the forest nor in the jungle, but in the Main Headquarter of the State, in the “Olympus” of Republic… The policy decides who to choose and how to choose the president. Remember well: I, the President of this country and yours, madam, I am a product of policy… Less importance is me being a donkey, horse, pig or lion, as you claim, Mrs. Fox… The criterion is for my subordinates and this also applies to you, Mrs. Fox! Strongly hold the workplace and don’t do very dalliance… And more obedient in front of your President! Clear?!… And find an opportunity to find a workplace for Sloe of the blind Shaqir… She will come to meet you… Make her shake a door within this building… Once again clear?! – stressed the president ending the oratorical speech.
-As you order, Mr. President! I clearly understood you. Can I leave now? – Bowed in a sign of subservience the chief of personnel and backward pulled to the outside.
-My honors, madam! You are free to go. And always with mind in the head! – Advised for the last time Rrapushi, although impromptu questioned his behavior.
Hadn’t he shown to be very gentle with that flattering lady… as he had talked too much… had brushed the tail? He should have behaved more severe… more cut… more toned… as a lion… as the king of the jungle… so should behave with those kinds of animals like foxes. However he would talk another time with her… would cut the tongue… just to put his honor of president… The thought that the office of the President should have a magical power, which transformed anyone who went inside, had already crystallized in the head. He waited to see the concrete results, first to himself and then to the others. The president, for instance, as the fox lady said, would definitely be lion, or at least a tiger, bear or wolf… It was accepted even horse, donkey enough… So, you entered in that office a donkey and surprisingly saw yourself a lion. Such was the former president, who left the inheritance of presidency to Rrapush… Why couldn’t Rrapush Kalemi be a lion? Even if he didn’t have the gifts of the Forest’s King, the presidential office would definitely donate it. Rrapush didn’t even discuss that the president’s office had magical power and did wonders transforming the donkeys into horses and vice versa, but he wondered if it acted equally on all the people, that entered and went out its environment. He believed that it shouldn’t have the same effect as for those who stayed a few minutes, one or a few hours and for someone who stayed pretty much days and nights, almost became permanent resident of it, as he himself, His Excellency, Rrapush Kalemi. So, he had to deal with a philosophical theory, which had to definitely be studied by a famous philosopher as that academician with the stunning name Farmak. As it was said, this Farmaku held as the greatest philosopher of the time, had even crossed the global boundaries and claimed he was in competition with aliens’ philosophers, if they existed and would ever dare to visit our planet, Earth.
-Pfff! I do not believe that this sort philosopher Farmaku to be so knowledgeable, however let’s try once, who knows, – Said Rrapushi and promptly decided to order the subordinates to find that wise man anywhere he was and immediately bring him to the presidency.
Not passing an hour, the philosopher, with his view of a goat beard, was in the office of the president Rrapush.
-As you ordered, Excellency, the immensity of my knowledge, at your disposal! – Farmaku bowed so much as the chin touched the table.
The president with all courtesy welcomed the scholar and, having made flattery to his great fame, that accompanied him, announced the reasons, motives and the purpose that made him call so hastily to cooperate in solving the secret of the President’s office’s magic.
The scholar, who took the message of the interlocutors in midair, he instantly began working with a very euphoric view, which meant that the problem to be solved was a very common thing for his immense erudition. On the top of a few days there would be no more a bit of mystery over the ignorance of the president. The light of the Farmak would shine everywhere in the presidency and would lead toward new paths the presidential ideas. The scholar with his discovery skills would put on scientific basis the opinion of the president and the progress of the works for the direction of the republic toward the future still unknown. The only requirement that he directed to the president to speedily reach the target, was: Him to have the goodness to order the free movement of the scholar in all territories where was the need to lay the surveys, observations, investigations and the detailed practices and extremely stringent of the Farmak, which was immediately completed. Several days passed and something unexpected happened. After extensive research, Farmak philosopher was suddenly petrified and looked like a moving statue that artistically posed in the presidency’s environment. Surprisingly it was turned into a surprised hermaphroditic animal, half donkey and half horse, as he had foolishly left the Gold, who was ordered to accompany the scholar step by step to facilitate the scientific research. In that state of donkey-horse sculpture, Farmak had lost the ability to produce results, thus Gold, in the role of the assistant, had to apply himself calculations. And after a fast computer processing of the data with more value collected thanks to the philosopher’s experience, and thanks to his exhaustible clear-headed, concluded that the magic that possessed the presidential headquarter was: Desire for power, money and glory… This sort of desire had alienating, transforming and metamorphose power. It was even with tracks and non-lethal effects.
Oh God! This is the culmination… Gold, not without pain, confused from the pity for the sufferings of Farmak and from the rapid turns of the course of events, was coming in a shocking conclusion… He was slowly realizing that rarely any of the residents, guests and guests of the presidency saved this surprising infection. People suffering from this virus, were suddenly seized from thirst and a high temperature, which awakened the obsession to sin all the sins that the holy books write. And willy-nilly they ended into eternal maniac with a very aggressive temper, with all the symptoms of the protagonists that had eventually turned the back to heaven to once populate the hell.
Oh God! Farther the greedy and greediness envy for power, money and glory undeserved, to target the envy killer, violence to adjust and inherit, pride to put in the service of habits, niggard to serve to the virtues and greed to perpetuate the sinful obsession of the infected spirit, as every cell of Gold’s being yelled, as he imagined how people incantation and lured by the presidential magic, even in the smallest contact with it. Apparently it wasn’t a coincidence the fact that a hefty part of the Albanians, citizens of the Republic with the name Albania, had declared themselves presidents of many businesses, associations, parties and every sort of organizations and inventions non-governmental and governmental ghost. Perhaps each of them had a physical or spiritual contact with the Presidency, either as a visitor of her magical environments, either through correspondence and as a result was declared President in the Presidency of his real or imagined principality. So, Albanians, as without understanding, were experiencing a Presidential massive alteration and in the territories of the Republic already, willy-nilly, the donkeys reigned… Yes, yes the donkeys…
Don’t you believe?! Weren’t you enough with the half-metamorphose of the famous Farmak eager for fame?! Then follow the TV chronicles that how many foreign diplomats present the credentials to the Presidency as horses and once go away from her as… donkeys… Still don’t you believe?! Then try to contact with the Presidency and you will see with your own eyes how you will be transformed… Suddenly the horses will be transformed into donkeys… The donkeys will be transformed into… donkeys.
The president Rrapush Kalemi waited to be informed for the discovery of the magic’s secret of the Presidential Headquarter, with the best hope to be metamorphosed for a day into a lion, as flattering to be a true leader who reigns and leads with foresight his people toward abundance. But what could the poor Flori confess, for Farmak’s err or for the fact that the donkey remains a donkey even though he coexists with the Presidency?!
He took the car. He went to the forest of Dajti’s mountain. He searched and found a bunch of nettles, which, after being returned, tickle the philosopher Farmak, who scorched leaped upward and as released from the magic, was immediately transformed into a gusty horse that jumped and went around.
-It seems as I was watching a bad dream. Oh God, make it a dream! – was cleared Farmaku.
-You have slept enough; the President is waiting to be informed, you dotard philosopher, – threatened the mocking Gold. – At least tell your dreams. Maybe he lull and sees dreams with lions, as he desires… maybe…
– Maybe… Maybe we will also save from the donkeys that burden our backs forever. Maybe the nettles are a kind of medicine for such errs, – foolishly laughed the philosopher Farmak, still under the searing effect of the nettles.

Shefki Hysa
Writer

Dr. Madhu Krishan – An international peacebuilder

Dr. Madhu Sakarkandi Krishan was born on 11 January 1962 in Dinglipur, a very small island of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. He was grown up in his birth place, in Dinglipur. He took first bases of primary school in Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. After that, he went to Madras, mainland of India to carry out his University Engineering Studies. In Madras, he was graduated and post graduated. Anyway, Dr. Madhu Krishan was not enough but he went on with other specializations in different fields even in United States of America. His qualifications are: DD, FICA, SD (USA), and PhD (USA).
After that, Dr. Madhu Krishan has given a valuable help all over the world. He has mainly worked over peace and over projects in the benefit of people and humanism in all corners of the world. To go on helping people, Dr. Madhu, since 1985 has created his humanitarian organizations. Firstly, he established during 1985 the organization for humanism and charity called “Snahalaya Ashram”. Under this organization, he had brought more than 12’000 homeless, needy and deprived children to the mainstream of Society by providing adequate food, clothing, and shelter and quality education up to the Graduation Level. Many of the inmates are now holding high positions in the Government like police officers, Defense officers, University Professors, School Teachers and in other various capacities. Observing this Government of India had nominated the name of Dr. Madhu Krishan for a prestigious Award and Gold medal. This organization already completed 25 years with humanitarian works like dedicated service for the poor and marginalized sections of the remote villages located in India, carrying out Mega Relief Works during the Earthquake and regular floods in Gujarat, Lathur, Pakistan, and Hattie. With his great work, he has been able to help socially and economically weaker sections of the settlements, especially among the poor and other socially backward and underprivileged.
Dr. Madhu Krishan, is also Founder and Chairman of another organization named Academy of Global Universal Peace (AUGP). This new organization is affiliated with United Nations, United Nations Global Compact & European Commission, World Peace Organization, etc. Dr. Madhu Krishan as Chairman of NGOs Federation, with more than 12000 NGOs as members of Federation which do work under the dynamic leadership of him, brought mighty revival among NGOs & transformed them for their active participation in developing their community in their respective geographical areas specially focusing on health, sanitation, water, education, human rights, women and children empowerment. During Tsunami disaster and permanent earthquakes following it, under AUGP, Dr. Madhu built and freely donated about 10’000 resistant houses with community halls to the victims of that disaster. He did others commendable emergency relief & rehabilitation works. For these valuable activities, he was given the Highest Commendation Certificate Award and letter of appreciation by the Chief Secretary of the Govt. of India. Besides these activities, Dr. Madhu went ahead in transforming more and more people as Ambassadors of Peace. He adopted some Universities in India and created the program “Peace Loving – Peace Living – Peace Practicing Community to transform people, mainly students, as Ambassadors of Peace.
For more than two decades of social and spiritual works, transforming multitudes to become effective social community leaders, peace builders, humanitarian workers, change makers, motivators of the global civil society, who contributed to build up – “Peace Loving – Peace Living – Peace Practicing” transformed the culture of global society and Dr. Madhu has been given many deserved top positions all over the world like:
Founder & Chairman of Academy Of Universal Global Peace (Affiliated/Accredited in: United Nations as International Organization, United Nations Global Compact as Global Organization, European Commission, Power Ministry of USA, Under Federal Government of USA – Washington); Goodwill Ambassador for Peace of International Human Rights Commission – USA; Goodwill Ambassador for Peace of SPMUDA GLOBAL – Philippines; Goodwill Ambassador for Peace of FASI – Republic Of Argentina; Honorary President & Goodwill Ambassador of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity – Albania; Ambassador of The Kingdom of Bunyoro – Kitara (ARKBK) – Uganda; Ambassador of International Blue Cross – United Kingdom; Ambassador of World Parliament of Peace & Security; Member of Asia Pacific Region of IBI (International Intelligence Bureau of Investigation) – Washington USA; Chairman of Islanders’ Shanghatan Munch (United Islanders’ Union – a Union of more than 553 Islands Situated in Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea, very near to Thailand & Indonesia, known as Andaman&Nicobar Islands; Founder & Chairman of Snahalaya Ashram (NGO-Non Government Organization, established during 1985; President of Haggai Institute Alumni Association (USA), Andaman & Nicobar Islands Chapter; Chairman of United Christian Council (UCC) & UWB – Asia; Chairman of Asian Peace Foundation; Chairman of Gateway University of Peace; Chairman of Asian Federation (AFIPC); Executive Chairman of Legal Aid Services – LASWEB (Its Chairman is Hon’ble Justice DK Basu); Arbitrator in the Panels of ICA (Indian Council of Arbitrations), FICCI Building – New Delhi, under the Aegis of Ministry of Commerce and; Arbitrator’s Panel of International Council “ICADR” , Vasanth Kunj – New Delhi, under the Aegis of Ministry of Law & Justice; Chairman of TAFVA (Tamilnadu Federation of Voluntarily Agencies) under which more than 12000 NGOs are members; Founder & Chairman of Snahalava Ashram; Founder & Chairman of Academy of Global Universal Peace, etc.
During his work all his life Dr. Madhu has been qualified in the following sections: Eminent Social Reformer and Activist, Environmentalist / Scientist, Educator, Peace Builder, Human Rights and Constitutional Rights Activist, Motivator, Change Maker, Teacher Trainer, Disaster Management Expert, Panel Arbitrator, Legal Aid Expert, Academician, Humanitarian Works Expert, etc.
For all his great work, his contribution and his good will, as acknowledgments, he has been awarded many times as follows:
Humanitarian Awards:
26th January 2006 – Government (Lt. Governors) Commendation Certificate award; 26th February 2004 – The Republic Day of India for The Best Relief & Rehabilitation Works during the tsunami disaster.
National Awards:
2006: Bharath Excellence Award and Gold Medal; 2006: Rashtriva Jewel Award and Gold Medal; 2006: Human Excellence Award and Gold Medal
Andaman and Nicobar Administrator for Durgabai; Deshmukh and Swami Vivekananda Award in the field of Social Work and Consumer Protection Awareness Work.
International Awards: 1997: Best Environmental Engineering Scientist, Glory of India – Award and Gold Medal; 2007: Rising Personality of India – Award & Gold Medal; 2007: Lifetime Achievement – Award & Gold Medal; 2007: Indian Golden Achiever – Award & Gold Medal; 2007: Arch of Excellence Award & Gold Medal; 2008: International Excellence for Best Construction Eng and Management Award; 2008: International Human Excellence Award & Gold Medal.
At the very end, Dr. Madhu Krishan achieved in transforming many people as peace builders but his work and his goodwill still goes on. His endless efforts continue to give peace to our world. God bless Dr. Madhu Krishan and all peace builders.

Paulin Rranzi
Journalist

The word of the publisher

Notes about the book “Cham’s ancient versemonger” of the historian Ibrahim Daut Hoxha

The word “Chameria” whenever harasses us and shakes our consciousness, because it recalls a long calvary of sufferings and slaughter. The muslim cham population was swept and chased, because they sought to live in freedom, to preserve the identity, to develope the culture and to speak their language. In this titanic holy war, were born heroes that waved the flag of bravery and patriotism. The cham’s nightingales and partridge have not stopped singing for the beauties of nature, the Fatherland, for love and true faith, for the grace of the girls and the bravery of boys. The history of Chameria must have a special treatment in the framework of our national history. This time it comes written in verses from the versemonger, that the tireless researcher Ibrahim D. Hoxha dredge and found through archives and many other types saved in manuscripts, in the popular memory etc., and bring for the reader in the book “Cham’s ancient versemonger” (Vjershëtarë të hershëm Çamër).
This anthology contains the most prominent poem of this Albanian area and the most selected versemonger. In this anthology you will find poems beautifully and masterfully woven for events engraved in history, for heroes that brandish the swords of freedom, that waved flags and watered with blood the native land. Were platted poems for the knights of knowledge, that with primer and books with Albanian letters, spread knowledge.
In this edition you will find the magnificent poems “Erveheja” and “Joseph and Zelihaja” of the prominent versemonger Muhamet Cami, works in which rises morality, honor, faith and virtue that has characterized the Albanian woman. Here you will even find poems for Scanderbeg, Ismail Qemali, Meta and Kaso Duce, for Albanian, Kosovo, Chameria and the flag. With a special interest are the poems of scholar Imam Hasan Tahsini, which open windows in the philosophical, religious and scientific thought of the Albanian National Renaissance dean, which embraces knowledge in the depths of the soul and the universal human universe.
The versemonger Muhamet Cami, Imam Jasin Alushi, Imam Abdullahu, Haxhi Murat Cami writes hymns which the great Hafez Ali Korca specifies “… a bunch of selected and collected flowers from many valid gardens. These writings prosper the national literature…”
In this analogy you will find even poems with religious inspiration, such as: Advice for faith, advice for the Ramadan, for five meals of Namaz, for the mirage of Pejgamber and for Islamic devotions. Through patriotic poems is released the summon: Chameria calls, Listen the voice of the Fatherland, Answer the voice of the Fatherland, The voive of Chameria. The summon of the versemonger was strongly heared in all Chameria and continues to resound: “ Don’t forget Chameria” which God has bestowed rare beauties, with mountains from where fresh waters flow, with hills covered from citrus and olive groves, with lawn where the cattle are fed, with garden where nightingales and partridge sing! Don’t forget Chameria of the brave men, of the sword and rifle, of the host women and full of grace, of the songs and dances! Don’t forget the history of sad and glorious Chameria, of the tears that are not dried yet!”
The cham ancient versemonger were not locked in ivory towers. Their poems were not powdered in the pages of the books. They were learned and recited even by those who didn’t know literacy. They were conducted from mouth to mouth, in every home, in every hearth, generation after generation, and in assemblies of men. They were sang in songs and caper in dances. Were strongly conceived in the Cham’s spirit to give strength to face the pain.
The book of Cham’s history still continues to be written. Recited in poems, the history comes to us more tangible, more sensible and more proudest. Versemonger resemble with colorful flowers in the meadow and grove, while the non-lazy and non-relaxed Ibrahim D. Hoxha wander these flowers to collect pollen and nectar.
This anthology comes as a preview of the Albanian cultural heritage, which the Albanian Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization appreciated and welcomed for publication.

Dr. Ramiz Zekaj

Dr. Madhu Krishan – Honorary Chairman of DMPP

Dr. Madhu Krishan, Founde & Chairman of Academy of Global Universal Peace, Ambassador and Honorary Chairman of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity, doing various activities to protect environment, health, sanitation and training the the Ambassadors of Peace.

Dr. Madhu Krishan – Leader of Peace

Dr. Madhu Krishan, Founder & Chairman of Academy of Global Universal Peace, Ambassador and Honorary Chairman of Diplomatic Mission Peace And ProsperityDr. Madhu Krishan trained more than 500 (Trainers) Ambassadors Of Peace At Punjab, North India; To Propagate The Gospel Of Peace and Prosperity World Wide.

Leader of Chameria – dream and reality

(The political world – Shpëtim Idrizi)

On 29 October 2009, Shpëtim Idrizi swore as a deputy. He was sworn even 4 years before but this time was a special day for him. The deputy Shpëtim Idrizi was already in the hall of Albanian Parliament together with his colleague Dashamir Tahiri, from Vlora, as a representative of a new political force, the Party for Righteousness and Unity or Cham Party as media used to call it. Its abbreviation was PDU and was the forth party in parliament. A political force that had in its axis the resolution of the Albanian issue especially Cham issue.
The day when the new parliamentary legislature started, the juratory as a deputy, the fulfillment of the first constitutional obligation toward the voters, was an important event for Shpëtim Idrizi. He was the deputy of Vlora district and he used to appreciate this as a special honor and privilege that he thought to will turn it in a powerful commitment. He will always be faithful to the voters, firstly starting by the parliament hall, by his pulpit where he will rise often and more often his voice especially about Chameria. He was already in Parliament as the leader of Chameria. This was his dream.
It was exactly the fact that he was a Cham himself, his will to speak openly about Chameria, about the land of his ancestors that encouraged him to leave Socialist Party and to join his Cham compatriots in a new political force. This action, apparently as an abandonment toward the shelter that grew him up as a politician, gave him the opportunity to be the leader of a community without support, to be the strong voice of the martyr Chameria.
The Socialist Party, in opposition, wasn’t in its place in Parliament and the polemics between clans of political spectrum continued by ruining the constructive capacities of Albanian society. In these conditions, Shpëtim Idrizi could not join the opposition boycott. He could not be a piece of its discontents about how the elections were held because he definitely had to represent his ideal, Chameria.
As a friend, various times he suggested to both parties to find out the ways to put on the contacts between position and opposition but politicians, as usually happens in our country these 20 years of transition, found it difficult to come out by the saps of their interests. As it seemed, they felt more satisfied attacking each-other by the pulpit of media.
Various times he proposed to his friend deputies to start contacts even outside the Parliament to negotiate an acceptable solution for all, thus to use with wisdom the old art of policy – negotiate.
The leader Shpëtim Idrizi thought that to negotiate means that nobody has preliminarily the right and that all the parties must tolerate somehow by the fighting positions they have occupied to offer peaceful opportunities. However they didn’t listen to him or better say they pretended not to listen because, in fact nobody moved by the fighting positions.
After some meetings and consultations where Shpëtim Idrizi took the blessings of the Albanian patriots for PDU, this new political initiative, he decided to join the majority of deputies to give it a parliamentary voice, to enter it in the institutional spaces of discussion and resolution of the problems with national features.
And here he was: in the Parliament pulpit, ready to protect the interests of Albanian patriots whom he represented.
The other deputies listened to him with attention. He hoped to wake up even the interest of public opinion. He would explain to Albanian what PDU represent in Parliament and in the public life of the country as well. Why it was created, what it aimed and how it would achieve to realize its constitutional and legal objectives.
In few words but clearly, he was appointing the targets of what he and PDU must do in four years. The force he leaded was announced as a party of national interest, considering the national issue as the priority of the political activity. There was a group of Albanian intellectuals who stand behind the establishing initiative with the conviction that stoned issues by time were not a taboo, were not unchangeable. He and the intellectuals who followed him were of the same opinion that everything is dynamic, that everything move due to thoughts and actions of people who are ready to sacrifice for their national interests. Thus, something will be changed by their force. Their work would always be in function of changing the nation and Albanian population’s position in regional and global plane.
That was how he and the PDU’s group thought. They had integrated in their plans even intellectual forces from Kosovo, Macedonia, Monte Negro, from older and new Albanian refugees, from all the communities in foreign countries and also from Albanian Diaspora.
The politician Shpëtim Idrizi thought that the issues that must be handled were:
– The recognition of Kosovo’s independence and its normal functionality as a sovereign state till in its full integration in UN;
– The progress of Macedonia’s Albanian status, in accordance with the highest international standards in handling populations with such a big demographic weight inside the whole demography of a state;
– The resolution of Cham issue as the most important by emotional view, of the crimes made over Cham population during Second World War and the importance’s weight of this community in our country;
– Of course, together with its resolution in accordance with international acts, also the resolution of Albanian properties’ problem in Greece, resolutions that are predicted by impartial Greek experts;
– The elaboration of a medium and long term resolution about the Albanian refugees abroad which represent about 30 per cent of the whole Albanian population.
This is great, isn’t it? Program with weight, objectives like confinement towers in the fog time.
The novelties of this program, about the resolution of whose were prepared even concrete resolutions certainly they must be done part of flesh and blood of the Albanian patriots wherever they were situated. On the contrary, they would remain just words in paper.
The politician Shpëtim Idrizi thought that PDU was a party of Albanians, a political force of the 21th century. This force definitely must have with it those Albanians that have over all the national interest. They had to knock in the hearts of those patriots that are convinced that the Cham community is the most vital part of the Albanian modern patriotism. Many politicians have discussed about the resolution of Cham issue, but just in paper. Unlike those who promised miracles and didn’t move even a thumb, Shpëtim Idrizi had conceptualized various concrete steps within the spirit of good neighborhood, of international legality, that would set justice for the Cham martyr population. And this was a qualitative difference in the program of PDU. That’s how Shpëtim thought. He and the party he leaded were more clearly, more decided in the resolution of this issue that would go on with those well though steps.
The leader Shpëtim Idrizi had the opinion that Albanian diplomacy must firstly negotiate the amendment of Greek laws in the years ’80 that allowed the repatriation of all Greek citizens removed after Second World War and banned this for those Greek citizen that are not with Greek nationality. These laws are discriminatory and totally contrary with the European Convent of the Human liberties and rights.
This amendment which is imposed by the Convent would allow the repatriation of all Chams that would desire that, in Greece.
So, was required repatriation and recovery of all the lost rights since that which is widely called Greek genocide and by impartial Greek experts as ethnic cleansing. So, he and the intellectuals around him didn’t want just properties compensation.
No! He was decided to work about the elaboration of a feasibility study by an international British studio and to give a juridical resolution for the Cham issue and Albanian properties in Greece.
This resolution must advance along with the diplomatic negotiations with the progressive government of Papandreu in Greece. Shpëtim Idrizi had somehow a conviction that the government of Papandreu would be abide by the sense of equality in the relations with neighbors. About this, Papandreu has often discussed before, in the quality of opposition leader or as the former foreign minister. The politician Shpëtim Idrizi believed too much that Papandreu would respect the best tradition of the Greek left which had practically realized the main normalizing steps into Albanian-Greek relations. Those steps were once started by Papandreu’s father by removing Albania from the list of enemy countries, followed by the ex-Prime Minister Simitis who realized the fellowship tractate with Albania, etc.
So, these arguments mainly compound the vision of the modern politician Shpëtim Idrizi but could anybody believe in older Albanian politicians and even more those Greek politicians to start the work in realizing the dream – Shpëtim Idrizi?!… Maybe not… Their infidelity was expected and the politician Shpëtim Idrizi knew this very well…
And then?!… There was certainly needed a reserve plain… In case they wouldn’t see progress ever these problems, he and his friends wouldn’t stop the needed pressure to intermeddle even international institutions. They would make the impossible to have these issues in international tribunals…
Shpëtim Idrizi was ready to start the battle with Albanian Parliament. As the start they would take the initiative to propose this Parliament the approval of a resolution for Cham issue.
He would not spare even the Government to which publically asked to put a commemorative monolith in the cemetery of the Klogjer’s village – where the lie the bones of 2600 Chams, mainly women, elderly and children. They died by thirst, hunger, fatigue, in the biblical escape to run away by the massacre, they escaped by the genocide of the bands of the notorious General Napolon Zerva for whom, as for a cynical irony, in the other side of the border rises a memorial. Never must be forgotten that those innocent people together with about 2500 others, who were murdered and massacred within a week, during the black June of the year 1944, had not made any fault; they suffered this tragic destiny only because of their ethnicity, so, only because they were Albanians.
He raised the voice and asked by the Government, especially to the Minister of Culture, to allot funds for the museum house of one of the most distinguished scholars with Cham origin, Hasan Tahsini, a house that has remained ruined and adrift since 1997…
The deputy Shpëtim Idrizi proposed a well thought solution also for the problem of refugees. A small place like Albania has not the luxury to ignore the destiny of 30 per cent of its population, something quite unique in the modern history of countries.
He highlighted that only few days before, Kosovo approved the immigration law. So, Albania must approve such a law that provided the establishment of a National Committee for Albanians abroad. This department would handle in an institutional manner the problems for the immigrants integration in the places where they live, would be interested about the values of their culture, about the teaching of Albanian language and about their involvement in the political life of the native country. There was a Committee for minorities and why not to exist such an “ad hoc” structure for Albanians abroad? Perhaps the country had 30 percent minorities as Albanians abroad? No! Be understood, minorities are much more less and surprisingly they are given a Committee under subordinate of the Prime Minister. Think a little bit, what an achievement by minorities that even the most development countries would envy!… What about Albanians immigrants?… Only silence and silence…
The Cham deputy highlighted that to achieve these objectives in the interest of the country the political force he leaded wished to collaborate with all politicians, with the position and opposition. It was not an ideological party and had no scruples to refuse the one or the other part. Its compass was the national interest and on behalf of it would collaborate with all parties. In this moment, in the interest of the population, before of all was the acceleration of European Integration, therefore was needed a big work. He and his colleague, Dashamir Tahiri, would vote pro to those laws that could accelerate the integration. They would support all the lawmaking initiatives that would accelerate the development of the country. Without doubt. Meantime, they were decided to give no blank check to none majority as a guarantee for unconditional support, especially in the cases when could be supposed to harm the national interest.
So, he belonged to a new force which in its work would certainly be distinguished by a policy of new style. It would be the representative voice of all the organisms of the civil society that work for the same scope – the progress in abundance of Albanian society. It would be the representative of Albanian owners’ associations in the country. Could not be asked the solution of properties’ problems of the citizens abroad, without solving first those inside the country.
Shpëtim Idrizi said that many other politicians had talked before about the national issue. Unlike them, his party would set in disposal of this issue all the forces, fame, dignity and the unlimited support of all those who in many meetings had trusted to the new program. Cham and non-Cham, everywhere in Albania would be with them. They would find the right allied for this issue and would make a qualitative pressure to all parliamentary majorities to handle with realism this issue. Nobody had the right to make more complex major issues. Nobody could speculate with the integration card. The integration does not diminish the resolutions, chances of the backward issues but on the contrary, it increases them.
The new politicians of PDU were of the thought that today regional and international situations speak in favor of Albanians. They just had to exploit and not to lose the chance of time.
After this programmatic presentation in Parliament, immediately after his oath as a deputy, the politician Shpëtim Idrizi felt that he would have even a greater support by his colleagues, that’s why his effort to realize the objectives must already be titanic. He was the Leader of Chameria, his old dream has started to become reality…
After he went out by the Parliament hall, the deputy Shpëtim Idrizi thought that he still had not in his hands the situation within Cham community. The existence of PDI, with its leader Tahir Muhedini, as a political Cham party parallel with PDU, was paralyzing a part of power to realize as sooner its program. They must certainly join, but how? Tahir Muhedini and a part of Chams were cons because they still didn’t trust in him due to the fact that he has turned his back to the Socialist Party… They guessed that perhaps would be the human to divide even more Cham community, rather than unite it… So, he needed a hard work to break also that part of the popular opinion that was cons of him. Of course, otherwise where is the sense of the efforts made so far?…
It was said that the Party for Righteousness and Unity was a nationwide party. It was a party that seeks to unify all the Albanians national problems. And with entitled rose the question how he would realize this when he could not join Chams together?!… A hard work…
For Chams, perhaps it would be better that all this odyssey within PDI as an older party. But he together with the other initiators of PDU had done ongoing efforts to find the common language with PDI. They had even made a writing agreement but unfortunately it had been impossible to find the common language to have just one party. Why not, he had continuously thought that the party must be extended, to be a nationwide party, not just a force of Chams. Of course, Chams are more sensible toward the national issue of their story, but up to now the unification was impossible.
Firstly, Tahiri Muhedini made a public appeal immediately after elections where he invited all the other Cham’s deputies, that there are also other deputies with Cham origin in the right spectrum, to join for the big issue. At that time, PDU was not created yet.
Shpëtim Idrizi, at that moment thought to join PDI, to have a common platform in protecting Cham issue in Albanian Parliament. The fact that the Cham from Vlora achieved to have get a mandate, was an essential point for all Cham community. This fact increased the will of Shpëtim Idrizi to leave Socialist Party and to join PDI and Tahir Muhedinin. But there were many debates and misunderstandings which after all deepened even worse the division.
Suddenly, the events took an undesired road, even the deputy Dashamir Tahiri left PDI… Already, it was even more far away the day of joining…
Shpëtim Idrizi had always thought that for big national issues and for difficult issues like Cham issue, was necessary a powerful political force that was lacking in Albanian political spectrum, so, a party with nationalist notion. There was needed a party, which many times must pursue pressure over two big parties. Because, in his judgment, which I share with many other politicians, the two big parties usually find it difficult to take protecting positions for special elements of national issues. For example, majority finds it difficult to take a protecting position for issues like that of Chameria, of Macedonia’s Albanians, etc., because due to integration issues in UN, NATO, etc., it must appear as moderate and to hold attitudes as diplomatic, obligated especially by Greece and Serbia, states that are very sensible toward nationalist politics and become this way a obstructive factor. But even opposition in such conditions, willing to come as soon as possible in power, avoids handling problematic national issues. So, for those reasons, Shpëtim Idrizi thought that Albanian political spectrum had the necessity for a party which would fight for national issue without fear and complexities and would rise the voice even more to the big parties, in Albanian and international opinion.
Except this, he thought that the new electoral system seed that causes problems for small parties but actually, to those parties that have concentrations in certain districts are given great chances. It must not be forgotten that about 50 per cent of Albanian do not vote. They are not satisfied by demagogic politics of two big parties.
So, with reasonable calculations, came out that there was still place for political party which would support national issues. It was time to act. And he together with the deputy Dashamir Tahiri and other intellectuals decided to create PDU as a national party.
And he was not repented for this action, despite the malicious assumptions of a part of clan opinions. He was aware that despite of the good things that PDI had done, it had never been a real political force. It acted more as an association than as a party which had to represent powerfully Cham community and that part of Albanians who aspired for a big Albanian state.
Undoubtedly that he and the intellectuals around him had acted with maturity when they created PDU, a national party prepared to open its offices from Vermosh to Konispol. That party would be extended even in Albanian communities in other countries of the world.
However, a mechanism to encourage the join between PDI and PDU must be found. And he certainly would find it with the help of the patriot Chams. He believed that patriot intellectuals like Servet Mehmeti, Ibrahim D. Hoxha, Idriz Balani, Namik Mane, Namik Sadiku, Shefki Hysa, Mereme Çunge etc., with the respect they had in Cham community and with their capacities as peacemakers, would encourage and accelerate the unification of two parties and would affect for social peace within Cham community.
And so it was. After many subterranean and surface negotiations was decided the unification of two parties. A sensational notice for the press and visual media. All were waiting as in fever.
Finally was organized a great ceremony in one of the halls of hotel “Tirana” and the PDI of Tahir Muhedini and the PDU of Shpëtim Idrizi were joined in a single political force with the name Party for Righteousness, Integration and Unity, with the abbreviation PDIU. It is known that this new political force would be represented in Parliament by two deputies: Dashamir Tahiri dhe Shpëtim Idrizi, and the last one would be at the same time the leader of this party.
Shpëtim Idrizi presented a detailed plan that the new party would follow in the future. He highlighted that the year 2011 would be characterized by an extraordinary work. Would be realized a resolution for Cham issue. They would work for the internationalization of the issue and for the opportunity to approve a resolution in American Congress. They would direct to more prestigious advocates studios over the world. They would follow the way that Greek state used to follow with the issue of German soldiers’ crimes in a Greek village during the Second World War, etc. So, they would never forget and stop seeking justice for the martyr Chameria and for Albanian nation.
Even Dashmir Tahiri spoke with a great trust, the Honorary President of this force. He highlighted that all the intellectuals of PDIU are in a single direction about the resolution of Cham issue and about any other national issue. Not without any scope the ceremony of unification was appointed in 17 February, the day of the anniversary of the announcement of Kosovo’s independence. So, it was unification with a great national symbolic. Thus, the big Cham dream was already converted in a political vision with the undeniable trend to become one day reality…

Shefki Hysa
Journalist

The writer and the origin

(The artistic world – Shefki Hysa)

Dr. Shefki Hysa, the writer and the well-known publicist, was born in Erseka on July 20, 1957 in an intellectual family.
His father, Mazar Hysa, was a teacher with the vlleh at that period and followed their pastoral pilgrimage; passed the summer in ”Gramoz” mountains in the district of Kolonja, headquartered Erseka, and passed the winter in Saranda, always concerned for the education of shepherds’ children.
All his family lived in Shalës, Konispol.
The mother of Shefki, Bahrieja, at first sight, a thin woman, but extremely smart, who enriched the mind and soul every day with the numerous books that her husband brought her, was a housewife and migrated alongside the householder to take care of their new family.
Shefki Hysa belongs to an old patriot tribe settled in Shalës of Konispol about the 18-th century, perhaps in the period of the Muslim influence of this region, since it is considered as one of the first seven founding families of Shalës village, according to the popular memory. As we can see, they were a rich family, dealing with livestock and agriculture, they had many forests, pasture and cropland, and therefore they would be patriots and would protect with blood their home, fatherland – Chameria, from the separator intentions of Greek invasion.
The grandfather of Shefki, the well-known patriot Shefki Hoxha (they were religious from generation to generation and that’s why they also kept the surname “Hoxha”), is known as one of the founders of the first patriots’ clubs of Konispol and Filat, as a donor of the first schools in the Albanian region Chameria (Konispol, Filat and Gumenica), as a financer of the war of Vlora against the Italian invader in 1920 and as a fierce opponent of all powers, as with the Turkish and later with the royal power of Ahmet Zogu.
In the years ‘20, Shefki Hoxha was distinguished as a democrat, supporter of Fan S. Noli and his reformist government, despite the fact that his numerous properties that he had put up with efforts and sweat could be affected. This was one of the reasons why he was imprisoned by the king Ahmet Zogu in Lezha prison. Even for this reason the popular poet of the region sang:
“Telegrams come and go, / to raise gendarmes, / a rebellion was spoken for, / Chameria don’t obey the king, / his majesty Ahmet. / In Shalës they took Shefki, / in Konispol, Maze Haminë / and also Xhafo Pandalejmoni”… /
Shefki Hoxha was ill in the prison of Lezha and died in 1936, due to the infirmities of imprisonment.
The father of Shefki Hysa, Mazar, has been persecuted as anti-communist from the dictatorship, although their home in Shalës was the main support of the anti-Nazi fascist war, partisan’s basis. In 1960 Mazar Hysa was fired from education, because of his nationalist brother, Sadedin Hoxha, shot without trial by the Communists on November 13 of 1943 at the Partisan hospital of Theollogos, Saranda district.
So, finally their family was involved by the blind mechanism of the war classes, which seriously affected even the dreamer young boy Shefki Hysa, after the death of his father, Mazar, in 1976.
Mazar Hysa, the father of the writer Shefki Hysa, left this world with the bitter taste of this life. He died with pain that he couldn’t fix his son as he had dreamt during the persecution period from the communist regime. However Shefki Hysa, son of Mazar, has managed to survive, thanks to the genes inherited from the grandparents.
Shefki Hysa began the primary and secondary school in the village of Shalës, Konispol.
He started the agriculture high school in 1972 and completed in 1976 at Konispol, in the region of Chameria. (The communist power of that period had obliged him to attend the agricultural school, not the high school, because of his “bad” biography, as a family of rich and anti-communist origin and for the fact of his uncle, Sadedin Hoxha, nationalist, political executed.
After ten years Jack London’s efforts in 1985, the talented boy Shefki Hysa was able to have the right of studying literature at the University of Tirana. Thanks to the insistence of the well-known Albanian writer Dritëro Agolli, who by his position as Chairman of the Albania’s League of Writers and Artists, and in some other cases, as even in the case when the right of publication was denied to the poet Namik Mane, was imposed on the totalitarian power structures to review the biography of the novelist Shefki Hysa, to be given the denied right to study at the University of Tirana.
In 1989 he was graduated for language-literature at the Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Tirana. Meanwhile he continued to write and publish short stories and publicistic.
So finally Shefki Hysa’s talent of a prose writer with a remarkable creative individuality as the critics expressed for his first lyrics, welcomed by the public and literary readers were valued.
“My dear teller, with strange observations and sensitive feelings; a writer always appreciated by me and others,” so expressed Dritëro Agolli, enthusiastic for the literary future of Shefki Hysa and he would never be disappointed.
Over the years, his name came out in newspapers and magazines as a writer with a special individuality, with the creativity that contained to the Albanian national question.
During 1991-1997 Shefki Hysa has worked as a journalist for the newspaper “Çamëria” and as chief editor for newspapers “Kombi” and “Dielli”.
In the meantime he has attended several specializations for journalism, publishing, public and international relation.
Since 1997 and on Shefki Hysa has worked in the Administration of the Parliament of Albania.
Meanwhile he has founded and continues to lead the Cultural Community of Chameria (Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri”) and the Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri”.
The writer Shefki Hysa is a secretary of the Albania’s League of Writers and Artists. He is one of the most prolific creators of post-communist period, so, after 1990, when the communist regime in Albania collapsed.
The writer Shefki Hysa has published many books like: “Turtullesha dhe djalli” (The turtledove and the devil), stories (1992), published by “Bilal Xhaferri” Publishing House; “Robër të paqes” (Peace Hostages), novel (1994), published by “Bilal Xhaferri” Publishing House; “Parajsa e mallkuar” (The cursed Paradise) novel (1997), published by “Bilal Xhaferri” Publishing House; “Rrëfimet e një hajduti” (Confessions of a thief), stories (1999), published by “Arbëria” Publishing House; “Aromë Çamërie” (Chameria Flavor), stories (2004), published by “Bilal Xhaferri” Publishing House, ISBN 99927-960-1-4; “Mrekullitë e rreme” (False Miracles), stories (2005) publication of the “Bilal Xhaferri” Publishing House, ISBN 99927-960-0-6; “Diplomacia e vetëmohimit” (Diplomacy of self-denial), publicistic (2005) publication of “Kristalina KH” Publishing House, ISBN 976 99956-650-3-6.
The writer Shefki Hysa has often translated and edited other authors’ books.
Amongs others he is editor of the novel “Lavirja e denjë pë respect” (The Prostitute worthy for respect), (1992), of the writer Jean Paul Sartre; editor of the romance “Dashuri fatale” (Fatal Love), (1992), of the writer Alfred de Musset; editor of the romance “Dashuri e përgjakur (Përtej largësive)”, (Bloody Love (Beyond distances)), (1992), of the writer Bilal Xhaferri;
editor of the novel “Kreshta e Krujës (Ra Berati)” (The crest of Kruja (Berat ceded)), (1993), of the writer Bilal Xhaferri;
editor of the novel “Kur dynden Vikingët” (When the Vikings flock), (1993), of the writer Pjetër Arbnori;
editor of the romance “Bukuroshja me hijen” (The beauty with the shadow), (1994), of the writer Pjetër Arbnori;
editor of poetry volume “Pjergulla e lotëve” (Pergola of tears), (1995), of the poet Namik Mane;
editor of stories volume “Një natë e zakonshme” (One ordinary night), (2003), of the author Namik Mane;
editor of the novel “Me putrat tona shëtitëm botën” (We have traveled the World with our paws), (2007), of the writer Xhulia Xhekaj, etc., etc., literary-publicistic publications and editions of him and other authors.
The writer Shefki Hysa since 1995 continues to publish and edit as chief editor the monthly magazine “Eagle’s Wing”, a political, cultural, literary and social magazine, published first in 1971, in two languages, Albanian and in English, as organ of Chams League in Chicago, the USA.
Its first founder, editor and leader was Bilal Xhaferri, poet, prose-writer and a well-known dissident publicist, who was born on November 2, 1935 at Ninat, of the Konispol region, and after an immense literary-publicist activity, he died in exile (fleeing Albania in 1969 as anti-communist nationalist) on October 14, 1986 in Chicago, in the USA.
“The Eagle’s Wing” magazine was a forum of free democratic thinking basically by anticommunist, anti-dictatorial and anti-enverists inclinations, which tended the union of all Albanian political forces in exile, the unification of thought, programs and their goals for a free Albania Pro-Western.
In the pages of the magazine “Eagle’s wing” handled largely Albanian national issues, especially Chams issues, the problem of Kosova, the remaining territories outside the parent tree, Albania, and also the problems of the Albanian communities everywhere in the world and Diaspora.
The writer Bilal Xhaferri managed to publish 39 editions of this magazine.
Since 1995 and on the “Eagle’s Wing” magazine continues to be published in Tirana, as the official journal of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” (The Cultural Community of Chameria) founded and directed by journalist and well-known writer Shefki Hysa, who enabled the return of Bilal Xhaferri bones in Albania and to glorify the extraordinary values of this rare personality, persecuted and thrown into oblivion of the communist dictatorship in Albania. The writer Shefki Hysa, as editor and chief editor of the monthly magazine “Eagle’s wing”, with his contributions and those of his friends, was able to publish more than 80 editions and continues insisting to glorify this pedestal of free thinking, following Bilal Xhaferri’s ideals.
The ideal of the writer Shefki Hysa: Chameria, ethnic Albania, Peace and Prosperity worlwide.
When you closely know him, but also in the eyes of the readers and in the opinion of the Albanian media, the writer Shefki Hysa, this well-known personality of Albanian letters, is never sufficed with the successes and achievements. He, as a marathonomak, always runs in search of innovations and the values of the Albanian society and the entire human society. The writer Shefki Hysa is always tireless, as his quick step with the momentum of a boyish soul. With the encouragement of his rare friend Ibrahim Rugova, Kosova’s president, the writer Shefki Hysa, set one of the most beautiful ideas of Richard Holbrooke, U.S ambassador, the man who gave the troubled Balkans that peaceful shape that has today. So, along with several foreign diplomats, friends of Ambassador Holbrooke, he created the international organization “Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity”, conceived in the form of a peace mission that lobbies for Peace and Prosperity in the Balkans and the World, according to the best model that the American democracy offers for developing countries. The missionary Shefki Hysa, governor of this lobbing organization, with his work once again demonstrated that any of his initiative has as a reward only the success in favor of Peace and Prosperity. It was this new venture that would focus even more the writer Shefki Hysa in the work of the tireless missionary for Peace and Prosperity. As a missionary of peace he began to create many new connections with the intellectual world, inside and outside Albania. Thanks to the continuous work and full of success, his name and biography are included in many prestigious encyclopedia of the world. The writer Shefki Hysa with his work and indomitable will as a leader-missionary, with the skills and the professionalism to cooperate with other personalities like: Dr. Madhu Krishan, founder and chairman of AUGP; Dr. Mohamed Barhoumi, Ambassador of Human Rights Organization; Dr. William Weiss, Ambassador Sovereign Military Order of Malta; Dr. Haissam Bou Said, Ambassador of IHRC; Dr. Muhammad Shahid Amin Khan, Word Chairman of IHRC; Jesus Gary Domingo, Minister and Consul General at Philippine Mission to the UN; Ryszard Cwikla, Chairman of I-SUN-VV; Dr. Haim Reitan, diplomat; Ambassador Jennifer Lim; Ambassador Elisa Peisino; Ambassador Khairudin Shadani; journalist Rodney D. Dir; etc., who lobby for peace in the world, in a short time managed to expand its network of associates and partners in many countries, on several continents.
“Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity” now collaborates with many analogous organizations to the UN, among others with AUGP (Academy of Universal Global Peace), Amnesty International, Human Right Watch, International Service for Human Rights, Human Rights Foundation, Freedom House, People to People International, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Greenpeace, Diplomatic Society of St. Gabriel (Knights of Saint Gabriel), International Alliance of Catholic Knights, International Human Rights Commission, Planet Diplomat, Academy of American Poets, American National Standards Institute etc.
The writer Shefki Hysa is honored by AUGP (Academy of Universal Global Peace) with the title Doctor of International Diplomacy (Honoris Causa) and is part of the directors’ board of this organization. Dr. Shefki Hysa is a model of the virtuous man, willing to sacrifice for Peace and Prosperity. He is a warrior of peace with the full meaning of this word.

Paulin Rranzi
Shkrimtar

Waiting for the spring

Notes about the book “Savagery is leaving” of the writer Pal Rupa

Pal Rupa was born in Shkodra in 11.08.1936. He has finished the faculty for albanian Language-literature and has worked as teacher in some of Dukagjin schools of Shkodra region. For praised work he is decorated with the Order “Naim Frasheri”, second clas, by the president Sali Berisha.
On 20 November 1989 he has made a strong criticism to the former regime of communist dictatorship in his newspaper “Voice of the people” (Zëri i popullit). The writing was published on December 6, 1990, and had much reaction which brought to the author many consequences and contravention with the power of that time.
In that turbulent period, immediately after to severe reactions which the writing caused, he was put in the movement for democracy in cooperation with Azem Hajdari, Pjeter Arbnori and other anti-communist intelectual. With the establishment of the democratic party, together with a group from Dukagjin initiators, they created the first sections and organized and headed the first rally for the collapse of communist dictatorship.
In the first conference of PD, Shkodra branch, he is elected member of the chairmanship for the Dukagjin area.
He has performed the function of the United Chairman Council of Thethi.
With the decision of the Council of Ministers, he is appointed secretary of the commune council Shale.
For 18 years he continues to be in management of the structures of PD and has participated in all the peaceful protests in local and national level.
He is constantly taken with critical and satirical writings, which he published in the newspapers “Shkodra”, “Torch” (Pishtari), “55”, “RD”, in the magazine “Eagle’s wing” etc.
The volume “Savagery is leaving” (Egërsia po largohet), chronic in verse, is his first book. With the publication of this book the author Pal Rupa is entering a new creativity level.
The summary “Savagery is leaving” (Egërsia po largohet), a title as significant and desirable for all those who have suffered in the years of the totalitarian regime of Enver Hoxha, brings a novelty in Albanian literature and reinforces to the people the belief that united can build a more civilized future for Albania.
In the nest/ wait for the spring./ All together/ will bring down./ You can’t do us nothing:/ take our worst,/ gall winter!”
The author expresses so optimistic for a better future, after harshly hits and satirizes all the negative sides of our life that we still inherit from the bitter past.
Once again we believe that this book will be a desirable surprise for the Albanian reader.

Dylbere Dika
Writer

Albania disabled…. Sos!

Once survived, but…
It is said the once lived the Beauty of Soil. She sparkled herself and everything surrounding her sparkled. Her beauty could be compared neither day nor night: Come up sun to come out, come up moon to come out.
It is said that initially the Beauty of Soil was called Pellazgji. It was so magnificient, gracious and bewitching that all neighbours and the remote ones, the civilized and barbarian which knew it, fell madly in love with it. But, Pellazgjia kept standing proud in its life. It honored and respected all those which came around it without being humbled to anyone.
Thus, the barbarians became envied for its pride, values and treasures. And once they lashed out to defeat it with violence. The barbarians wrestled too long with it, abducted here and there also jeweleries and treasures pieces, however, Pellazgjia was not depress…
What remained after those predatory battles was called Illyria. Barbarians wrestled with Illyria as well, abducted other treasures, other jeweleries, but it did not gave those to them. Now they called it Arberi and it still inherited a part of the graces of the Beauty of Soil, Pellazgjise. So graceful, like all the Beauties of Soil in fairytales, although being tired by long violator wrestles, the indomitable Arbëria radiated in the eyes of barbarians which couldn’t stand the light of its civilization. And they wondered how to defeat it. And they lashed out again and again, days and nights, during winters and summers, stole their jewelry, they wounded it, bleed it, broke their limbs and despite it was becoming smaller and smaller due to violence, it still did not surrender. So small and indomitable it newly looked beautiful and radiated civilization in the eyes of barbarian enemies that wanted to undo it with every cost.
Already some called it Albany and some others Albania. Enemies always were highly vulnerable to attack it and monstrous lashed out to its beauty. The small Albania, for the vicious mind of barbarians was the former Pellazgjia which was still indomitabled by predatory violence, that’s why it must not be in peace. It must be disappeared…
This kind of Albania was or not the former Pellazgjia?!… Disputed and disputed its enemies and lashed it out to undo it in order to remain neither fame nor mole by the primeval Pellazgjia which was still vivid in Albanian’s genes…
Her enemies were now not only barbarians, but even civilized neighbors.
Even they envied those few treasures that Albania inherited by the primeval Pellazgjia…
Was or nor Pellazgjia?!… Already everything was rendered in legend. Pellazgjia, the Beauty of Soil was already a fairytale that was told to the kids during nights…
Meanwhile came out a brave man who decided to explore the legend’s areas. And looking through the difficult paths of meditation dusk of legend, as indomitable archaeologist, somebody was discovering pieces of jewelry, precious stones, diamonds and pearls, which once constituted Pellazgji treasures jewelries… Someone looking for, discovering and restoring the stolen pieces of jewelry through the centuries by Pellazgjia’s body, was able to reconstruct the profile of Albany by the Beauty of Soil…
And so the legend was slowly becoming a reality… However, this reality, though belonged to modern times, continued to be extremely disturbing for the civilized great-grandson of past barbarians…
And they, with diabolical cleverness of Odysseus great-grandfather, donated a white horse to Albanian politics, a horse of peace, seemingly, mutation of the Trojan horse… And the Albanian mutant politics saddled the white horse and was lashed to destroy Albania on behalf of his patrons… It is known that the war within a species is a more certain death… The new patrons of the Albanian oppressive policy knew this fact and the conclusion that would bring… And so, the past barbarians souls, finally could feel calm… Albania was finally coming to the end by itself Albanian politics, by the mutation of its kind…
Albania once survived, but today is dying…

Sos!… Albania is dying!…
Hey, Albania is dying!… Albanians, wake up by the death’s sleep!…
Albania is dying!…
Don’t you believe this? I am shouting because Albania, where even the death is bought and sold, is dying!… Understand me in the true meaning of the word: is dying!
Believe me! Albania and Albanians are dying! Freedom, ideals, spirit are dying!
Understand it well; my words are hopeless cry in this collective agony worse than agonies caused by the medieval European plague…
Sos! … Albania is dying! … It is dying under the illness of political plague!
The Albanian policy that is bought and sold every day to the Greek and Serbian patrons…
Sos!… Sos!… Sos!…
Don’t you believe me?! In this country, everything is bought and sold by the politics that is bought and sold itself to our traditional enemies! Everything is bought and sold by order of Berisha and Rama, by the clans of Berisha and Rama, for the clans of Berisha and Rama… In this poor country where genes, traditions and culture are demolishing, only ignorance and fear survive! And the death! … And the death! … And the death! …
I remind you that in this country where prevails the policy plague, still survives the only ideal, Chameria! But, who cares for Chameria, would say someone on the verge of the death, when Chams themselves are cooled and have turned their back to this ideal?!
Indeed, noone cares of those who experience their agony!
Hej, maybe America cares for Chameria, the same as for Kosovo, because, Albanian patriotism is dying … Albanians are dying for themselves…
Hey! In this medieval agony that has plagued modern Albania, even I try to survive… Believe me; I try very hard to survive!
And on the brink of survival, I was once reminded and I sent a message to my Cham friend, the deputy Shpëtim Idrizi: Honored, you have the great chance of the Great Era of dinosaurs to make Era! Firmly embrace the Cham ideal and save Chameria! Don’t lose this chance! My friend, Shpëtim, at least in appearance, tries to keep alive the Cham ideal, to save Chameria! Hope he will not be disposed, to be bought and sold as Albanian everything else with the order of Berisha and Rama, on behalf of the clans of Berisha and Rama!
In this country, property of God, where the policy claims the role of God, must also sell their back to be “revived” for the status of the Zombie… You have to sell it to Berisha and Rama… So want to say … Some who do not obey the policy…
Hey, Albanians, be careful! Shake your back and don’t forget that even those are the properties of God! And well aware that can’t abuse so easily with the properties of God! The properties of God can’t be bought and sold as easily even by the politics! Whether it’s the most sophisticated and devilish! …
Oh, God! Is there a God to save Albania from death, which is bought and sold as everything else with the order of Berisha and Rama? We all need a strong Albany- Albania, friends… We need because without it we will not enjoy even the bright name: Albanian!
Certainly, even Europe doesn’t need the disabled Albania! A dead Albania doesn’t serve anyone, I believe even to the sold Albanian policy… Sos!
Hey, Albanian, wake up from the death’s sleep! Arise as our ancestors Pelasgian-Illyrian that were re-born as many times like the phoenix by the ashes of its death!
Save the European Albania by the desert that the policy plague causes which is bought and sold on behalf of its patrons, owner of the white horse of death! Sos!… Sos!… Sos!…

Shefki Hysa
Writer

Chameria

Fragmet of story

The car was slipping without being felt among the blocks of olives, oranges, mandarins and lemons that were lying like a green sea across the wide field around the main city, Gumenica, of the new Chameria or Thesprotia (this was the name held by this land in antiquity), as the Greeks of today intentionally called it to cancel the name “Chameria”. The pent-up blue sea lay farther on the right, in the Corfu Channel. There was a mountain range standing on the left, which used to divide Gumenica from Janina of Ali Pasha and to protect it by the cold North winds, converting it into a very likeable climate for olives and citruses. In some parts of it, the eyes caught even blocks with vineyards and with characteristic trees of the Mediterranean coastal areas lovingly well-maintained… A scholar’s sharp eye, like Fatos Mero Rrapaj’s, who carefully observes everything, could immediately understand that the area was fed due to agriculture, more exactly arboriculture, maybe tourism too, but industry not at all… Thus, environments were virgin and submerged in that lustrous sun, and despite the end of autumn, you couldn’t think to find any piece of polluted nature. And this was a privilege for the habitants…
Fatos was not satiated by enjoying the rare beauties of that nature where the mountain, the hill, the field and the sea were prodigiously harmonized… What more could a man want to live the earthy “paradise”?!… You might be crazy to launch wars in that region…
Eh… The Greeks!… If you dug the ground where the roots of that greenness lay, you would come across bones and skeletons of grave less murdered people… The Cham grave less people… And this was Greeks’ work, those who used to get out of the graves at night, like elves and bogey-men because neither soil could accept them…. Yes!… These were the Greeks… And their descendants pretended to bring peace and justice in the United Europe… No, God shouldn’t hush anymore!…
Kostandin at the wheel was talking and talking about the elims, about their castles in Kuç, Mazrek, Paramythia, about the wells in Mount Kladhi, about the cave in Arpica, about the three stones in Paramythia, about the stone in Luarat, which the elim women utilized as troughs to wash their clothes… But Fatos was more quarreling with his thoughts than listening to him… Do you know Fatos, Kostandin said, that the elims have worked at the Saddle of the Wall, near Margelleç, to build up a high-high wall which would link Mount Krane with the Peak of the Priest and they hoped they could reach the sky and see the whole world when they climb in there… But the wall they built up during the day would fall to pieces at night and they never could stop working… Wasn’t their willpower to be envied?… If people nowadays had that power, that willpower…, – whispered Kostandin, who seemed to madly admire and be almost blinded by the elim world’s grandiosity and his desire to talk to the others about the elims was already converted into a mania… At the end of every story he wouldn’t forget to work out the conclusion that not only Chams but whole Albanians are elims’ successors, that’s why they are able to survive in the most unusual circumstances.

Extracted by the story “Elims”, summarized in the volume with stories “Chameria Flavor”

Shefki Hysa
Writer

The Chams

Don’t hurt me!…
At least you, friends and acquaintances of mine, do not hurt me!…
Others, those who don’t love me and the enemies, let them do as they want…
Their behavior doesn’t bother me…
What hurts me more are your prejudice and judgments for Chams and Chameria…
Don’t hurt me!…
Don’t force me to talk about Chams, because I am a Cham myself, I am from Chameria.
I am not used to praise myself, but your suspicions pushes me to become an apologist of myself and advocate of my Cham’s brothers, although I find it difficult to say words when deeds, works and values of Cham’s boys light as gold in front of the inventions of the enemies and those who don’t want their good…
Look them better!…
Whole mountains with gold treasures blossom in front of you and I am surprised how you don’t want to see them!
Couldn’t you see the glow of Cham’s values or perhaps you are blinded by their lightning that you don’t want to accept the Cham’s existence as a tangible reality that has occupied your path?!
Don’t hurt me!…
You can’t overcome such ranges and not feel tired… Fatigue shines in your faces… Even your fatigue shines in our path towards Chameria…
Please, don’t hurt me!…
Enough have hurt me those who have gone back on us…
Enough have denied our spiritual treasures the treacherous and the ingrate…
Chams, were firstly betrayed trust by Albanian state and some so-called politicians, like their patrons shovene-hellenic (I respectfully salute the Greek civilization), labeled and sold them as treacherous…
You, friends, don’t hurt me!…
Let me at least comfortably in my field battles with our enemies!…
Chams are like bees that tirelessly collect nectar flower to flower and produce honey for themselves and for others… Can bees be treacherous?!… Those that just work, build and produce with the rare art the most wonderful food, the honey!…
Don’t hurt me!…
Cham’s boys are like pigeons that go around and sing their own doves (not the crows of the world; they fear the sufferings of the fables of magpie with dove leather). Can the pigeons of peace be treacherous?!… Those who do, want and convey to the others with love the message of peace?!…
Don’t hurt me!…
Chams are like lions that avoid the donkeys with lion’s skin… And it is known that lions are lions, brave and battle warriors and not treacherous or actors in wickedly role…
Don’t hurt me!…
Cham’s boys are Osman Taka and Albanian whistles that dance even before death…
Don’t hurt me!…
Chameria’s boys are like Bilal Xhaferri who melted like the candle of Naim for Albania…
Don’t hurt me!…
Don’t misinterpret me, I don’t want to be like Beluli, this modern buffo that praise himself in the style of Mark Anthony, who immediately bankrupted the greatness of Bruti, the murderer of the Tiran Caesar…
Don’t hurt me!…
Cham girls are like Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, that forced the Caesars to put their head in her lap and to worship her graces as she was goddess…
Don’t hurt me!…
Cham’s girls are like the bride that accepted to sacrifice on the foundation of the bridge of Arta, that it would be built to bring the unity and the civilization of human coastlines…
Cham’s girls are like suliots that disposed of in the abyss from the rocks of the mountains of Suli to not remain slaves of the invaders cruelty…
Cham’s girls are like Vasiliqia that with a look descended from the horse the cruel Pasha, Ali Tepelena, threw away his sword and taught him the civilization…
Don’t hurt me!…
Chams are like Enkeleda Alushi singer, bride in Kosovo that sings to Chameria with longing…
Don’t hurt me!…
Chams are like me that bow my head only in the lap of Chameria!…
Don’t hurt me!…

Shefki Hysa
Writer

Cham warriors’ portrait

Chameria – An Albanian Pearl

Views from Chameria

Hymn to man

Notes about the book “I-the Man” of Cham poet Hekuran S. Halili

God, as He created man, gave him wit more than all other creatures. Then he cried the angels and said to them:
-Humble to human, it is one of my most perfect creatures, more knowledgeable in the universe. I have set my vicegerent on Earth.
And angels bowed to human respectfully.
Satan rejected:
-Oh Lord, – he said, – I do not humble to a mortal creature of clay. I’m immortal of grace, of fire.
-Humble! – The Lord ordered. – It is my smartest, knowledgeable creature. Smarter than you.
-No! – The disobedient Satan rejected again.
-Despised be thou forever!- the Lord cursed him and threw away from Paradise, condemning him forever to hell for disobedience.
And since the beginnings of human life, Satan swore to himself to injure man at all costs. And to destroy it, he declared war for life or death this magnificent creature, a fight that continues even today throughout the world, the struggle between Good and Evil. It was the evil war of Satan which deceived the man, pushed him into temptation and lost Paradise and crashed into the whirlpool of this madness that tortures him everywhere and anywhere. So is described in all sacred books the history of the early human life, the subsequent flow of which is the daily effort of Man to survive in the struggle between Good and Evil, that are represented by values and divine virtues, on one hand, embodied in human spirit and the anti-values and evil sins shaped in the image of be away the black-hearted, the plotter Satan to undo mankind.
Good and honest people, extremely sensitive to the danger that threatens more and more to the human figure, worry, get angry, revolt and rebel against the evil and try and sacrifice to save humanity and its values. So human life across the globe, if you notice with the eye of a poet as Hekuran S. Halili is now extremely vulnerable. It seems like the evil is triumphing day after day over good and that the human being, on the verge of destruction and annihilation, has not any importance. And in this situation it needs a lot of sacrifices until the limit over-humanity to save the honest man from the dishonest. This is the reality of life, not just text and sub-text of artistic reality through the poet’s creativity involved at times from great dilemma: “the honest or dishonest will rule the globe?”
If you observe life through the eyes of a sociologist, will conclude: “Man, a death risk! Man doesn’t worth anything! Money over everything! A dog worth more than Man!”
Such conclusions look absurd, but this is the truth of the human daily around the globe.
You often sees through television screens, dogs-gentlemen’ parades accompanied by crooked millionaires on the role of their servants. “To live the animals! Human death!” Sometimes this is what visual media and the presses preach. Don’t you believe it? Be more aware and notice the madness around human!
Equally endangered are human values in the Albanian reality. Precisely this bothers more the poet Hekuran S. Halili, that’s why he has devoted his creations especially to Albanian man.
“Human death!” – scream and rumble the anti-values.
“I, the Man” (Unë-Njeriu)! “Man over everything!” – squawk and cry rightly the world of the poet Hekuran S. Halili, against the devilish flow that is defeating every human value throughout the globe filled with predatory wars and injustice.
Well, not in vain is titled “I – the Man” (Unë-Njeriu) the poetic summary of the poet Hekuran S Halili. This title is not casual, but a logical flow constrained by hard reality that surrounds us, is the very essence of the issue of human survival, is a divine conclusion conveyed in a way of genius to the mind of the poet of a genius, the creator of everything, God .
“The man to rule on Earth!” – was the message of God from the beginning of human life. This tries the poet to reflect in his verses.
So, God gave knowledge to human by his own knowlegde, gave him light by his own light, consecrated him and appointed as a successor on earth, he delegated power on him to live according to the principles and divine laws and not to eat themselves, to transform into a self-eating cannibal and self-murder kamikaze, as it is happening in reality. Despite this evil and satanic state that today rules the world, Hekuran S. Halili, with the wisdom and foresight of an inspired poet by God, returns to human origin and in the tradition of the romantics of Renaissance and evokes the glorious origin, the greatness of the Man creature that even the angels humbled him, Man who should rule the world as a divine sovereign and not as a tyrant Satan.
“I, the Man” (Unë-Njeriu), sings the poet and his song is a hymn to the greatness of the human being, which has a homeland that is called Albania; he has a birthplace, which extends from Chameria unjustly robbed, till Konispol in Saranda, wet lands from the blue waters of the Ionian sea, heated by the life-giving rays of a sun and Mediterranean blessed climate; has a house named “Hekuran S. Halili”, inscribed at the door, and inside it a wonderful family with a rare woman as Bardha, the worthy wife and mother as God has commanded, with children model like Ona and Goni; he has a large kindred with many brothers and sisters, cousins, good and honest people committed to labor; he has a lot of old and new friends, school mate and colleagues, whose mind works for good working, to beautify their lives and that of others and their tourist city, Saranda; this Man has so many things!
Magnanimous poet Hekuran S. Halili is aware of the sanctity and the nobility of the Man creature, so that not unintentional in his poetry gives the role of the subject of life on earth, that role that even the creator has appointed, God, and that the Satanic try to deny. He, at times, through verses identifies his lyric-epic hero, the Man, with himself and does good because he shows to people the etalon of the Being-Man. So, Hekuran starts from himself, from his spiritual and physical riches to go to people who surround him. And so, singing himself, pointing out the values and human and intellectual skills that owns, which never hesitates to honestly put in the service of all those chains that comprise the notion Man: self, family, home, kindred, friendship, friends, hometown, home, homeland, the world, the universe and above all the Lord, the poet Hekuran S. Halili, invites the others to follow his example, to fulfill the Ideal-Man, because only this way they can leave the evil that has flooded everywhere the human life.
A man, as the poet’s hero Hekuran S. Halili, like himself, never leave forgotten his parents, his father and mother, those who were tired, who born him (naturally according to God’s law), that grew him up with hardships, that sent him at school and instructed him to act and behave like their ancestors from generation to generation, to become worthy for himself and his offspring. This attitude is neither a diary keeping, nor enumeration, nor inventory vulgarism, but it is the artistic mirror of the links of that chain that are summarized in a life node and make up the notion Man. So, model Man that leads the path of God to others with his own example. Even Hekurani as human model in life, is trying to create an artistic picture of reality that surrounds it, to remind others that today more than ever need to disclose the values as man and then come the material values and assets that may have accumulated during his life.
More than any kind of property Hekuran, Man and Poet, worries the fact that how to acceptably explain other that was the father Safeti and mother (Nuja) Nazua who have cooked the dough of the Man that is named Hekuran S. Halili. And he succeeded in combining naturally the presence of parental figure with all the other elements of poetry and in full harmony he has given us a poetic volume full of life rhythm and very melodic as a long song with a find and appealing refrain till to magnetism, that occurs in the form of a magnificent hymn for human symbol, an impressive hymn, likeable and solemn like all the hymns, especially as the anthem of motherland and flag, which are among the most holy and most vulnerable in the human world in every corner of the globe.
“The human hymn over all!” – says the poet Hekuran S. Halili in his book “ I- the Man” (Unë-Njeriu), with the great desire that everyone learn such a hymn and become aware of human values that God has given us and that Satanic try by all means to bury.

Shefki Hysa
Writer

The Dance of Osman Taka

Any benevolent of Albanian art should know that they can not speak about the dance of Osman Taka, without knowing who was his own personality inextricably linked with this dance as nature with its creator. For this reason I feel obliged to write two lines for this great popular artist born in the heart of Chameria to be one of its most typical symbols.
Osman Taka was born in one of the most patriotic and richest families of Konispol around years 1848-1887. He, like some of the best boys of Chameria, grew and educated with the ideas of the National Renaissance. Over the years he became one of the most leading organizers of the revolts in the region of Chameria against Turkish invaders. Osman Taka has played an important role in the branch of the League of Prizren in Preveza. He managed to become one of the most important leaders in efforts for the protection of territorial entirety of Albania.
Osman Taka was not only an inexorable fighter but also a known popular dancer. Precisely to this fact relies also his deeds as one of the most prominent characters of popular Cham folklore.
It is said that Osman Taka was captured by Turkish forces, was incarcerated in Ioannina and sentenced to be hung to the trees of Konispol. At the moment when the decision would be executed, he expressed the last desire to dance a dance in front of the rope. It seems as a legend but it is a true fact. And precisely right here emanate the history of the eternal artist Osman Taka.
-I want to dance a dance before the Turkish sultan’s governer! – Osman Taka said.
It is known that the desire of the sentenced person to death has been someday and is mandatory even in our days, that’s why they accepted this unusual request to the madcap Albanian Osman Taka.
They brought him a white kilt, fez and a comb to comb the hair and the black mustache and decked before starting the dance.
Of course, they brought him harmonica with clarionet, violin and tambourine, according to tradition, a group of musicians who knew how to beautifully play the Cham dances.
Osman Taka approached to the clarinettist and whispered the rhythm of a melody. The harmonist captured in a flash what he had to play.
Osman Taka asked to the executioners even a handkerchief and one of his friends, a dancer that would keep him during the dance. The sultan’s governor completed all the requirements, while waiting surprised what would happen. Nearby was his wife, his companion and surprised officials like him.
Finally Osman Taka, with handkerchief in hand and nearby one of his friends that tightly held him, was looking by the corner where the loop of the rope waved and started to sing improvising some verses for himself:
-Come, Osman Taka…
The clarionet cried the accompanying melody and immediately began his legendary dance in front of the enemies and death…
Osman Taka, dressed with the typical costume of Chameria, with white kilt and fez, began dancing in front of the sultan’s governor of Ioannina and his wife. The drummer of the orchestra played the rhythm and the rare melody of his movements. He threw a few steps, sang and when he rotated he called “hopa” as to give courage to himself and to his friend who held him tightly following the very manly rhythm of the dance…
He was spinning in place on one leg in a space as a table and the when it seemed that he would cut off and fall down, suddenly threw upwards and the heels of the toe reached his friend’s shoulders that tightly held by hands.
He began the dance quietly, like the laid waves of the spring sea, being completely harmonized with the melody as lyrical, sad and hopeful that stemmed vibrating by the clarinet and violin. His simple steps, slow and cut, danced and danced, then suddenly took off and exploded in a dizzying and revolving flurry in a space as a baking pan. Just as a quick swirl which resembled to a wave that swollen as a magic and foam and turned onto a white crested wave. His hand, sometimes behind the head and sometimes as an eagle’s wing in flight, left the impression that he wasn’t dancing but was making waves. The kilt erupted and erupted and the fez seemed to tend towards the clouds. He danced like nobody else, not as a dancer, but as a rare magician or as a sylph coming out of the folk tales. Once as whirligig and once bended back with the head on earth, as a bridge, full of charm and elegance, sometimes as a newborn wave and sometimes as a gray- headed wave, seemed to be a part of nature, as the land and the sea, or like nature descend by that rotating and stunning beauty.
It is said that thanks to that body magic, skill and agility almost divine, the enchanted daughter of the sultan’s governor, almost fell from the window while extended to see that wonderful dancer.
All the people nearby looked him with admiration and amazement, forgetting that he was sentenced to death and a sworn enemy of the Ottoman Empire. When he finished the dance, Osman Taka, drowned in sweat, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and immediately lifted the crowd with an eagle’s look.
Suddenly a stream of hand clapping erupted.
The surprised dancer drank a pitcher of water and cried:
– Now I’m ready to go on the rope for fatherland! …
All were astonished in awaiting of the sultan’s governor sign for the execution of the prisoner. Ioannina archive documents show that after that really unprecedented dance, the wife of the sultan’s governor asked him to forgive the life to Osman Taka. And indeed it happened.
The sultan’s governer stood up and cried:
– A dancer like Osman Taka cannot ever go on the rope!
He immediately ordered the stopping of the execution and forgave his life. It is said that since that day, this early epirotic dance was called the dance of Osman Taka. It is an exceptional dance, the most beautiful and most manly of Chameria. A dance that brings to memory Osman Taka, the hero-boy, who immortalized in history and the deeds of the popular folklore thanks to his last desire to dance before the death. That was enough and Osman Taka, this living image of Albanian heroism during centuries, to triumph over death and to enter into song and legend.
The years passed, the drummer of Konispol played the music and the dance survived generation after generation embodied in dancers in love with the wonderful history, traditions and folklore of Chameria.
Many artists have danced over the years this dance, but nobody could dance it till nowadays like the artist boy Taip Madani, from the village Shala of Konispol. It is said that with his brilliant dance in the Folk Festival of Gjirokastra in October 1978, Taip Madani made the dance of Osman Taka one of the most beautiful dances and most evaluated of the modern times.
Through his virtuous dance, the artist of our time, Taip Madani, not only reinstated in the contemporary scenes the golden glow of this inaccessible dance, to the Cham dances in general and to itself impressive Cham folklore, but he re-created even the myth of the new Osman Taka, able to restore through centuries the unquestioned values of the artist-hero, the old Osman Taka who shines like a brilliant among the brilliant of the treasures of the Albanian folk culture.

Shefki Hysa
Shkrimtar

Shefki Hysa – Albanian Writer

Shefki Hysa, Albanian journalist and writer, Chairman of Cultural Community of Chameria

We seek Chameria

We seek Chameria
Our people have left home,
Territories, graves, property
Therefore we seek help.

Government does nothing,
Cham call out loudly:
“Don’t think we will forget,
Our land will protect”!

Shefki Hysa patriot,
Chameria defends with head,
Settle down to work,
To take Chameria with friends.

And they have in the forefront,
Shefki Hysa rare man,
Blessed Chams for this guy,
Their hopes are in him.

Sazan Faslli
Albanian Poet

Chameria as a pain and as a dream

1.
When the writer decides to publish a new book, such as the collection of stories “Chameria Flavor” (Aromë Çamërie) of Shefki Hysa, especially when part of the creations were previously published in other books, we must sought the incentives of this step, because surely there must not be only one. Simply having the desire to continually test ourselves in new publishing activity is too little to access to the publication of a new book, more so when you are newly liberated from the nightmare of coming out to the reader, as before a wrenching examination. Because every new edition puts the author before the public trial and should be motivated.
Reprint trials with structure conceptions of different types are very popular, especially in recent years, certainly among the authors who have already established enough and diverse fund of creativity. In the first editions the author achieves or not to organize book as a unique design on a certain level: thematic, conceptual, stylistic or new elements of form. They are pouring foamy images that have managed to be organized in poetic or storyteller structures, with a great message or pain inside that the author can not keep to himself any longer. Emotional trials of first editions must pass, he could conceivably start the preparation for publication as a kind of creation, that is just as important as proper creativity. This is the only criterion that publication does not become an aim in itself.
After the publication of several novels and story books, Shefki Hysa publishes a new book. How motivated this book is, how does it stays, with proper literary value and where is the novelty of this edition?
In the creative process the incentives are of different nature, literary and non-literary. Let’s say at first, those that look like non-literary. It is known the author’s biography, his non-artistic moods under a specific problem related to the Cham community. In general, concerns and obligations arising from such social activism are quite sharp and complicated. As part of a miss thing the Cham’s drama would be like a ghost. Indeed it looks like a love reality, but also concern or dream, as beautiful and overwhelming. Obviously, the Albanians could not otherwise experience the beauty, but in the form of pain or dream before we have in reality.
And, in such cases, his obligation within a national and social problem is to prevail among other incentives of important acts of the individual. But in the case of publication of a book it slightly differs, because the book is neither an individual event nor a close community. It is not even a social-politics plan. Even if it’s so, the true value on the benefit of the community’s cultural goals is measured by some quality that can not be determined or listed simply in the strata of meaning or in the significance ideo-emotional. We can say that is a help when the above values are realized through specific qualities of art: the most artistically realized, the more non-artistic goals widen the circle of influence and diversity of viewpoints.
2.
What are the motives that keep the macro-organisms of Shefki Hysa’s new book? How much do they exceed the reader’s interest that may feel far the discomfort of Cham commune in Albania and abroad. Acknowledging that the author’s creativity, even when it has not been intentionally summarized in function of lectures of that abrasive reality, has had it as a kind of seal, a kind of distinctive emblem, in what is called the thematic and emotional unmistakable originality that is related to Chameria. There are two important qualities that make palatable the author’s publishing of stories in the title “Chameria Flavor” (Aromë Çamërie): the theme of the book, which refers to the Cham’s space and its particularities, which is largely untreated in Albanian literature. Besides Bilal Xhaferri, Namik Mane, Enver Kushi or any other author, this issue, even in literature, has already exceeded provincial limits of recognition, evaluation, and pride. We can also mention a novel of Faik Balanca, that provokes so wonderfully non-forgetfulness of the testament of “The last song of Marko Bocari” (one hundred years after “The last song of Bala” of Dara), even as a lonely cry of a swan, vivid half-legend and half-elegy, testaments still leaking blood and I do not believe that allocated to the messages, from the Cham issue.
In this plane of view can be said that history is brought to art, becoming real phenomenon, with the weight almost unbearable tragic, the portrait of mother who always keeps at bay son’s scalp,with experience of massacre in front of her eyes, with terrible wrath and damnation for foreigners (story “Evidence”).
But not only that. All the characters have two pair of senses: the first pair of watching and enjoying the present and another pair not to forget what they left behind.
As such they have their own typically dialect, have a very special kind of relationship with each other in good and in bad, as sometimes they seem to want at all costs be distinguished from the rest of their compatriots and in the moral qualities of faith, of the sense of justice and humanity. This particular feature of layers seem to affect that they see themselves (perhaps because others see them) a bit like strangers in relation to other citizens of Albania. Of course it gives up then the characters also earn a second quality, that of living simultaneously in two realities: one that actually live and the other, filled with beauties images and Cham’s paradise fragrance. It is a normal consequence of abused ethno-psychology that rebels, the desire brutally pressed that realizes in consciousness in the form of dream, delirium and anxiety. This psychoanalysis appears to reveal the source of that strange tendency, almost necessary, of the confessor for the use of fantastic elements of the tale, Cham’s legend and myths. This preference probably is more important than the choice of the topic and the mention of the name Chameria. It is a way of existence in imagination, a revival way, almost one with the speech and thought as it was a magenta filter. It seems that the story gets from this narration features, such as the type of Kuteli, in which the magic and fantastic of the tale, legend turns to genuine literary subject. We can mention the story “Turtullesha and the devil”, the most typical story in which the character’s features, the idealized rural environment and romantic love returns spontaneously back to the traditions of pastoral life not of every territory but exactly that Cham one intending it as an aesthetics ideal typical of romanticism together with the figure of the devil and the mystery of two youth disappearance. But it is not the only story. Let’s remember “The lake old man” story. There we have the same tendency to make mysterious and misty the portrait of the old man between his clothes with magical quality and half-real, half-magic allusions. This is an interesting way to intrigue the reader even though it doesn’t let the truth to be revealed till the end. But this truth doesn’t have any importance since in agreement with the reader the author achieves to raise sharp social problems as is the relationship between generations and the respect for workers for what he does, not for what he says. The task of literature is not to judge and give solutions, the most it can do is to raise problems. The same quality take the narration in “Elimet” story, the more that Elimi, Cham and Lab mythology creature is personified as authentic exfoliation of the figurative way of the world visualize and your pre-being that reminds the titans of antiquity or the heroes of North epos. In such cases, the today’s characters are placed in reliable positions as a way of thinking, even with skeptical coloration towards the ghosts or those a little bit ridiculous of defeated Elim that needs to be feed by 2 creatures as a fly in front of him. But while the message of not-forgotten and the unknown Cham’s world magic for new generations is given. That world with its nobility has a strong love feeling for the birth place and it seems that stories like that are not simply a part of endless impressions of the childhood but throughout the popular memory. They are addressed not only to new readers of Cham’s community which have Chameria as an aspiration and as a pain and love, like the beauty that has to be worshiped and held in the heart but to all Albanian readers and foreign benevolent to sensitized about the tragic fate of these blessed areas which in the future need to join the motherland, to be conceived with it, as they were forever.

Natasha Lushaj
Literary Critic

The autopsy of “ The Cursed Paradise”

The famous writer Shefki Hysa, in a mature age and with a rich artistic experience, also the author of the novel “Cursed Paradise”, a very suggestive title, for reader’s curiosity has passed a difficult Calvary in his creativity during communist dominance till the democratic wind showed his talent and the ability that prove a pile of books in prose like novels and poetic stories. For this prose writer, the pledge was the biographical “rash” which for many writers or ordinary people was made like a strong and insurmountable  barrier in that time. Thus, for every real writer, during the communist dictatorship period, it was difficult to display the spiritual treasure seethed in his soul, not to say then that writers like Shefki Hysa with biographical tracks, despite the values and special character that is characteristic for his individuality and his artistic creativity.
Before reading the novel “The cursed paradise”, every person should know that the novel’s author or precisely an artist who the whole life has had a lot of sufferings and innumerable hardships because of his “rash” biography, has had not only disdain and cruel hate but also a big rancor boiling in his soul for that hinterland period. Precisely this complex of feelings that swirl his consciousness, the author has poured in special artistic size in his novel “The cursed paradise”.  To make something like this, the writer Shefki Hysa has been helped by some artistic tools which are conspicuous in the novel like the landscape, subtext, the grotesque in the display of some characters, irony, sarcasm etc.
In appearance, the work is distinguished for a simple composition, that falls in a straight-line way, with short chapters intertwined with each-other and as a “mosaic” unfold the subject, events, the environment where they happen and the numerous characters. But in the narration technique to hold a vast amount of vital material in the compositional structure, the author has used a hit discovery alternating in the following short chapters, sometimes the narration in the 3rd person, thus the narration of the author, and sometimes the narration in the 1st person, the narration of the hero of the novel, Jackie Vilez. This technique of narration not only has it widen the prescription spaces of the novel but also has strengthen the psychology in the characters’ individuality and in the discovery of the characters that are incarnated in it.
Not wanting to erase the reader’s curiosity, we are mentioning shortly some elements of the subject. The events of the novel happen in a far northern country, exactly in a miners’ town where for biographical causes, the hero of the novel, the writer and the talented journalist Jackie Vileza has been sent as a teacher. There he knew different kind of people, good and bad, from the waiter Gjuran to Dad, the most negative, hated and despised character of the work. The boy also knew many girls and with one of them, his student, orphan Rozafa, he fell in love but this strong feeling at the end of the novel had a tragic ending that showed one of the main message of the work that the tragedy in “The cursed paradise” environment was the only accompany of life. And indeed the novel begins with tragedy, the funeral of a miner who is murdered underground and it also ends with tragedy under the background of a livid nature, often with rain that only entice black. This landscape provided skillfully by the author through the brush strokes become affected and highly susceptible to the reader, from the first page to the last page of the novel.
Because of inspiration and deep knowledge of life, qualities of Shefki Hysa’s novel, even a simple reader understands that the author has used many elements of his biography and personal life in his work. This is true. But, as in any artistic work, even Shefki Hysa in his novel has not remained a prisoner of historical truth, but, giving wings to his creative imagination has managed to successfully publish one of his most realized books. The artistic level of the novel is shown up not only in the reflection with realism and vital truthfully of contemporary reality, in the artistic analysis of a rich, dense and complex problematic of this reality, but especially in the poetics of the novel form: in drawing the characters, the appearance of the environment where they operate, in varied tools and numerous tropes used to detect them as living in the eye of the reader, especially of the magic that sometimes dominates the real one. Thus, through the artistic reality of the work often blow the winds of a trend that recalls elements of a magical realism as in Markes’ works. With a laconic style, sometimes as a poetic prose, and sometimes even the color of fiction, today’s contemporary prose characteristic, the writer Hysa Shefki gives us artistic figures in the novel and a vivid and grim environment of life and the hard work in the town of miners, who remain in mind.
The brunt of the problem and the message of the novel the reader finds in his hero Jackie Vilëza. Imagine, dear reader, a young man who has begun to make his name with his writings, full of dreams for the future to have a career due to the talent and professional skills, to be sent in a remote and lost corner, where people struggle in misery and poverty for reasons that today, especially for young people, sounds absurd, but for that moldy time were strongly “important”. The figure of the work’s hero which is equivalent to the author himself, he has drawn  with realism and nostalgia for lost youth and unfulfilled dreams. The lines of this figure are bold as in outer portrait, and in spiritual qualities. A noble attractive boy, loving and honest, strong character, with special worship to life and people, sensitive artist soul, honest to blindness, brave and defiant of reality to his beloved country, these are more or less the boundaries where the hero’s spiritual world is. Jackie Vilëza coming from the south where the soft Ionian breezes blow, finds in that remote northern town, more winter and frost, wonderful people and friends as Gjurani, headmaster, Jim and his wife, Najada, he knew his girlfriend, brilliant girl, Rozafa, who wanted to get married, but the “iron hand” of the black monsters of that time who felt the pleasure of the misfortunes of the others, did not allow. On the other hand, Jackie is also known with such monsters like Dad, who made the cruel law in the province, with ignorants as Dudumi, with degenerated women of the conceited and perverted life as Demona or as Diella, whose eyes were filled by the fabulous and full of discreet luxury of Dad, so she falls in his lap.
The gallery of characters of the novel is rich. The author has managed, that through various artistic means to individualize each one. Now, after so many years, with an enviable background and experience in artistic craftsmanship, which prevails even in his earlier works, he has made ​​such figures as Dad, the real monster, which in my opinion, they are uncommon in Albanian literature nowadays.
No wonder the author puts into focus of artistic analysis the figure of Dad after several chapters of the novel. This finding remembers and adapts with Uriah Hipin of Dikens, who the author confront with the reader after the first chapters of “David Copperfield”. In “The Cursed Paradise”, after he is shown, Dad is put at the epicenter of the rest part of the novel. Look with what lines the portrait of this man-monster is given:
“He was surprised even with the unusual breathing of Dad. Simultaneously vents by the nose and of a valves mounted in the throat, some deep outburst: çuf çuf-of-çuf çuf as to imitate a steam locomotive. It was said that once he was defamed in the throat a cancerous cyst, which damaged the chords of the voice and made his breathing difficult. After the operation, down the neck, apparently, had mounted a valve, as an extra nose to improve breathing process. And valves vent rhythmically and provoke curiosity. Dad, unable to speak freely with his voice, expressed by gesture. He carried around a suite that served him and simultaneously decode the gestures for the interlocutors.
Facial mimics, head and hands movements were now become a code books which were read by the servants. Dad behaved cruelty with his suite. He treated his most loyal helpers and advisers as his stooge. He behaved indifferently towards the brave one, his royal guard as he called those who saved his life. He liked to rule as a king and in fact he became “pigmy king”.
There was said he did not respect any authority over himself. He also behaved contemptible even with those over him, the courtier of Pari. Sometimes he also used to shout with caress to Pari…”
The given of this dirt picture so truthfully through a description so much ridicule, and grotesque that symbolize violence, insult, misery or precisely “The swingle and the rammer” of the dictatorship” is made with a special subtext and rancor which is the rancor of ordinary noble people of that time, who were at their 99^th, tried unprecedented misery, inhuman disasters, the wounds that still bleed of that monstrous system which made that the baby in the womb shake. For this system and its crawlers, the murders of those miners in the mine were common, the massacre of Albani and Rozafa, non-personalization of Zudiu, Demona, Diella etc. Thus, this was the reality of that hinterland period that the author with irony and sarcasm has called “The Cursed Paradise”. Judging from the artistic values of this novel, we can say that the talented writer Shefki Hysa has made a real autopsy of this “paradise”, this “communist gulag” in this work, whose track and wounds will eternally remain outstanding.

Sokol Jakova
Writer

Chameria, the voice of the divine reason

(About the storybook “Chameria Flavour”
of the writer Shefki Hysa)

Shefki Hysa is one of the most interesting writers of a generation of creators who came in Albanian letters, after their release from extra-literary limitations and taboos by a period of prohibitions and walls, giving us a new vision about the daily life, the time and the contemporaries. Son of a Cham family, who has experienced a double Calvary, the Greek-Zervist and communist, Shefki Hysa has set up in an aesthetic system the fate and the fatality of Chameria, a magical world full of messages deeply historical and mythological, in search of the faded Cham identity. In a vicious era, among the sadder Albanian national crossroads, an innocent population, in the noble ancestors’ lands, was chased and tortured from barbarians.
Shefki Hysa, in his stories brings back artistically Chameria, this piece of epic land mutilated by the harshness of ages. He confesses about a world where the dreams and the hopes of free people abound that someday they will be back to the denied Eden. Shefki Hysa is the writer of the fine psychological surveillance, of the vivid narration where are intertwined the description, dialogue, monologue, and where the real and the obsession goes together and merge with each other, the possible and the transcendent, the dream and the aware action, a world which by the protagonists who acts in that, appeals for more freedom, peace and humanism. But, what makes him a writer with an aesthetic profile all of him, is the rise in cult of the Cham’s world, that metaphorical search in the myth’s annals and in the history of a detained population, which in this new globalization era is still pledge of nationalist and chauvinist psychosis of our neighbors.
With a series of creations like stories, Romanesque, publicistic-literary books, where abound the light-shadows of a stuck time in one of the most complicated labyrinths of the Albanian time, Shefki Hysa builds a poetic narrative saga of all the times, where move the Cham’s dream and reality.
Three-dimensional time, where Hysa puts his events and stories includes in an esthetic manner those bridges of Albania, Balkans, European and World memory, where after every artistic whim is a historic fact for Chameria, the timid truths, announced or implied, which feed the tree of pain, of resistance and love of detained population.
Cham exodus from their ancestral lands, persecuted by descendants of those who had given the world the vision of the best peace and cohabitation through the narrations of Homer and sagas of Aristotle, Plato and Sophocles, those knights of the justice, is akin to the Biblical journey of Moisiu and Israelis, persecuted by the Pharaoh of Egypt. With a difference because Israelis were inclined in seeking the Promised Land while Chams were expelled from their lands and were wildly murdered and persecuted. The massacre against Chams is akin to the Nazi holocaust applied by a onster system, like the one who poured the over Jewish the lava of a pathological detestation, exerted the genocide until the extermination of human protein. Jewish were arose over the pain sea, over the demolition and wounds and went to their promised land to built up Israel and to find the lost self in a crazy time-space. Chams have the Promised Land, those areas where “leaky sun and honey” as a poet used to say, but in it live the foreigners, the Greeks, who have expelled them from their lands and properties, depriving them from grandparents graves, from the history of their noble ancestors, from the myths and legends of a population with a great poetic spirit.
Dr. Haim Raitan, diplomat, distinguished personality originated from Israel, after he has been acquainted with the Cham dossier, already expressed in one of his public attitudes: “Even I am Cham, I am from Chameria. Just like my ancestors survived to the holocaust, fought and saw with their eyes the establishment of the Israel state, I also would call it a great honor to try something about Cham issue”.
Internationalism of the single dossier in Europe and wider, the Cham dossier which is still hostage by the complexes of a false greatness that has gone together with crazy empires, everyday more evidences the necessity to depart from this Gordian junk, that keeps to maintain alive the war’s law between two places, Greece and Albania. Two places which are more united than divided with each other by the history are hostage of a syndromic, chauvinist complex. In the middle is Chameria, the temporarily lost land. It is the centre of Albanian world gravity as well as of democratic world which does not work with the old hour of several Athens’ districts.
This staring world by the charm of historical survival and the search to find new ways to rise up over the museum forgotten complexes, gives a boost to the writer Shefki Hysa to build up a range of themes where the protagonists make their next war for the triumph of Cham issue.
The author is aware that Greeks came more barbaric than Vikings. If Vikings after all were merged with Anglo-Saxons population, by learning from them the alpha and omega, Greeks not only displaced Chams, not only didn’t learn from their nobility until altruism, but certain segments of the Helene state and society still today continue to be more Viking than Vikings by feeding the psychoses of genetic detestation against Chams.
In this viewpoint, the book with short prose “Chameria flavor” of the Cham writer Shefki Hysa, is free hand narrative-poetic drawing of virgin world of ancestors where the characters seeks their fates and the fates of a land remained without people, of an escaped population, hostage of a misunderstood and digressive history up to nonsense. It is not only the topic of Chams space with its particulates, with the light-shadows, the mystery, with the transcendent world of myths and Cham legends, with the unknown or very little known in our letters, which make this book to be read by a spirit. Over all, is the magical of the narration, the suggestion of environments and situations, the agility of types and drawn characters, the foreshadow of that staring world by emotional flow of the upper level, that passes the fate of Chameria in the esthetic optic of the writer Shefki Hysa.
The author, this passionate searcher of Cham psychology and soul, in the framework of Bilal Xhaferri and other apostles of Albanian cards, in that forgotten corner of Iliriada where the Goddess Dodona firstly spoke in Albanian language and, the descendants of Pyrrhus were departed in the biblical journey towards an unknown fate, not once in his writings and books is directed to the collective consciousness of an immolate population which on top of Golgotha of a sad season were crucified by cruisers who don’t have even the pseudo-alibi of Pilat.
In the stories of this book mill about the Chams fate, the Calvary road, the existential anguish of a population that, despite has cohabitated in pre-history with Zeus and mythological Gods and has inherited the noble gen of Epirus, it has been denied the threshold of the house, the stone of the foundation and the stone of the grave.
In the narration “Elims”, the author, by using the heroes of Cham epos, the Elims, their mystical and magical world, those elements such special and suggestive, that gives in his hand a virgin folk and mythology, builds an wonderful narration where through the main personage, Fatos Mero Rrapaj, a real figure of Albanian world, a courageous historian who has carried the Cham issue as an existential hostage, escort the anguish, the disillusionment, the dream and the hope of Cham population in its secular war to find the self and the denied land. Actually, the fantastic world that gives charm and vivid colors to the narration in some short prose of this summery, like in the short story “Didini” where the magical elements serve for the narrative structuring and for the strengthen of vital substances, “The turtledove and the evil” that has in the centre of narration an ancient Cham legend, etc., “Elims” where the fantastically with the potential are emerged, reminds the kutelian images, that world of hobgoblins, night shades and ghosts which the distinguished narrator put in service of his esthetic messages for the fate and human fatality. But, different from Kuteli, Hysa uses an original superstitious archive not as a purpose in him, but to strengthen vital elements, to give them more charm and motivation in their archetypal journey towards dimensions of the great Cham dream.
Before it can be fulfilled in the magical prose of Shefki Hysa, we can say that the magical realism has existed since in the distant pre-history in myths, fairytales and legends of Cham population; in that poetic dimension of the deepest collective unconsciousness that has created by itself the Gods in the magnificent temple of Pelasgian Dodona.
Marquez spirit that traverses the Hysa’s prose, especially the narrations, deals with the vertical incision of narration lines where rules esthetic fixation and pre-destination. But, different from Marquez in whose prose are noticed the human relations and in this context also the Latin-American customary law that inhabits his prose in a pure dependence from the myth and mythology, Shefki Hysa put the myth and mythology in serving to the strengthening of history and to the evidencing of symbolic and metaphor of reality. In this sense, the fantastic serves to Hysa to make the real more touchable, to give the narration another understanding. So, for example, Didini, the hero of the narration with the same title, who appears and acts not like a concrete human but like a troubled soul of the nationalist boy, massacred by communists during World War II, in magical circumstances where he acts traverses very good the tragic of a bad time, where a part of Albanians murdered and massacred the other part due to borrowed ideology from Moscow steppes that entered as a killer nightmare among them. The events in the narration happen in perspective by wrapping all the vital material the soul-personage, who as an invisible breeze goes and comes in the homeland areas passing the events in an ice time that entered as a misery among Albanians. The fact the Didini is Cham makes his drama more tragic, neatly confessed by the soul of the young boy, which wanders away-that way, in searching for self start, remained in a bloody and painfully twilight.
The narration “World Neck” is a tragical dense and surprising saga with symbolic codes which are represented in the deadly clone (entourage nuisance with accompanying thorns of a murderous voltage of electrical energy), that separated two worlds, the propaganda world hence the Albanian border which vomited fire over them who dare to cross the thorny wires border toward the dream of freely world, where other wind blow, where Chameria is situated, this wonderful bride of Balkans, slave of Greeks. The protagonist’s journey of this prose from the iced clone where wanders the Stalinist-Albanian shade, toward Chameria is a tragic adventure where are interweaved the crime, paradox, delirium, the search of those psychic, esthetic, moral and philosophical truths which bear the prohibited Cham’s time and space. The writer Shefki Hysa has changed the Cham dossier in a searching universal metaphor of the lost identity where the individual and collective fate of a barbaric driven population from the ancestors’ lands, is combined in the metaphysics of freely time-space.
The book with short stories, “Chameria flavor”, in the sense of esthetic truths that unfurl and of the messages that passes, as our distinguished writer Ismail Kadare says, “is necessary, is indispensable, virtuous, like every mellow edition of this nature, as there are many reasons that Chams don’t forget Chameria and, this is guessed, it is not only their right, but it is the right of all Albanians”.
Essentially, this is the right of all progressives and idealists all over the world.
The compressed and concise style but worm and full of colors and life where are merged in one the pure confession, monologue and dialogue, poetry and lyrics, irony, grotesque and paradox, placement of fiction in a right context of the psycho-aesthetic-linguistic, figurative language full of brakes and surprises, slim phrases full of linguistic charm, etc., make the short prose of Shefki Hysa to be read with a spirit.
The Cham writer Shefki Hysa, believes in the divine reason of his ancestors homeland, believes in Chameria voice and in the voice of this transcendent reason and has crushed in dozens protagonists’ voices of his wonderful narrations presented in this book, which believe that one day will be back in their land, where love fruits and cohabitations fruit mature, in this trobled corner of Balkans.

Dukagjin Hata
Writer

A new stage of creativity

I have in front a manuscript of the new book with short stories, “False Miracles”, by Shefki Hysa. Before reading it, I thought I would find in it the same elements of narration style I used to find in his previous books, particularly in the book with short stories “The thief’s narrations”. By that time, this book was the most distinguished one regarding the spirit of the real contemporary realism, embodying several problems and social ideas, characteristic for the time. I remember I was impressed by the fragment: “Dad”, extracted from the novel “The cursed paradise”, which I would consider expressionistic, due to the deep emotional impressions felt after its reading.
While reading through the lines of “Dad” an idea struck my mind: the writing process of Shefki Hysa is about to pass into a new stage! Anyhow, I was not very much convinced…
So, I started to read “False Miracles”, without succeeding to get out of my mind “Dad”. Those elements, ready in embryo at the “False Miracles” were now about to bloom.
But what are these blooming buds? I think they are present in the mixture of fantastic and grotesque together with the allegory which conveys the idea indirectly. Let us take into consideration the short story “False Miracles”, which is part of the book with the same title. Its idea is that no matter how beautiful and precious things are in themselves, if they do not serve the mankind, they are common like all the rest. The daydreaming hero enters the world of magic, in the arms of an enchanting girl with luxurious palaces and magical library. She is eager to have all these miracles, including love as well, all for herself and her lover. Here comes out the conflict. This is in a few words the content, which is revealed at the beginning in the psychoanalyst spirit:
“When he opened the eyes, he saw the sun caressing the wall in front. It was high time to get up but he did not want to leave the bed. He gasped and took his arms out of the sheets. He remembered that last night he puzzled his wits to change something in his life. To make something worthy, to the benefit of mankind, but still he was ruminating what.
He wanted to think it over again before taking the next step. He had all the time ahead until two o’clock in the afternoon, when he had to start the job at the old bus garage. He was a mechanical engineer.
He had to go through the same things lately: get up at eight, wander around to drive away the sleep, then to get washed at the old basin with his gritting teeth, comb the hair at the washed out mirror nailed against one of the wardrobe doors, get dressed and leave.”
Such psychoanalysis is revealed bit by bit to depict the realistic-phantasmagorical character:
“He was perplexed in various thoughts, until he reached the corner of the road, that left behind the inhabited zone and could make out the high-school girl in her black school uniform and white collar, who stirred up in him the nostalgia of migratory birds, the swallows, maybe because she used to commute every day from town to village and vice versa. With his heart pounding, he slowed down the pace and waited her to pass by him. He could feel in every cell of his body her approach and his heartbeat melted suddenly into her deer-like steps. He could hardly breathe in those moments, his back thrilled and his nape got sweaty. He could feel her troubled breath kissing his ears but did not dare to turn around. He could feel the inner voice urging to speak, but they have never greeted each-other so far.”
So, bit by bit, portraying figuratively the character, the short story turns into a symbol. And while in this story we have to do with a symbol, in the other one “The donkeys” we come across the grotesque that whips the kingdom of inefficiency mingled with the cringe. The inefficient people, the donkeys, live happily thanks to the skillfulness of other people- the well-known formula of all the times. Even here the author doesn’t skip the psychoanalysis, the paradox together with the grotesque mixed together with the sarcasm and the contemporary satire. The metamorphoses elements remind us of Apuleius novel, the famous Latin writer “Metamorphoses or the golden donkey”, which unfortunately is not translated yet into Albanian.
In his short story “The donkeys”, the author writes:
“Strangely, every night he dreamed of himself turned into a donkey. Nevertheless, even though his being might enter the skin of that animal, he would never believe it. How could such a thing be believed? He was the number one of the Presidential staff… He was right after the President in rank. Everyone feared him more than His Excellency, the President himself. No! Rrapush could never be and would never turn into a four-footed despite that strange feeling that tormented him at nights and deepened him into the dream world, becoming a donkey…”
It is not the place to enter into a detailed analysis of the book “False miracles”, because it would take time. That is why I mentioned only some short stories, typical of the actual level of the works of Shefki Hysa. But I cannot let without mentioning the unique short novel: “The village headman”, which contests the greediness and voracity. I would say that the traits of the expressionism are more obvious than in any other short story, not leaving aside the paradox and grotesque or phantasmagoria, all mixed together in realism. The short story evokes figuratively the corruption and degeneration of the society through the unique cinematographic dynamics. Each word here is readable and transparent.
In these few lines, I would also like to mention “The magic” that belongs to the kind of short novels above, but differs in the anxiety it lets out and the fear not to become a written calamity.
“Oh, I know you would call me nuts, evocative, fascinated, raving into the infernal grounds of a scary dream, or whatever epithet you’d like to add, when I mention magic. Your job, nevertheless, or otherwise- the vivid fact, the outcome of its violence, is me. Looking closely at me, you would understand the transfiguration of my being. Hence, look at my unshaven skinny face, swollen and bloody nose and lips, pimpled and scabby cheekbones, shaggy, untidy, muddy hair, becoming scarce in the widened and creasing forehead because of the fear sheltered deep inside the skull, outlining more and more clearly. Just look at my numb and cold body! So… aren’t you feeling fear, pain, pity, disgust, taunt, or anything else, because of the way I look like? ….”
As I mentioned above, the actual level of the writing process of the narrator Shefki Hysa is perceived by the expressionist traits. But permit us to say, very friendly we would like to have this tendency hidden from time to time and not to come out strongly and open. It is clear that the early expressionism despite the tendency of the idea hidden in it, it was also distinguished for the pathos of “catastrophe and scream”. The new expressionism should be different and I am convinced that Shefki Hysa is aware of that, because his stories are characterized by the national spirit and signs of the clever Cham spirit, always troubled and always in search to discover, because he knows well the book of life and that of library.

Dritëro Agolli
Writer

Reflexes of a lifetime

Shefki Hysa is a name that demands attention: he is as Bilal Xhaferri who knows to carefully choose from life, patiently develope the vital material, and gives us without artifice and torsion qualitative creations. No wonder that eminent writer, Ismail Kadare, after getting acquainted with the first literary creations of the novelist Shefki Hysa, would be surprisingly expressed: What’s this guy who writes differently? My beloved storyteller, with strange observations and subtle feelings; a writer always valued by me and others; – the great writer D. Agolli would be expressed enthusiastic for the future literary of the author Shefki Hysa and would not be disappointed… And truly this author’s creation is and remains very surprising. By entering deeply into our dramatic lives, he consciously observes and captures the characters and situations that treats artistically with a personal natural style, which is the result of natural features of the writer; the circumstances and living conditions where he was born; grew up and lived; where he learned and worked; from a deep village in the northern Chameria; in Bulqiza mountains; Vurgu and Vrina fields; through boulevards and the outskirts of Tirana. The difficult life, where every step jumped with pain, gaining but also leaving something by himself, where the system challanges helped him, but he couldn’t benefit from them, made him tough, wild but didn’t destroy the future writer. Here, then, why a wild lyricism and an almost diabolical cynicism pervades Shefki Hysa prose. From the creativity of this prose writer this short stories gave me great emotions: “Confessions of a Burglar”, “Black widow”, “The fall impertinent”, “Didini”, “World’s neck”, “The city magic”, “Turtullesha and the devil”, “Statuettes of love”, “The village headman”, “The magic”, “False Miracles”, “Donkeys”, “The smile”, “Squirrel”, “Love lecture”, “Poet and power”, “Chameria flavor”etc. Cham theme in the stories of the writer Shefki Hysa doesn’t intend to make themes, but it arises from within. This author uses beautifully and proudly the Cham expressions and wise sayings that we have “sprouted on the edge”. At each turn of the soul Chameria olives and oranges come forward like history and longing torches. And even if it stays as quiet watermelon under sheets, creativity of Shefki Hysa has a long time, it doesn’t need the critic to prove and say its word.

Xhemil Lato
Writer

Don’t forget Chameria, friends!

My speech today is not directed unto you Cham mothers, fathers, brothers, nephews and sisters. You are everywhere inside me. We are each other’s offspring. Therefore, it doesn’t seem the right way to address to myself.
I want to address you, friends and sympathetic of Chameria. Injustices are numerous and varied, they can be made to people, one province and one individual. Injustices that can be done to the individual may remain intractable and can be extinguished along with the individual. Life is short!… But the injustice made to a nation can never remain forgotten. Because the generation inherits it by the former generation. Population doesn’t forget…
Can Cham issue remain forgotten? Greek politics interests want it so. And perhaps a part of Albanian politicians do not want to deal with this problem. They don’t care about this problem. We, the Chams, do not agree with this attitude. Enough have we been silent, enough pain have we endured in chest, enough with the excessive care, with the care not to touch the governments, governments that have betrayed us all life, governments that have forgotten us all life. We are neither against abstinence nor the care. But today, excessive care makes Cham torpid.
We are muhaajir population forcibly displaced. We are the most typical case in the world. Approximately twenty percent of the population massacred, all the properties robbed. Is there any more typical case than this? In this climate of brotherhood of people, shouldn’t you, my friends, deal with this issue?
We, the Cham, expect near radios, televisions to hear a word about our beloved Chameria. A good word of yours raise us, gives us strength.
Indeed, these days, we have heard hopeful words, words that have become balm for wounded hearts of the Chams. These words come from the most democratic country in the world, America, but there are other sayings and contradictions, that deepen more our wounds. So will we remain?! With the wound?! I speak to you, our friends, show your wisdom, your maturity, and lose some time to get acquainted with the Cham’s truth. It speaks for itself; we seek to look at this.
What do you say? Has the Greek government the right to deny us the properties? Has it the right to deny our homeland?
Had Enver Hoxha’s government the right in 1953 that, without asking us, changed our citizenship? Why was this action performed, by what motives? What backgrounds are played in those years in the detriment of the Cham people? These questions want an answer.
Today, the Greek government claims that the Cham issue is forgotten and doesn’t exist laying out ridiculous absurd excuses: Chams were allegedly fascist collaborators during the World War II and as such people are doomed to losing the right to return back to their homeland, are sentenced to loss their properties. “Great!” Greek diplomacy!
Let’s think for a moment that two or three Chams have collaborated with fascism. Haven’t been the Greeks also collaborating with fascism? And then? Their children must be punished, an entire people must be punished? Thumbs up Greek democracy!
We seek justice for our rights. We need back our citizenship, to live near our Greek brothers. You have to know well, we have thousands of friends and few enemies.
Make a trip to the northwest of Greece. You will listen that they still speak Cham language fluently. Foundations and broken walls of our homes will tell you grievous story, our grandparents and great-grandfathers graves will speak to you, their graves seek our graves.
Some of our fathers are still alive and they are seeking to talk with you. We, their children, who know well the extent of Chameria, are alive. We do not need maps, we do not need land patent, and we know exactly our limits. But, we seek your human support friends, seek your wisdom, ask to take a look and see the Cham issue which is packed with truths.

Namik Mane
Journalist, Poet, Writer

A book of messages of hope and peace for Chameria

I was impressed by the book with short stories “Chameria’s flavour” written by Shefki Hysa, promoted in one of the programs of the national TV Channel. I am interested in every publication on Chameria, whenever it is remembered. This is not to encourage any disturbances in the Balkans, as someone might think of, but to calm down any restless conscience. This is why I said that I was impressed by the book with short stories “Chameria’s flavour” of this author originated from Chameria. I was interested in reading this book and I was anxious to go carefully through its pages and come across the message of hope and peace that it conveys to the reader.
In short, I would say that this book is necessary, imperative and moral, like every publication of this nature. There are many reasons that the Chams do not forget Chameria and this is not only their right, but also the right of all the Albanians. Furthermore, it is a moral task, because one can never forget the suffering wound of thousands and thousands people. It can never be forgotten the displacement, it can never be forgotten the birth place, where the hearth is. All of these will help to get rid of the nightmares, as the book “Chameria’s flavour” does.
It is high time for the Balkans to get rid of the old crimes, and one of them is what happened to Chameria – the Cham’s drama. In this way, the Balkans will pave the way towards the emancipation. Only after this, the Balkans might become part of the emancipated European family.

Ismail Kadare
Albanian Writer

Albanian League of Writers and Artists

Historic
Albanian League of Writers and Artists (ALWA) is an organization of creators, located in Tirana which includes writers, composers, and artists, creators of figurative arts and critics of the literary and artistic values. Writers League was created on October 1945 while the Artists League in 1949. The First Congress held on 1957, joined these two organizations in a single institution: in Albanian League of Writers and Artists.
In the establishment and direction of the first organization of Albanian creators took part some of the most distinguished intellectuals. Sejfulla Maleshova was appointed its leader and Fan S. Noli its honorary president. Among the most known creators were Poradeci, Bulka, Luarasi, Shuteriqi, Asllani, Pasko, Prenushi, Spasse, Haxhiademi etc. This voluntary union of creators from all the country, at the beginning was compound by 70 members.
The goals and objectives of this organization: Albanian League of Writers and Artists is a non-government organization created by a group of Albanian Writers and Artists to propagate literary and artistic creativity of Albanian authors, to evaluate and re-evaluate the best works of the Albanian literature, music, painting and sculpture, traditional and contemporary values, and to encourage the creativity of young talents. ALWA protects and stimulates the best tendencies of the developments of literature and art to serve to the society and Albanian nation, under the best models of literary and artistic values of the civilized nations.
For more than 50 years, Albanian League of Writers and Artists has had its literary and artistic organs: the magazine “Literatura jone” (our Literature), after that the monthly magazine “Nentori” (November), later on the weekly “Drita” (The light) (1961), the magazine in French language “Les letters Albanaises” (1978), “Bota Letrare” (Literary World) and “Revista Letrare” (Literary Magazine) as alternative publications after 1990 while currently the organization of Albanian writers and artists doesn’t publishes any organ due to lack of funds.
With all the difficult conditions of a backward society and a totalitarian regime which mostly limited the freedom of expression, which exert a vigilant orientation and censorship of the state-party over creativity, even by persecuting and condemning some writers and artists, many talents, members of the ALWA who had the rights like creativity permissions, reduced working hours, studios and different facilitating tools for their creativity, they created works which came out of the frames of so called methodology of socialist realism, especially in those fields of art and literature where was a little national tradition.
After 1990, Albanian creators, writers and artists, members of our organization, believed too much in their liberation and in the liberation of the artistic creativity in general. In the hurry to catch the lost time, some works were distinguished and especially were re-evaluated persecuted figures of the past like Konica e Fishta, where our organization gave its contributes with many re-evaluations.
During these two decades with a too problematic democracy and highly politicized, the Albanian League of Writers and Artists has been for many years the flunky of the party in power which, together with the power has appointed the leader of Albanian creators. Finally, after she could depart from the politic, these recent years our organization rolls like a baby between two girls, sometimes despised from one party and sometimes persecuted by the other political party. Anyway, it is well known that the independence of a creators union has a high price for the writers themselves and are needed ongoing efforts to handle it.
In the existing status, article 1, is clearly determined the essential nature of our association as common home of art and literature: “Albanian League of Writers and Artists is free and independent institution, a set of professional creators, opened for every other literature and artistic association, unconditioned by political views, trends and artistic platforms”.
Today, the ALWA has approximately 1300 members. Leading authorities are: National Congress, Chairmanship and Administrative Council. In the organizational structure operate: the section of literature, music, painting, sculpture, and the section of young talents.
For more than 60 years of its history, Albanian League of Writers and Artists has been leaded by distinguished personalities of our culture. Its leaders have been the gentlemen: Sejfulla Maleshova (dead), Dhimitër Shuteriqi (dead), Dritëro Agolli, Bardhyl Londo, Xhevahir Spahiu, Limos Dizdari, Zyhdi Morava (dead) dhe Hysen Sinani the actual leader.

Hysen Sinani
Writer

Lori Dir, American Journalist

Singer of Cham’s Ballad

Enkelejda Arifi, Singer of Cham’s Ballad, Ambassador of Albanian culture

American journalists, friends of Albania

Rodney D. Dir and Lori Dir, Journalists

Albania like California

It is the first time that I come in Albania. I have heard that Albania was one of the problematic countries of a turbulent Region like Balkans, where very often are generated inter-ethnic clashes. However, to tell the truth, I was surprised. I found a beautiful and a quiet place like my California. I feel delighted from Albanian hospitality. In Albania I met hospitable people, hilarious and sincere who turns into pieces for their foreign guests. So, I found true friends who are ready to sacrifice for friendship. I have traveled too much all over the world. I have seen rare and strange countries, but they have not left me so many impressions like the country of Albanians. And, I don’t know how to explain this. Albania is one of the most beautiful places of Mediterranean. It has a nature with an appealing view, fields, mountains, rivers and seas pent in a small surface, in few kilometers; it has a worm spring clime, it has micro-climes as quiet bays where is the life of many sorts of creatures, Mediterranean and exotic flora and fauna, where work peaceful people, but I believe that I was not attracted by these, as much has entered in my heart the kindness of Albanian people. So, the special thing of Albania stands in the Albanian human world, in his rare individuality and characteristics to love people who come from other worlds. Due to friendship that Albanian offered me, sometimes it seems that somewhere in this place should be the gate of the Heaven. Albanians love too much America. They love American democracy. They dream to have Albania one of the United States of America Republics.
What about Americans? American politics and diplomacy have really supported Albania and continue to support and to protect it, but I mean American citizens. Most of them do not recognize yet very well Albania. If they knew it better, they would consider it like my California. They would come for holidays in Albania and would fell in love with this place full of harmony and peace. They would help more in its economic empowerment and to be really part of Paradise over the Globe. As a missionary of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity, I will try the impossible to have Albania entered in the hearts of American people, to be as one of its most beautiful countries, like my California.

Rodney D. Dir
Journalist

Peace, Prosperity and Human Rights

Peace
The God was the First! He created the Universe, the Paradise, the Life, the Human being. At the beginning the World was the Paradise. There used to live the Humans under Divine laws and under the principles and rules of the Harmony. And that was the Peace. The Peace was the Light of God that illuminated the Human in his feats. So, the Human used to live illuminated in Peace with himself and with the Nature. The Peace was the model of the Good, the model of the Divine Light. The Clock of God measured the beauty of the human time. The time passed full of Light and Peace in the human life. So, the god had winded up his Clock on the good of humanity… Suddenly, with the passing of time, opposite of Good was the Bad. In front of Light was coming the Obscurity. The human, possessed by the Bad, started to revolt against the divine laws, to violate the Nature and the other human beings. The Violence, litter of the Bad, of Satan, ruined the Rule, the Harmony, and the Social Peace. The Human Paradise ended. The Chaos began to dominate in the World and, the life of human beings and the life of creatures as well, was at risk by the Bad. Besides the values of the Good, the Human World began to inherit the values of the Bad as well, the Anti-Values. The World was turned into battles and wars field between the values and the anti-values. That way, the Human had turned the back to the Light of God, to the Good, and the Bad started to predominate everywhere, the Satan, who aimed to undo the Good. The Obscurity aimed to undo the Light. The Chaos and the Violence aimed to undo the Social Peace. The World was really at risk, despite the Clock of God which measures endlessly the progress of time. In the turbulent world, the Good Human hardly could survive. There was the fight to acquire and to rob everything to another. There was the fight for the world and for the life of the others to be a property of the most powerful. The individual was against the individual, the family against the family, the tribe against the tribe, the nation against the nation. This wild war was inherited also when the states were created. One state was against the other. So, over the justice possessed the injustice. Anti-values were getting higher on the system over the values. And, there was no talk about Social Peace. The Good Human who hardly survived started to revolt toward the system of injustices. So, in front of the wars of the Bad were the warriors of the Good, the warriors of Peace, in long battles tooth for tooth, generation after generation. The Warriors of Peace were so, the hope for the future’s humanity… From their battles, the world has the today form. God blesses the Warriors of Peace! The Social Peace gives the Human the opportunity to grow up in welfare, to be illuminated and wiser from the Light of God, and to be capable to make goods for him and for society as well. The Social Peace gives the opportunity to talented individuals to be educated under the laws of God, international and national human laws, with the aim to become worthy leaders for the society and for the state. Social Peace encourage aware people to become decided fighters of Peace like Gandhi, a simple Indian, who with his peaceful philosophy appealed the good people, became their leader, defeated the British empire and laid the base of the Indian state, of today India. The Warriors of Peace sacrifice like the famous Albanian, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who passed all her life close to the poor people, by curing the wounds of the Bad, by giving food, shelter and education to become the future Warriors of Peace. Her sacrifice from Calcutta was expanded in whole India in many countries of the world, where were created new centers of the Mother Theresa Order, like islands of Human Peace. Mother Theresa served to humanity with her death too. Now, she is one of the Saints of God who inspires Peace all over the world…

Prosperity
Social Peace creates good interhuman relationships, culture and civilization. So, it is the power that makes the potentials and human values move for good of human society. Social Peace causes change, development and growth, advancement and progress. So, it brings prosperity, an indispensable element for the welfare of human society. The prosperity creates harmony and love by the human for the human, conviction for the accurate implementation of the divine and human laws. The people with prosperity never violate the laws; never harm the rights of the individual or society. They are Warriors of Peace, despite the race, religion and political views, like the African-American Martin Luther King, the African Mandela, the Poland the Pope Wojtyla of Rome, the Tibetan Dalai Lama, etc… The people with prosperity are the most dedicated fighters of Peace, they sacrifice also their life serving to the humanity. Let’s refer to the scientist figures like Newton, Einstein, etc. The same are also the great writers like the American poet Witman, the Latin-American Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or the dissident writers like the Russian Solzhenitsyn, the Romanian Paul Goma, the Chinese Ai Weiwei or Hassan Mushaima from Bahrain, etc. So, a place with peace and prosperity encourages its citizens to be converted in international figures, international peace personalities like the Indian Dr. Madhu Krishan, Dr. Muhammad Shahid Amin Khan from Pakistan, Asra Khan from Pakistan as well, etc…

The Human Rights
Today, more than ever the Human Rights are at risk in this world where many dictatorial states and different dictators take the positions of gangsters and behave like bandits with their citizens, the foreign tourists or with the economically weaker countries.
The gangsters, these modern bandits, are more sophisticated than the former Somali pirates, than the thief Ali Baba who was the leader of forty Arabian thieves, or more than all the pirates of informatics gathered together. These gangsters-dictators like Milosevic of Serbia, Gaddafi of Libya imprison their citizens and torture them in an antihuman way and take away the life of their citizens by killing them traceless, like they were not human beings. The today’s dictators use all the modern technology to enslave their citizens and to win an undeserved absolute power at the expanse of them. They use that technology that was gifted to us by the distinguished scientists who sacrificed the life and its pleasures, only and only to serve to the humanity with their talent, as the warriors of Peace and Prosperity. To use the latest inventions like the satellites, internet or the nuclear technology to exert terror over their unprotected citizens, but also over the world, over the peaceful citizens, is a gift only for the malicious dictators that are opposite with the God, with divine laws and with the human laws. So, to be a dictator, are the most perverse ways and the most sophisticated ones to violate the Human Rights ostensibly on behalf of God and the population. And to face such masters of deception is exactly the present challenge of the warriors of Peace and Prosperity organized through dignified organizations which know to well-collaborate with each other under the umbrella of UN. Working for Peace and Prosperity is a gift from God. Not everyone works and sacrifices for peace. Most of people take care about their comfort by profiting by the others. Every day that pass, we notice the underestimation and the disrespect of the word “Peace”, such an important word, synonym of the word “Paradise”. And, as a consequence, many bad things have come and continue to come over our shocked society from the bad of the divisive wars and from the incurring diseases of poverty… A horrified society by the future now and again hopeless… The Warriors of Peace are the Warriors of Hope. They, on behalf of God and Justice, are united together all over the world and are trying to aware all peacemaking brothers. The sacrifice for the human society, for a world where prevails the peace, prosperity, the goods and the love for each other and the love for the Savior. The work of the Warriors of Peace is a colossal work, admirable. Each of us must give his contribute to improve and to flourish our planet. Each of us, can start giving this contribute since the dawn by wishing the welcome to the new day and by donating a warm smile to his family, to his companions and his friends, to the known and unknown people. So, during all seconds that accompany us, during all the day long, we can contribute with good words and behavior to maintain alive the tradition of the Warrior of Peace. That way, we can invite all our beloved people around us to join our cause. So, with the sweet words and behavior full of human love we can be one day great Warriors of Peace, like them who have made the story of the humanity…

Shefki Hysa
Writer

Chameria flavour

– Ah, my friend! I don’t have time, I have told you, the work is suffocating me, – and I felt in the telephone the plaintive refrain.
Because it brought me to mind someone whom neither had I desire to imagine, who, to avoid his friends used to say constantly to them that neither had time to die. In that moment embittered I replied to him:
– I suppose you neither have time to die, but you should get used to command people with cell phone. Add any other skilful specialist or any strong administrator and get rid of ordinary works. You are a proprietor and you should only direct, not work…
– I know this my friend, but the work doesn’t progress if I am not the head. People from all parts of Albania call me. I have extended it a little to Kosovo too. I have big responsibilities for my clients – he whispery cut a long story short.
– You will die one day and the husbands who profit from their wives are going to eat your money. Nobody will remember you, like you have never existed. You would better remember alone yourself, your name. Make name for the girls, not only money, – I insisted, feeble to convince him.
– Wait for me the other week. I’ll come to mount two espressos, in Tirana and we will meet for sure, – he said suddenly.
I had the impression that he wanted to dispose of me. He used to do the same thing every time I phoned him or when we met each other by chance. As if he made fun of me, that is why I huffed:
– As you want, I have warned you, but you have to know that you will die as a mechanic. And death doesn’t care; it takes you when you don’t expect it…
– Ah, my friend, I know but the work can’t do without me…
– As you want, eternal worker! – I covered with blood the lip and closed the phone without greeting him.
I know that he wouldn’t keep his word.
– Ah, Namik Mane! You have sold the spirit to the devil too – I raised hackles to myself, unable to chase after him.
I felt anger that I couldn’t distract him from the everyday work of the coffee shop. My friend’s shop, the omitted poet Namik Mane’s shop, lay somewhere in Durres, in a skew alley, in the first floor of an old two-stored building. To enter inside it you had to pass in a rusty ferrous door, in a narrow hall and across two compartments, one small, with the used espressos shelves, that were expecting to get repaired and the other, the big grinder room, where the Turkish and espresso coffee was baked, grind and packaged. There, among the humid air and the soot, was packaged even the sugar in those packets with the lettering “Mike”. I couldn’t withstand for a long time inside that place, in winter or summer. The coffee odour used to open my nose, my bones were bitten of that wee empire coldness, with which my friend used to preen himself with reason because apart from its ugliness, it brought such a big profit.
I decided to forget my friend and his creativity, although I was sorry for the precious values that he was hiding in his soul, this coeval and close friend of the well-known writer Bilal Xhaferri. I wanted to harvest those values but as it seemed, it wasn’t said. And I threw him away in a hinterland of the memory.
– E, you, the eternal poor man, you presupposed I cheated you again?! – I felt a known voice mingled with the crack of the door that was opened fleetingly.
Like a shot, Namik Mane’s silhouette clashed on the corner of my eye. He had kept his word. I am really late but better late than never.
– Are you entering barbarously in the state offices, vicious man?! – I came upon to him blissfully surprised, but it seemed as if his healthy, good-natured face, eased for a bit the grudge left somewhere in the spirit profoundness.
– Ha, ha, ha! I couldn’t care less! The same as the state cares about us, it collects taxes and this is enough… A state that leaves you without bread…
– Once you used to tremble from the state, sir, and now you are a little too much emboldened because I see that you have got thick, fattened up and your face and bald spot have become red. Perhaps your brain hasn’t got thick, has it? – I teased to stop his jerk.
– You couldn’t joke with that state. Yesterday, the communist state used to kill you. That state interned me for many years at Hamalla bog. The mud engulfed my youth. I shut my mouth and save my head… Regarding your democratic state, I do live one thousand years…
We embraced one another. It was good-for-nothing to be disgruntled with his jerk. His face was reflecting goodness. I noticed out of the corner of my eye while he weighed with howl down the chair. He would be too much over the normal weigh. His grey jerkin, like a bullet-proof vest, could hardly compress that entire explosive chest. He suffered from high blood pressure and from heart failure. The excessive obesity of the body tissues could cause him even any infarct and he could give up the host, although he used to keep the medicines always with him for every unexpected event. Even my uncle had been so healthy and over-obese and he died in the middle of the road. From infarct or cerebral haemorrhage, who knows…
– You are left with one book, good man! We forget even its title, after so many years of silence, – I said to him as I was joking to hide from myself that horrible sensation which his healthy body, too healthy for his over sixty age caused me.
– One book really, but it was a book, not waffles, like these volumes with verses that are published today.
– If I am not wrong, was your poetic volume titled “The pergola of tears”?
– Yes.
– In any case, hushing so many years can’t be swallowed. When I, your friend, forgot the poet Namik Mane, why do you ask for the others…
– You don’t forget me, no, big deal for the others!
– You tired me, my friend, you hardly show up. I will forget you, omitted man – I emphasized capitulated.
– The calls are driving me crazy. An avalanche of clientele, from South to North. I can’t even cosily breathe, believe me. My assistants, nephews, grooms are not skilled in the keeping of espressos and I have to run everywhere, up to Kosovo. I’m going crazy, do you believe me?
– Believe you?! Can I trust in a millionaire like you, who doesn’t know where to hide the money, who has filled even the gaps under floor slabs with banknotes?
– Trust in me deserving poor man because I am not so rich. The expenses are big too.
– I suppose it; you have the jerkin pockets always swollen to be emptied out in the best restaurants for meat, fish and brandy.
– No, I don’t drink brandy anymore, it makes you fat. Now I drink wine.
– You go even in motels, I think.
– In motels no, although I am a man, – he laughed. You don’t believe it?
And he began to tell me a happening how once, a beauty of those vagabond blonds, that was travelling with him in the car, ordered the driver to stop next to a motel. The driver flashed an inquiring glance throughout the mirror. Look at the street, straight, he answered with gestures. The blonde repeated the order, but the driver cut it, he was only following the director’s orders. He was a director’s driver and not a lady’s driver.
It is excusable if he goes anytime in motel, end of story, I was thinking while hearing to his confession. I knew he was widowed. His wife had died some years ago, leaving him with two daughters, already full-grown. Going in motels is a way of entertainment for the businessmen.
– Let’s put aside the unnecessary waffles because they are poverty in this comfortable office, a bureaucrat’s corner. Let’s run in the best restaurant that Tirana has. Because you, metropolitan people, do know the relish of the restaurants too.
– Let’s go at my home, maybe we will talk more quietly, – I sprung.
– At home? Won’t we be more disengaged in a restaurant? – He boggled.
– At home! Though we, as litterateurs are fortuneless, do have five good things for the infrequent guests.
Namik shrugged disarmed but it didn’t sway me. We had been sometimes in the best restaurants of Durres, near the sea-line, in winter when the long water-waves used to crash infinitely like the wavy flows of the white horses at Currila beach and in summer, when the wave used to push the wave and together they used to smarm like wild cats the soft sand of the shores. We had roamed along the tourist destinations in Tirana too, along the waterside and to Dajti mountain, where it used to hold the green garland of spring overhead and that snow grey-headed winter. Even at Namik’s home we had been many times, we had even stayed sleepless all night with foods and drinks and telling and retelling Bilal Xhaferri’s jobs whilom. At my home we had never been, simply because I have lately become a family man.
Meantime we had get out in the big yard of the Albanian Assembly building, covered from the doughy high pines that were sifting the sun and were throwing it with the form of a golden dust along our bodies. Autumn was coming in and leaves on the trees were gilded, picked off and used to fall one by one on the asphalt. A breeze was blowing and the sun’s rays were flecking our sight. In that instant we were like gold searchers, with the only difference that we were tracking the thesauruses of human souls.
At the turn, where the street met the boulevard, in front of “Rogner” Namik’s van was waiting for us, but we chose to walk along the green side of Lana river.
– You are a good boy, Shefki, – suddenly Namik said, throwing behind the shoulders those meditative wanderings that the autumn was arousing around.
– I know.
– Wise too. You have moved ahead since I have known you.
– Yes.
– But not everyone knows this.
– I know this too. The friend of everyone and the friend of no one.
– Some came and said me to meet and bring him to court. To remove him the right to study Bilal Xhaferri’s figure.
– Yes…
– And I said no! Because today we are a democracy, because everyone has the right to live, not only do they have this right, as yesterday; because he did the things as he knew. It’s sufficient that he did them when nobody had courage to do, them neither. I said to them that Shefki crossed seas and oceans and brought all alone from America Bilal Xhaferri’s bones. He exhumed Bilal from the oblivion tomb where the censors of dictatorship had buried him and raised him in the heights he deserved.
He has done a titanic work with “Bilal Xhaferri” publishing house and “Eagle’s wing” magazine. Why do we have to deny all these?!
– And they didn’t hear you. They tried to set me against the state and the American embassy, but they didn’t succeed because I had discovered a mountain with my work.
-Yes, the mountain can’t be pulled down. And that mountain was the work of the extraordinary writer Bilal Xhaferri. His masterpiece “Cham ballad” is sufficient and he remains a mountain on mountains. And he dared to publish it in those years.
– Yes, in the dictatorship years. I have seen it published with my own eyes, browsing through the newspaper collection in the National library. And that masterpiece has given extraordinary impressions to me as a hymn of the martyrdom of Chameria, an unrepeatable hymn like “La Marseillaise”.
– Please my friend, don’t irritate my wounds, and don’t hurt my soul further because when I bring to mind Bilal my own life hurts me. It is said that the writers’ envy killed him. No, my friend, all the writers loved him, all the readers honoured him. He was murdered by ideology, by the state security.
– The state security?! – I wondered.
– Yes, yes, the state security. He was being victimized even far away. They had invented even some files. Bilal heard about this and escaped in Greece and later emigrated in America… He went away to save his own skin and not to express his dissidence, as it is written.
– Would they have imprisoned him, if he had stayed? – I became curious.
– Absolutely!
– He appeared far-sighted, varmint, that escaped, – I rubbed the hands.
– But not only in that case. Bilal was a deft nature, though quiet and continuously thoughtful. Only with me did he open. If you could see how his passion used to explode. Eh, dear friend! – shook the head nostalgically Namik.
– … …?!
– Please my friend, I said you, don’t hurt my wounds!
– But I can’t leave you take all these impressions with you. Get this out of your mind! – I interrupted.
– Please! What to tell you first. You don’t know how difficult this is for me. You know that he was called Bilal Hoxha, grand-nephew of the universal polymath, Hasan Tahsin, who was born in Ninat, Konispol, whose father, Xhaferr Hoxha was shot as nationalist, as anticommunist. But what did Bilal do? Instead of the surname Hoxha he used as a literary surname his father’s name. Thus he was self-called Bilal Xhaferri, perpetuating his shot father’s name. They knew this too.
– What a courage!
– Really, courage of a mad man! And he was so wise! – whispered and the conversation was suddenly broken, as if its thread was a rope that was keeping pending the thought weight and Namik’s being, which was giving the idea that he was falling and losing in one of the horrible oblivion abysses.
– You were blessed to be his friend! – I broke the silence, with the desire to keep up the fire of the conversation and in that instant I don’t know why I felt like the life-savers, who throw a hook or another rope which the flake-out man can hold onto it and not go to pieces in the abyss.
We were walking in the opposite direction of Lana turbulent flow. Only the insistent gurgling of water was harshly heard. Namik hushed and then began to speak like the tense man that already had a narrow escape from fall. I was listening with close attention his patchy speech, with cramps. It seemed as if he was intoning or reading with passion a diary of memories. He told how he used to stay sleepless all night with Bilal, mulling things over and writing poems with a rebellion spirit, although they used to melt the days in the cabbage parcel, where the mud used to keep you bound like handcuffs, where the cries of submission were born and the hoe and the scull could shorten life, where because of the exasperation they used to kick on the cabbage, like on the charismatic king’s head. With the rebellious verses, idealist as they were, they dreamt to publish a common poetic volume, with the title “A silhouette in darkness”. It was so titled one of the poems with the verses:

“I will appear to you in the darkness with mist,
a profile raised full of pain and disdain.
For me the stars won’t tell anything,
Neither the winds,
nor the bronze e brightness of my silhouette.
Only my wounds will witness for me
only my death will witness for me”…

Meantime we arrived home and got directly in the studio. Namik caved in sunken in the armchair and was hardly taking heart. The face and the head barefooted from the hairs were reddening exceedingly. The sweat in the forehead was shining from the neon I had already switched on to remove the dusk of the heavy curtains made of azure atlas. I was looking at him out of the corner of my eye, while I was removing the files of the computer desk and I was thrilling by the thinking that that entire gasping chest could blow up like a balloon. But no. People don’t say for nothing that man’s life is at God’s hand and only he knows when to take it. He quickly pulled himself together, was appeased and began to view curiously the bookshelves.
– You really have a big library! You never divided you life from the books, apart from the poverty that is not detached from the intellectual, – noticed Namik.
– But, for good or ill luck, I have dedicated myself to the literary creativity. And you know that the books in Albania, can eat you even the last morsel, – I spoke through clenched teeth whispery.
– I do know, my friend, I do know, this is why I let up on editions and I dedicated myself to the business. I left you too, I left you alone…
– This is a thing of the past! – I responded in a word without any desire to bring to mind our old-time adventure to become the first Albanian editors of the new post communist epoch.
Namik laughed with the fermenting of my face while it became more twilit, even in my soul. I didn’t manifest my emotions because he was my friend, at home, though I couldn’t forgive him for the abandonment.
– I can feel with all my heart your exasperation, believe me, but I was afraid. Do you remember the day when we were loading in the car the typographic paper that that typographer had hidden at the blockhouse behind his house? I was thinking that maybe it was a paper robbed in any state magazine. And suddenly a police van passed nearby. It passed really by chance. I was horrified. The way we were working frightened me. It is understood that it was the only way to earn something in that ravaging period, after the collapse of the dictatorship. Everybody was acting this way; they were trying to be mended. But I couldn’t. All my life I have dreaded the communist state shadow and I still dreaded the new state. But that not because I am a coward. And I buggered off abroad. This is all and my soul hurts me, – explained Namik with regret, as if he wanted to alleviate a little the big hurt that the partnership with him has brought to me.
– I said to you once, this is a thing of the past! – I repeated quietly, in face.
– It is important that you moved ahead and you are not a stranger, you are my friend. Say thanks God!
– I shouldn’t repine. With fatigue, really but I earn. You should only know how much I have suffered abroad. I will witness this even to the tomb shingle.
– Have you tried a lot?!
– You say have you tried? I have worked like a slave and I was treated like a slave. A life like that of a slave, in the communist Albania as well as in a foreign land. Eternal refugees we, the Chams, did remain, as an expression says, like the Jew in the desert. After the Greeks deported us from Chameria, we ended up for a half century as refugees at our homeland, in Albania, though we were among people of one blood, Albanians among Albanians. The same thing happened even in emigration, in the foreign countries, where we were deported for a better life and we found slavery. Eh, a life of hell! – Namik huffed desperately.
I hushed wincingly, voiceless before that hell on earth that my friend was bringing to mind. Hell in here, hell in there, as if this life is only for them. Even Namik stopped for a while, and then he began to recount his life in emigration, the revolt that was clenching in his soul with the thinking to earn and to turn back near his home, in Albania to invest them.
He used to convert the rebellion in the nights in the foreign land in poetry verses: The Sea cruelly pounds Skiathos (an island in Greece) coasts and with a fist I strike this land. I am right one hundred times more than Dar of Persia who ordered the sea to thrash him with a whip, after the defeat, when he lost the entire fleet in the ancient Greek-Persian battle of Dardanelle. I hear the Albanian mothers’ lamentations, who cry on the phones for the sons, who melt on the shores of a foreign land. Their lamentation is thousand times more painful then Hecuba’s one for his son, Hector, murdered by Achilles…
This was in few words, the point of one of the poems that caught my ear in that heinous atmosphere created by that woeful confession.
Namik was going on speaking and my mind, intrigued by his testimonies, was eddying and a big rancour was being billowed toward servile politics that our country was pursuing with the neighbouring countries, leaded by them. And while I was imagining how weak the man is at our country, I squawked within myself: “Oh God, protect the poor Albanians!”
– It’s difficult in Italy too, as in Greece, for us Albanians, – Namik was chuckling.
– Difficult?!
– As we were cursed!
– Strange!
– This isn’t strange, as we are leaded by them.
– Yes, them! Once, yesterday and today…
– Even tomorrow, my friend, in the entire lifetime, them once again.
– Us and them! Them and us. A large sea of disdain between. This country will never mutiny, – I whispered pessimist.
– Never! We work and they, the dishonest people, the scroungers, the cheats, the Mafiosi utilize everything, thousand ways and tricks to keep this country occupied. Intense corruption in Albania, my friend!… The world doesn’t raise sometimes the voice for nothing… Do you understand me?… The dishonest people do know to pay, to have millions money, which is not earned by their sweat, to throw around, to corrupt, not jokes… And they do this to have super profits, to have wealth and power, to engulf everything, as the octopus does with its prey… They have bought all the powers: Legislative, Executive, Judicial and the Press… Everywhere they appear in front of you… And where can we complain about this?!… I am allegedly a businessman but I don’t see anywhere fair competition, collaboration between businesses, as they pretend… Neither can I distinguish on the horizon that democratic society that I dreamt… Don’t forget, I was persecuted during my whole life, my friend!…

We hardly live and surprisingly they make money behind our back… Us, the slaves and them, the masters. Our intellectuality is good for nothing!… They don’t need to be neither strong physically nor clever. Our strength and wisdom is sufficient. They only lead and don’t want to know if they throw us down in an abyss. We die, they don’t!… Have you ever seen something like this?! – sprang Namik.
– Eh!… God saves us from them! – I groaned.
– Maybe, in the other world! –said Namik emphatically, with a horrific tone.
– Evil world! – I sighed.
– You are saying evil?!… Totally crazy!… Don’t ask how world behaves with the poor Albanians… As the former dictatorship, if I am not wrong, did… I don’t know if those leaders of countries, who say to love us so much, will ever turn the eyes to us and see us as mother’s, not stepmother’s, – Namik said doubtfully.
– No! – I said. – Why do they have to do this?! I don’t think they are neither Christs nor stupid… I say this with a mathematical security: The world will never turn its eyes to us. We only will have eyes for the world always …
– Then, maybe we need to straighten ourselves out, with each other too. To know, to help, to love, to respect each other, and then to turn our eyes to the world… Can something like this be achieved? – Namik philosophized with the fanciful view melted somewhere inside his being.
– Naivety, utopia, dream… You dream with open eyes, my friend!…. Theoretically, yes! Practically: us and them, the politician- businessmen devils that have usurped Albania!… Didn’t you say the same thing before?… Us disunited, they, a fist at our head… At least till now, because they allured America as well as Europe, – I emphasized hopeless.
I was thinking that they were enjoying our contacts with the world, too… They used to propitiate its diplomacy, to fondle it, to promise everything and to play, if they could, with it as it was their doll…And when the world got angry with the flatteries and the cheats that they do, they used to fall upon their knees and implore with fear and servility, like believers in front of their idols…
– If so, keep on bewaring of them…They never will forgive you the writings against them – laughed Namik.
– Maybe, – I laughed too.
Meanwhile the table in the other room was laid. We stood face-to-face.
– The wine is red, as you like it. A wine from Delvina, Leskovik or Tushemisht of Pogradec, the small earthy paradise built up on wonderful water fountains. You have to know that Tit Tasellari with Nuçi, my friends from Lasgush’s and Mitrush’s lands have sent this to me, – I strutted humorously.
– I will prove all the kinds.
– The brandy too?! – I joshed him. We have in front Konispol’s, Përmet’s Skrapar’s grape brandy and mulberry brandy from Boboshtica of Korça. We have Ukrainian vodka, Marseille champagne, some kind of beers, whisky and other things from the world.
– I wish we will always have such abundance! And the world will view us with another eye! Cheers! I have some wine. And they would be exasperated – clinked the glasses Namik.
– Cheers my friend! And I wish you to have success in your creativity as well as in business. – I congratulated him.
He drank up and flied at the lamb came from Gramoz of Kolonja. He was a glutton, not a joke, like the people at work. I induced him to taste all kinds of food and drink. I felt pleasure while looking at him with such appetite, the same as for myself.
– You should taste the trout of Bistrica and the rare coran of Pogradeci lake. White carp from the White Drin as well as eels from Karavasta, – I didn’t stop.
– Hey, eat by yourself because I put away all the goods, – Namik was laughing.
– I am satiated if my friend enjoys the dinner.
– A complete enjoyment! If only I had a little Chameria flavor. The defunct Bilal had written a poem with such a title and it said much:

We lived where osaka used to murmur
where Sparta, spartilja flower used to flourish
we lived beside the mountain where lophata used to flourish,
where the squares were covered in snow like the daisy flower.
When the mother at night used to get the lid off the mess tin
Our plate used to evaporate fresh butter smell,
heady canella smell,
Lamb damp smell.
The same all the year, from winter to summer,
Our country used to change flavor:
heady canella smell,
Lamb damp smell…

– Bilal’s poetry?! – I exploded impatient.
– Yes, yes! His poetries… Eh!… He was Bilal Xhaferri… Do you understand what we have lost, my friend, with his escape?… Even the Albanian – Americans didn’t duly sustain him… Maybe they didn’t understand him, maybe they were like them and avoided him intentionally, who knows…
– Beautiful poetry, – I noticed.
– And once I said to the Albanian – Americans, precisely to one of them, to their head: “We sent you a big writer and you brought back a cadaver”… They got angry with my words. Maybe they are like them… – explained Namik the start of his reasoning.
– Maybe they are of their same hut, maybe brothers or ambassadors who work for them, it doesn’t matter… For me, that poetry was beautiful, – I repeated.
– “Chameria flavor”? Really beautiful. Unpublished. I have kept it and I will bring it to you, so you can publish it and the complete version of the poem “The mist”, partly published till now, in the magazine.
– Wonderful! As soon as possible. Your tales, too.
– Your tales, too. Cheers! And you have to know that I need only a song now. Hey Cham, can’t we burst docilely into a song now, – exploded suddenly Namik.
– As you want, but I don’t have much of an ear for songs.
– Eh, my friend, the songs disturb my soul so much, especially the dolorous songs of this populace that have suffered the whole life, the Cham songs. I remember that in the evenings till late at nights, when the stars had flashed, there in emigration, a fiery longing used to flame for my family and all the good people that I have known, for my homeland. Even in emigration where the word Homeland has a magnificent meaning. The nostalgia used to involve all my being and I used to stay sleepless all night singing. I used to sing all the dolorous songs. I don’t know why, but I used to sing and sing. I remember that one morning the boss called me alarmed and said to me that last night I had cried. No, I said, I have sung. You have cried, you have cried your eyes out, he insisted as I was astonished and thought that maybe I had cried. Maybe I had cried all those nights, instead of singing.
– It is not any surprise. It is said that man, sometimes cries of anxiety even when he is sleeping, the good man, is understood, not them, – I said laughing.
Namik laughed too, affirming that they don’t even know the meaning of the word tear and moreover shed tears. Usually sensible hearts and not those without a heart are afflicted.
Late, in the afternoon we went out in the streets of Tirana. The sun hadn’t dropped yet and the green pine-needles were slightly murmuring from the wind and were sifting on us the gilding of the rays. So, along that immensity of gold crumbs that was shining the night air, we were like searchers of rare gold, so dear for them, hungry for power and wealth, although we were simply searchers of the inward gold.
Eh!… I thought that if we became geologist and discovered somewhere once a gold-mine, after efforts and efforts, after we had unearthed the mineral and refine it they were going to enjoy it again… It would be the most precious luxury, the most covetable for them, the former power holders and the politicians, the former spies and all that flock of Mafiosi and their servants, thieves and criminals that already were part of the Albanian politics… We were going to inherit only the troubles…
Finally we embraced one another and parted. Homesick as always. We promised that we were going to meet each other more frequently, until we would find the magic formula of alchemy that converts everything in gold. And we were going to made it a present for them, so that we could stay a little bit quite about our literary troubles.
– Call me when you arrive in Durrës, Namik, – I told him, when he was next to the car, although I knew that the work was going to grab him and immediately he would forget me.
– Oh my friend, work will take my soul, not God… You have to know that now I am forgetting you. Every time I get on the caravan and providentially troubles choke me, work suffocates me and I forget the live people. I live only for those demon stuffs, which are really maddening me…
– Be careful not to end up like them – I rallied.
– Like them?! Perhaps…although I know for sure that they don’t accept me near them. Like that tale of Hazis Nesin, the well-known Turkish humorist. I think you know that character, who aimed to get in the mafia. We are of another paste! We are moulded with Chameria flavour. The rare flavour of our marvellous homeland, my friend.
– Remember Chameria flavour and call me!
– We will contact each other.
– On August, thirty-six?!
– Sure! Even if we don’t want, they would join us. They can’t do without us. Keep your ear to the ground – shook his hand Namik and the car left.
Us and them!… Honest and dishonest!… Dishonest all over the world…. Dishonest and that invisible drag of alliances, like a giant spider web where the human life has failed….. Instantly, the poetry verses of a Cham writer gleamed in my mind:

This land
The honest people
Hold it on their shoulder
They are tired
Dishonest
Have doubled the world weight
Honest
From the Atlas till now
Charged like coolies
They aren’t unloaded yet
And bethink, and bethink…
To let the world fall
And come apiece
Or to keep laden on their shoulders
dishonest people’s globe?!…

Honest and dishonest!… Us and them… Indeed, they can’t make anything without us, was suddenly cleared up the thinking. Like the opposites of the binomial. And necessarily Namik and I will always be in front of them along the swirl of that gigantesque eddy, the corruption that has magically slotted Albanian life… Uncorrupted people versus corrupt people and corrupters…
The caravan had disappeared already and I had remained among Lana drowned flow and the heady flow of cars that were hurrying and hurrying and were clashing in my face the smog: petrol and burnt oil hard odour. There was a heavy traffic at night in Tirana. There was heavy smog too. After all inside of me I smelt Chameria flavour…

Shefki Hysa
Writer