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| The future is far, far away in Albania | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hail to a wise man who dreams of peace |  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Halfway between the Albanian capital of Tirana and the “rebel“-controlled southern port of Saranda, along an ancient coastal road linking the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, my Albanian driver turned to me with a smile. “Jim,” he said, “you know what you do to end this crazy thing? One headline. Just you broadcast one headline: Ten Thousand Foreign Tourists Come to Albania. And you will see. EVERYONE will lay down their guns. If there is money to be made, they will stop shooting! Please, do it!!” | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I liked the idea, however far-fetched. Maybe Timo was right. This weird war of nerves, where AK-47s followed you at every turn, might be won by a wave of good-willed tourists. Certainly nothing else had eased the paranoia of thousands of armed Albanians who remained convinced President Sali Berisha was sending “execution squads” by night to infiltrate their ranks. No concessions — and there had been many — offered by Berisha had managed to silence the tracer bullets fired into the sky from a dozen southern towns, day and night. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Along this route, dozens of armed gangs were ready to kill you for chump change and a pack of Marlboros. | Timo was exceptionally brave to be driving us in his Mercedes taxi (for a good price, of course) from Saranda all the way north to Tirana, via the flashpoints of Vlore and Fier. His friends thought he was nuts: that 100-mile stretch was hostile territory. Enemy tanks lined the road; government-backed police and vigilantes waited for prey coming from the south to beat and rob. Along this route, dozens of armed gangs were ready to kill you for chump change and a pack of Marlboros. But Timo said he was Albanian, and thus had nothing to fear. He had friends everywhere; we would be safe. Maybe naively, we believed him. (We learned later that he didn’t even take a weapon with him, not wanting to provoke an incident along the way). As we moved north over the winding road unrepaired since the 1950s — the NBC team with Timo in the Mercedes, the gear in a (stolen?) repainted police jeep driven by Timo’s brother-in-law, Edwardo — the scenes were breathtaking and our tension eased. We climbed sheer cliffs, often above the clouds, then coasted into valleys of flint-rich fields and terraced olive groves seemingly untouched since the Middle Ages. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| At every Rambo-esque check point, there were smiles of recognition behind the barrels of automatic rifles, then, screams of joy, hugs, kisses — Timo and Edwardo did know everyone. As we approached Tirana, the journalists’ blood pressures continued to fall, despite the signs of increasing poverty. Historically, the north is less prosperous than the troubled south. Our drivers, however, grew nervous — the friendly tanks and Rambos were behind us: this was the land of the traitor Berisha and his infamous Secret Service. Our convoy now seemed to fly over the flat, paved road. The northern scenes passed in glimpses. Villages replaced towns. Farmers cut their crops with scythes. Mules and bulls did the work of machines. Whole families ploughed and tilled their soil by hand. Time-ravaged faces stared out from the fields. These were the faces of a 20th century tragedy. An independence was gained in 1912, only to be crushed by World War I; a taste of freedom and democracy in 1920, ended by an Army revolt in 1924. Since then, a despotic king, another World War, and four decades of Stalinist rule — 72 years of oppression, and then, in 1992, a fresh whiff of freedom, one on which many of these faces literally bet the family farm — and lost. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ‘Look at these beaches! Look at those mountains! You come back in five years and you will see Timo, the King of Albania!’ | Now these impoverished people faced a double threat: a corrupt government and armed bandits. They feared for their lives. But Albania had opened to the world, however briefly. In that, said Timo, lay its hope. In derelict villages more like the Gaza Strip than a part of Europe, satellite dishes perched atop broken roofs; peasant girls crossed dusty streets on platform shoes; and some of the ubiquitous Cold War bunkers — built by the late dictator Enver Hoxha to repel attack — were now painted in the colors of Bennetton. As we were sent to do, we covered the evacuation of American nationals — significantly, a minority — who wanted to leave northern Albania, and then we headed back, south, toward Greece, again on the coastal road. But now it was we who were growing tense as our drivers relaxed at the wheel. Too many stories of TV crews robbed at gunpoint, stripped to their underpants, their cars stolen. But Timo was going home, to Saranda, and he was waxing philosophical. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| An Albanian rebel stands guard at a checkpoint on the road near the southern port town of Sarande, March 7. |  “You know, Jim, everybody is leaving, but I say, we must stay! Look at this country. It is so beautiful, so much potential. I will build it up, someday. Hotels, casinos. Look at these beaches! Look at those mountains! You come back in five years and you will see Timo, the King of Albania!” I laughed nervously (we had just passed two rebel tanks south of Fier) as I imagined King Timo holding court like old King Zog in his castle, surrounded by armed henchmen, issuing decrees to his servile people. “But, you know, Jim, I would be a good King — not like Berisha!” I did feel protected by Timo, despite the sounds of lead cutting the air as we approached Saranda at dusk, ready to take the morning ferry to Corfu, and safety. But I worried what might happen to him. Timo didn’t think like the others. He had a vision: a free, prosperous Albania, reaching its full potential through hard — if not clean — work. Who knows how Timo had made his money? Certainly not only on his taxi meter. Not in a country where everyone seemed to run guns, or drugs or hot Mercedes-Benzes. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I listened to the drone of gunfire and thought about Timo’s plan. | But Timo had been wise — he hadn’t jumped into the pyramid schemes like so many others, promised the moon in a month. He bought land, lots of land, and held it. Now, he said, once the troubles had passed, he would build a new Albania. The 10,000 tourists will come. He will be king. That night, in a cafe-hostel off Saranda’s port, protected by two armed guards outside my door, I listened to the drone of gunfire and thought about Timo’s plan. Albania, this amoral land of naive peasants and robber-barons, where only pistols and money talk, could use a beneficent King like Timo. It could also use a constitution, a system of checks and balances, an incorruptible judiciary, and an army of Wyatt Earps. In the morning, Timo and I hugged and said goodbye and I jumped on the ferry (which had been hijacked twice in three days). As our boat left the harbor, I watched Timo’s image shrink. Finally, he got into his (stolen?) Mercedes and drove off. You’re the future of Albania, pal, I said to no one. Don’t get yourself killed. Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent who covers Europe. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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