FLASH
Shkruar nga Frrok Çupi
It was a charm, a white cup, a wide road... That's why I found an opportunity to go to Italy or Switzerland... This has a symbolic connection with flight.
As night falls in Tirana, the planes seem closer. Those who have gone on long journeys, they are above and have no business with us. When I'm in Tale, where I have relatives, there even during the day - as soon as one goes down, the other goes up to Rana e Hedhu. In Tirana, I have to look from the South. On the hill where we reached it once a year, if it happened, and we called it "Lapidari", where the 1st brigade had fired a cannon at the Assembly in 1944; there every time you look up - the lights of the plane are in front of you. Then it takes a turn and doesn't stop, Rinas has a different direction. In the last two years, countless planes have landed in our country. Last year, at 'peak' time, 200 per day went down. This year, the Department of Flights in the European Union made a balance and it turned out that Albania was at the top of the list of European countries in terms of the number of flights compared to the forecast. The figure was more than 200 percent above expectations. Even the country's prime minister commented on this news, of course with enthusiasm that our country has become a visitable, enviable, loved and admired place for tourists and other citizens of the continent. This year, about 50 percent more tourists landed here than last year.
I have always thought of this phenomenon with fear:
Would that day come when several, and not just one, plane would land at Tirana airport a day? I did not perceive that this has or does not have anything to do with tourism; I wanted movement and ease of landing from the sky in my city. This is not just about the plane. This has to do with the progress of the country and man, After all, it has to do with what I have experienced myself. At that time when you had no right to any hope, at that time there came a moment when I would spend somewhere in Kapshtica..., and as soon as I set foot on Greek soil I felt like sitting down for a coffee on the side of the road. It was a charm, a white cup, a wide road... That's why I found an opportunity to go to Italy or Switzerland... This has a symbolic connection with flight. But the flight proves that just as you went to Switzerland then, today there are many others who want to touch your country. The plane is just a symbol. In the first years after the overthrow of the communist regime, the New York Times journalist, David Binder, wrote a report and the most shocking fact he brought, that 'this is a place where only one plane lands a week'. With the only Malev plane, in 1996 we escorted Zef Broz, president of the High Court, whom the president of the Republic wanted to eliminate. The American embassy had taken over his departure, but there was no line that day when Berisha could be out of the country. That he should not wake up and start his gangsters towards the airport. A lot of time passed, and one morning at five o'clock Malevi alone rose above Rinas. I remember the American diplomat Carl Zibetr who climbed up on the metal railings and shouted as loud as he could for 'victory'.
When you only have one plane a week, every move is scrutinized. Not just because you are a monster president like Berisha, but also Hoxha controlled the country with a lack of movement. Absence brings fear. Absence also brings the 'calmness' that some show today with nostalgia for the period of socialism. This is how sleep falls on a country and everyone sleeps. No light in the sky, no noise of planes at night or day... The most angelic person I have known in this sense was Rikard Ljarja. The outstanding actor and director, great as an authority, but he was also a child. "How come you're not afraid of this monster," he told me, "I wouldn't dare!". He used to sit in the courtyard of Vizion Plus television, where you work for some time as a director, and he kept his head in the sky.
"I know, today it's been six!", he said and made a comparison with the previous day. In the years of the dictatorship, flights were prohibited even for international lines, ours to arrive in Rinas.
Rikardi, thanks to his soul and culture as an artist, felt that the plane above your sky is progress, it is movement, it is life. Symbolically, so. But in reality, flying in the sky is not only a symbol. It is the removal of fear, it is the emptying of the heavy and arbitrary power of the leader in weak societies. The flight completely discharges the potency of ideology, party ideology, religion ideology, division ideology, nationalism, station ideology. Because flight is speed. The West, after the second war, came back victorious because of speed. The government of Edi Rama has given all the power to flight, that is, to movement. Today we are one of the most desired places to visit in Europe.
Years ago we seemed to come from a place where the airplane was a myth.
"I can say one thing, like humor!...", my journalist friend at the Swiss News Agency, ATS, told me. We were located in Geneva.
- Yes, I told him, with pleasure
- Or we better leave it..., I'm afraid you will take me for granted.
-No, there is no reason, I believe- I told him and took the next step.
- I wanted to show how we distinguish Albanians here... Notice, if someone raises his head when the plane passes, he is probably Albanian... Laughing. I remembered myself then.
Lini një Përgjigje