"We would meet in the spring"

The writer Helena Kadare has sent a letter to the late Elona Agolli, the daughter of Dritëro Agolli, after the death of her mother Sadija earlier this week. In it, Helena remembers the times of her youth when she met Sadija, when they were in the dormitory and then her whole life when they lived in the same building.

"Dear Elona,

It seemed a little strange to me now that I sat down and wrote your name at the top of this letter. Because we never exchanged messages together. I used to do them with your mother, Sadie. So now that I'm addressing you, it seems unexpected. As is the bitter event that just happened. Because all people who have a long history together have a hard time imagining that such a moment will come.

As I write, in my mind you are always little Elona, ​​the daughter of my old friend, Sadie, who has been gone for a few hours... I wrote these words and it still seems unbelievable. Because it will never seem natural or "right", the loss of a close person, even though we all know that this is inevitable.

I have been following like a fever the news that came to me from Albania, from our mutual friends, about the progress of its situation. Yesterday morning, when I got the call to tell me that your dear mother and my friend had gone on the road of no return, I was stunned. It's not just you, dear girl, who was surprised by her rapid departure. There are many of us, all her friends, who have been left speechless by the news about her. It is a path that we will all take, and yet, we cannot accept it. Each one of us is connected by hundreds and thousands of threads of compassion, understanding, sometimes ambiguity, but mostly love, with other creatures around and the loss of each one, along with the mystery of life, remains always unbearable. Unacceptable, I would say.

As you know, my friendship with your mother does not start today. It begins many years ago, when both of us, young and inexperienced girls, she with black curls, me with braids, came from two distant cities of Albania, to sit on the benches of the Faculty of Literature. Along with the lectures, we would also share the dormitory room. All the events, our girlish secrets, small or big, would be beaten and sifted in that common room of the girls' dormitory, a one-story building, barracks of the Italian army, as it was said, at the entrance to Elbasan Street.

The truth is that we felt happy and full of life, which age gave us, even though our daily life was full of countless deprivations and lacks. We were happy that we had escaped from the strict parental rules, happy that we were studying in the beloved branch of literature, happy that we had come to Tirana. Happy for everything. My wedding happened quickly, already in the first year of the faculty, with a young poet who had just published the volume of poems "My century". It was a wedding that caused a lot of trouble, because instead of cousins ​​and relatives, there were writers from the League and my dorm mates. At this wedding, your mother met another, equally well-known poet, your father, Dritëroi, which gave our friendship a new dimension.

Soon you came, our children. You know very well that, as Sadija has described, your beautiful name that you have today was given by Ismaili. Those were unforgettable times. I am reminding you of a simple detail, which you probably do not know: When our conversations took us forward and the midnight hour found us there, we ate dinner together in our bedroom, spread on an old suitcase that he had brought with him. Ismaili himself, after postgraduate studies in Moscow. They were simple dinners, with little food, taken in the kitchen of the house, where Ismail's mother would come and where we would both enter with the tips of our fingers, so as not to wake up the other members who were sleeping... Not infrequently, when the dormitory was closed, Sadija slept with us on a portable bed, kept behind the door especially for her. What beautiful and unforgettable evenings they were!

Then the time came and it got tougher politically. Many problems, many worries. We didn't hang out as often as we used to, but we never cut the ties of friendship.

Years later, fate brought us to be in the same residential building, on Rruga e Dibra, where you are today. In that period, problems and troubles came and became heavy and we no longer had enough time to share thoughts and feasts with each other. But, in the important events of our families, we always remained together. At one such dinner, in the mid-70s, when I was writing my first novel, I asked your father to write me a village scene, which was something completely unknown to me. He beamed, without the slightest hesitation, even laughing, he wrote to me there, on the table. It was a dialogue with "village work", a scene that continues to be in the novel to this day, just as he did, with his own hand, that evening. How many such memories take place in this space of time...

Your beautiful mother Sadija and I, for years, kept our friendship intact from the turbulence of time. At every celebration, new publication or literary launch, we would be heard together on the phone. And this communication did not stop even when we left Albania.

The last time we were together was December of the year we just left. Even though she was tired and not in good health, she welcomed us wholeheartedly, with another friend from our school and with the same enthusiasm as before, she showed us the extraordinary work she was doing with Dritëroi's manuscripts. He brought the files there, in front of us, on that big round table in the middle of the salon full of paintings, the table you now find in all the reports and interviews that are written about you. A trophy table!

Together with the many pictures we took that day, laughing that now we no longer needed a photographer, as we used to in the dormitory, because the cell phone we held in our hands took them easily, we made an appointment to see each other in the spring, when we return, as usual, in Tirana. My other friend and I promised her that, even if she didn't want to, we would take her with us on morning walks from the hills of Lake Tirana. I will come with you, she said when we parted at the stairs of the apartment. By spring I will have recovered.

A promise that could not be kept...

Dear Elona, ​​you are now a young mother yourself. But before I end this letter, I would like to say that your mother, Sadija, was a wonderful daughter, wife and mother. I'm sure you will know how to keep her image alive for the grandchildren she left behind. And you will tell them about it. For the beautiful and wise grandmother Sadije". /ExLibris/