By Nikoletta Gjoni
Foreign Correspondent

As I sit listening to “Let it Be,” I evaluate the highs and lows of my summer in Albania and contemplate this bittersweet feeling of leaving my homeland.

If I look straight ahead from my balcony I see the Adriatic, blue and peaceful beneath the sun. In the distance lay Albania’s smoothly sloped mountains with creases on their surfaces that can be visibly traced with my eye on a clear day. If I block out any annoyance from the street below me and focus on land and water; if I ignore the noise of cars and people shouting out names, the dust curling in the air forcing me to squint my eyes to keep it out; I can concentrate on the Albania that is thousands of years old, of the ancient, proud Illyrians that are my ancestors.

Drive fast through the streets that divide one village from the other and it’s like you’re in a time machine. This summer I’ve savored but also rejected Albania. I’ve come to grips with my background while also grimacing a little at it.

If I sit long enough on a bench I’ll see the typical old woman dressed in black with a handkerchief over her gray hair, legs short and slow moving against the flow of today’s youth. I am reminded of my grandma.

I see old men sitting and drinking raki or playing a game of cards outside some café, murmuring of their past or of their current family situations. I am reminded of my grandpa who doesn’t have this satisfaction back in the U.S., who discusses politics with me instead of elderly friends. I see all of this and I smile.

The streets of Vlore are littered with broken memories and with rotting trash thrown and forgotten into corners; yet my generation walks around with chins in the air, girls whose eyes are outlined heavily with mascara making up for the lost time of their mothers when communism was everyone’s religion, way of life, and mental state. I smile but also grimace. They walk around because they can but don’t entirely understand the situation of their past, of Albania’s past; freedom here today is marked by a nonchalant attitude, a laissez-faire understanding of the cities’ conditions.

Further south, Panaja is sitting at the top of the mountain above Dhermi reminding me of goodness present within the village. Standing at the churchyard’s entrance, I feel like I’m close to heaven and Dhermi is a cloud below me. The charm of this ancient church encompasses me once I walk through the door and stand in glowing murals covering the walls.

I am amazed at how beautiful people can be and how the miraculous things they built that can last centuries. Disarray doesn’t exist here and this is the Albania I’d like to remember; humble and simple. Close to God and close to my heart. There is a darkness and a light everywhere you go. Albania is a brackish existence of good with bad, old with new, and potential stifled by corruption.

I’m going to begin packing soon and am ready to return home. But a part of me reflects upon what I’ve gained from my time here and why I’d wish to return to Albania in the future.

My Albania heritage is a part of me I won’t ever discard, regardless of how many years I’ve lived in the United States. Perhaps this is because inside our home, my family and I are Albanian in every way, despite the fact that our outside lives demand that we adopt American ways of doing things. Living in America has endowed upon me a uniquely American understanding, an open-mindedness I’m fortunate to have. I am a complex product my lifestyle – one of dislocation and adjustment. Chunks of my soul remain in Albania while the rest travels back with me on a plane to America. I am left to wonder when these chunks will at last come together, if that was ever meant to be.

Copyright: The Retriever Weekly
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