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22:51 TODAY

Businessman Artur Shehu breaks his silence: I am a long-time land owner in Zvërnec, I don't know the investors at all

Albanian businessman Artur Shehu spoke on the Opinion show...

Sunday story/ 8 cards...

2024-10-20 19:45:00, Kulturë Agim Xhafka

Dawn Xhafka

I don't know why at home I went to the little box I have in the last drawer of the closet. I hadn't thought about it for years. I keep some precious things there that remind me of many stages of life. It's like a father's watch that when I touch it, it makes my chest heave like that sweater chain when he slowly takes it from the bottom to the top of my throat. I have a pair of mother's earrings. Beautiful as it seems to me that she sits inside their blue stone and smiles so gracefully at me. There are also a lot of my high school poems that I dedicated to Coseta at first, then to Zana, Ida, Tatjana and a dozen chicks who were happy when I read them, but then they didn't like me anymore. And the most expensive ones in that box are my grandmother's 8 letters,

Anne was called Adivije, but I learned her name very late, just by chance when my father one day received a family certificate at the civil status office. I had just finished high school. I have poetry in my heart. She raised me, she fed me, she listened to me, she advised me. He put up with me, but he never, ever scolded me. Because my mother left at night and came back from work at night, my grandmother became the closest to me. Every day a little bit. Like that electrode that gives off sparks and sparks when welding a broken iron. And at the end he sees that the sparks have made him a body. So solid that it can be broken in any part, but where the sparks played it does not break anymore. As if the bomb falls on him.

When I told my wife that those 8 letters were from my grandmother, written for me, she smiled. I had spoken to her, but she also got to know him and with a few meetings between them, she made me jealous. That the woman, what she would become, became very attached to the side. With the Adivya of my soul.

-What if your grandmother could neither read nor write! - she told me with surprise and a little provocation.

Indeed, the party did not know how to read and write. Unfortunately, I discovered this too late. It used to hang over my head when I was doing homework in elementary school and after every word I wrote it would tell me:

- Well done son! You wrote them like beads. Nice, very nice!

My notebook liked what the eye swallowed. When I made a mistake, I would erase it and an ink stain would remain on the paper. She was tearing me up and saying:

- Do it again on this new page!

So year after year. I totally forgot she couldn't write. After the language, I would say the lesson of history, of education. Every afternoon I babbled like I was in front of the nipple. But I succeeded. I used to close the years with a letter of praise and when I said that there is merit at home, they laughed. They knew that she did not tell him about reading and writing. But it was not too late. I did the lessons with him. And the math with it. Both chemistry and physics. The most patient side. He didn't understand anything, but he kept his mouth open, seemingly focused, when I talked about Einstein's theories or Newton's laws. So until I finished high school. Then, when I was going to university in Tirana, we both cried for a week in a row. But in the mornings, when father and mother were not at home. I would run away from Korça and how would I leave my grandmother alone? My nipple? my friend? my soul?

At the bus agency, as soon as we hugged, he gave me the order:

- Don't forget! You promised me that you would write me a letter every month!

I couldn't tell him, you don't know how to read, because his father, mother or sister could read to him. I shook my head. No worries, that is.

Life in Tirana grabbed me. Before the end of September, Zura and loved ones. It was eating up my study time, but so was she. But at the end of the month, when a friend of my father's came to the dormitory and brought me the monthly allowance, because I didn't have a state scholarship, I gave him the letter for my grandmother. In a sealed envelope with the note on top: "Anesë".

Likewise for October and November. December found me home for the new year. I boarded the train in Tirana at 5:00 in the morning and at 6:00 in the afternoon I knocked on the gate in Korça. Mom opened it, she let out shouts of joy like screams that Razo and Ilo, our neighbors, opened the door at the same time. The sister also shouted. The more restrained father, my side eventually came holding onto the hallway wall. I was also holding on to that wall until we hugged and we choked with sobs. Then joy and happiness. I was the only one talking. All open mouthed. For school, for exams, for the girlfriend. Until:

- Get up, let's sleep now! We are at work tomorrow! - ordered the father.

As they left, grandmother took my three letters out of a pocket of her apron. Unopened.

- Didn't your father read them, my dear? - I asked him.

- How would he read them? The letter is for me, not for him. Read it to me now!

I stayed like a hu. I never believed it would happen like this. I opened it and started reading:

- My side.

- Here I am son, go on.

- I missed you a lot.

- Me too. Broke me, son.

- At school, I took the exams and got good grades.

- We must, we must.

- I have a good friend. Beautiful and wise.

- As you are, old man.

Letter by letter, line by line, we finished what I had written. He burst into tears. He gathered them again in his hands, put them in his pocket and said:

- Read them to me again tomorrow!

As many days as I was on vacation, we reread the letters without stopping. With her many improvisations. So much love and detail was put into those envelopes that now, when my Aneja sees me from above, I forget that she did not know how to read and write. That Adivija you find. The love between us was so strong that when I remember the dialogue in the readings we did, that after every written word of mine she inserted her own spoken word, I say that today's "chat" was born from such communications. Or more precisely, "SKYPE" was invented from such communications. That's why I call those letters "Grandma's 8 letters". That I continued every month until June to send the promised envelope to Korça. And my grandmother and I used to SKYPE with them all summer, before the internet was invented yet. Grandma "Messenger", suits him better. We did not write to each other. My good life changed. But we still "communicate" non-stop, like back then. I talk to him during the day, with my eyes towards the clouds. She answers me at night, through our dreams...