by Rorie Smith
The First Dream
The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was opening a new exhibition of Socialist Art at the National Historical Museum in Tirana.
‘My friends,’ he was saying. He was dressed in the uniform of an Egyptian Field Marshal. ‘Let us be serious for a moment.’
We were a group of aging Rotarians from Omaha, Nebraska, who had been following Enver, heads bowed, on a tour of the exhibits. We had stopped to examine the bust of a Chinese worker when an air raid siren sounded and all the pictures in the gallery got slowly down off the walls and walked hand in hand down the stairs to the basement where the father of the nation waited patiently to address them.
When he had finished, seven hours later, a staff of Chinese waiters in dazzling white uniforms brought in trays of Red Star noodles.
But just as we were tucking in, a furious Hoxha shouted out: ‘Halt, there is a traitor amongst us,’ and pointed his Field Marshal’s baton straight at poor old Pete Gunter for whom I had worked, selling hinges and brackets, at his hardware store in Omaha.
The Second Dream
The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was at the wheel of the big old embassy car, wrenching it round the corners of the steep mountain passes as we made our way north to Valbona. At the same time he was puffing on his trademark Cuban cigar and cooing suggestively into the ear of the ambassador’s daughter, a flat chested society girl called Letitia.
In the back seat I was taking photographs. Then Pete Gunter, who was alongside me, put aside the book he was reading and began to describe to Enver in a loud voice, with a surprisingly strong Welsh accent, how he had danced the Dashing White Sergeant and the Eightsome Reel at a hunt ball at Lydney Grange, Gloucestershire two summers previously.
I was well positioned to observe Enver’s reaction to this provocation. I took several photographs from a kneeling position with a wide angle lens until Enver slammed on the brakes so that we all pitched forward and the car nearly went into the river.
Then in a bloody rage he leaned back over to Pete Gunter and placed his large red farmer’s hands round his throat and yelled dreadfully:
‘In Albania we dance the Twelvesome Reel and the Dashing White Major, so fuck you capitalists. Hah! the Communist system is superior.’
After that we drove on staring gloomily out of the windows at the soldiers lining the route to cheer us. ‘They stand guard in all the Alpine meadows,’ Enver explained, cheery again, winding down the window and throwing out pennies and bunches of flowers. ‘They have been expertly trained to defend our borders from the savage hordes planning to picnic there.’
As dawn broke we were driving through the gorge of the Valbona, a small plane flew overhead trailing behind it a banner which read, ‘Enver, Enver, you forgot to wash behind your ears.’
Then the car stopped, the back door was yanked open and poor old Pete Gunter was dragged out. Enver helds his arms and Letitia who turned out to be very strong, having rowed for England ladies, took both his legs and suddenly poor old Pete Gunter was sailing through the air toward the turbulent blue waters of the Valbona with Enver shouting out:
‘Swim to Italy from there you black Fenian bastard.’
The Third Dream
The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was holding a cabinet meeting in the corner of his bedroom. He was wearing a brocaded silk dressing gown and smoking a cigarette from an inexpensive holder. On the bed beside him was a top hat and around it was curled a small brown cat.
After a seven hour address, during which he coughed continually, indicating bronchial problems, he looked quizzically at his ministers and asked:
‘But if we let the Chinese workers go, who will wash the delicate silk undergarments of the American traitors?’
After that he stood up and moved quickly to a podium and speaking directly to a television camera began to instruct his generals on the delicate art of growing rice which, he informed us, to the surprise of Pete Gunter and the aging Rotarians visiting from Omaha, Nebraska, was a staple of the Chinese diet.
Then he rolled up his trousers in the manner of a peasant and stepped carefully into the giant children’s paddling pool which he had ordered erected in the main square of Tirana. As he paddled slowly in the icy cold waters, the large crowd watching anxiously, he shouted out, ‘Oy, Oy, Oy, the icy waters are good for my old father’s feet.’
Then he threw out rice seed from a blue plastic bucket and we watched it grow ten feet high before it was harvested by an army of carefully drilled soldiers. After that hundreds of white coated Chinese waiters came into the square carrying silver salvers on which were packets of Red Star noodles. Enver then showed us how to eat them, American style in the manner of cornflakes, with milk and sugar.
The Fourth Dream
The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was in the mountains of Northern Albania dressed in the bright pink uniform of a Partisan, a brace of grenades at his waist. He was supervising the electrification of his country. He had a very detailed programme to which he assured us, we were with the Japanese Red cross as neutral observers, he planned to strictly adhere.
We watched as he instructed young housewives to lean out of their bedroom windows so that cables could be passed about their delicate wrists and through the braids of their flaxen hair by nimble fingered children.
Then the cables went over the spades of men digging in gardens, over schoolmasters teaching Latin in bare schoolrooms, over mountains, across valleys, into the arms of surprised shepherds in their barns.
We watched as fishermen in boats on the lakes raised their arms to hold the cables aloft as they were passed from valley to valley. Bus drivers in Tirana threaded the cables through the exit and entrance doors of their public service vehicles. Pilots carried the cables to the highest snow bound peaks and stood, fur hats on their heads, holding the cables aloft.
Like an intelligent gardener he planted us everywhere even those of us with the Japanese Red Cross. How happy we were! How excited! How confident of the future! Only the Chinese workers, thin as rakes and sour faced, declined to take part in this prodigious effort citing Health and Safety Regulations.
Finally the whole joyous population of this small Balkan country stood arms upraised, cables aloft, in happy anticipation of joining the modern world. Then Enver in his mountain hideaway, with his generals and his engineers, counted backwards from ten and pushed the plunger down. At which there was a heart rending series of screams, heard even from outer space and the entire country was plunged into darkness.
According to Pete Gunter and his father JY Gunter, who both attended the trial, when the verdict was pronounced Enver snarled, ‘That fucker Mao just sold me another pup.’
The Fifth Dream
The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he had put on twenty pounds and was sitting outside a hotel in Durres. He was cradling a Kalashnikov in his lap. ‘Hey buddy,’ he shouted at me as I passed. ‘Wanna buy a hotel?’
When I said no, that I had two already, he got up and as he uncurled I could see that on his tee shirt was a slogan which read in bright luminous letters, ‘Ronnie Reagan fux dux.’
I felt the tears coming to my eyes. Where was the youthful patriot who had come down from the mountains to liberate his people? Where was my leader who, a gleam in his eye, had encouraged me in my desperate bid to swim from Durres to Bari?
That night over a surf and turf dinner at a local sporting club, which he could only nibble on account of his cardiologist’s concern over his cholesterol levels, he explained in the soft tones of a southern Baptist preacher: ‘Everyone’s in property these days kid, wanna’ have a look?’
So skipping dessert, we went to a lock up at the back of the hotel and Enver put down his Kalashnikov and fumbled in the pocket of his baggy trousers mumbling, ‘Now where in the heck did I put those goddam keys,’ until finally they were located and the doors were rolled back on his Aladdin’s cave.
The lights were so bright they hurt my eyes. Enver had lit up a big cigar. His gun was over his shoulder and his baseball cap was tipped back over his head. His large belly stuck out over his trousers. ‘It’s like I told you kid, these days I’m in property – everybody’s property.’ After that he started to laugh so hard he dropped the gun and it went off startling an old bear that was sitting in a tree watching us.
Shielding my eyes from the bright lights, Enver had up to date wrap around ray-bans, we entered the Aladdin’s cave and I saw everything stacked up. There were chairs and tables and beds, some with people still in them, and office suites and farm labourers and terrified girls tied up with tape and ready to go and white paper bags with gold teeth in them, and hundreds of spare pairs of glasses, as well as shoes and trousers and suits and shirts and sweaters and ships and cars and cement plants and in the back whole farms and houses and even seas and mountain ranges.
‘My, you’ve certainly got a lot of stuff in there Enver,’ I said shaking my head as we came out half an hour later.
‘It’s like I said, kid,’ He snapped the door of the lock up shut. ‘Everything’s changed now. It’s like I’m running the world’s biggest garage sale.’
Then he took a bottle of Bourbon from his back pocket, took a good swig and raised the gun and cocked it, before aiming at directly at my intestines.
‘You got thirty seconds to get off this here property stranger,’ he snarled darkly. ‘Before I fill that belly of yours with good old Texan lead.’
The Sixth Dream
The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was a deck officer on a cruise ship on the Dalmatian run. He addressed us, in spotless whites, in the mutton chop manner of an English gentleman of the Edwardian period. ‘My dear old fellows,’ he began, his accent as clear and high pitched as the beautiful white gulls that circled above us.
We were assembled next to the helicopter pad, the big H, a thin breeze waving through our hair. A small group of us, all well into our eighties, all from Omaha, Nebraska. Enver removed his captain’s cap and waved it in the direction of the mountainous shoreline of his beloved Albania heavy under the heat haze of the afternoon.
‘You see before you my fiefdom and the homeland of my ancestors over which I ruled for so many years’
His voice trembled with emotion. We followed the direction of his outstretched arm and instinctively knew of the terrible cruelties of which he spoke. After that there was a pause while drinks were served and then we rushed and bound him. Then we dragged him, inch by terrible inch, across the burning deck like a cornered reptile. He resisted hard and there were effusions of blood but finally we had him over the poop deck and the youngest of the crew, whom he had abused terribly with both fork and spoon shouted out, ‘Chuck the bastard over, let him swim with the fishes.’
‘No, no,’ I yelled out in a panic. ‘We must give him a fair trial,’ but I was too late and he was thown overboard with a splash and I knew we had made a terrible mistake.
Enver had come into the hardware store in Omaha where I worked, my speciality was hinges and brackets, on many occasions. He was trying to recruit us for the union but old man Gunter, known as JY, who later handed over to his son Pete, always lay in wait for him with a loaded shot gun.
For years they argued terribly over the price of nails but then JY finally said, ‘OK Enver you win, I’ll up the price of nails and then it’s all for one and one for all.’ After that we all joined Enver’s union and got a pay rise. So I knew that you could never beat Enver.
We had put him off on a deserted isle, but he had hidden a small fold up saw in the back of his pants and when he opened it out he was able to quickly cut down a dozen trees and make a raft then he took out a great big handkerchief, which he had been using to protect his head from the sun, and worked it into the shape of a sail and then he blew and blew until his nose became horribly distended and suddenly he was sailing very fast, helped by the softest of breezes, across the Corfu channel, until once again he reached his dear Albanian home land.
I looked gloomily around at my fellow passengers asleep in their deck chairs, empty champagne bottles rolling gently at their feet, knowing from my position high up in the crow’s nest that there was nothing I could do to stop the rowing boats that were approaching carrying Enver and his cutthroat crew with sabres in their mouths and old muskets over their shoulders.
After those good citizens of Omaha, Nebraska, including Pete Gunter and his entire family, many of whom were Jews, had been murdered in their deck chairs, Enver looked up, a dreadful grin on his face and spying me in the crow’s nest shouted out to his second in command, ‘You can bring that bastard down now, I am certainly going to use my fork and spoon on him’
The Seventh Dream
The last time I dreamed of Enver Hoxha he was in the attire of a Romanian gypsy sunburned of face, gold toothed of mouth, rattling a tambourine as he encouraged a poor old bear to dance with a pointed stick.
There were six of us from the World Wildlife Fund, all trained snipers, led by the Duke of Edinburgh, hiding on roof tops scoping him. We were supported in our endeavours by the Royal Navy, which came up the Corfu Channel, line astern, flags flying proudly firing salvo after salvo until the town of Saranda was reduced to rubble and all that was left standing was Enver and his dancing bear.
Then the Duke raised his camouflaged helmet twice and gave the order, ‘WWF prepare to fire,’ then ‘WWF fire’ and we let rip with a wicked volley so that both Enver and the poor bear staggered and fell and lay in the dust.
Later the Duke was drinking tea in the ambassador’s residence when he was heard to say: ‘Do you know it was the nose wot gave him away,’ and we looked at his nose and saw the resemblance straightaway.
Then one of the matelots, who had come ashore in a boarding party and bore a striking resemblance to Pete Gunter, jumped behind the wheel of a small truck and said, ‘Follow me’, and the next thing we heard was that the hides of the pair of them, Enver and his blasted bear, were pinned up on display in the National Museum of History in Tirana for all people to silently file past and see.
And that was the last anyone saw of Enver Hoxha.
Footnote
When Enver Hoxha and the Albanian Party of Labour came to power after the war they chased out the avaricious landlords of the old order. Malaria and syphilis were eradicated. Land was redistributed from rich to poor. Income tax was abolished and a health service founded. An illiterate population was made literate, women were given equal rights. Electricity was provided to the whole country, even to the remotest farmhouse.
But then this utopian and enlightenment promise, for reasons which can only be explained by criminal psychologists or experts on the vendettas of the Balkans, turned into gangsterism. When Enver Hoxha died in 1985, tiny Albania, about the size of Wales, was the poorest country in Europe.
Enver Hoxha was cruel and tyrannical but he could also be vain and ridiculous. A French educated intellectual who could quote Le Monde in his speeches he ordered all the latest books from Paris – and then banned them. He also had shelves of books on vampires. He watched all the new films and then banned them as well. The films of Norman Wisdom were the exception. Enver considered the character of Pitkin a perfect portrayal of a worker exploited by the capitalist system.
It was the great Albanian writer, the late Ismail Kadare who worked out that Enver, steeped in the cruelties of Albanian history, was in fact medieval. Revenge and settling of scores was his priority. Punishments continued after death with burying and re-burying.
Rorie Smith is a former UK journalist now living in Bordeaux with partner Jeanne. Four novels published. The latest is The Wonderful World of Jane & Oliver Bloke (WriteSideLeft publishers, Bridport, Dorset.) Considers Bordeaux the best city in the world but still thinks of his small wooden chalet on the cliffs at Freathy, Cornwall, as home.
