By: Ahmet Bushati

The Vlashuk Camp ... It was still winter when one day, we of Camp No. 2, getting into the cars, left the Urë Vajgurore camp and, many of our old and new friends, and, winding for several dozen kilometers along unpaved roads, along the sides of low hills, we arrived at a place that did not seem like a village or anything, which was called Vlashuk. It would be a camp - the year 1953 - from which the work front would never leave, since the works would be concentrated on opening a canal of short length, but of great dimensions, both in width and depth.

There would come a time when, to extract the excavated soil from the bottom of that 25-meter-deep canal, they would need thirteen alternating piers, on both sides of it, through which, shovel after shovel, the soil would come out. In the depths of the canal, the light penetrated little and the soil there had a color between blue and green, because it was very compact and it also smelled of a heavy odor, perhaps similar to that of pyrite or stone dust, and which often made one want to run their noses with it.

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The work at the end of the canal, apart from the difficulty of digging through hard, compacted soil like glue, as well as the eventual dangers it posed, had two advantages during the summer season: the coolness and the water collected in small ponds along the canal, water with which we could quench our thirst and that of many other friends, above the piers, without worrying about its unpleasant taste, which it had acquired from the stench of the soil from which it came.

In order to prevent the deep sides of the open canal from collapsing, an incalculable amount of wooden material was consumed for their lining, but nevertheless, due to the great pressure of the masses of earth on the sides, and especially after any rain that might have fallen, saturated with moisture as they would be, they would sometimes lose their points of support and cause the two sides of the canal to come together, ruining our work of several days. To our luck, the collapses would occur continuously after midnight, so much so that we prisoners, laughing, would say: "It seems that you are all alone, God has begun to love us". When spring came with its extended days, the work would be organized into four six-hour shifts, which would change at the beginning of each week. Fate would have it that five of the six people at our table would be on one shift, while I was alone on the other shift.

During the week that I would have the lunch shift, the role of the lunch cook would be performed by me. It was at that time that I continued to study the English language, through an Italian “Lisly” method, and in order to practice it, any order I had for my friends, when they returned from the first shift, whether related to the dish or something else, I would let them write it down in English, on a piece of rough cement sack paper.

Inside a camp of about two thousand six hundred prisoners, - mostly political - sometimes you would not take your eyes off the faces of the prisoners and see them for the first time. The political prisoner usually maintains connections within a fairly wide circle of friends and acquaintances, as well as preserving and respecting some acquaintances that he may have come close to by chance, which usually more or less close the world of his prison people, outside of which he generally does not go. So one day, after finishing work early, from the depths of the canal where I was working, I climbed up to wait for the completion of the work for everyone. The chance brought me there to enter into conversation with a prisoner from Berat named Qemal, who was working there with a large electric crane.

From the beginning, I was impressed by that man's clean, very white face, as well as the calm tone of his voice, which whenever he spoke, he would accompany it with the smile of a good and polite man. After a conversation of about an hour, we parted as if we had known each other for a long time. After the second shift had finished, that is, in the evening, when we were having dinner, I would talk about him to my friends at the table. But what happened? By an incredible and fatal coincidence, these friends of mine would tell me that exactly that crane driver, named Qemal, had been run over by that crane after lunch, spilling his guts and brains out!

The death of a prisoner in a labor camp sometimes passes with indifference from those who had never known him before and with the deepest sorrow from his comrades. Thus, a friend of Qemal's, who I think was named Nuri, from the sorrow for Qemal's death, from that night on, played with his mind. He was isolated inside a small barracks, which was a little behind our shed, and for a week that boy, day or night, would not stop calling out in a loud voice: "Qemal, oh Qemal, Qemal ore"! - filling with pain and even leaving many prisoners there without sleep. Ruzhdi Baja, my cousin, who at that time was sleeping next to me, worried that he wasn't falling asleep because of Nuri's calls, would blurt out: "That guy hurt us enough, but even so, don't let him close his eyes, he's tired as we are, I don't know what to say"! However, a week later, we didn't hear Nuri calling anymore: someone told us that they had taken him to the hospital.

In this Vlashuk camp, I remember with respect, and now only in person, some good people from Berat and its surroundings, among them especially a short man named Syrja. As a Syrian, I also remember from Berat on this occasion a former student, a little dark and charming, who had one parent of Italian origin. Also from Berat was the student Ilia Thereska, who had attended high school in Gjinokastra. Likewise, camp after camp, we would get to know and become very close to a group of very good colonists, who had at their head an old man named Muço, Muço Shkëmbi, a gentleman of great prestige, who deserved the honor that was bestowed upon him by everyone.

The youngest among them would be Kamberi, whom we would call Kambo. Already in the Berat camp, we had met and established social ties with intellectuals, such as Isuf Vrioni, who as the son of the ambassador who had been in France, had completed all his school cycles, including some years of primary school, in Paris, where he had been awarded twice and a third time in Milan, Italy. We would also get close to his two friends, Milto Lito and Foto Bala, who, together with Isuf, would form an inseparable trio. [Foto Bala was; a professor of philosophy and literature. He was born on February 14, 1910, in the village of Vuno in Himara. He completed the semi-gymnasium of Gjirokastra, the Lyceum of Korça and his higher studies in Montpellier, France, always together with Enver Hoxha. In 1945 he was appointed professor at the Gjirokastra Gymnasium. That same year his father, Dhimitër Bala, was executed. He was arrested a year later, in 1946, on charges of having created the Neoballist group and being an Anglo-American-French agent. In 1947, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. On May 14 of that same year, the Executive Committee of the People's Council of the Korça Central Sub-Prefecture decided to seize all his property, movable and immovable. He was released in 1964. He died in 1991 - Telegraph note].

Foto Bala grew up with Enver Hoxha. They had attended the Gjinokastra semi-gymnasium together, the Korça high school together, and Montpellier, France together. Foto Bala was not only a complete intellectual, but he also had a very charming and eloquent way of speaking. Among other things, he would tell us about Enver Hoxha, about his behavior in general, about his complete lack of character, about the feminine “manners” that he used to the point of disgust, whenever he had to do with women, as well as about his many adventures, many, many times dirty.

“Enver Hoxha would be the only Albanian who would pose shamelessly for hours and hours in a bar in Paris, waiting for some old, rich client who, in exchange for a fee, would take that beauty with him,” Foto Bala would tell us. He continued: “As depraved as he was, who knows how many times he would get into bed with me, a few hours after midnight, saying to me: 'Foto, Foto, make some room so I can get in too.'” And when Enver came to power in Albania, the witness to his many antics, Foto Bala, he would keep him in prison for ten years, while his father, who had been a pharmacist in Durrës, would be shot, to which Foto would say: “That bastard, he's fine with me, but what about my father?”

We would have met and become friends with many good people in this camp, but I would at least remember two more, one Niko Koka and the other Lem Daçi, both from Shkodër, arrested in Durrës, where they had recently been working and living, as well as a certain Eshref Zagorçani from Pogradec, who a few years ago had interrupted his higher studies in Austria. Among others, we would have had the student Ali Cali, from Tirana, there.

Continuing to be in this camp, it happened that one Saturday at dinner, one of the friends at the table, the family brought food. Uncle, our steward and cook, was busy arranging them. Thabit Rusi, not seeing well in the dim light of the bunker, accidentally knocked over a bottle of vodka and, looking back, began to mutter: "Where has it been that I didn't see it?! Damn it!" etc. Meanwhile, Maliq Bushati, since it was not time for sleep, was lying on the mattress and covered with a blanket. While Thabit continued to vent his anger over the loss of a bottle of vodka so precious to us, I noticed how Maliq Bushati was shaking and shaking under the blanket and after I discovered him I asked: "What are you shaking about?"?! - and he could not hold back his gas and, continuing to tremble even more, would answer me: "Thank goodness I have another duel to throw, because you are left saying everything; Maliqi, Maliqi". And, truly, if they had thrown or broken something, torn or stolen a piece of loot, they would have generally had Maliqi's hand, arm, leg, knee or head as the perpetrator. Likewise, if even a louse had been noticed entering our places, we would be sure that Maliqi had brought it, even if he had worn dirty clothes that day. He put it like that, because Maliqi Bushati, like no one else, would put them in the corners of the poorest and most forgotten people of the camp.

Every morning, Uncle would fill the tobacco boxes for everyone, especially Maliqi's, and he would even fill them with his hands, and when he handed them to him, he would say: "Maliqi, this is for the whole day"? And Maliqi, although on the spot, would answer with "Yes, yes", when he returned from work, like none of the others of us, the first thing he would try to do would be to extend the empty tobacco box to Uncle, because as always, he would have met Preka, Hajdar, Nduena, Muho, and even Koço or someone else, with whom he would constantly share his tobacco.

Whenever Maliq Bushati received something new from home, like a shirt, pants, etc., he would think that they didn't belong to him and would generally throw them at me, as the youngest at the table that I was, something that of course I would never accept, just as I would not accept a morsel of meat that might have fallen from the pot, and that he, taking from himself, as soon as he started eating, would ask me to throw in my basket! /Memorie.al/

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