I called my father, Sokol Zheku, while he was on the road driving an eighteen wheeler. We discussed history and his personal story. Our conversation was hours long so I including a 30 minute segment in this transcript. He was like a well of knowledge for this project.
Where are you?
Koli: Where am I? I am somewhere in Nebraska.
Really? Did you ever imagine in Albania you’d be driving across the country in America.
K: It was a dream just to go from one city to the other.
Seriously?
K: I mean, seriously, the movement was limited. By all means like transportation. You might be suspicious if you go to some city near the border, like if I go to another city and let’s say 10 minutes past the city I got over the border. I could get arrested if I don’t have any additional should have permission from the from the..
You’re breaking up, Koli. Now I can hear you better.
K: Yeah. Actually, the secret police would arrest you if you didn’t have permission. ‘What are you doing in this village here? Do you have permission?’ No? You are handcuffed and you never know what will happen after that.
Did you know anyone who went missing or was arrested?
K: I know people know they got killed. They tried to escape on the sea.
Do you remember what year?
K: This was in 1985. Actually, he was the same age as me. I used to go to high school with a guy. He was with two other guys and tried to escape with some kind of improvising. Maybe swimming or something like you know, they provide something like they pull those. You know those days before the tire they have the heavy side. It’s not like this. They have something that you call that you put that on that it’s not like right now you have only the big tire is nothing inside. Before it was something inside there.
I don’t know. Sil would probably know.
Yeah, anyway so they used to make like a raft. They inflate them and put some like some makeshift wood or something like that and they tried to escape then. And the border police didn’t even try to harass them, they just killed them and I think their bodies, they never – they left them in the freaking sea. He was my age I think. I forget his name but I still remember his face.
Why do you think he was trying to escape?
Because he didn’t like communism.
Do you think it was part of something bigger? Like were a lot of people feeling that way?
No, I mean, like at that time people start feeling that, you know, their eyes start opening. The economy was getting worse and worse and you know the police were getting more brutal.
Was Enver Hoxha already dead when this guy tried to escape?
I don’t know if it was that year because he did April 11, 1985.
Your birthday present, right?
Yep and I don’t know, exactly. I don’t remember exactly if this is in this was in 1984 or 1985. But I know because I was in the Navy at that time when I heard the news and everybody was like ‘do you know what happened to this guy?’
No matter if your soul is hurting, your son just got killed – you still cannot express the pain because your son was a traitor. Your son was the enemy of the system. So if you cry for him, you’re an enemy, too.
I heard some of the family don’t even accept the body because if they accept the body to bury that means that they supported their acts in the eye of the state. No matter if your soul is hurting, your son just got killed – you still cannot express the pain because your son was a traitor. Your son was the enemy of the system. So if you cry for him, you’re an enemy, too. You should condemn him. Even though he was dead. You should say they did good. They should kill him and they killed him. They did good. You understand what I’m saying? So it’s horrible.
I mean in the 1990s, Ramiz Alia, was the successor of Enver Hoxha. He tried to act like Gorbachev, like he’s a little bit more liberal. There was a law before when Hoxha was alive, that attempt to escape was a crime and so was punishable with with a prison. Alia said it’s nota law anymore, and guess what? So many people tried to escape but this guy tricked them because he said it’s not an offense anymore. So before if you try to escape you’re sure going to have like, like 10 years or more in prison — if they don’t kill you. So this guy said, ‘Okay, we abolished this law. It’s not more crime anymore. You shouldn’t try to escape, but it’s no longer a crime.’ And guess what? He only said that, but on the other side, you know, on the government or whatever. That government – his government gave the order to the soldiers on the border, ‘Do not try to arrest them or to stop them but just kill them.’ Before if you tried to escape, they were only going go to stop you. But then if they saw you were dead – they were going to kill you. That was the last, the last crime and one of the last crimes of communism and so many so many they got they got deceived. And they go in there and they, you know, they got killed by Kalashnikovs. You know, AK 47s, that was the weapon of the guards.
Got it. Jesus Christ. How was it like living under the threat of violence all the time?
K: You know, that expression, ignorance is bliss? We didn’t know how bad it was. Albania at the time was almost like North Korea today, but we’re lucky because we were watching some TV, you know, and we were in the middle of Europe. But still, Albania’s communism was one of the most Stalinist systems. Sometimes when I think it was like maybe more Stalinist than Stalin him because Russia was big. Albania was small so it was more brutal, more easy to control.
You’re closer to the capital.
K: Plus, we didn’t have a tradition of democracy. As a matter of fact, we didn’t have any tradition at all because before the Second World War, Albania was like 90% agrarian – kind of almost feudalism.
We got our independence in 1912. So we’d been almost five or six hundred years under the Ottoman Empire, and after that, after the first World War, we got invaded from sites like Serbia in the north, Greece from the south and Italy from the west. After the First World War was only a few years of stability. It wasn’t even stability but it was like you know was King Zog but we got a revolution in 1924 So they toppled him. And he came back six months later and with the help of the Serbian forces.
So when you came here, were you like.. I feel like I would be paranoid.
K: Me and mom, for some reason, we would say if we left Albania, we would only go to America even though most Albanians left for Italy and Greece. I don’t know why. I think it was, to me. I think it was, believe it or not, because of The Leaves of Grass. I cannot explain but when I read “Song to Myself” it was like you’re in the dark and somebody opens the curtain and sees, “oh, it is so light out there.
it was like you’re in the dark and somebody opens the curtain and sees, “oh, it is so light out there.
Imagine this: every poem, every book, everything, you cannot be an individual. You have to be part of something. You have to be part of the cause. You have to be good or bad as a character in the book or poem or whatever. Your good or your, your character is bad, against the party, against communism, against the people, the enemy of the people, enemy of everybody, or you’re good. So imagine now, all these books that I read and I read this guy that said ‘hey, I sing to myself, I celebrate myself.’
you cannot be an individual. You have to be part of something. You have to be part of the cause. You have to be good or bad as a character
The funny part is if you read that, and you know me, I don’t like people that are cocky, you know, like if you read that without thinking, you think he’s egocentric. He’s cocky. You know, ‘I celebrate myself, I sing to myself’, you know, like he is God but it didn’t sound like that at all for me.
It sounded like somebody could be honest. I’m free and you are part of me and I am part of you. It seemed like this guy is free, honest, and he can tell everything he wants. I tried to figure out what shocked me, like all these years later, but I think this is the one. He was so free, like unimaginable freedom. and to write, you can be free inside, but declare it the world: “I’m me. I celebrate. I can sing.” It shocked me.
I still have a copy – have to show you that. Actually, Mama gave it to me. She took it from Lana and I never gave it back.
How were you allowed to have a copy of Leaves of Grass?
Okay so that’s another story. Communism won at the end of WWII. Albania was liberated on November 29 1944. So communism got power in, let’s say, at the end of 1944. So in that time there were still some intellectuals in Albania – they didn’t get in prison yet or they didn’t get killed yet or whatever. So this guy who translated it was smart and intelligent and wise. He was a volunteer in the Spanish. You know anything about that? So many people from all over the world went to fight with. They used to call that the international brigade. They were they very left. So this this guy, this guy you use beside that you as a intellectual but he was also also you know an idealist. Communism got the power in the end of the 1944 and didn’t have absolute power. The book was published in 1956. So still the communist doesn’t have total control over everything that’s why I suppose there’s so many books that were published in that time.
We used to give to each other them like contraband. Like illegal trade — I have this book, it’s banned you should read it but don’t don’t let anybody catch you with that. I read Theodore Dreiser which was banned, I read Hemingway which was banned in Albania and other things. I have Leaves of Grass at home it seems like it looks an old newspaper, you know, when get like yellow? I still have this book.
So that’s I always said I loved America even though the propaganda against America was like, like, like on full force every day. America was like the number one enemy
Enemy to what? To Albania?
To the proletariat and to the workers of the world.
Okay, so what is Albania then? The hero?
The masses they thought were like in the center of the world. You know, like our dictator was only one was telling the truth and keeping Marxism alive because even the Soviets, they are ‘evil’, they were ‘treacherous’. They were traitors of Marxism Leninism.
What did Marxism do for you though? Did you feel like oh, we need this like, what would we do without this?
Part of the curriculum in high school was the philosophy of Marxism and I don’t really remember anything. But I know that Marx slogans and Lennin books about them. They were all over. You don’t know, we were so isolated.
Okay, let me tell you this. I’m reading a book one time by German writer about the Second World War. So in that book, he says, one part of the book, he said, like ‘oh, the food the food was getting scarce. ‘Now we don’t — I don’t remember exactly the amount — but let’s say now we can have only 300 grams of meat or day.’– something like that. . So I’m reading the book and this is when Hitler was losing, when like, you know, Germany was losing the war. And I’m like, ‘what? We don’t have this much meat but we’re free. We like the happiest country in the world.’ We don’t have much because at the end, everything started rationing, you know, like you cannot find meat like freely on the market. You only have a ration for the week. So I’m like, ‘What the fuck? They’re losing the war. These are the worst days of Nazi Germany and they still eating even better on us.’ So here and there sometimes the censor slips. If you read you read between the lines, sometimes you can you can see. Try to remember. I mean, nobody told me this, but you know, I’m kind of like catching it myself.
Did I tell you the story with Badui(his father)? The class warfare in Albania was horrible.
Explain.
Let’s say, let’s say I have this this classmate. She’s okay –she lives in Boston, okay. They they put her father in jail when she was like 13 years old. They put her father in jail for 14 years. I didn’t know why. Now, I know. I mean, I know that there’s a charge of ‘propaganda against against the system.’ That’s that was the indictment was for.
Is that like a blanket reason?
They can put anybody like that. They get two witnesses. Look how bad it was: they’s say you have to criticize the leaders and you have to give us suggestions on how we can improve. Let’s say you want to something fix something at work. We cannot find meat on the market. I mean, people are complaining people are not happy. So you’re saying this to help them to fix those things. That night somebody might knock on your door and grab you and put in jail and say you’re doing propaganda against against the system, against the government.
So let’s say I liked this friend and we fell in love and now I have to tell my father I fell in love with her and want to get married. There’d be no way. My family would become targets — persona non-grata.
my-family-story 