Prof. Dr. JORGO BULO

"I CAN'T CRY, BUT I CAN SING"

I spent 13 years as a high school teacher in Gjirokastra, and Alizoti remained with me for 13 years among kind and wise people. His day job, which supported his family, was surrounded by the culture of the books he sold. But he first of all had a cultured soul. He did not like the state of the time and his reasons were above the level of the ordinary people around him. This coldness towards the state remained within his soul, seemingly unreadable. It was distinguished not by his abusive words, but by his disdainful silence, which for him was also a sign of nobility.

In that environment with that state oppression and that psychology of ordinary people around, swearing was the same as walking on a muddy road, from which you emerged barefoot without shoes, or holding your mouth open, waiting for the stars like candy! Heroism to the point of sacrifice was another thing and, according to him, for other circumstances. Alizoti was at peace with himself, silent with officials, close to people, full of humor with trusted friends. Like this, his life passed surrounded by books with the wisdom of the whole world.

I had his three children as students, one better than the other, and they gave me more opportunities to meet their father. In the bookstore on the central road through the city, the parade of people walking about their business passed by before his eyes. There was no interference in their lives, except that in them he could see a little of the spiritual state of the city. They would rise higher as if for a wedding, and lower as if in a cemetery…! Life passed the same way before his eyes and he always stood with dignity, sometimes the great man of the day, sometimes the philosopher of an undefined time for that city.

There, sometimes up and sometimes down, I walked with the teacher's bag under my arm. His sweet face invited you to come inside behind the glass windows. I entered with pleasure, certain that I would hear something new and wise. Even before speaking, his face had a sincere kindness and humor. Among the books that filled the shelves, he was a separate "book", wandering among them to arrange them better and, without realizing it, to bring them into the hands of those who entered there. Many people bought the book themselves out of shame, because if they showed it to others, it would be a humiliation of manhood!

On his lips, as the first words, he had humor. He lived in the city where people in their simplicity had goodness, while the state produced evil. Since he had nothing to do with that evil, which dragged the victim all the way to the castle prison above, he loaded it with humor so that people, as if without his will, could read it more clearly. It was the city where the porter's samarri was more humane than the "Gaz" of the committee.

You could learn these things from Alizoti. Of course he knew who he was talking to. From the street, he looked inside through the glass sometimes like a dark surrealist painting, sometimes like a host who held books and spoke to each one by name. He behaved seriously and cultured with intellectuals. He sat down affectionately with the little ones, like women when they throw crumbs to birds. He showed them the pictures in their books and explained them a little. He followed those who came in vain with his eyes, as if to cry out to their plight. Someone came in with bags from the bazaar, and first he asked them humorously about their prices! Someone dropped a banknote without noticing and Alizoti begged him to pick it up, because his wife had taken the broom from home that day!

As soon as a cooperative president entered, his eyes fell on Whitman's poetic book "A Blade of Grass". He was looking at it carefully because winter was coming and he was responsible for providing food for the livestock. Alizoti followed him with the corner of his eye. "That grass, why is it a 'blade of grass' and not a full grass, like our livestock likes"?! "Because it is a selected grass" - Alizoti replied. - "Where does it grow"? - "In America, but the book teaches that that 'grass' can grow here too. It is good for children"! - "I don't understand" - the president replied.

-"Buy it for the children at school and they will learn, for themselves and for the livestock. How have you read it, come and tell me! Tell the other cooperatives too"! He didn't take it any longer; he bought three books, looked and for once couldn't clearly distinguish the blades of grass on the front, shook his head in two minds, put them in his bag and left.

-“What are you going to do with it when it learns what's inside?” – I asked my friend. He laughed: “You heard it, I didn't lie anywhere, it's good for schoolchildren. Then sometimes you love it and that's how this guy gets angry! When he doesn't know how to judge, why is he in a hurry to speak”.

He told me another story: "Yesterday, the chairman of the League, Shuteriqi, came to see me. His book 'Song in the Mine', which he wrote as circulated in Mirdita, has turned yellow in the summer and has been wrinkled by the winter. No one will take it. The author came in with two officials. I pretended not to recognize him. Seeing his books on the shelf, he didn't like the situation and suddenly asked me to skip the line: 'How are you doing'? Nothing, I replied, 'Song in the Mine', I was left at the door! I felt serious as if I had been accused. He turned his back and left.

The official spoke to me reproachfully: 'I don't know who it is that insulted the book'?! I am not a civil status officer, I know and recognize you as long as they come here! After all, a man has his book, whether he boasts or insults God! I am Ali-God to myself". He laughed again to himself. "12 o'clock. Let's have a coffee"! He closed the bookstore and we left. - "You don't run out of humor, I said, where did you get this"? - "From your silly song, which I like so much: 'I can't cope with crying, but with singing'. It's as if my soul has found refuge in this polyphony".

He never asked me how his children were doing! One day he told me in concern: "I have a surprise or concern: it seems to me that the national history, the deeds of the ancestors, especially against the Greeks, who we have on the border, are given to children in a truncated form! I cannot understand why in high school only Greek teachers teach history, one after the other. Who concocted these!? You see for yourself, because you have them close by! One day I asked the child about the occupation by the Greeks of Gjirokastra in 1940, how they took down our flag and put up theirs. The child opened his eyes, as if in a dream"!

Then he added: "I'm afraid that even if they did well in the matura, the scholarships are still commanded by a Greek, strangely attached to the surname 'Çami', as if attached by someone! However, others know these things and they solve them themselves" - he closed his concern with wise neutrality. Surprised at his discovery, I shrugged my shoulders and continued to dig into my memory! - "I didn't tell you to raise these in the Pedagogical Council," - he added with humor, - how could you even shoot this"! He laughed frankly and ordered a glass.

As the instruction came from above, even in that area there was a riot against religion and their cults. Suddenly, a pub on the side of the road decorated the sign, where it wrote in beautiful handwriting "KAFE". But since the stone was narrow, it wrote "KA" above and "FE" below, and from afar it was read; "Ka - fe". The god, who had made it, was called by the Party, then the Security...! The most fearsome secretary of the Committee, with terror in his eyes almost white, goes to Alizoti and, after glancing at some books, says: "The word 'God' in your name is against the Party's line! How do you still keep it, in this revolutionary spirit?! You even have smart children in the gymnasium" (he himself had an intelligent and excellent girl as a student in all the appearances of a girl).

Alizoti, who was in a difficult situation, calmly replied: “I am not to blame for my name, comrade B, my parent gave it to me, when my party had not allowed it, my father had not foreseen this! But I have a question; Is the word 'Lord' equal to the word 'Lady'? Without understanding where it would come from, the secretary affirmed: “I agree, 'Lord' is male, 'Lady' is female”. – “Then,” added Alizoti calmly and politely, “if the name of the Heroine – 'Lady' Çurre is changed, I will change it after her”!? The secretary could not find words to answer, rhythmically blew his nose in his habit and left, muttering an answer in anger, which he ended up roasting with his friends.

I would pass by his bookstore after school. He was waiting for me as it seemed. He saw me and called me with the newspaper "Drita" in his hand. He opened it and said with unconcealed joy: "The leader talks about the Independence Monument, instructs the three proud sculptors and your ballad for Selam Musa. I'm afraid of you now," he suddenly added. I was happy and looked him in the eye, as he instructed me! - "You gained wings to fly, to finally go to Tirana because you've been busy here enough...!

"Only now you are on the mark of the envious couples! Now you must beware! I fear your honest nature! Raise your eyebrows, but don't lose your eyes!" Within the natural joy I felt, his advice seemed theoretical to me, like a proverb said for everyone the same, that danger is shared by a few to all, as a matter of fate, in the end.

The leader of the country arrives in the city. With a luxurious cane in his hand, Enver Hoxha quietly walks through the cobblestones of the city, surrounded by officials of all kinds. The sidewalks were filled with people, most of whom looked at him with pride and adoration, others with curiosity. When he saw someone he knew, he would meet or greet them, according to his memory of each one. In front of his bookstore was also standing Alizoti. As soon as he saw him, the leader called out to him in the local language: “Alizot!..”. He wanted so much that he went out among the people to meet him.

They hugged each other, then Enver asked him about the children and the job. For every question, Alizoti, even though he wasn't feeling well, would only say; "good". The photographers were taking dozens of shots of him from all sides and in all colors. Finally Enver asked him once more: "So you don't have any problems"! Smiling slightly, Alizoti answered as if with an intimacy that he allowed himself: "Now that they saw us together, comrade Enver, for a while I won't have so many problems". He smiled and they parted.

The incident was passed on by word of mouth, receiving additions and other embellishments from the curious. Alizoti asked the people of the Committee to give him a photograph where they had gone out together, but no one gave it to him. They had ended up in the hands of the Sigurimi, where Alizoti remained a stranger until the end. Someone told him: “You played a trick without asking us. You could even be punished”! He replied: “I have the order you gave me here in my notebook, for any complaint!..”! The official acted as if nothing had happened to him and left.

I set off for Tirana with my family. I met him and he gave me a nice notebook, with a black cover and red sides, from the time of King Zog: "Write here the years you spent in this city. And the good and the bad, people need to know them"!

He continued working there among the books, always at peace with himself.

Geneva, December 2010

GAQO VESH (“HYSKE BOROBOJKA”)

ENCYCLOPEDIA LIBRARIAN

In memory of bookseller Alizot Emiri

Every time I go to Gjirokastra, with longing for the years of my youth spent in that city, when I go down from "Qafa e Pazarit" to "Sheshi e Çerçizit", I completely unconsciously turn my head to the right, as if I expect to see Alizot Emir in his bookstore and as if I expect him to recommend a new book that has come out.

That bookstore, state-owned when I first knew it, has remained identified with the name of Alizot Emiri, because he was not simply a "bookseller", but an institution, without which, we who have studied and worked in Gjirokastra, cannot understand our formation and approach to books, as the basic nourishment of our cultural and civic formation. The book and Alizot Emiri have remained one, closely linked in our imagination even today, more than half a century after our first acquaintance with Alizot and his bookstore.

I must have been in my first year of high school “Asim Zeneli” when one day I entered the bookstore, probably more to look than to buy a book, although they were not expensive, but not cheap for a boarding student who was studying with a state scholarship. With the shyness as if I were entering a temple, I was liberated when I encountered the smile of the bookseller, who did not let me feel bad.

On the contrary, he came out from behind the counter and started asking me about my field of study, what books I had read, who my favorite writer was, and what interested me. When I told him that I came from Sheper, he immediately started talking to me about Çajup and recommended that I get the new edition of “Baba Tomori”, prepared by Prof. Dh.S. Shuteriqi, but when I told him that I had the first edition of 1902 in Sheper, I saw that he liked it and asked me what I had read by Noli and his translations. I had only come across “History of Skanderbeg”, “Macbeth” and “Ligjeron Fan Noli” with his lectures, collected by Lefter Dilo. Then he took out “Rubairat” by Omar Khayyam, the 1926 edition, from under the counter and said to me:

– "This is not a book that is for sale, read it and return it when you finish it. You will like it."

I didn't know how to thank him, not only for the precious book he gave me, but especially for the trust he showed in me. "Rubairat" was not a forbidden book, nor was it recommended by the school for reading. Some of my roommates and I devoured it, and when I returned it to him and talked about the book, I was amazed by his knowledge of it and the personality of Omar Khayyam. I can say that from that day on we became friends, and when I passed by his bookstore, if I didn't go back myself, he would call me. If he didn't recommend a new book to me, he would open a topic about literature, about an author, or an event or debate in literary life.

Alizoti gave the impression that he left nothing unread. As soon as a new book came out, especially a new translation of Balzac or Dante, of Moliere, of Dickens or of Remarque, he was able to talk about it. Later I came to understand that a good part of the books that were translated, he had read previously in the languages ​​he knew, while the new books of Albanian literature, as soon as they arrived, he did a diagonal reading, but he had the ability to capture the essence of their message and subject and some detail that he used as a "trap", to stimulate your curiosity to read it.

Alizot Emiri was not an ordinary bookseller, not only for the culture he had acquired as an autodidact, but also for the way and "didactics" of presenting the book to readers, to simple readers yes and yes, but also to qualified readers. He felt confident and equal with them; we measured ourselves more when we talked to him than he did with us.

So, Alizot Emiri's bookstore had become, so to speak, a "tekke" where we all prayed, not only students of Gjirokastra schools, not only teachers of language and literature, but specialists in various fields, doctors, engineers, lawyers, economists, agronomists, but also ordinary citizens and villagers. He had the rare intuition to recommend to each person that book that would be useful to them, but also that would suit the tastes of each category of readers.

Alizot Emiri has remained unforgettable in our memory as a special and beloved character. He was a pleasant conversationalist, with a rare intelligence, with a spontaneous humor that came from within, ironic, sometimes bitter, but still funny and subtle. If all of Alizot Emiri's sayings, jokes, anecdotes and parodies were collected, a rare book of folk wisdom would come out. I hope that his sons will do this, if they haven't already, so that not only his memory, but also his spirit, is preserved. / Memorie.al