Forsaken Albania

By Artan Lame
The Highlands of the North around about the year 1915. The photograph depicts a group of highlanders who have set up an ambush and are waiting. From their attire they appear to be from Kelmendi or Mal촩a e Madhe, this can also be discerned by their shaven heads and the single clump of long hair you can see below their woolen skull caps. This customs, quite rare at the turn of the Century, which completely faded out in the thirties and today has been forgotten altogether, was reminiscent of the times of the deep Middle Ages. From his clothing, the highlander in the middle appears to be the poorer of them all; mended leggings, torn shirt and bare arms. In particular, this is a very rare element, because bare skin, even at these levels, was something quite shameful for the time. You can tell by the way he holds his gun that he is unaccustomed to a firearm. In factr he is holding a pistol in his hands, but he holds it like it is a rifle. The other two, from the manner in which they are using their firearms, are obviously experienced in the business of handling arms. The first one, who is taking aim, holds a Martini-Henry, which as I said in a previous edition, was known as the Martini, in our highlands. I recall the lines of verse, “Against me the northern winds and snow batter and ram/ I freeze, clutching my Martini in my hand.” This weapon was used during the last years of the XIX Century and the beginning of the XX Century. The poorer highlander holds an old hammer and flint model of pistol belonging to the last decade of the XVII Century, naturally almost one Century out of general use at the time this photograph was taken. The third highlander, who is on the look out, is holding a Berdan M. 1868 rifle, quite widespread in the border areas with Montenegro, whose armed forces had been issued this weapon and from where our resourceful highlanders stole theirs. They called the rifle “the Hood” because of the shape of the cover over the barrel. From the diversity of the firearms and the distance in times they belonged to, it is obvious that this is a mock ambush for a photograph. In other words, the photographer was trying to perpetuate a moment from the activity of the highlanders, something typical, and of course, what else could they chose apart from posing behind shrubs in an ambush against an unsuspecting traveler?
Let us go back to the debate we opened in a previous edition, related to the business of the difference between the image created by many foreign travelers or by our Renaissance fighters regarding the Albanian highlanders, the customs of hospitality, the Cannon, honesty, the pledged word and the confrontation, time and again, during history of an entirely different reality, where these highlanders are frequently depicted as heartless killers and perfidious liars. Who is right? In my opinion, both sides are right. The essence of this contradiction lies in the fact that the highlander possesses all the fine and noble features kneaded and shaped and only functional within that particular territory, within the boundaries of the highlands and their context. In the context of a location where everyone knows everyone else, within a powerfully structured patriarchal society, where society does not undergo any change at all, where generations are capable of controlling the entire dimension in time of the lives of the members of this closed society, where the intervention of aggressive elements of civilization was impossible for a long time, all these positive, fine and noble features of the Albanian highlander unfurl in all their majesty. No-one escapes the unbending rules, and moreover when they don’t know any other system of existence, and within this system each member tries to be as exemplary as possible to profit from the benefits, whether the very rare material benefits or the many moral benefits (a song is composed dedicated to you, good memoirs of you are woven, your name is mentioned positively). But this entire manner of living, exceptionally delicate and which only functions within a closed system, is very easily threatened when it comes into contact with elements of civilization, and when these elements penetrate into its ranks, let alone when members of this closed society break away and join the civilized society. In these conditions, the entire system of values and morals crumbles with astounding speed, it loses its meaning and this ‘creature’, unequipped with the morals of a modern society and nurtured with the morals of the society that spawned it, finds itself in a phase of the total lack of values, which thrust up to the surface and fire nothing other than the instinct to survive, accompanied with the full range of evils accompanying this, and which we all witness occurring around us.
In the conditions of a modern and powerful State and with a potential to absorb, the problem of integration is being faced up to with success. In these cases, the State is capable of implementing a stick and carrot policy; on the one hand to attract and absorb within itself through work, through schooling, education, through production, the masses of persons who pour into the towns and cities of a country, and on the other hand, to condemn any manifestation of the lack of respect towards the State shown by these persons, who find it very difficult to comprehend both the new rules as well as the interference and role of the State in this new ambience. History is full of such examples; suffice it to mention only one of them, the integration of Scottish society into the British society in the XVII Century.
Whilst in the conditions of a State like ours, which does not have either a carrot or a stick (a state that can’t even keep its own trousers from falling down, and which is terrified of its own shadow), it is obvious that things will go as they have gone so far, in other words that not only will the integration of these people who come down from the highland areas be protracted, but friction and almost racial divisions are created between them and the locals in the towns, to avoid going one step further and calling this a trend of barbarism of society, because of the front on incapacity, not so much of society, but of the State to defend these newcomers.