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The former mayor's key and the State's moles

2026-04-16 17:25:00, Opinione Auron Tare

In recent days, several television studios in the capital asked me to give my opinion, however small and humble, on the state of the Albanian community in America, since fate has allowed me to spend some time among them. I tried, to the best of my knowledge, to say a few words about the need for this community to become more visible and more useful to the motherland, since today its weight in national affairs seems, unfortunately, pale.

From these conversations I learned that a Diaspora Summit had also been held in Tirana. Curiosity prompted me to take a look at this event, to see what was said and done. From the beginning, I was struck by some "new knights of Skanderbeg", some foreigners who, for the sake of truth, I know myself. If Skanderbeg I were alive, I do not believe that he would have even opened the gate of the Castle to them, because they look more like those Venetian merchants who sold wheat to the Turks and straw to our brave, than like ideal defenders of the Albanian homeland.

But the biggest surprise was the appearance with great fanfare of the youngest resident of Administrative Unit No. 2 of Tirana, Mr. Eric Adams. Dressed in finery and smiling all the time, he was clearly unaware of what was going on around him, he wore a white cap on his head that looked like a turban. The acquisition of Albanian citizenship by a former mayor of New York is, without a doubt, a valuable opportunity for propaganda embellishment, although the real reasons for this choice are better known to the one who signs the decree - our President of the Republic.

However, my curious mind did not escape the picture on the big screen of the Summit, where Mr. Adams, now a full-fledged Albanian, spoke and, proudly, wore the white cap that they had placed on his head. I am calling it a "white cap", because my curiosity was pushed a little further and I expected that Mr. Adams had been given a Tirana area cap, since he became a resident of unit 2. But the cap did not seem to be from this area.

To resolve this dilemma, I called three academics on the phone, asking them if they had any idea (as researchers in the field, of course) as to which region the “white cap”, called by commentators as qeleshe, belonged to. I thought that Mr. Adams would have chosen the north, perhaps from his acquaintances in New York. The researchers told me that this “qeleshe” has no connection to the north. I know a little about the south and I was sure that the white cap on Mr. Adams’ head had nothing to do with the Labi or Tosk people of the south. I told them that it could certainly be from Ulcinj, since the people of Ulcinj have some old connections with Mr. Adams’s homeland. “No,” they said, “we can’t give you an answer, because it has no connection to any of our regions.”

Surprised, I didn't believe him and called the most knowledgeable person from the Institute of Ethnography. After I explained the problem to him, he replied:

"Auron, don't bother. You can't find it anywhere. A kind of approach, if it had some different features, I could say it came from some villages between Opoja and Tetovo, but I can say with responsibility that it is outside any kind of Albanian typology. This is simply a fabrication of people in institutions who have no idea about the great importance of the typology of the keleshes over the centuries, as an identifier of Albanian territories."

So, the youngest resident of Tirana's Unit 2, who was presented with fanfare and pomp as an Albanian of the future, carried a "qeleshe" that had no connection to any of the Albanian regions.

Mr. Adams's statement, right in the middle of the Diaspora Summit, actually shows the deep despair that has gripped Albanian society, which even in such significant cases, with international public effect, is administered and managed by ignorant people. Ignorant people who, with a phone call to a state institution like the Ethnography, would have selected a national symbol of cultural heritage that would truly be appropriate for this ceremony and not disgrace the National Badges.

In order not to prolong it too much, we have no choice but to hope that Mr. Gonxhe, the one from our Ministry of Culture, will not send this "qeleshe" of Mr. Adams to UNESCO as part of our heritage, because then we would risk missing not only the Albanian qeleshe, but also the mind to keep it on top.