I understand that most “national traits” are the consequence of an unhappy history, in this case centuries of bitter struggle against the Turks. But there were also thousands of Albanians who went voluntarily to serve the Turks, were Turkish favourites, generals, officials, helped oppress their country and — and yet remained Albanians. Such are the whims of national culture. An Albanian major said to me: “It’s as well that the Turks oppressed us, and kept us away from their civilization. But for that, the Albanian language might have disappeared without trace.” This was, as I say, an Albanian major speaking. Therefore I didn’t say what I was sorely tempted to say: But what good did that do you? Try telling your beautiful wife: I love you in Albanian. Wouldn’t it be better to say it wholly in Turkish than half-say it in Albanian? It’s a crime to oppress a nation, we both agree about that. But to praise the negative outcome of this oppression, the chance survival of a technically interesting language is false and childish national pride. But as I say, I bit my tongue.
I passed through towns of an exquisite ghostliness, and others that were simply heart-breaking. I saw Elbasan, one of the oldest towns in the country. Its stone buildings in stone courtyards in stone grounds have the monumentality of death and at the same time its idyllic grief. There is nothing so moving as the green between stones, cracks and crannies sprouting soft, damp moss, the flower of mould and nothingness. It makes the stone somehow still stonier. With its winding lanes and its hunchbacked bazaar the town is reminiscent of a sort of huge and whimsically, defiantly irregular snail shell, whose original inhabitant has died and has left its place to a clutch of casual, brown, picturesquely clad, also soiled and broken traders. It appears that most of Elbasan belongs to one Shefgiet Verlaci, the father-in-law to be of Ahmed Zogu. Elbasan boasts one of the loveliest, widest, greenest prayer sites of the whole country, where on hot afternoons priests and acolytes like to recline and give themselves over to metaphysics. In the east are the great Mohammedan cemeteries with gravestones like outsize mushrooms; in the south is the dynamited bridge at Skumli, and further an extensive deep-green olive wood, a fairy-tale wood for a stage production.
I will mention Kruja. It is a dream of primitivism. It reminds me of the story of Rebecca going to the well. A naïve early Biblical fuzz overlies the overgrown village. Pots are baked in large fiery open ovens, Old Testament forms, handled jars of innocent clay, brownish-girlish, with youthfully slim necks and hips, and slightly clumsy thin spouts. Turkish coffee is boiled on open fires. The café consists of a patron and an immovable set of scales, in whose pans sit a couple of cups filled with black, viscous, syrupy stuff. The town is ruled with a heavy hand by the gendarmerie commander, who in another life was a warlord (or, some might say, robber baron). He has a fine uniform with gold stars.
Walking around, you encounter Biblical scenes: shepherds scarved against sunburn, leaf huts, tents of woven willow, men on mule-back, veiled women, knitting as they walk. The land is so peaceful that you refuse to credit its reputation for murder. Even so, I met a man who wanted to avenge a friend, and shot an innocent party by mistake. He was unlucky: the innocent party had seven brothers, who are now all on the tail of my acquaintance. He tried sending out various emissaries, but it takes a while to settle on a price. For three months now he has lived in imminent expectation of death. He is no sort of primitive Albanian either, but a man who has lived in Paris as a munitions worker and returned, expressly to carry out his vendetta. Even though he is himself pursued, he is still looking for the man who murdered his friend.
If you come to the European towns like Scutari, Valona, Korça, towns with stiff collars, cravats, postcards, razor blades, gold fillings, Ford automobiles and lawyers — then you are even less inclined to believe in such a proximity of semi-civilization and epic. Even so, the barber’s brother is a bone fide and quite a successful warlord. When he comes into town, he has himself shaved, drinks coffee, and talks like you and me. We’re all human.
Urban Albanians are strikingly timid. It takes less courage to shoot here than to speak. An Albanian would rather shoot than say what he thinks. He is afraid of the walls’ ears. He senses a spy in everyone, and he’s half-right. An Albanian “Okhrana” in the sense of the Russian organization doesn’t exist — not least because every urban Albanian is a passionate and spontaneous observer of his neighbours’ comings and goings and doings, takes childlike pleasure in teasing out “mysteries” and finds dangerous secrets in perfectly open and transparent things. This complicates life for the good Albanian people. A stranger does not come in for particular attention, no, everyone watches him with passion and primitive fascination. How often I met Albanians who said to me, with cunning expressions on their faces: “You’re a journalist”—as though I had tried to make a secret of it, and should now feel rumbled. But if I happened to ask: “What’s new then?” or “What does it say in your Albanian newspaper that I can’t read?” then they shrugged their shoulders, because “new” is equated with danger, and anything resembling a “novelty” may give you away. A constant formula is the reply: “I have no news. You tell me something. You know everything.” Then you can be sure that your discreet Albanian will straightaway repair to some interesting place and report: “What he said was…” These people’s love of intrigue is as great as their fear of expressing an opinion. Over time, they do so little that they seem to have given up all their own opinions, and only listen to those of others. Why have an opinion merely to suppress it? In place of political convictions there is political partisanship, instead of struggle conspiracy, instead of a word a hint, instead of caution fear. In this land no ruler is safe, and no subject either. A publicly expressed view is an impossibility — even if it were allowed. Over the centuries the Albanians have lost all pleasure in the right to an opinion. Even unambiguous circumstances become secret mysteries in their hands. They have no taste for the absence of danger.*
Their virtues are courtesy, silence, modesty, gentleness. Their most dangerous quality: love of money. There are places where the farmers bury piles of gold, and continue to acquire more. Perhaps their frugality is half miserliness. They are not so much work-shy as plain feeble. They accomplish vastly less than a European because they are so poorly nourished. Their lack of wants borders on the absurd. Their extreme moderation is sad and oppressive — almost as oppressive as the absence of women in the public life of the towns, where you can go many days without seeing or hearing a single one. Their lives are de-eroticized, love has been degraded to a domestic virtue, and a stroll is as perspectiveless as a Sunday.
But such a topical part of the world…!
Frankfurter Zeitung, 30 July 1927