BY DR. JORGJI KOTE*
During the last 35 years we have noticed a substantial increase of books and publications by numerous authors. However, veteran authors who have lived through different political times and systems in the past have a distinct place hereby. Their works bear significant values, as they have been eye-witnesses of several historic events, where their life was indeed at stake.
Even in this field, ARGUMENTUM” has been playing for years a very active role, as a promoter of dignified literary works by authors of different age, profession and region, who have have shown their best even at worst times, both in the past and currently, even by challenging their advanced age.
Another fresh testimony here is the tenth book “ Browsing time” ( Duke shfletuar kohwn) launched a few weeks ago by Mr. Eden Babani, author, writer and publicist in the last 35 years who lives in Brussels. This true gentleman that a few months ago celebrated his 90th Birthday Anniversary enjoyes a geuine prosaic and poetic “ harvest”.
I put this title on purpose, since Babani has experienced with patriotic dignity three oppossing epochs, political, social and economic systems; that of World War II, of socialism and of pluralistic democracy. Most of it, 62 years in Albania, in Korça where he was born, to continue his education in Vlora, in Kavaja, and later, until 1990, wandering from village to village to teach children the beautiful Albanian language and literature.
This happened because, unfortunately, the heroic story of his martyr uncle did not help him, and he was even condemned at the height of his passion as a teacher in Kavaja by the tragic shooting of his grandfather. As he himself has shown, after Enver Hoxha’s speech on March 7, 1968, two girls in the gymnasium wrote a letter to the organization of professional unions, asking how a man whose grandfather the Party had shot could be considered a teacher, despite the fact that he had a martyr uncle. As a result, Eden was initially removed from education with flattery and then by force, interrupting his dream of teaching, literature and poetry, only to resume it after the 90s.
In addition to the meaningful Foreword by the well-known Çerçiz Loloçi, the vicissitudes of his life, the spirit of sacrifice, will and determination to challenge every danger and difficulty of survival are shown from the beginning of the book by his fellow fighter and fellow sufferer, Reshat Kripa, with much feeling and respect and with congratulations on the 90th anniversary of his birth. Despite the suffering and sacrifices in Eden’s life until the 90s, Mr. Reshat Kripa’s dedication is full of light and inspiration.
After 1991, Eden became involved in democratic and reform processes, mainly through the written press. From 1992 he was Editor-in-Chief of the Newspaper “Liria”, while in 1995-1997 he founded and directed the magazine “Për Mëmëdhenë” and “LiriaA”; in addition to hundreds of articles, analyses and correspondences in the Albanian right-wing press, mainly in Gazeta 55, Bota Sot, Ylliria, Dielli. After 1997 he moved to Brussels. It was during this period that I had the good fortune to know him, initially as a diplomat in Brussels and then as a fellow traveler on his prosperous literary itinerary.
Even in this publication, Eden constantly addresses the past, its most beautiful aspects, but also its bitter ones; but not as moments to vent or to beat oneself up, but as a major point of reference, as a key to understanding the present and to orient oneself towards the future.
This is also one of the main messages that the triptych “Sweeping through time” with its 56 writings, memoirs, columns and poems tries to convey. By giving us a publication that resembles the pages of a time, which you must read all of, otherwise even if one page is missing, the rest cannot be understood.
It is no coincidence that the author opens the book with some beautiful poems; not only because poetry was his first youthful passion; he wrote his first poem in 1955, before he was 20 years old. But also because of the many difficulties he had to go through during the years of monism to preserve his poetic creations in safe places, otherwise….
After 1991, when democracy restored his true smile and citizenship rights, Eden began to carefully collect and organize his scattered poems. At the suggestion of friends and well-wishers, he published them in 2021 in the poetry volume “Smile in Two Times” under the supervision of his friends and Gjovalin Kola, the renowned journalist, prominent literary critic, and expert on communist dissidence.
As he has mentioned before, since he was young in the wild years of the dictatorship, Eden closed himself off and spent difficult periods “crying out his troubles” with poetry, with deep reflections on bitter realities. He shows this with emotion, truth, sincerity and nostalgia right from the first poem of this publication “Poet outside the League” when he writes with pain, regret and deep spiritual sadness: “Poor me/ the self-proclaimed poet/ the unfortunate poet of the black night/ the poet outside the League/ who takes the courage and tries to write poetry/ when everything is blackened by darkness/ and I am in danger, no one listens to me”!
Despite the suffering and vicissitudes of life, in Babani’s poems you do not find hatred, anger, or resentment towards people who intentionally or unintentionally harmed him in life; but pity, human compassion, along with the political denunciation of the system that forced even innocent people to become evil towards each other. You see this clearly in “I and the Class Struggle” with three extremely significant and synthesizing poems: “Blood for Freedom”, dedicated to his martyr uncle Sedat Babani, who fell in the war for the liberation of Kruja in 1944, and “Blood for Democracy” for his grandfather who was shot by the regime in 1948.
However, the great poetic “wall” that separates the two eras for Babani is “Pessimist 1972” and “Optimist 1991”.
The smile on the first occasion was barely there, from worry, it hid sadness, misery, suffering, uncertainty about the future, about survival, when the dragon sword had just begun to fall on hostile groups and that mini breeze of liberalism in art, culture, and the economy was disappearing.
This is clearly seen in “Baritja pirën erësirë” (Shepherding in the Darkness), which shows the poet’s indignation and pain over the fate of his childhood friend, Burim Kokoshi, who was sentenced for the second time as a political prisoner in the early 60s. These feelings are also evident in “Në Agimin e demokraciës” (At the Dawn of Democracy), a tribute to the martyr of democracy, Atur Lenja, who was killed by military patrols on April 24, 1991.
Babani writes completely differently 19 years later, in “Optimiste 1991” when a completely new and epochal reality has already been revealed: “If only you would come back to life, my mother/so that you could see what shame has fallen on me/so that you could see how I became one with the boys and the maids/how the smile returned to my face/how the worries, the sighs, the silence were banished”!
Introducing us to his world of prose, as Çerçiz Loloçi so beautifully synthesizes in his homage Preface, the essence of this publication where prose and poetry naturally merge is our national issue, the independence and strengthening of the new state of Kosovo, starting from the Kingdom of Zog and up to the present day, with numerous meditations and reflections on geopolitical topics, relations with neighbors, Euro-Atlantic integration, etc. There you will find festive commemorations of the anniversaries of our and Kosovo’s independence, thematic meetings of our embassy and Kosovo, concerts and artistic performances in Brussels, in Kosovo and elsewhere.
With great inspiration, the journey in mid-January 2001 to Kosovo is described, on the occasion of the inauguration of the monument to our National Hero Skanderbeg in Pristina and the holding of the Assembly of the World League of Albanians. Historical moments experienced with great emotion by the author there in the middle of free Pristina. With great emotion, he shows in detail the significant symbolism and celebration of the 100th Anniversary of our Independence and the 15th Anniversary of Kosovo’s Independence. The author also makes critical reflections and reflections regarding the trial in The Hague against former KLA leaders, the fabricated accusations of Dick Marti, etc.
Next, the author accompanies us on a beautiful afternoon at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), where invited experts from Tirana presented the Purple Codex of Berat, amidst great interest; then in the reading of poems by our compatriots in Brussels organized by our Embassy in Brussels, etc. Furthermore, Eden does not fail to make remarks and scathing criticisms of the government, while not sparing the opposition and its shortcomings.
Meanwhile, the main feature that leaves its mark on this publication is the naturalness and richness of events, occurrences and prominent characters, representatives of generations, ages, professions, locations… With an equally seductive and interesting geography, always in dynamics. Thus, Eden takes you with him and “walks” in European Brussels, in its history, in the numerous centers of art and culture, where our compatriots gather with their Belgian and foreign friends on the occasion of celebrations, fairs, inaugurations, promotions, visits by political and cultural leaders of our country, protests, parties, receptions at the Embassy, etc.
We started with Brussels, as the Euro-Atlantic capital reminds us of the well-known saying “if you want to be heard, speak in Brussels” and “Brussels is the place to be”!
Another merit of the book is that these characters are both ordinary people and prominent personalities, starting from the references to Faik Konica with the famous newspaper “Albania” in Brussels, to the house where he lived on “Rue d’Albanie” to Enver Hadri, the hero of Kosovo who also lived in Konica’s house, to the emblematic leader of Kosovo Ibrahim Rrugova with his loyal collaborators; one of them, Gani Azemi, my late colleague, a true hero of Kosovo since the 80s and until November 2012 when he passed away as a diplomat from Pristina in Brussels; Lek Pervizi, this living epic figure who, together with his wife, Juliana and their families, survived with dignity endless ordeals in the labor and internment camps in Tepelena, Porto Palermo and in Plug in Lushnje.
In the following, the author remembers with longing, pain and positive nostalgia his close friend and collaborator Kostaq Xoxa, who passed away in 2020, as well as the passionate musician from Vlora but “from Korçë” Mishel Lako, who also passed away in 2020 from COVID-19. Babani expresses these heavy losses of that pandemic with great sadness in his story “Painful Stories” and “Go and dare to make a phone call in Albania”!
In Eden’s book, you will find memories of the late Myrtesa Bajraktari, a prisoner of several regimes in the former Yugoslavia and Albania, a personality, publicist and ardent patriot. He has described with special notes the 80-year-old veteran photographer of Kosovo, Asllan Krasniqi. We encounter him often throughout the book, because Asllan is everywhere with his art and his camera; since 1963, when he shot on celluloid the images of the first emigrants from Kosovo heading towards Turkey, to continue with the demonstrations in Belgium, Kosovo’s war for independence and until today, commuting from Brussels to Pristina and other Albanian lands. It is difficult to have a historical moment and monument in Kosovo that has not passed through the photographs of Asllan, this tireless and generous man in every important activity.
There is no way Sakip Skepi, one of the first emigrants to Brussels, the founder 40 years ago and the director of Radio “Jehona e Shqipes”, could not be in the book. On this occasion, the author tells, among other things, the cultural and patriotic evening at the Albanian-Belgian Cultural Center on Grande Place in Brussels in February 2023 on the occasion of the 37th anniversary of the creation of this Radio, which in those difficult times was and remained the only voice on the air of the Albanian diaspora in Europe and Belgium.
It is striking that in addition to veteran compatriot figures, despite his age, Eden has resonated with his presence and speech, as well as in dozens of writings and in his 10 books, with the younger and younger compatriots and characters here in Belgium and especially in Brussels. Many of them are now found in the EU, NATO, the European Parliament, leaders and advisors of municipalities and municipalities, etc. Eden warmly introduces us to some activities of the active student association “Vlera” as well as the largest cultural association “Vatra” “Konica” “Mother Teresa” ALBELG, the Association of Albanian Writers and Journalists, etc. He shows with a sense of respect that they have been led for years with competence and passion by Mr. Ahmet Gjanaj, the former first Albanian deputy in the Brussels Parliament and now First Deputy Mayor of the Municipality of Molenbeek; Ahmeti is also the founder of the famous “Vatra” Ensemble, without whose presence no festive or thematic event in Brussels can be understood.
Also, the Chairman of the Cultural Association “Konica” Genti Metaj, extremely active, initiator of several meetings up to the European Parliament with MEPs and in the Municipality of Saint Gille with the presence of Albanian personalities from Tirana. Eden respectfully writes about the two ladies Shqipe Koçiu and Shqiponja Duro, who have long led the ALBelg cultural association and that of Writers and Journalists, while Shqiponja is also a publisher of numerous poems and novels in French and Flemish. With the same passion, Arian Bajraktari from Namur is described in the book, who leads the “Mother Teresa” Association, notable for organizing several prominent activities in Namur and Brussels, as well as in Albania and New York.
To get to the latest, in “Browsing Time” you will find descriptions of the first Albanian female MP from Tropoja elected last year to the Parliament of the Brussels Region, Kristela Bytyçi, who has been very active in local politics for over 10 years. The book tells significant episodes from her life, having arrived in Brussels at a very young age and being involved in political life since her early youth, as another example of the success of the Albanian girl in emigration. Along with her are Alketa Selimaj, Qendresa Gërlica, other boys and girls known in Brussels and Belgian politics in general.
Finally, in addition to the fact that the book is overflowing with the typical generosity of Eden, where he writes very little about himself, having left the “lion’s share” to the characters, ordinary people, and numerous events, which he has known how to embellish one by one with the corresponding sufferings and lessons, the seductive power of this publication is also explained by the author’s special style, which makes reading attractive from beginning to end. It is a simple, narrative style, with beautifully woven sentences and with professional care and, above all, with truthfulness. Although prose and poetic creations, they are in fact communications from everyday life, exchanges of messages and impressions after various meetings and activities; without prolongations, without jumping from “branch to branch” but straight to the topic. Most importantly, the author does not invent or fabricate his events and creations, but takes them from life with its true events accompanied by noble feelings of tolerance, wisdom, and popular wisdom, which the author’s age and long experience in life give him.
So much so that when I close the book with some regret, it creates the optimistic impression that the browsing of all three times for the author continues even now, when he has entered his 91st year, leaving us in a pleasant and intriguing wait for new events and attractive publications.
With these beautiful and inspiring sentiments, we wish Eden and his Wife, a genuine Madam a long life, health, and further literary prosperity, accompanied as always by a little grape brandy ( raki rrushi).
* The author of the article bears the high presidential title “Grand Master”
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