OUR LADY…

2025-08-31 12:34:00, Kulturë Agim Xhafka

Agim Xhafka

It happened a few years ago, I remembered it today, I don't know why. The voice on the cell phone: "Ladi died!" crushed me. After my father's departure, this was the most poisonous news. I walked and trembled, as if I had been electrocuted.

-When?- I asked.

-Today. Two hours ago, in a hospital in Milan. Cancer destroyed him.

-The funeral tomorrow?

-No, no. After three days. He left his will to be buried in the Homeland.

-In the Homeland?! Yes, that Homeland killed him, that Homeland ruined him, ate him alive. It impoverished him, made him miserable, and...

And I kept talking and talking, all angry. Because his life for the last 20 years seemed like a movie to me. For the reader, I'm explaining that Ladi was the husband of Vera, my aunt's niece. My aunt has three daughters and their husbands are so kind, smart, hardworking and honest that I used to joke that they are cousins, not sisters, their daughters-in-law. After finishing high school, Ladi came from Korça to Tirana. He started working as a miner in Valias. Zgafellist, we used to call him jokingly. He got married and his family grew with a daughter and a son. Life went on like everyone else's until 1992. Then the mine closed and Ladi found himself on the street. And there, in the torture room at the technological school or the palace with arrows today, he started selling oil for cars, bottled Coca Cola. He earned his bread. Then his wife also lost her job...the problems increased. The children grew up. Sales and income fell year after year. But his smile remained the same. A born optimist. And one day he learned that Ladi had fled to Italy.

-How did he escape? -I asked.

-By dinghy. At night from Vlora.

The homeland left him no other choice. At the age of over 40, without knowing the language at all, a cousin joined him in the outskirts of Milan and did the jobs he had never done before. Bricklayer, tiler, shipbuilder and...always smiling. The worker and the righteous never lose. After some time, he got a wife and children and life rewarded his efforts. They live honorably in a modest apartment. The children grow up. They start university and work. Well, bright days finally came. Joy entered his home. But...the stress and boredom of the past had poisoned his health. The disease suddenly woke up and after a few months he left a message:

-Bury me in Tirana. Leave it to me.

His story is not so personal. There is a generation that has this biography fixed. A generation emerged discovered in the fight for life. With dreams, but without education, without finances, without home and without security. That like in the jungle, the homeland, only bit them, expelled them. So the young and middle-aged men started running to survive, because the country was turning into a living cemetery.

But here Ladi and the others still want to rest in these still, stagnant caves. Because they know, the Homeland is not to blame. They know, it loves them. Because the Homeland is like a mother. True, but it gets tired. But it doesn't forget to cook for them, wash them and cover them at night when they sleep. Because it has them in its heart, it has them in its blood. Therefore, the trust comes naturally:

-Take me to my land, it has the moisture of eternal dreams./ CNA