Polyparty-ism - Search for Common Ground

A tragic feeling about
balkan borders
Luan Starova
(A synopsis of an Albanian
family drama and of the borders
from 1941 to 2001)
1941
Two brothers with their families
lived in the town of Pogradec, on the
border between Albania and
Macedonia. The Greco-Italian War
ended. Fascism created new borders.
People here are used to borders,
but they have always created a
desire to leave. Borders cut water,
souls, nations, and religions.
Leaving could mean salvation. It
was always a time to flee when people's
internal borders trembled with
fear, with anxiety.
1942
Fascism was spreading throughout
Albania; new partitions, new
illusions, new borders. Every family
either became a fortress or prepared
to fly across the border to safety, to
ascend like a cloud between Heaven
and Earth, like on Chagal's canvasses.
The fragile country was in the
grip of fascism that was accepted by
those deceived by Mussolini's false
and chimerical promises, and rejected
by others who joined partisan
resistance. Families were split; solutions
sought. Only children played
happily with stamps picturing the
previous monarch, and exchanged
them for other stamps of the leader
of destroyed countries.
1943
Anxiety overcame the families
of the two brothers. The older one,
who had studied law in Istanbul in
the 1920s, refused to be subjected to
fascism. Trying to avoid a concentration
camp, he decided to cross the
border through Lake Ohrid at night.
The younger brother, who had studied
in London in the 1920s and had
wanted to introduce the scout movement
to Albania, decided to stay in
his native town. The mother
remained caught between the two
families. The older brother was resolute:
"My dear brother, there is no
future for us here!"
"If there is no future in our
native country, then we won't find it
anywhere," answered the younger
brother.
"Fascism has divided us, made
us quarrel. Some of our people have
decided to join it. Dark days are
coming."
"I'm keeping out of this, brother.
I've done no harm," the younger
brother finished.
They hugged each other for the
last time.
1944
The older brother crossed the
unguarded border with his family
that night. He arrived on the other
side, at another destiny, and started a
new life with new people. His legal
trade brought him close to defeated
people, and he helped them in difficult
moments. He lived with his destiny,
with everything he had lost and
left in his native country: the house
and the field; and the vineyard
inherited from his ancestors which,
of course, had never been denationalized.
1945
The war ended. Fascism was
severely defeated. Nothing, however,
changed in the Balkans! The history
of the borders continued.
Communism came, and it was greeted
first as the conqueror of fascism.
Stalinism accompanied it, however;
a new great ideological division.
Borders were paradoxically open for
the two brothers during Stalinism.
They could cross them easily, in the
name of the free spirit of "proletarian
internationalism." But they
stayed, each one with his own destiny,
with his own family.
1948
The idyll between Tito and
Stalin did not last long. In fact, it
had never existed. The country
where the older brother lived had
more luck. It opened towards the
world. His children got opportunities
to study in good schools and
faculties, and to have respectable
professions. The younger brother
was taken "to hell" with his family.
Albania became the last bastion of
Stalinism. When borders truly
become ill, they spread a contagion,
and create total isolation. What
starts to function is the system of
looking for supposed victims, that
impossible Balkan syndrome of
self-destruction, carried over from
prehistoric times into religions, ideologies
and the impulse for power.
The younger brother soon
entered the list of victims. His crucial
fault was his English connection;
that is, his education. He was
arrested, and tortured to "confess."
He disappeared in prison. His family
was informed that he had committed
suicide! A real Golgotha
23
Liberation from war, April 2001