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Washington D.C. October 9, 2009
Library of Congress
Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen:
- Thank you Mr. Harris for the introduction.
- I feel both happy and privileged to be here today. Thank you very much for coming!
- First, I would like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to Mr. Grant Harris, Head of the European Reading Room, for the invitation to speak before you today, and for taking care of the details of this meeting.
- I am very happy to learn from Mr. Harris that several of my books are part of the Albanian Language Table, maintained by the European Division of the Library of Congress. That makes me feel truly honored.
- In fact, the topic of this talk today appears often in my writings published previously in those books, especially on an essay published in 2001.
- I am sure you all have a general idea what living under a Communist Dictatorship feels like.
- One can say there was no freedom of speech, but one could never capture what that meant—well, anyway, not better than a clandestine Albanian joke, like the one where…
§ two friends, both of them security guards, chat while standing guard outside the Party headquarters. “My dear friend--says one to the other-- I wonder sometimes, what is your opinion of our leader, Enver Hoxha?” The other hesitates a while and then answers: “You know… I have, the same opinion you have, I am sure.” “ Oh, really?” says the first guard, “If you have the same opinion I do, I’ll lock you up!”
- One can also recite the familiar list of shortages that plagued communist economies: like, lack of meat, milk, eggs, or toilet paper… But the unhappy truth was more palpable in a story like the one where…
§ a military instructor lectured to the students, explaining the destructive force of a modern nuclear bomb which burns to ashes only the humans but leaves untouched the buildings and everything inside them. “Imagine- he says – if the Americans manage to drop that bomb here in Tirana, that grocery store you see across the street will remain completely intact. But the grocer will certainly pulverize and disappear.” “Well, then what about in our case?—asks one of the students—What kind of bombs are the Americans throwing on us right now? that the grocers are completely intact, and the groceries from the shelves are the only thing disappearing?”
- Not only those who have learned about the horrors of communism through history books, but also those who have experienced first hand the repressiveness of a communist regime, have started to doubt whether people actually laughed in those austere times as they lived in total lack of freedom of speech, of thought, of movement, half-starved, repressed by the most humorless regimes on the planet.
- It occurs to me that when imagining those of us who lived the dark age of communism, your ordinary Westerner--who has an array of digital encyclopedias and information at his fingertips--often helps himself in black and white superficialities, imagining only people that live under the fear of the dictatorial repressive machine and who are only preoccupied with the pains of daily survival. What’s imagined is a total sadness and desperation.
- But we laughed…. We really did! A lot.
- In fact, I believe that nowadays in Albania, people don’t laugh as much as we--the repressed--did under Communism.
- At first blush, this may sound like a favorable testimony for communism in the grand tribunal of history. But it is not.
- Our laughter wasn’t due to lack of awareness of how hard we had it. And it wasn’t nonchalance either!
- To be fair, the laughter was due to the communist repression, but not out of duty to comply with the supreme command that the citizens had to appear happy.
- The Albanian dictatorship was indeed ruthless, cruel, bloody-handed, unpitying and dehumanizing, but it was also grotesque.
- We lived in total isolation from the world. In fact, were there a Guinness Book of Records for countries, Albania may have even gotten a little mention—as the country that was encircled by barbed wire along its entire border. Literally! The entire border! These were networks of barbed wires that would rise to about 7 feet above the ground. The official propaganda maintained that the surrounding of the entire country was in no way meant to keep Albanians from getting out, as much as it was to prevent Albania’s enemies from coming in. At the time, there was only one person on the globe that could jump slightly more than 7 feet and cross that barbed wire border. That was the American Olympic athlete, John Thomas, who had just broken the jump record. (John never showed up though. Some of us waited… )
- The dictatorships may survive for decades but it is the grotesqueness in them that makes them fragile and the people’s hopes to get rid of them, more attainable.
- In the essay I mentioned, published in 2001, I discuss both, the official, “licensed” humor and the forbidden humor that spread from mouth to mouth and penetrated society to such degree that made light not only of the everyday drabness of the Albanian life, but also of the people’s darkest hour, from the interrogation rooms to the torture chambers of the State Secret Service.
- I also wrote about what it meant to be a writer, especially a satirist in those times. There was no writer that could ever sit on his desk and not feel the inevitable presence of the Ubiquitous State Censor. This was the monster that ordered the cruel persecution of writers and artists, and who had the power to seal their fate forever by sending them to exile, prison, or the gallows.
- The humor writer, however, -- the satirist working through official channels,-- enjoyed a little bit more space than writers of other genres. By its nature, satire targets all shortcomings and failings; ridicules characters, praxis, and everyday phenomena. The system itself was interested to a certain degree, to encourage certain “licensed” kinds of criticism.
- But the humor writer would also find himself in an absurd and precarious position. He could target all but the system and its wardens. There was no need for directives and guidelines in this respect. We knew what could not be touched.
- This meant that there was a limit as to how sharp satire could be. Although we were able to create interesting comic plays, short stories, sketches, and caricature, and although comedy enjoyed tremendous popularity due to an amazing crop of talented actors and directors, there was something serious missing.
- We were not able to speak of the deeper truths of the Albanian reality. Nevertheless, in that surreal environment we were the manufacturers of humor, and yet, we ourselves, were comical subjects.
- For example: you write a short play and you are very happy with the way it turned out. You feel as if you have hit the magical chord. The play is sharp and funny. And although you wouldn’t want to change a word, the first night after you finished it, you can’t sleep because you are terrified that the allegory is probably way too obvious, and if they get it, very bad things may happen.
- After having obfuscated the allegory as much as you could you go back and read it again the second night. The cover up is so apt that no one will get the real message. But you can’t sleep that night either, because you are now convinced that what was sharp and brilliant has now become dull and pointless. And so on… night after night, with every paragraph you write.
- In the eighties, I wrote a short play, the inspiration for which had come from my personal experiences in my twenties. I used to work in a faraway industrial yard that was secluded, and nestled between mountains. In the little cafeteria that was meant to serve snacks and drinks for the workers, there was a head counterman that had become notorious for skimming off the portions of sausage or salsa dipping, or for under-pouring liquor. If anyone complained about the portions, or petitioned to the administration to discipline the counterman, his two assistants—that looked like two bouncers out of a Charlie Chaplin silent movie—would simply show up and beat the heck out of the complainer. Gradually, a state of terror had been created in the cafeteria. So whenever the head counterman asked me or my friends whether everything was OK with our food or drinks, we’d rush to tell him that every thing was perfect. In fact, just to make sure, we had the urge to tell him every day that in that little cafeteria, we felt true happiness.
- I wrote this story as a screenplay for a TV comedy. I certainly exaggerated certain aspects for artistic effect. For example, I had two actors ordering brandy, and with each round, their portion became smaller and smaller until, in the last round the bartender simply served them two empty glasses. They looked at the glasses and without uttering a word of protest, they propose a toast and raise the empty glasses to their lips.
- After the comedy aired, I was a bit surprised to have two unknown men run up to me and try to hug me—their breath smelling a little bit of alcohol. They congratulated me on my tremendous courage for publicly denouncing the situation of terror in the nation and for blasting the government!
- Look, I said. There is absolutely nothing against the government there. You misunderstood it!
- Had they not been so drunk, they would not have dared keep me there to try and convince me that they knew that cafeteria was nothing but Albania, the terrorized and obedient customers were no one else but the Albanian people, the bouncers were the State Secret Police, and the counterman was, well, Enver Hoxha… They said they admired my courage. I told them repeatedly, I did not need any courage to write that piece, because I meant nothing of the kind. In fact, they were the courageous ones, for daring to have those thoughts, and they were the ones that should be careful.
- It is really a precarious and yet ridiculous position to find yourself in as a satirist, when you want the audience to get the allegory, to properly understand the symbols, to draw the parallels, to make the right connections, and yet, you tremble at the thought that they understood it perfectly!
- But there is one thing to be noted here: there was such a sterility of real, unpoliticized Albanian art and culture, that the situation had shaped and cultivated an Albanian spectator and reader with an overexcited and rich imagination, with a nose for self-ironizing and political allefory. They only needed a little spark in order to flare up their own sense of humor, creating or spreading mouth to mouth the forbidden jokes, those that send one to the gallows, contributing thus anonymously to that body of folk anti-communist jokes of the Eastern Block -- the mutating viruses to which the communist state never developed the right antibodies.
- In the late 70-ties, I ran across a French publication of a book titled: “World Encyclopedia of Anecdotes”. Reading through the anthology, I noticed that the jokes that originated in countries or communities that had seen the most brutal repression and persecution, like the Jews, the Afrikaans, and Europeans under the Nazi or Communist rule, had a distinct quality to them, conveying a sense of humor that was allegorical, dark, and surreal which raised them to the level of pure art. These jokes were funny primarily on an intellectual, historical level, rather than laugh-out-loud hilarious, and all the more satisfying precisely for that reason.
- It seemed as if terror and brutality, by stripping people off their rights and liberties, contributed, paradoxically, to the development of an oral culture of satire, and made the world culturally all the richer because of it.
- Another thing that I noticed later on by reading various anthologies of political anecdotes from former communist countries such as Czechoslovakia, or Romania, is that many of them I had heard in Albania in the eighties, circulating clandestinely from mouth to mouth, and told as if they were pure Albanian-made. It seems like it takes similar social and economic conditions, similar violations of human rights for the clandestine humor to be easily veiled in ethnic clothing and comfortably parade as locally grown.
- However, reading these familiar forbidden jokes in New York in the late nineties, I realized they did not affect me the same way they did thirty years ago, in Tirana. Back home, under communism, the humor felt sharp, witty, imaginative, funny… Here, the books of communist jokes stood idly on my desk, like mines with de-activated dètonators. Their effect was, in a substantial part, due to the danger they possessed for those who told them, as well as, paradoxically, for those who happened to hear them. Their true life was underground.
- When it comes to the performers of comedy, the Albanians owe the deepest gratitude to Skender Sallaku, who was a comic virtuoso, a serious actor, and a real thinker. I dedicated an entire book to analyzing the work of this man, who was as colorful a character offstage as he was onstage.
- Sallaku, however, enjoyed a massive popularity, a very unique position as a comic. He was beloved by communists and anti-communists alike, by political prisoners and persecutors, truck drivers and Politburo members. Very often, clandestine jokes doing the circles of the crowds who whispered them one to another would be attributed to him. Sallaku was absolutely fearless, and even ended up telling one to the face of the Dictator himself. Hoxha spared him, perhaps wanting to appear as a person with a sense of humor, or perhaps to follow the centuries-old tradition of the powerful monarchs who never beheaded their court jester for going a little too far with their act.
- But other joke-tellers were arrested and sent to prison, never to be seen again. Sallaku, is credited with being the author of a joke that dealt with the scenario of a jokester’s arrest:
o A judge hears loud laughing behind the door of a colleague’s chamber. He enters the room only to find the other judge convulsed in laughter. - What’s so funny? - he asked -- I just heard the funniest joke of my life- said the judge. -- Tell it to me! – became curious the other. -- Are you crazy? I just sentenced someone to eight years for doing just that!
- The justice system and law enforcements were the natural target of clandestine joke-tellers.
o - Hey bro- says one inmate to the other in a Tirana prison. – For how long did they sentence you? – Ten years! –says the other. - And how long have you done so far? – Fifteen. – How long do you think you have left then? – Twenty!
- And of course, the quest for an alternative reality, free of propaganda and communist clichés, was ever present in the humor of the underground. Like the story where…
o A little kid gets lost at the beach and is later found by a public safety officer. – I can’t find my mom and dad anywhere! - says the child, tears in his eyes. – Don’t cry- says the officer—we will make an announcement and call for them by radio. First, we’ll try the public announcement radio here at the beach, and if that doesn’t work, we will issue an announcement through Tirana Radio. – But my mom and dad never listen to Tirana Radio! – says the child with panic. --Can’t you try the Voice of America instead? That’s all they listen to.
- That there were so many laughable phenomena during the years of dictatorship, it was neither our merit, nor our fault. But the ability to see them and point them out was certainly due to the depth of our collective humanity, and to the invincibility of our spirit. Because when desperation wins you over, and hope alone is unable to lift your spirit, you no longer laugh. You cannot see the ridiculous, the grotesque.
- That’s why it is emblematic in this respect, to close my talk telling you what an imprisoned Albanian catholic priest said once. He shared a prison cell with many other political prisoners. Every night at 2am, a loud alarm would sound. The prison guards set it off every night as a form of collective torture for the inmates. Father Peter Meshkalla, woke up along with all the others, but instead of protesting like the rest of the inmates, he just simply sighed loudly: “Ah, this alarm! When will they start letting us really enjoy our time in prison?
Thank you very much for your attention.
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