The False Apocalypse

by Lubonja, Fatos; Hodgson, John; Hodgson, John

  ***

  The gunfire subsided early in the afternoon, but it was still dangerous to stay out in the street. Qorri ate, tried to rest a little, and set off on his bicycle for the Hotel Rogner. He might learn more news there. Foreign journalists were trying to move around and find out what was happening. The hotel seemed to be the only island where one could feel physically safe. The Bar West had been virtually abandoned, and Noel’s was rarely open.

  At the Rogner, Qorri was drawn into a diverse group of journalists trading news. An Italian was describing his adventure travelling to Rinas Airport, which was closed. He had just returned, and said there was no traffic at all on the motorway. You could have driven at 200 kilometres an hour, were it not for the potholes. Even the checkpoints had gone. He had seen only one near the airport with about twenty armed men, some in uniform, some in plain clothes, standing by obstacles they had placed across the road. On the runway there was only an ancient twin-engine Albanian Airlines plane, and all around was an incessant concert of gunfire.

  Another journalist described anarchy at the port of Durrës. Thousands of people had taken to the sea, climbing onto anything that floated.

  At this point someone entered the Rogner and announced that Berisha was taking flight. It was a matter of minutes, he said.

  People rushed out into the hotel forecourt not to miss the sight of Berisha’s helicopter rising above the Presidency building.

  Reportedly, Americans, Germans, and Italians had been trying to persuade him all day, ‘Escape while you still have time. You are the problem. Find some pretext.’ But nobody knew if he had paid any heed. The only certain news was that he had sent his eighteen-year-old son and twenty-five year-old daughter to Italy on the last ferry that had left Durrës that day for Bari. Heavy machine guns were prominently positioned near Berisha’s house on Fortuz Street and on the roof of the Presidency building, in the care of a handful of trusted men to discourage anybody from attempting some coup de grâce.

  One Western diplomat, a tall man of fifty-one with a ruddy face and a loud, distressed voice, expressed scepticism of this report. He had been at the Presidency that very morning, evidently among the group trying to persuade him to leave. He had found Berisha alone in his office, deserted by his staff. ‘I talked to him about the looted arsenals and the gunfire everywhere in the city,’ he was telling a journalist, ‘but his first concern was how to bring foreign troops to deal with the looters who had destroyed the Coca-Cola factory.’

  ‘You’ve got to do something. They’ve burned it,’ Berisha insisted. ‘This factory is one of the few multinational investments in Albania. It’s very dear to me.’

  The diplomat couldn’t contain his laughter as he tried to imitate Berisha.

  ***

  Qorri’s heart quickened. Wasn’t this the moment that Charles Walsh had talked about, when Berisha would turn his weapon against himself? Qorri too went outside to see the helicopter lift this culprit-in-chief from the Presidency and away from Albania. But as he watched, the less likely this prospect seemed. The day after his ‘act of reconciliation’, Berisha had armed his own people and opened the arsenals throughout Albania. Would he flee the next day? Now that he no longer bore responsibility for what was happening, but was sharing it with the opposition, he could act out the scenario that his instinct for self-preservation suggested to him. No, the moment that Walsh had hoped for had passed. Walsh had said that they would need skill and courage if Berisha were to turn the weapon against himself. But they had not shown these qualities. On the contrary, by opening the arsenals in Tirana and the north, he had fired his weapon and killed the innocent people who were his hostages. Now it was not just Berisha but both sides who were murderers.

  If the uprising in the South had been leaderless and chaotic, the chaos that had now enveloped the entire country was organized by Berisha and the people around him.

  In the midst of such mayhem, it was not hard, with the help of the SHIK and his trusted militants, to incite people to seize hundreds of thousands of weapons from open arsenals. The armed men would precipitate total chaos. In the darkness, all cats are black. Moreover, Berisha could easily describe this turmoil as a response of his supporters in Tirana and the north to the insurgents in the south. Then he could raise the alarm to the outside world, ‘We are in civil war, help us.’

  ***

  Qorri had to return to his refuge in the Kindergarten before eight o’clock, the curfew under the State of Emergency. It was dark when he left the Rogner. The din of the firing was growing louder. As soon as he stepped out, he came across two armoured vehicles on which the word ‘police’ had been written crookedly in white oil paint. They were parading up and down the main boulevard of Tirana and round Scanderbeg Square. They were manned not by uniformed soldiers but a ragged crew with scarves round their heads brandishing automatic rifles and firing into the air. It was impossible to say if they supported Berisha or the new government, or were merely part of the confusion. The fact that no government buildings were attacked and burned, nor the state television studio, suggested they were Berisha’s men.

  Qorri held the handlebar of his bicycle with one hand and instinctively protected his head with the other. This was an absurd reaction, because a bullet would pierce his hand like a sheet of paper. So he pressed down on the pedals as hard as he could and raced home.

  The route he usually followed passed along the boulevard into the ‘Milky Way’ where Noel’s was situated and then along Qemal Stafa Street. Passing Noel’s he saw its wooden door closed. The last time he had been there, he had met Shvarc who was in the company of Dita. Shvarc was worried about his heart trouble, but he hadn’t given up smoking. His conversation was rambling and disconnected.

  ‘Look at you!’ He had shouted. ‘Killing each other! That story about Albania being the only country in Europe that didn’t hand over the Jews has a simple explanation. The Nazis didn’t impose racial laws in Albania. Otherwise they would have handed us all in like lambs. In Kosovo there was an SS Division named after Scanderbeg, and two hundred Jews disappeared from the camp in Prishtina. The guards were Albanians.’

  ‘Are you talking about the Albanians then or now?’ asked Qorri, smiling.

  ‘At any time.’

  It was almost eight o’clock when he reached the Kindergarten. He turned on the television news. The first item was a strange statement read by the announcer, that a Committee of National Salvation had been created in Tirana with branches in all the northern regions of Albania. This committee stated that forces of destruction at home and abroad were trying to divide the country, but the committee would re-establish the constitutional order and national integrity. ‘Every part of Albania is sacred to us and we will defend it with our lives.’ The committee of the North vilified the committees of the South as ‘the spawn of the unbridled egotism of anti-national cliques trying to divide Albania, setting one region against another.’ The committee warned that any armed attack or resistance against it would be punishable under military law, as would any act against the nation or the people. It appealed to all officers, servicemen of all ranks and reservists to take up arms to save the country and to obey military discipline and regulations.

  Oddly, this statement had no named signatories. Qorri recalled that in the Rogner he had seen Berisha’s adviser talking to a PD deputy, known as a hardliner within the party, with the ability to mobilize hoodlums. It struck him that the emergence of this committee must have something to do with the meeting of these two people. This was another document that fed the myth of a north-south civil war.

  Chapter XLII

  Untitled

  ‘Albania Implodes... President’s Men Flee Country... Government Fails To Disarm Gangs.’ The headlines of The New York Times went round the world.

  On 14th March the defence minister, who was accused of having given orders to bomb the South, left for Italy with his wife and 14-year-old daughters in a ship that had arrived to evacuate Italians. His farewell to h
is escorts was overshadowed by the tears of one of his daughters who wanted to take her dog with her.

  Berisha’s people were fleeing the country one by one. A number of officers of the National Guard that protected public buildings and Berisha himself were making preparations to leave. For some of these people, the agreement and the creation of a new government were steps on a slippery slope. Some had already sent ahead their wives and children. Rumour had it that the only office still working, and on overtime at that, was in the Foreign Ministry, where diplomatic passports were issued.

  As a riposte to reports of this kind, one Italian television channel reported Berisha’s press office as denying that the President intended to flee.

  Berisha had been invited to take part in diplomatic talks that day, to include Ambassador Foresti, on board an Italian frigate somewhere off the coast of Durrës. However he did not want to venture so far out, fearful that this might be a ploy to persuade him to flee abroad.

  ***

  The firing in Tirana became more intense and reports of the catastrophe engulfing the entire country came thick and fast. Several tunnels used as weapons depots had exploded with people inside, turning them into mass graves. In Vlora, there was panic at reports that the drinking water was poisoned, and the inhabitants let their taps run for a long time, and made sure to boil the water. In Korça, the tanks and armoured vehicles seized from the army were being used as taxis, and anyone wishing to travel safely from the city to a village had to pay the plunderers. Further south in the little town of Erseka, six thousand guns were looted. In Shkodra, armed groups robbed and set fire to two state banks, the office of the SHIK, the prefecture, and Radio Shkodra, as well as the ancient shopping street that was a national monument.

  Public buildings stood empty, especially those of the army and police. All the country’s prisons were open. People known to have money were being kidnapped.

  The newly appointed Prime Minister of the Government of Reconciliation, with the patriotic call ‘The homeland is in danger,’ appealed to all soldiers and officers, wherever on active service or not, to report to the ministry, the military units, or other bases where they had served. But few responded.

  Finally at a quarter to five on the afternoon of 14th March, after a day of terrified appeals, something happened that the internationals did not expect, although Berisha had planned it. The prime minister of a government that governed nothing appealed to the outside world:

  ‘We are on the brink of civil war, help us.’

  For the Westerners, this was the final act of a tragedy foretold. Its episodes had included the rebellion of the South, the agreements, their mediation, and the Government of Reconciliation. All in vain. The events of the last few days had persuaded even the most sceptical that only foreign intervention could save Albania from final destruction.

  Berisha’s plan was working, although the flight of his staff had caused hitches. He had now ensured that the call for the intervention of Western armies came from his political opponents.

  In this situation, many people who had been asking for Berisha’s head shrugged their shoulders when asked who would take his place. One Western observer claimed that even the leader of the Socialists, the strongest rival party, had called Berisha ‘a necessary evil.’

  However, the NATO spokesman rejected Berisha’s appeals for intervention and said that the main problem was that the government did not enjoy confidence.

  Vranitzky held a meeting with the newly appointed members of the government, emerging in despair to say that the European states should consider sending military and police forces to help Albania suppress the violence. The Albanians had made it clear they were unable to establish order themselves.

  In response, NATO diplomats said that they would not send help until Vranitzky reached a political solution. The OSCE would have to devise a credible framework for this solution and then make a specific request to NATO.

  Chapter XLIII

  The Exodus Begins

  The first alarm was raised in Bari. A ferry with dozens of Albanians on board had set off from Durrës. ‘These people are armed,’ the Italian Navy warned. ‘Be careful.’

  All the Albanian ships had been stormed by armed crowds seeking a sea route out of the chaos. Two fishing boats that left the port of Shëngjin to protect themselves from the armed mob arriving from the North were caught in a storm. They were dashed against the rocky coast, and sank.

  The situation was even more complicated at the port of Durrës. The San Giorgio amphibious craft had set off for the Albanian coast, with marines of the San Marco Battalion on board and orders to evacuate all the Italians. When it arrived it was attacked by dozens of people armed with Kalashnikovs, iron bars and staves. A short time before, they had attacked the Annamaria Lauro ferry that plied the Otranto-Durrës route and attempted to board it by force. The captain had succeeded in closing the main portal and had departed at full speed, but both ships headed for Italy carrying more Albanians than Italians.

  The flight of the foreigners increased the panic among the Albanians, who resorted more and more to violence in their attempts to join them.

  Now that evacuation by sea was difficult, the Italians attempted an operation with helicopters, which landed on a sports field in the middle of the city, and aircraft, using a runway in the chaotic port of Durrës. Here too crowds of despairing Albanians fought to board the helicopters and planes, and soldiers had to drive them back by force. One Italian helicopter as it took off was struck by a bullet fired from among the crowd left behind, but was not brought down.

  The Italian press of 14th March reported a sea of Albanians in the reception camps in Apulia, expecting to make a future life in Italy. The journalists highlighted the case of fifty young men dressed in blue Italian uniforms. These were sailors of the Albanian Navy who until three days before had worn Albanian uniforms. They had left the shores of Albania in their ship without taking even a change of clothes. Their officers were in another corner of the room.

  ‘We came here to save our ships and their crew, not just our own skins,’ they said to Italian journalists.

  ‘And what is happening now in Albania?’

  ‘We have no idea either, we promise you.’

  ***

  From morning to late afternoon, helicopters took off from Tirana carrying westward the Americans, the Italians, the Dutch, and other foreigners, economic and military advisers, experts in law, agriculture, health, human rights, culture, the environment, and animal protection. Berisha’s people said, ‘For five years they gave us valuable advice, helping Albania change to a market economy. But now they’re being forced out by the communist rebels.’

  That same day the U.S. ambassador, Marisa Lino, appeared on State television to speak to the Albanians on behalf of the U.S. Government and people. She wished to assure them that the United States was not abandoning their country. She and a part of her staff would remain to tackle the many problems together with the government. Only American citizens who wished to leave were being evacuated, with the families of embassy employees and some non-essential staff. ‘This is our duty to our citizens and I ask all Albanians to cooperate with us at this time to assist U.S. citizens who wish to leave the country.’

  But despite Lino’s appeal the attempt to evacuate the Americans was suspended when two helicopters waiting to take away the families assembled on the field in the embassy compound were fired on. Only four hundred and eight of the two thousand Americans in Albania had been evacuated. The Pentagon expressed its concern at leaving Americans to spend another night in the city, exposed to the dangers of stray bullets and looting.

  ***

  Qorri learned that many of his friends had also fled. Phone calls came from Italy, France, the United States, Germany, Spain, and Greece, urging him to escape. Most of the intellectuals who had signed the petition against Berisha six weeks before had already fled. An international association that helped writers and artists in danger had come to their
aid. Ben Kumbaro and his wife had left to join Edi Rama in Paris. Many Koha Jonë journalists had gone, but some from Albania too. Qorri told people who phoned him that he had been in the public eye and couldn’t run away. But the deeper reason was that he was kept in Albania by curiosity to see what happened next, a curiosity that could probably be swept away at any time by rising panic. But he felt no panic. He had been more frightened earlier. Now it was obvious that this was not a civil war. Nobody had taken up weapons against anyone else. Everybody was firing into the air. The greatest danger was the lunacy and desperation of people who didn’t know what was going on or what would happen to them the next day. It resembled an apocalyptic drama, but it was a false apocalypse, a revelation that revealed nothing. It would leave everything just as it was.

  So, his writer’s and journalist’s instinct told him that it would be a great loss not to live through this false apocalypse that one day he might describe. In fact, all historical calamities had been like this, false apocalypses to which God’s angels had failed to turn up. This one was perhaps more farcical than most, but maybe for this reason slightly more truthful.

  ***

  Nusi was distressed by the gunfire and wandered from one window of the Kindergarten to the next.

  As Qorri went to bed, curious about what the next day would bring, a message in capital letters was spreading on the internet:

  TO: ALL READERS ON THE WEB AND ALL ALBANIANS ABROAD

  TODAY MAY BE THE LAST DAY I CAN WRITE. OUR LIVES ARE IN DANGER. ALBANIA IS IN CIVIL WAR. THE WHOLE COUNTRY. ALL OF THE TOWNS AND VILLAGES. TIRANA IS IN CHAOS. THERE ARE REPORTS OF DEATHS AND A LOT OF WOUNDED. DURRËS TOO. THERE HAS BEEN GUNFIRE ALL OVER MY CITY OF KAVAJA FOR THE LAST 24 HOURS WITH BULLETS FLYING LIKE CRAZY.