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70 | albania besnik Mustafaj (b. 1958) Poet, novelist, essayist, and diplomat, Mustafa was born in Bajram Curri and majored in French at the University of Tirana. After working for a while as a teacher, he joined the faculty of the university in 1982 and also was affiliated with the newspaper Zërri i popullit (Voice of the People). In 1988 he became a translator at the Institute of Marxist and Leninist Studies and two years later editor in chief of the journal Bota letrare (Literary World). In 1991 Mustafaj entered politics as a member of the Democratic Party of Albania and that same year was elected to parliament. When the government of Sali Berisha took office, Mustafaj was named Foreign Minister of Albania on 11 September 2005. He resigned the position on 4 April 2007 over policy differences with Berisha. From 1992 to 1997 Mustafaj had served as Albanian ambassador to France. However, in May 2009 he withdrew from politics completely devoting himself full-time to his writing. Mustafaj’s major works include the novels Vera pa kthim (A Summer without Return, 1992), Një sagë e vogël (A Small Saga, 1993), Gjinkallat e vapës (The Cicadas of the Heat of Summer, 1994), Daullja prej letre (The Paper Drum, 1996), and Boshi (The Void, 1999), for which he was awarded the French Medicis Prize in 1999, as well the essay collections Fletorja reservat: Shenime jashte valixhes diplomatike (The Reserved Notebook: Pages from the Diplomatic Pouch, 1995) and Midis krimeve dhe mirazheve (Between Crimes and Mirages, 1999). Although Mustafaj never spent time in prison, he has been a champion of human rights who has often spoken out against political injustice. His novel Një sagë e vogël is an attempt to come to terms with the inequities of the prison system as it existed under the Communists, although the time frame of the novel is not specified nor are the Communists ever referred to by name. The work is divided into three major parts. In the first, a young boy named Omer Tsatsa is taken by his mother to the prison where his father is being held for political reasons. This will be the first time the boy will have met his father, Oso, who in his mind has assumed epic proportions. In the second part, Omer’s son, Bardhyl Tsatsa, now himself eagerly awaits a conjugal visit with his wife, Linda. Although hopes for the visit are high on both sides, prison life has taken its toll on Bardhyl, and the visit is largely unsatisfying. In the third—almost surreal—part of the novel, Linda’s grandfather, Hyqmet Hidi, is the last warder of the prison when its cells have been emptied of prisoners at the time of the Italian capitulation in World War II. In an effort to replace them with rocks he drags his wife and daughter into the cells in order to fill the void he finds intolerable. The novel ends with Linda giving birth to a rock, the fruit (so to speak) of her conjugal visit with her husband, Bardhyl. As Mustafaj writes: “Her infant will take one of two predetermined albania | 71 courses: the first, that will transform him at a single blow into the son of a political prisoner, or the second, that will transform him little by little into a prison warder who would continue to occupy the old citadel.” The following excerpts are from Një sagë e vogël (Tirana: Arbri, 1995), 15–18, 56–58, 69–70, 82–83, and have been translated from Albanian by Harold B. Segel. from Një sagë e vogël “Why don’t I have a father?” he asked his mother one day. “You have one, you had one, son, why shouldn’t you?” she answered him and her eyes moistened. She turned her face and hid her tears with her white head scarf. She didn’t want to show them to her son. Such a response did not satisfy Omer Tsatsa. “Where is he? Why is it I never see him?” “You did see him, my darling, but you’ve forgotten. You were just an infant . . .” His mother again wiped her tears. “Where is he now, did he die?” little Omer persisted. “No,” she said, “he is not dead. He is alive, and well. Very well.” And she stopped. Her tears dried. Omer did not take his eyes off her. She debated a moment with herself, in an effort to avoid the relentless gaze...

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