You may have missed it - I very nearly did myself - but Wednesday 28
November marked the 100th Anniversary of the emergence of Albania as an
independent nation. OK, Albania may not be a country that makes a loud beep on
your international radar. Its population, hovering on either side of three
million, depending on which source you look at, undoubtedly ranks it among the
minnows of Europe. If you have any mental image of the country at all, chances
are it's not awfully positive. Perhaps you've seen the "Taken"
movies, where ex-CIA agent Liam Neeson single-handedly dispatches an extended
family of spectacularly incompetent Albanian bad guys intent on killing him
along with his lissom wife and daughter.
Well, I admit it - I do empathise with small countries struggling to
make a splash in the ocean of world opinion. Coming as I do from a nation whose
population is creeping towards the five million mark, I know what it's
like. 'Oh, you come from Auckland - California,
right?' or more commonly, when someone picks the accent, 'So, what part of Australia are you from?'
Perhaps that's another reason I have a soft spot for Turkey. Not that we can
compare in terms of land area (about one-third) or population (one-sixteenth),
but no one knows much about either of us.
 |
| Love Albania :-) |
By chance I have a young Albanian colleague at work who proudly informed
me of Wednesday's importance in the Albanian national consciousness. I use that
phrase because Miranda herself comes from Kosovo, and there is a significant
Albanian diaspora in many European and major US cities, who have, apparently,
been celebrating somewhat noisily in the past week. Miranda is the second
ethnic Albanian I have come to know quite well while living in Istanbul. The
other, Dritan, hosted me for a few days on a work-related
visit to the Albanian capital Tirana a couple of years ago. I can't say how
typical these two are of their race, but I can say they are two of the most
intelligent, talented, hard-working, sincere and honest young people you could
hope to meet. Unlike us New Zealanders, born with the God-given gift of English
as our native language, Albanians struggle with the harsh truth that no one
much wants to learn their tongue. Perhaps that's why these two seem to have a
gift for learning others - French, Italian, English, Serbian, Turkish, Russian
. . .
Anyway, as I said, I had the opportunity to visit their beautiful
country in January 2010. It's always better to see a new country with a local
guide, especially when you don't know the language. Albanian at least belongs
to the Indo-European family, which perhaps makes it easier for us than Turkish
- but I didn't pick up much in my three days there, apart from learning that
'Albania' bears no resemblance whatsoever to the word the natives use for their
own country: Shqiperie! Still, the
Germans have to put up with us calling them 'Germans', so they're in good
company I guess. But not to digress, Dritan and his family made me wonderfully
welcome, and I had the opportunity to see three cities, Tirana itself, Shkodra
and Vlore.
Dip into travel books and websites about Albania; you'll find they all
mention the scenic beauty, the mountains, beaches . . . and the flora and fauna,
which apparently represent one of the last remnants of primeval Europe, its extensive
forests providing habitats for wolves, bears, the almost extinct European lynx,
and the golden eagle, Albania's national symbol. Well, I'm proud of our kiwi,
of course, but an eagle is something else, isn't it! Still, that's another
thing we New Zealanders have in common with Albania - a small population and
minimal industrial development have some advantages in terms of preserving
nature. Two of my enduring memories of the country, apart from the marvellous
hospitality of the people, are of the majestic mountains. My first sight of
them was as my plane approached Tirana from the Adriatic coast. And later,
dining with my hosts at a restaurant beside Lake Shkodra as a full moon rose
behind snow-capped peaks on the far shore, turning the still waters to a sea of
silver.
As my grandmother used to tell us kids, every cloud is lined with silver,
and its natural beauties must be the silver lining for a country that has had
more than its share of cloud cover over the years. Albania achieved independent
statehood in 1912 as the Ottoman Empire was entering its last years, but if its
people had thought they would be left alone to determine their own destiny,
they were to be sorely disappointed. Like their neighbour Greece eighty years
previously, they were thoughtfully provided with a king from the extensive
aristocracy of Germany - William of Vied. During the First World War they were
invaded by Greece and later by Italy, regaining independence for another spell
in the 20s and 30s, when a gentleman by the name of Ahmet Bey Zogu seems to
have played a pivotal part. This
multi-faceted character apparently got himself elected to office once or twice,
participated in a couple of military coups on the winning, then the losing side,
ending up in a royal role as King Zog the First (to the best of my knowledge,
there hasn’t been a Zog the Second), before being finally sent packing when Mussolini’s
Italians mussoled in in 1939. After the Italians surrendered, the Germans moved
in till the end of hostilities in 1945. Perhaps these experiences help to
explain why Albanians chose a singularly isolationist road of their own in the
chaos that enveloped Eastern Europe when peace finally broke out.
Enver Hoxha ruled Albania with the iron hand of ultra pure communism
for forty years until his death in 1985. So pure was his dogma that, in his
eyes, post-Stalinist Soviet Russia lacked doctrinal credibility, and he threw
in his lot with Red China. The country that, after 1990, emerged blinking into
the brave new world of capitalism triumphant, was, as one might imagine,
somewhat behind the developed world in the trappings of material modernity.
Average per capita income is still among the lowest in Europe[1],
the urban architecture of Tirana itself has an Eastern bloc austerity, and the
beaches are mostly free of five-star hotels and holiday villages – which could,
of course, be seen by some as an advantage.
For the present, Albania’s independence looks fairly secure. Capitalist
development, for better and worse, is under way, and one of the things that
struck me in Tirana (apart from the ubiquity of Mercedes Benz motor cars) was
the vibrant café scene – a sure sign of post-modern urban sophistication. Other
things that caught my attention were the frequency of Turkish Muslim names
among the people, and the large mosque occupying a strategic spot in Tirana’s
main square – reminders that Albania was ruled by the Ottomans for nearly five
centuries, from 1431 until the Conference of London brought formal recognition
of independence in 1913.
The initial conquest was apparently a protracted process, drawn out by
the pugnacious determination of George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, Albania’s very own
Alexander the Great, who organised resistance to Ottoman military power for thirty-five
years, before the end came in 1478. Even then, he might have been successful if
the promised assistance from Papal Europe had shown up. Albanian relations with the rest of
Europe, it seems, have long been problematic.
Nevertheless, having finally come under Ottoman suzerainty, Albanians
seem have taken to their new situation with a will. It is said that more than
two dozen Grand Viziers of the Empire were of Albanian extraction, including
several members of the Köprülü family, who served with distinction during the
glory days of Ottoman power. The majority of their countrymen apparently converted
to Islam at this time, which accounts for those names I found familiar on my
visit.
But how to account for the name ‘Albania’?
Even allowing for our English tendency to mangle unfamiliar words from other
languages, it’s hard to see how the local name could have been mutilated to
that extent. Admittedly, even with a modicum of good will, it’s not easy to
make an Anglo-Saxon tongue do ‘Shqiperie’.
My researches showed that ‘Albania’ owes
its origins to Medieval Latin, and seems to have been applied fairly
indiscriminately to remote places of minimal geopolitical significance. Scotland,
the land of my fathers (and mothers) picked up that label at one time in its
history – probably around the time when medieval monks had a monopoly on
Western education, and were instructing their students that ‘here be dragons’,
and traveling too far in any direction would likely result in your falling off
the edge of the world. Anyway, maybe that’s another reason I feel empathy for
Albanians. If the monks had known about New Zealand in those days, they’d
probably have called it Albania too.
Well, I’m sorry I missed the centennial celebrations. If I’d heard in
advance, I’d have been tempted to head off to Tirana with a bottle of duty-free
whisky and spend the evening with Dritan’s family. I’ll bet it would have been
a good night!
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