I can say that among the apocalyptic dinners throughout the Balkans and Europe, something unforgettable happened one night in New York.
It was the last one for me.

I'm a journalist. One of those who is used to facing deadlines in life, whenever she travels. Which doesn't surprise me that much. But the wonder happens. America collides with both times, how I live and how I should live.

After wandering the east and west coasts, between the Atlantic and the Pacific, I understood the importance of peripheral fate, that luxury is not worn by fate, but by those whom fate brings into your life.

Even when blind, life is gentler, just like freedom.

In my case, the opposite happened.
Man is born with a mission and time limits cannot be defined, I thought.

I was walking from Radio City to 5th Ave, towards Elton Ilirjani. I wasn't even on my third day in New York and the streets of Manhattan seemed familiar to me. Elton is like a good exercise for poets when they can't produce, but when they can, they turn their unconscious into experience.

Totally conscious of what I wanted to avoid in my conversation with her, was Parashqevia. This is because I separate the private from the professional, the human from the inhuman, and this does not make me exploit the extraordinary of my profession, in contrast to the ordinary human that I see as poetry and write when the situation is simplified.

Apparently, after my distancing myself without embarrassing my brilliant friend who seemed to me to have noticed once again the difference between little Albania and America, the unexpected happened.

A dinner with Parashqevië by my side.
Which not only satisfied my taste but also the mouths of the "fairy tale from the past" while surpassing even the world classic One Thousand and One Nights.

I arrived about 15 minutes late.

The noble Elton, incomparable, was sitting at the table with Parashqevi. Milos, the restaurant was inviting. I found the first courses and wine laid out.

The premonition was visible from afar from the beret she had chosen. When I shook her hand and sat down, I felt the prophetic ability she had. It shone with those kinds of sparkles and penetrated my head, like the crown that never escaped the fate of women in the Albania of song. Once it shone, and ironically, a year ago it also gave fame to the stone in the middle of Time Square, living silently.

"Ilnisa," she said to me, in a warm and calm voice.

– I'm happy that you're Agoll, and I still remember Dritëro during his visit to New York. Just like you, he didn't want to meet anyone, and Elton told me that you hadn't asked him to meet me. Why?

Because I have tact, I told him. And God never abandons you when you have tact.

She was beautiful, speaking slowly in unadulterated Albanian, with the same delicacy as the stimulating art that raised us all for decades. Self-possessed, she stopped and said: God, he is the savior.

Parashqevia had apparently built a special bond with him over the years. Surely only his mercy had allowed him to shine as he wanted. But the greedy hypocrites were not lacking in taking notice of the empire of oblivion that Parashqevia had built, and the first day that Elton kissed her hand, in the middle of Hudson Yards and bowed to the icon, without opposing the harsh past of the streets of New York while Albanians greedily devoured the portals with this inspiring story in pain. Elton swallowed his soul without considering anything.

I wondered, what would be the result of all this if Albanians changed their approach and abused less. If there was less sense of exorcism and even less lies. Or development and solutions.

Repeat after me, directed by Elton and I, before we eat I want to pray.

It was a prayer. A prayer that, let's say, did us good.

Amine.

We clink glasses, and we start talking about America, its beauties, its difficulties, and my great desire to be there as soon as possible. In New York, where the magical is possible.

Finally, we stopped to smoke a cigarette.
With the same peace, he spoke to me: Ilnisa, I want to baptize you with the name Becky Saint Alban because you are wonderful and that's what I want to call you.

Let's walk a few steps further, New York is harsh in winter, but wounds find healing in the corners of fate or the palace.

Her instinct that recognized the path, amidst the cold of abandonment and the same wind as that of that night, once again revealed the nail-biting pattern in my eyes to always find the safe corner.

This was the Parashqevia I met, and in my eyes she had clearly decided to never confess her sadness, just like her God.

Which in fact is constantly revealed to us in different shapes and forms. I don't know which of the two came first, but I can say that I read the encounter with it as a work.

And I liked that!