The first part
“A King in Albania”, is the title of the novel published by Jean-Luc Tourenne, brought to Albanian by the publishing house “Uegen” with the translation of Dashnor Kokonozit. The author is a Parisian psychoanalyst. His nature as an unusual traveler pushed him to visit Albania in 1985. Here, he learned about our history, and later did a great deal of research on our country. “This is a novel. Some names have been changed, others have not. The historical facts and most of the events really happened, some are the fruit of the imagination. And such a thing, I believe, is the privilege of historical novels”, he writes in the introduction to the book. The part we publish below is excerpted from it…
Don't call me Colonel. We are not at the front. I am Albanian. My name is Ahmet bey Zogu.
– You don't foresee a military career?
– I don't predict anything beyond the next twenty-four hours.
-What about you?
– Me? I will be King.
I burst into laughter.
– Excellent idea! – I said.
A sharp smile appeared on his face. He filled two glasses and raised his own. We knocked on his door for his kingdom. On November 11, 1916, an Albanian delegation, including the young colonel, was present in Vienna, like many others, to attend the funeral of Emperor Franz Joseph. Exhausted by the never-ending war, the emperor had decided to die right in the middle of it. If he had lived, there would never have been any delegations.
I would have spent that December night in a cabaret, accompanied by two gunners, forgotten in the arms of a blonde, and died on the field of honor six months later. With the ceremony over, Ahmet Bey Zog was ready to return to his homeland, a narrow strip of land on the western coast of the Balkans, about which I knew nothing.
But getting out of Vienna turned out to be a difficult task. It all started with empty excuses. The war had cut off transport routes, the railways were unsafe, the Balkans were on fire. Then in some high offices they started talking to him about obscure diplomatic reasons. Finally they let him know that there was no question of him leaving Vienna. While he was disturbing the Austrian empire in this way, he had to be much more than a simple colonel.
Ahmet Bey Zogu was born in Burgajet, in the Mat Mountains, in Northern Albania. He was the heir to an old tribe of warlords whose names I still confuse to this day. Zogu the Great, Zogu the Little, Xhelal Pasha Zogu, all powerful men of a mountainous feudalism that had been going on since the fifteenth century.
In that modern Middle Ages that ruled his country, Ahmet Zog grew up and became a tribal leader when his father died. He was only thirteen years old. "I didn't have many opportunities to show what I was capable of," he told me.
Ahmeti studied at the French Lyceum of Galata-Sarajevo, then attended officer courses in Manastir. Perhaps not long enough to justify the Austrian supremacy, but long enough to lead men in war, which he did not fail to do later.
"This doesn't bring us much closer to Vienna," I said impatiently.
He refilled my glass.
– You keep interrupting me…!
– I tend to burn the stages, sorry.
– A habit of chivalry! It is the advantage that the infantry has over the knight. He prepares, waits, and then strikes at the right moment.
I didn't want to get into a discussion of strategic issues, but it had been three years since the infantryman had waited for anything, perhaps even to be replaced, where he sat in the mud of the trenches. To strike at the right moment, he had to first control his fate, to brave the cold, the rain, the lice, and to keep his head safe from the deadly game of shells.
I blamed his newly acquired ranks for his lack of understanding of the war they called modern. Perhaps he had been fed images from the pages of history, where you still die amidst glory, dressed in white and covered in gold. It would take time for me to understand that he reasoned like a mountaineer and that a man who lay in ambush on the bare rocks of Mat was worth ten others on horseback.
Ahmeti continued to tell. Rebel, independent, he had long been accustomed to hearing that he was destined to rise very high. As a child he had trampled on the family estates alongside his father. He had been greeted and cheered. In the years when he was far from his homeland, these greetings were not erased from his memory. He vaguely remembered a distant childhood event that spoke of his ties to his land. One day, as they were passing through a village, a crowd of highlanders had descended on them.
Ahmeti saw his father take out his casket, ready to protect him. It seemed to the child that death was ahead of them. He remembered the grimacing faces, women raising their hands to the sky. And as the horse suddenly rose, the crowd began to shout. Xhelal Pasha Zogu, put his weapon in his belt and brought the child closer to the villagers. They took him and lifted him up, carrying him on their shoulders. It was the first time that the heir to the tribal leader had met his people.
– Maybe, – he spoke again, – it was that very day that I realized what those people were to me.
I found his expression amusing, but after all, it was befitting a King…!
– It is a debt, a debt that you enter into at birth and no exile can wash it off.
– He doesn't know how to do anything else, – added Ahmeti, – he doesn't know anything except letters.
Ahmet, then, continued his story in a dry tone. In addition to the Ottoman language and customs, during his stay in Constantinople he had also acquired other values. There he had received his first lessons in politics and diplomacy and above all he had learned strategy, something completely different from that instinctive war that his people in Albania had practiced for many generations. Being close to the Young Turk movement, he had felt the tremor that threatened to overthrow the empire.
He didn't let anything escape him, he took advantage of everything he saw, everything he read, he sought knowledge from everyone, transforming his stay there into a means of understanding the world.
But Zog's people were poor. When their money ran out, the Albanian guards at the sultan's palace began deducting something from his salary to allow Ahmeti to continue his studies. He would never forget this for the rest of his life.
Without the help of those anonymous people, those exiles he had once despised because they had chosen to serve the Turks, his ambitions would end for lack of money.
While he was still in school, the Ottoman Empire was slowly crumbling. The Albanian front opened in 1909, before the reforms of the Young Turks had reached the country. A year earlier, Bosnia-Herzegovina had risen against the empire and gained independence. An expedition was sent against Albania and drove the mountain tribes towards Montenegro, their centuries-old enemy. Fifty thousand Ottoman soldiers invaded the country and established order in the Turkish manner… In Constantinople they thought the danger had passed.
But in 1911, weakened by wars on many fronts and with Italy eating away at their territory in Libya, Albania began to spiral out of control again. Less than two years before the start of World War I, the Balkan countries put aside their ancient feuds and united against the Ottomans.
The region was on fire. Caught between two fires, the war against the Turks and the predatory intentions of its neighbors, Albania felt more endangered than ever. Ahmeti was no more than seventeen years old, but he sensed that his hour had come. There are some key moments in everyone’s life, some moments that should not be missed even when you are in the most miserable state, – he told me, looking at his empty glass.
Then he added: – It's just that most people don't know how to see them. Otherwise, they like to let them pass. Ahmeti had returned to his homeland. There, the war was wreaking havoc, a war that was said to be waged to gain independence lost in the waves of centuries. The leader of the Albanians in exile, Ismail Qemal Bey, had called for them to take up arms against the Turks, but also against the Balkan countries that had once again decided to divide the country among themselves.
At the head of his men, Ahmet Bey Zog faced Serbian and Montenegrin troops, better armed and trained than Mati's highlanders. But what ultimately prevailed was the determination of the Albanians. Those men who had grown up with the spirit of the captains, known as indomitable nationalists and predators, fought blindly for honor, for their word.
– They do not know fear, – Ahmeti clarified, not without a hint of pride. – It is not part of their culture. I spent a few moments in doubt, unable to understand whether the colonel was somehow embellishing the events he was telling or whether this unknown people were in fact the Sparta of the Balkans. Today, with the help of my Albanian experience, I believe I have understood that it is not so much culture as the lack of it that makes them not know fear.
…- Until that moment I was only my father's son. Ismail Qemali and other men had respect for our tribe, because they had been the first to rise against the Turks. We were a symbol, but outside the family history I was not known as someone. At least not before I knew the fire of weapons. Thus, at the age when the sons of Viennese families learn to dance the waltz, Ahmet bey Zog entered the pages of History for the first time. I did not learn more about his role in the events that followed Independence, nor about the fate of that country in the Balkan turmoil.
…We returned to the year 1916. At the beginning of the year, the Austrian army had entered Albania with the aim of establishing order, after the new unrest. Trampled by the Serbs, controlled by the French, placed under the yoke of Esad Pasha, that small country had difficulty recovering from the successive regimes that had ruled it after the declaration of Independence.
Vienna cast seductive glances at Ahmet Zog, whose future seemed promising.
The point was to respect the neutrality of the country, to restore sovereignty, to appoint an independent government. The young nineteen-year-old leader took the outstretched hand of the empire with timidity and fear that the country would be swallowed up again and turned into a front line of the Austrian front. He hurried to arrive before the allies in the liberation of Kruja, then created a National Assembly, where for the first time he called on the Albanians to follow him.
The Austrians were not mistaken; they declared a state of curfew in Elbasan, where the assembly was to meet. Rather than subdue Zog by force, Vienna remained true to its diplomatic tradition and decided to summon him to Vienna and shower him with honors. After Constantinople, it was Vienna’s turn to try to win over the stubborn mountaineer and channel his nationalist energy into the gears of the imperial machine.
"Women like uniforms," he clarified, not without humor, glancing at the waitress who was wiping between the tables. Memory.al
