Margo Rejmer - Mud Sweeter than Honey

Voices of Communist Albania

Margo Rejmer

Translated from the Polish by

Zosia Krasodomska-Jones and Antonia Lloyd-Jones

With an Introduction by Tony Barber

RESTLESS BOOKS

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Copyright 2018 Margo Rejmer

Translation copyright 2021 Zosia Krasodomska-Jones and Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Introduction copyright 2021 Tony Barber

Excerpt from Franz Kafkas The Trial translated by Jamie Bulloch

First published as Boto sodsze ni mid: Gosy komunistycznej Albanii by Wydawnictwo Czarne, Woowiec, Poland, 2018

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without the prior written permission of the publisher.

First Restless Books hardcover edition November 2021

Hardcover ISBN: 9781632062833

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021937471

This book is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

This publication has been supported by the POLAND Translation Program.

This work is published with support from the Sons of St. Marys Albanian Orthodox Church, Worcester, MA, and the Massachusetts Albanian American Society (MAASBESA).

Cover and text design by Sarah Schneider

Map Bill Donohoe

Cover photograph by Nikos Economopoulos/Magnum Photos

Photographs on pp. xviii and 226 by Nikos Economopoulos/Magnum Photos

Photographs on pp. 48, 108, and 176 by Ferdinando Scianna/Magnum Photos

Printed in the United States of America

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by Tony Barber

Where is mud sweeter than honey? In your own country.

ANDON ZAKO AJUPI, Where We Were Born, 1902

I love you, muddy Albanian soil,

Magic,

Sweet as honey,

Bitter as wormwood,

I love you

Ferociously,

Desperately,

Like a wolf loves the forest,

Like a wave loves a wave,

Like mud loves mud!

MITRUSH KUTELI, The Muddy Albanian Soil, 1944, translated by Robert Elsie

Albania (before the breakup of Yugoslavia)

BY TONY BARBER

AT THE STATE FUNERAL for Enver Hoxha in April 1985, the dictators body was buried next to the Mother Albania monument in Tiranas Cemetery of the Martyrs of the Nation. A red marble slab with the inscription ENVER HOXHA 19081985 was placed over the coffin. Ramiz Alia, Hoxhas successor as Communist Party leader, solemnly told the mourners: There should be no date of death on this marble stone. There is just one date for Enver Hoxha, his date of birth, and that is how it will always be, there is no death for him. Enver Hoxha is immortal.

Intended as a prophecyand doubtless as a warning to the Albanian peoplethat Hoxhas repressive apparatus of power would outlast the tyrant himself, Alias words proved mercifully off the mark. Less than six years after the funeral rites, a crowd tore down the bronze statue of Hoxha that towered over Skanderbeg Square, Tiranas main plaza. In May 1992, Hoxhas remains were transferred from their grand resting place to Tiranas plain municipal cemetery. A little later than other countries in east-central Europe, but not a moment too soon for most Albanians, the nation was embarking on a rocky journey to political pluralism, civic freedoms, a market-based economy, and integration with the outside world that continues to this day.