By Agim Xhafka/ Sunday Stories, My Front Page

2026-07-05 11:33:00, Opinione CNA

It was a coincidence. I had just arrived in Korça and passing by the neighborhood from the car to a side alley I saw a pile of furniture, boxes filled with who knows what and many, many fronka. Thrown carelessly one on top of the other. As if the wood truck had emptied them when it brought them to our yard. Fronka is what we Korça people call small wooden benches.

Which are low, narrow, that you can take with you, for example, to the stadium and get comfortable on. It saves you from the cold of the stone steps. Especially in the weather when the snow and frost made the city "passporting" from the end of October to the middle of April. This sight excited me, it made me turn back. But in a second I came to my senses. Those clothes, those boxes and furniture were in front of the house of Nesti, my high school friend, who was also my neighbor. He lived two streets away from my house. I braked, longing pushed me to meet him. I didn't come out empty-handed, he was there. Elegant, tall, handsome, but a little stooped and covered in gray hair. The skin on his face was dry, sagging. Like that of an uneaten chicken. I said it to myself, I was going to tell him too, but I remembered that the old man is like a woman of the hour, he gets angry if you remind him of his age. He didn't let me ask each other questions.

-I'm selling the house. I spent years in Boston, I wanted to settle down here now, but neither my wife nor my children are here.
He seemed to be exhausted. Not tired, but depressed that he would spend his last years in America.
-You're going to sell the fronkas too, aren't you? -I asked him jokingly.

He laughed. He didn't speak. I spoke to myself. Those were our childhood and youth. A cousin from Germany sent Nesti a black and white TV, but it caused a stir in the neighborhood. We went crazy celebrating, so to speak. He was the only one who had a TV. He connected it and in a second he caught Skopje. With a simple antenna on the balcony. Tirana at that time started broadcasting at 4 pm. He gave some news and that was it, and then he hung up. Goodbye tomorrow, the announcer told us. Luckily, the European Championship started that month. We stormed Nesti's house with a dog and a cat. He gathered us in his parents' room, which was bigger than the kitchen, and not even three people could fit in it. He laid the blanket that his grandmother was covering on the floor and all of us neighborhood kids put our asses on the cement. It was summer, we didn't feel anything. As soon as the referee's whistle was heard, we were seized by an unprecedented cheering and many times a fight almost broke out. Beautiful moments, but also scary because Nesti's father often got angry. We thought that the next day he wouldn't open the door for us, but no. His face looked as if he didn't remember what happened. Days passed and then the cold knocked. Suddenly, as the lights go out without warning. The house had only the stove in the kitchen, like houses everywhere. The cement started to bite us in the ass. We tried to stay on our knees, but we couldn't hold on for more than 10 minutes. We were getting tired. And one afternoon, Thomai, who we called Çome, brought a bag with him.

"Yzeiri made it for me," he said and sat proudly on it.

We tore our eyes from the TV, watched his sleigh. It occurred to us to follow Çome's example. We took out old things from the house, crates, boards that we could light a fire with and with hammers and nails we set to work. Each one made his sleigh. Ugly as ever, they moved like a stone sleigh. Because one leg was not as long as the other, shorter or longer. But we stood proudly on the cement, almost saying to the cold, come eat our shit now! Çome laughed and one day she turned the sleigh over. We read, "ÇOME". He had written his name on it so that we wouldn't change it. When he left, he left it there.

"Let him put them in the basket," Nesti told us.

That's what we did. But each one put his name down. And the next day we ran to the sobalka, dug to find the box that belonged to us, then turned our eyes to the television.

-Go and see if you can find your wallet, - said Nesti and pointed to the pile with his hand.
Maybe he was joking, but I was overwhelmed by them. Dig and dig and lo and behold, I found it. "GIMO" written by my small hand of those years. So much longing, almost tears.

"I'll tell everyone to come and get them. Don't throw them away," I said to my pleading Nesti.

I was writing down the names on my cell phone. I turned each envelope over, looked at it, and wrote. The line of names became like the line of cars at the border. I knew the addresses and phone numbers of many of my friends, I had many friends on Facebook. I'll let them know today, I said, and picked up my envelope. I held it as if someone were going to take it from me.

"Well, now you can find as many of these in the market as you want," said Nesti. "Beautiful, of every size, painted with varnish so that when you see them, they blind your eyes with their brilliance."

True. You see them everywhere. But the clock in my hand wasn't just that. It was more. It was… Oh, I remembered the old clock we had at home. Someone had given it to my mother. It was Japanese porcelain, a tree trunk, and the clock was set in a worn part. That was the only one we had that told us what time it was. It helped us organize our day, when to sleep, when to eat, when to go to school, when to wake up. Then my father bought a wristwatch, but it was on his hand. We used to look at the Japanese clock. When my parents passed away, I asked my brother and sister to leave the clock to me.

"Take it, but it doesn't work, they've lost the needles," said the sister.

In Tirana I took it to a lot of watchmakers. Nowhere could I find parts for it. Until one of them suggested:

-I have a new watch, Fringo, that sits right in this hollow where your old watch is. I'll put it on right now, right now, if you want!

I said:

-No.

-Why?

-That the new watch will tell me the time correctly, but it won't talk to me about my memories. About those years and years that I had it by my side, that it saw me and I saw it, that without asking it, it would give me the answer to what time it was.

With the bag under my arm, I got into the car. I made him comfortable in the seat next to me and promised him that I would definitely find him a place of honor at home. A place of honor where I could see him and tell him about it…