Horatio Morpurgo
( a free-lance writer based in the South West of England )

 

Horatio Morpurgo's Visit to Albania

…the thorny point
Of bare distress hath ta'en from me the show
Of smooth civility… - As You Like It II.7

My luggage and I had trailed around little towns in Le Marche for several days before we presented ourselves in the wind and the snow at the door of a monastery high up in the Apennines. Someone had joked about the place in a bar - 'Oh it'd be quiet enough for you up there.' To my surprise it was a young woman who opened the door and listened to my explanation..

To judge by her sardonic look she had heard similar stories before. I was in Italy to complete a book I'd been working on for two years - my first. I wanted a little room somewhere out of the way with Italian light through the window each morning, that was all. And not expensive

'Did you tell someone you were coming?' she asked.

'No.'

She looked doubtful and stressed, as if frankly she was busy enough already without this sort of thing. 'It isn't a hotel,' she remarked

'È a punto di quello che sono qui.' That's exactly why I'm here. My Italian is not normally so prompt or assured. The weather conditions must have primed my language skills. The woman left me standing outside while she went to ask. The bitter cold must also have been the main argument in favour of admitting me. There had been a sharp frost in London the night before I left the previous week and most of the Europe I'd crossed since had been under thick snow.

The Abbot explained that evening at supper that it was extremely unusual to take in a guest on spec like that. 'Sei molto fortunato,' he declared, singling me out before the assembled monks for a welcome that was not without its hint of severity. The other monks peered at me for a response and I thanked him, trying not to look too pleased with myself. It wasn't easy: the refectory was warm and the wine was delicious. 'You leave next Saturday,' the Abbot stated, publicly and clearly, lest there be any doubt about it when the time came.

So for a week my window looked out over a steep wooded valley and was itself looked down into by the bare whiteness of the mountain-tops above the monastery which was mentioned in Dante. The solar panel you see on somebody's roof is tilted so as to capture as many of the sun's rays as it can. The long wing of the monastery in which I lived, built across the upper end of a narrow valley, was like a giant stone panel on the roof of Italy, oriented so as to capture a radiance beyond the physical spectrum..

From my window in the evenings you could see the fat black silhouettes of big hungry wild boar foraging along the sky-line. The intense cold of the long nights had disturbed hibernating creatures - using up their fat supplies before the winter was properly over. Porcupines had been seen wandering the roads, disoriented - their foot-prints were easy to find in the woods around the monastery.

My cell was normally occupied by a monk who had gone to spend a year with a silent order - it had stood empty for some time but once the powerful old wall radiator got going it was soon quit snug. There was a power-point for my lap-top. Desk, bed, crucifix, window, sink. And such quiet, after all those trains, all those espressos and pop-songs in station bars.

My room was off a long sixteenth century corridor, vaulted with a fresco at either end, each cell named after some distinguished figure from the order's thousand-year history. It was one of those weeks that Italy can so casually throw your way - can rummage about in her great store of centuries and spare you a week, why not. But not at all like some serviceable hotel keeper - more like some hard-bitten fruit seller throwing in an extra apricot, quite impersonally, without returning your smile.

The Abbot proved more amiable as the week progressed. He was in his late thirties perhaps - vigorous, intellectually curious, a good preacher, proud of the excellent food and wine served at his monastery. It was as if he relished every aspect of his complicated role at the head of this isolated community. And it was isolated - as much culturally as geographically. It financed itself by putting up tourists in a separate building nearby during the summer months. There were frequent exchanges with groups from other religious houses too. But you quickly saw just how fraught, how tense the permanent set of relationships here was. For example, a former ABC-TV cameraman, now a monk, was in charge of seating the guests in the refectory. He enjoyed irritating the older monks with provocative juxtapositions. A female guest was placed one lunch-time directly opposite one of the old monks who still wore the white habit and was certainly to be scandalised by the presence of such a visitor. And the quiet merriment all around the dining room at her attempts to engage him in conversation. The young zealot for Catholicism the One True Faith was placed next to the retired parish priest of more ecumenical views.

These and twenty or so like them were the enduring core as the visitors came marvelling at the landscape and the architecture and went. These were the reason a monastery was still there for people like me to knock on the door of. And you quickly realised that the different generations and temperaments within it were not much better harmonised here than they are anywhere else.

It occurred to me before the week was out that perhaps that was what the place stood for, after all: recognition of our essential poverty, and precisely the refusal to go sight-seeing as an escape from it. It embodied the conviction that what we lack is not the ability to assert or expand ourselves, but the will to deepen and transform those selves. A refusal to be fobbed off with the easy evasions so skilfully marketed all around us. Something in this place reproached me and my rushing off to Italy as Land of Art. To complete my novel, of course.

So as I rode the train back down to the coast the following Saturday I felt relieved to be out and about again but chastened too. My week of religious seclusion left me unable to shake off the feeling that my heightened enjoyment now - of espressos, of station bars - had something evasive, something cheap about it. It had left me prey to the suspicion that most of the travelling we do is ultimately a dodge. That it is shallow.

Back in Ancona I opened my emails for the first time in a fortnight. The Madrid train bombings had happened meanwhile and I don't know if there was any connection but there was a message from a magazine editor asking if I would write a profile of the only European country with a Muslim majority, Albania.

I hadn't come to Italy to do more journalism. See above for the explanation of my journey's higher purpose. And yet… And yet there's a regular ferry service to Durrės from Ancona. The magazine paid well. I'd covered a brief war in Macedonia for them three years earlier and not visited Albania then, which had been an omission surely. And it was providential, wasn't it - my receiving such an email when I'm just a ferry-ride from Albania. The editor needed to know either way 'soon' and the message was already several days old.

I wrote back yes, left my luggage with someone I'd had an interesting chat with earlier that day and booked the ferry. I was glad to be back in the thick of life's variousness. Enough monkish hiding away.

Albania turned out quite different from any other Balkan assignment I've had. For a start I had my best interview straight away, on my first evening in the country. Waiting for the ferry in Ancona I'd sent off various emails in search of possible contacts. Someone at the embassy in Tirana had, unexpectedly, responded. She recommended a maker of documentary films. I rang his number from Durrės and he said to come straight round as soon as I reached Tirana.

A couple of hours in his studio and he ran me through the essentials of four or five of his films on video. How after 1990 property developers filled the capital city's central park with five-storey blocks of flats without ever asking anyone's permission and without needing to, apparently. How the Botanical Gardens were going to be ploughed up and the land returned to agricultural use - and the thugs who turned up at his home to threaten his son while he was helping to block this 'development'. The French and Italian thieves looting Albania's red coral forests because they have the equipment to go that deep and strangely there is never anyone there to stop them.

And so on. This isn't the sort of thing west Europeans know about Albania and I was no exception to the dismal rule. He quite undemonstratively gave me enough for half a dozen 'profiles', then dropped me back at my hotel. I wrote up my interview notes in the bar and wondered if it could really be this easy. Perhaps I'm just getting better at this, I reflected smugly, sketching out a first draught of the complete article in a café next morning - less than 36 hours after arriving.

The café was just off Tirana's central square - even today as bland a public space as any of the many such raised by the Communists to their own greater glory. Being filled now with big city traffic only adds a new squalor to the old pomposity. Tirana now has the worst air pollution of any city in Europe. I took one look at that square and set off in the direction of the archaeological museum. There were still odd phrases for the article coming into my head - I took out my notebook as I walked along to jot one of them down.

'What are you writing?' asked a young man I hadn't noticed till then, standing nearby. Denim suit, square solid head, fair hair cut very short, a nose which had been flattened. Untrustworthy smile. I was on the point of 'not understanding'.
'
No - stop,' the man said, 'I'm a journalist. I'm like you.' He named a Swiss network. He'd worked for the BBC too, during the 1997 crisis. 'They had the 12th and 13th floors of that building -' he pointed up at a high-rise office block. His boss was away but it was actually very convenient. He was free for the next fortnight and had the company car for his own use. Why didn't we have a coffee, over there? What did I want to know about? Revival of blood-feud in the north? Trafficking? Drugs? Weapons? White meat? He knew the people to talk to. The head of the media centre here in Tirana was a personal friend. I was going to the archaeological museum? The director of the archaeological museum was a personal friend. He could get me an interview with the President - no problem.

First thing I had to understand, though, as we took our places in the café - the first thing was - he smoked. I had to accept that from the start. And obviously he would need something out of all this, for himself, out of our work together. He knew every square inch of this country. So. What did I want to know?

Shark, I thought, of course. And how did he know what I was doing here? The scar on his nose was from boxing, he said. Green-brown eyes. He'd been all over the world but Spain is best for summer, Denmark for winter. He had saved an Englishman's life in 1997. The man had given him a thousand pounds. But what did I want to know about? 'Ask me anything.' He had taken Canadian anthropologists into the villages in the north, to listen to the rhapsodes - did I know about the rhapsodes? He knew the mayors of all the towns up there, the main families, the Police chiefs, all were intimates of his. What proportion of the prostitutes smuggled through Shkodėr goes to each European capital. He could tell me. We could drink some more coffees or talk about everything or whatever and then there was something he wanted to ask me, but not now. Later.

Why not now?'

'Later - later.' So. Where did I want to go? Hadn't I made my mind up yet? I should understand from the start, though - once we were on the road - I don't touch any women and he takes care of the money. He'd seen it time and time again - west Europeans who think they can take care of their own money - who think they know how money works here. Oh dear no. And obviously he wouldn't be doing all of this for free.

'Obviously not,' I replied. 'What's the thing you wanted to ask me about later?'

'OK. It's nothing. Not something you have to do for me in England or anything like that.'

'What, then?'

OK. I need - 2,000 Lek. Now.'

Uh-huh.'

'My mother is ill. She is on a kidney machine.' I took out a ten pound note and gave it to him. 'And could I have 1,000 Lek extra. I haven't eaten since yesterday morning.'
I said I'd buy him a meal then and we went somewhere else to eat. At the restaurant I had to decide by tomorrow where we were going to travel together. He was in my debt now. It was a terrible thing for him to receive money from me. What plans did I have for the rest of the day? His mobile rang at that point so I had time to think of some. He spoke briefly, coldly, into the receiver.'

'My mother,' he said, returning to the conversation. 'From the hospital.' It was a well rehearsed performance. He'd done this before. He wolfed down the meal - the not-having-eaten-for-24-hours part of his story was convincing enough. Outraged by the tip I left for the waiter he scooped the coins off the table into his own palm. 'Actually I need the money,' he mumbled.

I told him I had to write up some notes and then I wanted to go for a walk around the city.

'Do you want to go for a walk alone?'

'Yes.'

'You should be very attentive, going for a walk on your own, as a foreigner here. It's very dangerous. Do you still want to?'

' Yes.'

We would meet next day, to finalise arrangements, at exactly 2PM, on the steps of that hotel opposite. Once I'd decided what I wanted to know about.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Solzhenitsyn has a phrase somewhere - A man who is warm will never understand the man who is cold. The words no doubt arose from his experience of the Gulag but it has implications beyond its origin. I've probably written too scornfully of this encounter. Was he just some hustler? Something nastier? Or was he more or less what he said he was? Of course we didn't meet next day. I went south to Vlorė, the other main smuggling port. I was woken there several times during the night by the windowless vans which roar through the streets of that city during the hours of darkness. There don't seem to be any speed restrictions on windowless minivans in Vlorė during the small hours. I suppose the Police must all be sound asleep. I went there to find out about the 21 people who'd been killed earlier that year attempting to cross illegally to Italy. Large crowds gathered to protest against the failure of the government to reform the economy at home or deal with the people smugglers who prey on the despair of the young.

So I'm not deriding the sort of information he was offering me. To trivialise his country's difficulties would be by implication to trivialise the wider European problem they feed into. But I will not glamorise that problem. Byron might have been charmed by Albanian brigands, but I wonder how inspired he would be by the streets of its modern cities, teeming with Mercedes-Benzes stolen mainly in France or Germany, then re-registered by corrupt officials and policemen once the vehicles arrive in Albania. Or by the treatment of women in the north of the country, where 'tribal law' (the Kanun of Lek) has been 'revived'. In context, my acquaintance was probably a very small-time hustler, a very minor scoundrel.

Or rather he was, specifically, the sort of scoundrel which western engagement with these places, such as it is, inevitably produces. He could do Journalist's Interpreter, Adviser to EU Projects - putting roofs on schools - or he could do Anthropologist's Primary Informant. He could play the Cultural Authority, at a pinch. Tour Guide. Political Insider. That was why he kept asking me what I wanted to know - to get a more exact fix on me. He had clocked me in a matter of seconds, and quite correctly, as an ill-informed western journalist who had just arrived. He could cook up any reality I liked and serve it any way I liked.

In a way he was or seemed entirely a creature of our own news-froth, perfectly adapted to it, in his way, all slicked back with our very own intellectual hair mousse. He was the logical south-east European counterpart to what I've been doing for six or seven years now, in my well-heeled north-west European way. It was an unflattering mirror to look into, and a distorted one perhaps, but unquestionably he was a mirror in some sense - and that was why I left Tirana next day.

Returning to Italy ten days later I had a morning in Durrės before the ferry left. It's an ancient city and I spoke to the curator of the archaeological museum, about the Greek marble carvings stolen in recent years, about their 'unfinished head of a god', from a C5th BC Greek workshop - a sculpture which would without any doubt be world-famous if it was in Paris or Florence. He directed me also to the city's Roman amphitheatre.

This was excavated in the Sixties as part of Enver Hoxha's national-cultural drive, but something quite unexpected had been uncovered in the process. Across one of the lateral entrances to the arena a small Byzantine chapel had been constructed in the C7th AD. Most of the wall-mosaics are well preserved. It has been variously interpreted - as a memorial chapel for those killed 'in sport' nearby, or as the family vault for some local dynasts.

But to me, at the end of that assignment, it meant something else. That people, like whole civilisations, can go beyond a culture of spectacle. That they can reflect too, can see through mass-entertainment and really work for the meaning of what they have experienced. It meant that Europe can do better than the thrill-seeking and the channel-hopping and 'the news' - a gladiatorial spectacle if ever there was one. That Europe must do better.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

So here I was re-bounding from what the magazine had asked, just as I had from what the monastery asked. Back in Ancona I sent the article from the same internet café I'd opened the message from my editor in a fortnight earlier. He wrote back to say it was fine. I collected my luggage and continued the search for the right room to finish my book, with these two experiences, the monastery and that hustler, still arguing at the back of my mind.

The discarded religious idea which says you can do the truth anywhere; the idea that real courage is in committing to and really understanding the conflicts in any little community anywhere, no matter how prosaic or limited they might seem. Because real solidarity, however derived, will over-ride the prose and the pettiness. And on the other hand the journalistic idea we are all too familiar with - requiring incident, hazard, all manner of glamorous disconnected rushing-about.
These two - like an argumentative couple, endlessly accusing each other - of frivolity, of timidity, respectively. As I resumed my search I wondered if you ever find a way to stop them accusing each other. I needed to find that room very badly.

And I did in the end. And I did find a way. But that's another and much longer story.