Enver Hoxha, Haxhi Qamili and the "dumbabs"

By: Naum Prifti

Skënder Luarasi was one of the rare people, if not the only one, who ignored Enver Hoxha's message of self-criticism, maintaining his personal dignity and views. And yet he remained alive. His admirers attributed this miracle, first of all, to his father, Petro Nini Luarasi, and the sympathy he enjoyed in intellectual circles with his personality.

At the First Party Congress in 1948, Enver Hoxha elevated Haxhi Qamili to the rank of outstanding patriots, presenting him as a peasant rebel of the Pugachev or Stjepan Razin type, as a shallow historian had presented him. This characterization aroused strong objections among all honest patriots who knew that period. They sent letters and protests to the Central Committee that Haxhi Qamili was and remained a Turk who had fought with the flag of Turkey and with the slogan “we want Baba” (the Sultan), when independence had just been declared. The letters remained unanswered and there was no discussion in the party-controlled press, but in free conversations, the criticism was quite strong. The contradiction was that while the party saw Haxhi Qamili with class eyes as the standard-bearer of the fight against Esat Pasha Toptani and other beys, the patriots judged his movement to be profoundly anti-national.

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The Museum of the National Liberation War on Barricade Street was opened in the former Police Headquarters, a three-story building that no longer exists, opposite the Poliambulance. In the main background of the largest hall, the portrait of the noble old man Ismail Qemali, with a white beard, was visible, and next to him the gloomy portrait of the bandit Haxhi Qamili with a black plume beard, with military boots and a hat. Prof. Skënder Luarasi, upon visiting the museum, said with irony: “Beautiful, very beautiful! Here they have put him on a pedestal as the one who raised the Albanian flag, as the one who lowered it”! His monumental sentence spread rapidly, for the strong contrast and for the truth it contained. Many patriots could not stand Haxhi Qamili next to Ismail Qemali, but they did not dare to speak openly and mock the museum's creators, because they knew that the model had been approved by the highest echelons of the party.

I am reproducing Skënder Luarasi's account of Haxhi Qamili, just as I heard it from his own mouth:

Haxhi Qamili was an ignorant peasant from the village of Sharrë in Tirana. He was a religious fanatic, so he had once been sent to Mecca for a pilgrimage. When he returned from there, the villagers began to call him “haxhi”, according to custom, and thus Qamili became Haxhi Qamili. He was a bachelor of advanced age and his brother used him as a servant by sending him to sell leeks in the Tirana bazaar. He would have remained his brother’s servant all his life, if the quarrel had not broken out in Durrës between Esat Pasha Toptani and Musa Qazim, the mufti of Tirana.

At a meeting of leaders in 1913, Esat Pasha, a man with strong political ambitions, just returned from Istanbul, made claims to a leadership position, while his rivals attacked him with criticism, saying that he had been remembered late. Where was the pasha, when they were fighting for Albania? Esat said that even while he was away, he had helped his homeland by sending 3 gold liras from Turkey. A scandal broke out that the liras were not known where they had ended up, but it was suspected that they had been eaten or appropriated by Musa Qazim and his circle. The meeting was broken up, bridges were broken. Musa Qazim, upon returning to Tirana, thought of taking revenge on his opponent. After thinking about it, he sent word to Haxhi Qamili, to come and meet him. He knew him as a loyal and religious believer, so as soon as he saw him in front of him he said: "Hajji, Allah has entrusted you with a great mission"! Haxhi Qamili's eyes sparkled at the good news he heard, for he believed that the message came from God. "You will fight and exterminate the enemies who want to destroy our religion and try to defile the holy people"! "I am ready, right now," Haxhiu replied.

Musa Qazim, the man of religion, armed Haxhi Qamili with a rifle and a pistol and sent him to Kruja with three men behind him, to gather other volunteer forces. When they arrived in Kruja, they numbered thirty, and when they left Kruja, they numbered three hundred. This was Haxhi Qamili's army, which attacked the opposing beylers of Musa Qazim and his clan.

Prof. Skënder Luarasi saw his movement as a conflict between one pair of beylers against another and Haxhi Qamili as a tool in the hands of the mufti of Tirana. The movement was anti-Albanian from the beginning. Tearing up the Albanian flag, calling the eagle a chicken and fighting with the flag of Turkey, demanding the return of the Sultan two years after Albania's independence, was a stab in the back for the nation. The truth is that Haxhi Qamili and his gangs set fire to the palaces of several opposing beylers, where the spontaneous revolt of the peasantry avalanche that was behind them was joining, but in the meantime, the murders, mutilations and tortures of Albanian patriots cannot be forgiven. He put all the teachers of Albanian schools on the spot, as sinners who taught the students "the harps of the cowries".

Enver Hoxha was like a bicycle with a counter-pedal, he did not know and did not want to turn back. After more than twenty years he remembered to take up Haxhi Qamili again and present him as a patriot, this time using Marxist methodology without sparing. “His” study of Haxhi Qamili served as a model for historians and scientists to judge historical figures. Of course, it was a disgusting model (or a lesson in negative example, according to the Chinese expression), because there every fact was transformed, every truth was turned back into the service of the one-sided idea from which it had started.

The study, published in one of Enver Hoxha's many volumes, opened with criticism directed at S.L. and AM (perhaps Prof. Meksi), who had erred in their judgment of the figure of Haxhi Qamili. It was a direct criticism against Skënder Luarasi and, if I am not mistaken, Meksi, except with initials. After the publication of the work, friends and relatives advised Prof. Skënder, for his own good, to make a sincere self-criticism where he admitted that he had had wrong thoughts about the Haxhi Qamili movement, now that Enver Hoxha had publicly criticized him. Skënder remained unbending in his opinions and did not accept their suggestions. A little later, a special messenger, coming from an official institution, asked him if he had read the latest volume of comrade Enver, where he was criticized by name. Skënder replied that he read Enver Hoxha's works "carefully", but he had never seen any public criticism of himself. The special envoy, a fellow historian, told him that the initials SL were clear to anyone. Skënder, acting as if he knew nothing, asked: "Are you sure? I'm not. Who could this SL be?" The question was surprising to his colleague. "Of course, you are SL, Skënder Luarasi"! "And why is it me and not someone else? How do I know that it is not Selman Latifi, Sotir Lefteri or Sadik Lumi"? "You have expressed criticism of Haxhi Qamili, accusing him of being anti-Albanian, anti-national ... therefore, the leader criticizes you and you must admit your mistake", his colleague advised. "Not me", objected the professor. "Please tell me in which organ, or in which newspaper, I expressed my opinions about Haxhi Qamili. I cannot accept that this SL is me and I cannot take responsibility for who it might be.” The professor turned his colleague away, without bowing his head before the dictator.

"Weren't you afraid of the consequences?" I asked him when he told me the story. "I had a strong argument," he said. "I hadn't written or published anything about it, and I had spoken about it everywhere, but they couldn't prove it to me."

As soon as he learned that Luarasi refused to self-criticize, Enver Hoxha became furious. This made it clear that he continued to maintain his views on Haxhi Qamili. With his permanent malice, Enver Hoxha labeled him an agent of the imperialists and a son-in-law of the Soviets! He was terrible at political labeling and, worst of all, his words were repeated by other party members, expanded in concentric circles and became part of the administration and institutions. It was one of the lowest and most cunning forms of class warfare to discredit intellectuals. Could Skënder Luarasi be called the son-in-law of the Soviets because he married a Russian? Following this logic, Zogu should be called the son-in-law of the Hungarians and Enver Hoxha himself the son-in-law of the Dibrani people.

After the untimely death of his first wife, Skënder Luarasi married Maja, a lecturer at the Faculty of English. Her husband, an officer, succumbed to official pressure and was forced to divorce her, like many others who had married foreign women. Maja, for her own reasons, did not want to return to the Soviet Union and decided to remain a lecturer at the University of Tirana. As soon as Skënder declared that he would marry her, he received many reproaches, both from his friends and colleagues, but as a man of strong character, he did not listen to them. Then, either at their suggestion or on his own initiative, Mehmet Shehu sent his secretary Peçi Kallushi to convey the following words: “Skënder, I advise and command you not to marry a Soviet woman, because you will aggravate your sins and whims”! It was known that both suggestions and advice took the form of categorical orders when they came from the mouths of our leaders. Skënder immediately greeted Peçi, his secretary: "I apologize to the Prime Minister, and for the message you are sending, tell him that I am the Prime Minister in my home and family, not him." With so many conversations between them, it ended. Skënder had exemplary harmony with his wife until the end of his life. Fate wanted that after three daughters with his first wife, he would rejoice with a son, whom he baptized Petro, in memory of his father Petro Nini Luarasi.

Skënder Luarasi had a habit of surveying known and unknown people on issues he was interested in. He followed the same method for Haxhi Qamili and after a few years collected a series of stories about his tragic and comic exploits.

The episode with the swordsmen was part of that series. Its detailed narration and dramatic dialogues remained etched in my mind:

As soon as Haxhi Qamili and his bashibozuks arrived in Elbasan, the city's bakeries quickly emptied and the merchants closed their shops due to insecurity. The main problem for the rebels was securing food. Their commander-in-chief, Haxhi Qamili, knew this well, so wherever he set foot, he would release his army to plunder. This freedom gave them great pleasure, to plunder whatever they could in the city and the countryside, without paying a single penny. However, inside Elbasan they had nothing to requisition, so they attacked towards Shpati, on the plateaus of which they spotted several flocks of sheep. They snatched them from the pastures and brought them to the city, providing food reserves for several days. Haxhi Qamili congratulated them on their courage and speed. In the afternoon, the men of Gjinari returned from their work outside the house and heard from the women what had happened, the flocks had been plundered on the orders of Haxhi Qamili. They did not know who Haxhi Qamili was, but whoever he was, even God himself, could not give the order to rob their flocks. Seven or eight armed men set off towards Elbasan, where their flocks had ended up. As soon as they entered the city, they asked in which inn Haxhi Qamili was staying. When they entered the courtyard of the palace, the guard tried to stop them, telling them that no one could enter without Baba Haxhiu's order, but they rushed him through the gate with the barrels of their rifles, telling him not to pretend that their weapons were loaded. Four armed men entered the room where Haxhiu was lounging by the fire, since it was autumn time, while the others stood outside watching.

“Sir, are you Haxhi Qamili?” – one of them asked. “Yes, I am, by the grace of Allah,” Haxhi Qamili replied to the Serb. “Sir, did you order the soldiers to take our sheep from Shpat?” – the swordsman continued the question. He seemed angry and armed, so Haxhi Qamili invited him to sit down so they could talk. “Slowly, men, let’s come to an agreement. Sit down here squarely.” “No, believe me, we didn’t come to an agreement without ordering the soldiers to return the living creature to where they kidnapped it,” the swordsman interrupted. Haxhi Qamili carried a large revolver on his belt, one of whose magazines was loaded with cartridges, the other empty. He had declared that his knowledge separated the guilty from the innocent. Like a devil, he would turn the barrel of the revolver away from himself, when the empty shell was at the muzzle, fire it and of course he would not suffer anything, then he would point it at the other person's chest, fire it and leave it on the ground. Then he would turn to those present and ask: "Did you see that? Allah made him a fool"! The naive were amazed, while the superstitious people believed that the revolver really had magical powers. He wanted to use that trick on the swordsmen as well. He took the revolver out of his belt, said that it could recognize the culprit and immediately pointed the muzzle at his own chest, but one of the swordsmen interrupted him by saying: "Not with that revolver, sir, but with the one I have", and was about to throw the revolver into his lap. After Haxhi Qamili saw that he could leave his head there, he turned the page, told them that the brave do not chase the brave, and immediately ordered the release of the kidnapped herds. /Telegraph/