Swire over his newspaper that he was waiting for his death, for Essadâs blood had to be avenged. Six weeks later he was shot down in Tirana by a hireling of Essadâs family, âa thick man with a red faceâ whom Swire says he met several times in 1930 near his house âwith an innocent umbrella in his handâ.
The priests and the teenage girls were gone when we wandered back past the cathedral. Not a soul was about, even at the residential end of Rruga Ndre Mjeda. Shkodërâs population turns indoors between the hours of one and three.
A mangy cat lying in a doorway raised its head as we passed. A single vendor had chosen to stay with his five or six copies of Albert Camusâ The Outsider , which was enjoying the runaway success of a newly released hot title.
It was at the bottom end of the rruga that we came upon a small crowd lined up outside an open door.
The building seemed to be some kind of shrine. A new enterprise, something like Bill would imagine, a highly popular café even crossed my mind.
âIt is not these things,â says Gjyzepina. âIt isâ¦How do you sayâ¦?â
She thought for the moment, concentrating with the effort.
âIt is the house of biografi.â
âA house?â
âNo. Not a house exactly. An office.â
We chewed around some more, before nailing it down to the office for political prisoners.
I preferred Gjyzepinaâs original choice.
âHouse of biografi did you say?â
âYes,â she says. âThis is the place.â
14
IN A BACK room of the house of biografi there is a desk and two chairs. The registrar sits before a huge open ledger, into which he enters the details of the person sitting opposite.
The room is filled with surviving relatives. Adult children with stories of parents carried off in the night. Wives who have lost touch with their husbands. Or solitary men and women, former prisoners and exiles whose lives were confiscated under the old regime, have been lining up in Rruga Ndre Mjeda to tell their story.
Two lines form in this small cool room of alabaster. One behind the registrarâs desk, and another line before me and Gjyzepina.
It just happened this way, a story for the ledger and another for me. They present their lives as though they are little more than damaged houseware, bits of crockery; as if to say, Here, do with it what you may.
In Albania when lives disappeared it was more often than not through a trapdoor called âArticle 55â, shorthand for âagitation, betrayal and propagandaâ. The first time I ask a man who had been jailed for ten years for the evidence, some details please of his âbetraying the peopleâ, he doesnât quite understand.
âThe evidence? The evidence is they said I betrayed the people.â
Then he says, âWhen they said âTen yearsâ, it felt to me that they had kissed me on both cheeks.â
One woman refuses to come further than the doorway. She is halfway through giving her details when she loses her nerve. The registrar assures her that she is amongst friends. She mustnât feel afraid.
âIt is not for myself that I feel afraid,â she says. âI am afraid for my children.â
The sigourimi recently dynamited some houses in her street. She does not want her house to be next. She says she is sorry; she cannot go through with her story. It is still much too dangerous.
Luchia Cole steps forward. She had worked in a bakery. In the late seventies, during one of the countryâs periodic convulsions, the biografis were pored over for likely victims and it was discovered that Luchiaâs father had escaped the country in 1951. After eleven months of interrogation, Luchia âconfessedâ to her crime and was jailed for eight years under Article 55.
Gjenovefa Vilaku is here on her husbandâs behalf. Before their marriage, before they had even met, her husband was studying in