You are from London

by Lily. M (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

Making a local connection Albania

“You are from London?” “Yes. Do you know it? Have you been there?” “Yes, I’ve been there.” “What did you think of it?” “I’ve been to the UK seven times.” He showed me with his fingers. “Each time, they send me back” he said, gesturing with his head to show me where ‘back’ is. “But I go again.” “Oh”, we said, craning our necks up to him. We were at a loss. All we could do was listen. “The situation here with the economy is bad, so many people, young people, they try to leave. I hope to try again.” We talked a little more, then he laid down the bill on the red-checked tablecloth and walked away. We stared at it, silently. Connections can be threadbare - dotted lines, sparse moments. But they can bring into relief wider systems and stories. *** I like to study maps. I am fascinated by the boundaries, by the demarcations of space, the line between one side and another. In Albania, the lines circling the territory are relatively recent, but the battle scars signalling conquest and power much older. I had been in the country for two weeks before the encounter with the waiter in a quiet restaurant on the south coast, and all the while had been struck by both the impotence and brutality of borders. After an all-night ferry, I flashed my UK passport, my golden ticket, into the country. This region sits at an intersection of cultures, languages, and history, a tight triangle of movement and connection between Italy’s heel, and the splayed form of Corfu. Hiking up a mountain one day I peered over at Puglia beyond; as I threaded south over the weeks, I saw Corfu’s blissful green coming closer into focus. I dined on stuffed vine leaves - plump, glistening - and baklava that shattered into a sticky mess of nuts and cinnamon. These foods aren’t ‘Greek’ or ‘Albanian’ – they speak of a truer, deeper history, one that escapes language, that speaks of the human connection with the land, with pleasure and hospitality. Albania is dotted with military bunkers, pockmarked with these concrete orbs on every roadside. During the Cold War its dictator cut it off from the world, forbidding its citizens to leave or outsiders to enter. In Ksamil, a small seaside resort, I swam to tiny islands inhabited only by hares and birds. As my sea-wet feet dug muddy imprints through the soil, I thought of the women forced to work here picking herbs, watched over by guards lest they dive into the crystal water and attempt to swim to Greece, so tantalisingly close. Further south is the once-great ancient city of Buthrotum. A swampy marshland of reeds and ruins sitting stagnant in a lagoon. I walked past stones white hot in the sun - Greek, Roman, Venetian, Ottoman. Relics of conquest, crumbling. So many feet burying time. Only the sea continues to rise, forming the land anew, nibbling at its edges, ever moving. *** Later, back on the road, I pressed my forehead to a coach window, and looked out to a land crumpled, mountainous, stoically aware. In the early evening, these mountains take on a bluish tinge, but during the day they are dry and parched, cropped to dusty brown, patched in green. Approaching the Llogara Pass, a hairpin sweep of road looped and laced with sheer drops into the void below, your body swerves despite itself. It brings into view the blue swell of the Ionian Sea (or the Adriatic – they wash into each other, no border visible). It sparkles like lapis lazuli, the bluest of blues. Julius Caesar once landed here, marching northwards to claim territory. The sea now must look as spectacular as it did then, washing the land, claiming it, never keeping still. The coach sound system blasted music tinny and discordant - circular rhythms chanted in chorus, speaking through the ages, folding and overlapping on themselves. I wondered if I’d see the waiter again, maybe bustle past him unknowing on a suburban high street. I looked back down at the map on my lap. I traced the boundaries, I followed the lines. I didn’t count how many times.