I slept under a line of holy paintings in their best room, exempted from everyday use. The bed was a wide bench layered with pelts and blankets, topped with a duvet that would be enough for the harshest winter; “and winters,” they said, “are harsh here.” They slept in the kitchen. Laid their mattresses on the floor and locked up the whole house “because,” they explained, “there are thieves all around here.” “Once they even stole our dog. To call them neighbors is too much, the living scum.” The house was well heated; a fug filled the corners; he murmured something to her, her reply was quick and hostile. Then he left; I smelled the cigarette from where he was sitting outside in the darkness, smoking. Finally, he got up and went somewhere.
He woke me early in the morning. It was cold, and I quickly got my things together. His wife kissed me goodbye, wished me safe travels. He walked me to the main road. “It will come soon,” he said. It is one of those village secrets; there was nothing there, and there has never been; just a right turn after the bridge, and you have to stand precisely there. And the schedule’s in your head. “It comes from Przemyśl, and Przemyśl is a long way away,” he said. “Should be here already, it’s a little late.” I kept shivering from the cold despite my sweater; he stood next to me in a short sleeve shirt, sweaty, reeking of a hangover, his pores releasing all that had accumulated over the years. He kept smoking off-brand cigarettes, smuggled from all over Europe; smoking one after another. Finally, he implored: “Not that I’m asking, but wouldn’t you leave me something?” “I did, at the house, on the table,” I said, and he left immediately. A bus emerged from behind the trees, filled to the brim with people, their wares, and the usual checkered bags, some things tied with rope and wire—nothing that would bring to mind a proper international trade. In the morning, I was back in Czerniowce, where I again had no ticket. I went to the bus station, and from there, I went somewhere farther.
It’s that moment when the fear of not coming back disappears. I always have this sensation at the beginning. The first night, wherever I go, is always the most expensive one. As if I were looking for a comfortable casket for my precious body. The same with the first meal and the first train—they’re always the best. And then I grow used to the circumstances until one day I find myself sitting in somebody’s home; the home of the people I don’t know. I find myself in a musty bed, unused for years, in a village the name of which I don’t know. I drink with the men, whose names I never learn. I listen to their stories; usually these are modest. Their entire worldly possessions could be tied up in a handkerchief. Even if they travel, they stay in the cheapest dumps. Their women will stay ten to a room to save money, and their adventures—in the eyes of men—have nothing heroic in them; they simply clean other people’s houses and bring the money back. When their children leave, it’s as if they’ve dropped off the map on which all the places they know are marked. They disappear forever. They live somewhere and the name of this somewhere is an object of pride. They say: “She left for Sydney,” or “for Toronto, she is an official now, sir,” but they never add that she will never come visit, never come back; that she lost all will to do so.
Cities, villages, and hamlets; inconceivable metropolises. Roads between them. All of that was compressed into one big mass. I keep ripping out parts of it; the rest I fill in myself because it was forgotten. Places my clan decided to abstain from because they would rather nurture their gardens and melancholia, because they would rather sour the kraut for winter and look after the tightly sealed windows, brew tea and meticulously sweeten it. My clan sat motionless, breeding memory because nobody else wanted to, but somebody had to, after all. They kept holding a more and more intense vigil over it; one that kept building a taller and taller wall separating them from other clans until, one day, it turned out that they were just a miserable bunch in the middle of a sea; that, along with the crazies from Kulaparkowo, my whole clan would be locked away forever because nobody could listen to their miserable wailing. It turned out that the entire clan was on the same boat with St. Wojciech and St. Bruno, and any minute now they would all be decapitated because they believed in their past and still wanted to remember it. And all of this was done as if the whole clan was taking part in dziady, praising the pagan deity Kupała and the dead, a ritual only understood, in its own way, by so few. My clan was sitting and debating the past as if it were their children’s future; as if they believed anything at all could depend on it. But all was buried already; others built their houses on this cemetery, on this dump; just like we built ours on somebody else’s cemetery. I have forsaken my people and their silly obsequies, and now I’m ashamed. In return, I tell the story of what I’ve seen after my escape.
I was in Shkodër, I tell my clan, where in the middle of an empty road stood a boy, maybe five years of age, with a plastic bottle full of bread soaked with water. And it was this peculiar boy who was a foreword to all other cities and villages in Albania. One has to try and foresee, based on those first sights, what has been seen since the beginning; you have to figure out the rest. But he was a false prophecy, a decoy. Albanian roads are chaotic and loud, women stroll under enormous black umbrellas designed for a heavy rain—you can see those umbrellas everywhere, even in nineteenth-century paintings; or under rice-paper umbrellas, not because of some Japanese fashion, but because of the stores with Chinese merchandise that have settled down there like in all of our cities. The sun is scorching, scorching. Days spent half asleep, in the search of shadow. They burn wood by the side of the road, and fry corn in the fire; it’s black and hard as a stick. Night in Durrës, Durazzo, displaying its Venetian chattels in full glory, its towers—but it’s a port city like any other, maybe a little poorer. A scrapyard city, composed of car washes and inhabited by towel sellers—towels with an ominous coat of arms, an ancient warning: a red background—fire walk with me. On top, a black bird, a vicious two-headed eagle. Scare, burn, butcher the others; that’s the Albanian coat of arms. They must’ve made it as a deterrent. Red flags for lying on the beach, for drying yourself after a swim in the lake; somehow I can’t imagine drying a young body with such symbol—a talloned beast with tongues split like a snake’s. And yet, they lie flat on those eagles, among bites of concrete blackened by the sea and slightly crumbled. Although, if you look you can tell there are hundreds of years of crumbling ahead of them; and even then they won’t disappear by themselves. This concrete is what’s left of the bunkers built by a mad ruler who, in the olden days, would have a colorful nickname, like Enver the Vengeful, or Enver the Evil, or Concrete Enver, after those bunkers, or Enver the Murderer, or the Idiot, because he wasn’t the brightest. He did so much, it’s hard to pick the right thing. In any case, the concrete is what’s left of him. And it imitates the rock. This is the crop of the sea here, bunkers and concrete, and not the stones.
Durrës, Durazzo, is of a density and intensity of all that seems initially unfriendly and hostile: sticky hotness and the sea throwing out rotten matter, stores with an amalgam of merchandise, internet cafes like a convent locutory. All of Albania communicates with the world from those cafes: with Germany, with Italy, with some place where one can settle for a bit, earn a little money and then build a house, or at least live a little better. Families stand in front of those computers, staring at those on whom their fate depends. And those on the other end will be suspended between two lives for years, until they realize that it’s enough, or, on the contrary, they’ll understand that they alone live their new lives, and that there’s almost nothing that connects them to that family on the computer screen. But for now, three generations gather to stare into a camera, they say “son, dad, dear,” and the one on the other end gets emotional. Where in line is the Albanian nation, in embarking on a journey to conquer the world? Where, after the Italians, Portuguese, Greeks, Turks, after the Poles and Ukrainians? Our whole continent wanders, and it’s not the only one that does so.
Durrës, Durazzo, and its sister Marseille-Massilia with its dense boroughs and dark
alleyways close to the market, where the scents are from a different world, from across oceans, and where a police patrol ends with a brawl and a roundup, with the barking of a megaphone; it ends with somebody’s tragedy—just like it started; only somewhere else, on a different continent. It started with a tragedy that brought that somebody to this port city that smells of fish. Durrës, sister of Casablanca, black from its black population, from the inhabitants of a different Africa, who came from afar because from here—it’s closer to the better side. They walk around with their lives packed into checkered bags, they sleep wherever, do simple jobs, and sell merchandise so shiny it has to be fake. Sister port cities, at the doorstep, with a human wave rushing somewhere.
“In the morning, in Skopje, from the room in the Motel Vien, you will see blocks of flats,” I go on, telling the story to my family in my thoughts; family that could never be convinced to step on the evil path of travel, “and you can see minarets rising from between.” This hotel was, like all other hotels in the Muslim neighborhood, inserted between blocks of flats; there was no room anywhere else, only here, on the former lawns, driveways, where normally you’d find garages. Between blocks of flats—a network of pathways, trails, concrete tracks; some sectioned in half by a chain so that no one can drive onto them and park; not all of this is private property. The smells from the nearby market strike like from any other market in the world, but you can’t actually find much: yogurt, dried apricots, bread, figs, and herbal tea. “Muslims” says the seller and makes a gesture of hopelessness, as if the religious affiliation binds him not only when it comes to beer.
They drink tea at the bar by the market, they stare at the TV tuned to a Turkish channel—one that broadcasts local dance music. That’s what they like here. The owner has a leukoma in one eye. He wrapped the remote in plastic and he rules the TV. He keeps track of every tea in a notebook. One client, so he puts a “|” in the line for tea. Another client, “|” in the cola line. There’s nothing else. They sit and smoke, slowly slurping. They listen. The teahouse is on the street of the smiths, the doors to their shops opened; you can see how those who have a job forge. Older smiths don’t get new jobs anymore, they sit outside their workshops. Next to them are the jewelers. It seems like not much changes here, a hundred years ago the description of this place would be similar, even the merchandise almost the same, only the crowd would be slightly thicker back then: a market in a Muslim neighborhood, mosques, muezzin, teahouses, and those half-unemployed elders; except jewelers were always in demand because the thirst for gold is never quenched. They drink tea and sit in silence. They drink tea and talk—depending—calmly; only a young clerk at a grocery kiosk is nervous. He hands change back too quickly, distractedly, because he has a computer on his desk and is watching a soccer game.
The hotelier is serious, his gestures are subdued. His mouth is surrounded by an already grayish beard; it reaches his chest. His assistant also has a beard, but it’s still more like a goatee. The hotel’s is called the Vien because the owner saved up the money for its construction while living in Vienna. I wonder what he did there. He named his hotel after a city that—yes—gave him a rough time, but also gave him money and a new life. The hotelier’s name, and I don’t even have to come up with a fake one, was Imer Osmani. During the day he sits in an alcove under the stairs because that’s the only place with a little bit of room, since everything is slightly crooked in this building built without a second thought, as if the architect wasn’t present at the construction site. On the shelf behind him is a Turkish flag. In the drawer—The Book of Commentaries. In the morning there is a young couple sitting in front of him. She’s dressed properly, wearing a hijab. His dress is also modest, a shirt and pressed pants. The hotelier holds the Book in front of him and explains life to them. They fall quiet when I approach. The hotel is just a side operation, a necessity, whereas the true need is nestled in this alcove, at that pulpit for conflicted spouses, for the infertile, for the brothers who took to drinking.
There is an upheaval on the stone bridge. In a split second, all the merchants gather up their stands made of carton, grab their goods, and, suddenly, the bridge is deserted. No more chestnut sellers, no more CDs and movies on VHS, toys, socks, and knee braces; nothing’s there anymore—in the blink of an eye. A man who looks like a civilian comes along, but the word “Police” is printed on the back of his jacket. He makes a ritual of his arrival, so that everyone has time to run. I saw a similar scene in Vienna, the city praised by Imer Osmani. Two youngsters were selling things off a cardboard stand. The police arrived and chased after them on their motorbikes, on the sidewalk—the boys didn’t stand a chance. Here, it’s different. Here, these are still different times.
The yellow-green hills surrounding the city are covered with snow. It’s sunny in the city and a strong, chilling wind. People sit close to the buildings for warmth. Diplomats in suits drink coffee on the main avenue. The light is low and the poplars appear white. Everything seems to be shining with an internal glow, the bridge, the Vardar River running under it, the people walking over it. The bones protruding from a beggar’s stump-leg are more pronounced. The ruins of Ottoman houses have sharper edges. And at night, the light in the bar window glows red and there’s one beer left in the fridge, but people there wouldn’t order it anyway, so it’ll be there when I arrive. They smoke cigarettes and stare at the TV where dark-haired, dark-eyed beauties squirm; tense, to a point where you wish you could reach out and touch them. Thirty men stare at the women on-screen; each man has a mustache, smokes, and never smiles. They lust after those women but won’t do anything about it. They drink their kefir and unconsciously maul cigarettes between their fingers, eventually lighting up one after another.
I wanted my clan to know how, in Belgrade, people run across multi-lane streets, between speeding cars, and everyone has something for sale—small children and adults, even the elderly—because they all belong to this dark-skinned nation and they all run, risking their lives. They are the local Indians, from the local reservation by the Danube or the Sava rivers. I can’t remember where their city is; it’s not a camp, but an actual city—with actual addresses for the mailman’s sake, painted on the plywood of their abodes, which have backyards sometimes paved with wood planks, and sometimes even stone, with tires holding down the roofs made of aluminum and leftover paneling. Between the houses, their rags hang drying in the wind, and a plant grows out of a cracked bowl—something green for decoration; and a decoration means it’s home. There is one real home in the middle of this city. And it’s not the house of some outside master, but of a tribesman for whom they all do honest work. The King of scrap and rags, the emperor of waste paper; he’ll buy the handlebars for a child’s tricycle, and any amount of tram tracks collected God knows how from all over Belgrade. He doesn’t ask any questions. You don’t ask questions here. He’ll buy a pile of yellowed newspapers wrapped with string and a reel of paper that his people will roll down from the printers. His house is like a town hall and Supreme Court all in one; the epicenter of power and justice, the last instance. And to the side, across the road, is a crapper. You get there by a linoleum path that leads through the mud; a red path, as if you were in Cannes walking the red carpet reserved for the stars. On the other side of the river, on the flat part of the shore, is a smaller kingdom; one wonders if it has its own ruler, or if the power reaches there from this side of the river. Maybe they’re outcasts? Exiled from the city? I see the inhabitants of those bum kingdoms everywhere; they try to wash your car window with dirty water, they try to spit on your car, or make a deal of some sort. Most often, however, they carry some kinds of scraps, God knows from where; they’re like ants, like bees that feed their queen and in whose hive the drone is growing; a fat baby ready to inherit the crown and continue to overwork its people, but pay them even less.
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