Allegory
Police Station no. 3 on Rruga Mine Peza was the first police office that I ever visited when I moved to Albania in 2010. Back then it hosted the Migration and Border Police Office, and I went there to apply for my first one-year residency permit.
I had fully prepared the application, or so I thought, and entered the somewhat dim and run-down reception area next to the prison building. There was no one behind the counter; they were having a coffee. When one of the officers returned – I don’t remember which, the “good” one or the “bad” one – I was met with a look of puzzlement and curiosity.
This was the beginning of my first grand tour through the Albanian state institutions – the Ministry of Labor, the Chamber of Commerce, the Tax Office, the Municipality of Tirana – in search of the right papers.
A few years later Prime Minister Edi Rama had come to power and the migration office moved to a brand-new location in Laprakë, with staff clearly trained with EU money. Not only were the ambience and the officers more professional, the entire procedure was also more centralized and streamlined.
Though they made me come back multiple times, there was a proper document checklist, reliable opening times, a waiting area, and multiple other immigrants filing their paperwork around me.
I still had to push here and there and bring a “friend,” but overall the experience was a bit less adventurous than before. Albania was opening up to the world and eager to join the EU.
More recently the migration office has moved to the periphery of Tirana in Sharrë, on the exercise grounds of the Rapid Intervention Force (FNSh). The office is open only for a short window between 12 and 2 in the afternoon.
When I arrived in the middle of summer there was a large group of Filipino labor migrants huddling in the little shade offered by the gate. Several lost digital nomads hung out across the dusty street, not sure whether this was indeed the migration office.
There was no sign. The “office” itself, if it deserves that name, comprised two unmarked and barely furnished rooms with a few chairs outside, where you could listen to the target practice near the police barracks in the full mid-day sun.
Though I had prepared all the documents listed on the website of the Ministry of Interior Affairs, visit after visit new demands were shouted at me by increasingly hostile and incompetent officers. I thought of bribing them, but sometimes they just don’t deserve your money.
All of this went through my mind as I returned yesterday night to Police Station no. 3 on Rruga Mine Peza in the back of a police car, handcuffed to Joni, a waiter from Librazhd1 and blinded by a fresh load of pepperspray.
Actually, this didn’t really go through my mind until later in the holding cell because when your eyes are full of pepperspray you can only scream in pain and anger and your brain basically stops doing any type of higher-level functions like thinking about an allegory of migration offices.
2011
The protests of January 21, 2011, called the Rama’s Socialist Party against the coalition government of Sali Berisha and Ilir Meta in the wake of a large corruption scandal involving bribes paid to Meta, are at the origin of my tenure as a journalist writing about Albania.
I had to think of this often as I have watched the escalation of the Flamingo Revolution unfold over the last few weeks; the massive, indiscriminate, and illegal police violence; the mockery of the Prime Minister in the face of this suffering of the Albanian people and his increasingly unhinged and erratic public statements; and the calculated indifference of the European Commission.
This is some of what I wrote on that day in 2011:
[…] I left home around 14:30 and arriving behind the PM’s office I met some friends on the street who said that it was a “coup d’état,” “just like in ’97.”
We walked to the main boulevard together, but had to return because of the teargas, which, blown toward us by the wind, burned in our throats and eyes. I climbed onto the Pyramid to have an overview of the situation and within half an hour I could see five cars going up into flames.
People on the square in front of the pyramid destroyed the pavement to throw stones at the Military Police guarding the PM’s office. Several explosions could be heard. […]
After about an hour of throwing stones and basically destroying the two police vans next to the PM’s office, the protesters launched a full attack on the Military Police around 15:30, forcing them to retreat inside the gates of the PM’s office.
The two police vans were set alight. Subsequently the police started shooting, supposedly with rubber bullets, but by then I was forced to leave my position on the Pyramid.
As I was walking to meet some friends in a cafe, I could hear (semi-automatic) gun fire coming from the direction of the main boulevard. On the television of the cafe I saw that the protesters had breached one of the gates of the PM’s office.
At the moment (17:30), the protest seems to be more or less over. According to 24 News, the boulevard has been cleaned of demonstrators but the “Twin Tower” buildings seem to have been looted. […]
2026
Fifteen years later, I left home again yesterday around 14:30 to join some friends at the protest in front of the Ministry of Education. It was a sorry sight.
Several supporters of the Democratic Party taunted party members of Lëvizja Bashkë with “Rama në burg, Qori në burg” (Rama in jail, Qori in jail) and “Poshtë komunistat” (Down with the communists), while the students tried to drown them out with the original “Rama në burg, Berisha në burg.” Nationalist and proto-fascist groups shouted “Albania for the Albanians, down with the traitors,” while students responded with “We are the opposition.”
After all these months, the protest was mainly protesting itself, in front of the empty, delapidated husk of the ministry. Everyone was waiting. Waiting for something. “Rama resign!”
At some point some masked protestors of the “fire group” wheeled a few dumpsters to the frontlines filled with burnable trash and ceremoniously lit them on fire, to which the police responded with the first salvos of the water cannon.
The whole scene was strangely ritualistic, as if following a script that had been rehearsed and perfected over a longer period of time. Some teargas granades were enough to get the protestors moving from Rruga e Durrësit toward the Orthodox Cathedral.
From there on, around the corner of the demolished entrance of the Ministry of Environment, to the Boulevard of the Martyrs of the Nation and the Prime Ministry, where some more water cannons and armed police forces awaited the crowd.
Nothing much happened as dusk fell over Tirana. The same masked kids collected stones and threw them at the police. A few molotovs were hurled at the water cannon parked to the side of the Prime Ministry.
None of it really seemed to matter much, as little groups of protestors met and chatted on the boulevard. I was happy to discern several old friends I hadn’t seen in a while, and kids that I used to teach Alain Badiou but now had all grown up to be political activists.
The same masked kids were now trying to move the crowd back to a position between Parku Rinia and the National Bank. Several people around me commented that it was a trap and diversion, and that no one was sure whether these kids were actually part of the protest or plants by the government.
But once a crowd starts moving, there is no stopping and so I ended up together with my friends on the sidewalk next to Parku Rinia. It was getting later and no one seemed to move.
One friend left for dinner, then another. Just as I was about to leave for my own dinner appointment, the police started to move in with the water cannons, while also charging from all sides through Parku Rinia.
As I walked toward the fountain, I was met by about five armed police officers and taken into custody. For a while they debated whether or not to arrest me. Some wanted to let me go, others wanted to take me in. None of them could give me any particular reason.
Eventually two of them walked me to a police van. Another journalist saw I was being arrested and started to shout my name and film me as I was led away. She was violently peppersprayed by the officer on my left, while he also gave me a dose. I was instantly blinded.
Pushed into a police van, they searched my body and my belongings. I identified myself, but naturally a Dutch-Chinese writer about Albania is an easy subject of mockery. “I also wrote a book!,” one of them shouted at me. “Are you going to write about us?”
Another officer, perhaps slightly more conscious of the situation, told the others to shut up. I was moved out of the van into a police car, handcuffed to Joni, and driven away. From what I could sense from the movements, we were driving to Police Station no. 3 at Rruga Mine Peza.
As I entered the police station, I was still blinded and in agonizing pain. Inside I ask whoever was there for medical assistance, which was one of my rights.
I was allowed to briefly wash my face with running water, but still could barely see. No one read me my rights or informed me of the reason for my arrest, and I was placed in a holding cell.
The screeching pain and blindness of the pepperspray slowly dissapated and dissolved into a numbing headache and nausea. But at least I could see again. I soon realized that this was some type of “luxury” cell, given to me on account of my foreign passport. Some officers came in to joke about the “television” (there was none, obviously).
I was visited by officers of different ranks, with and without uniform and consistently without any form of identification, asking me for my personal details.
I wrote my father’s, my mother’s, and my own name on post-its, torn pieces of papers, and phone notes. One officer came in to scream at me claiming they had video footage of me throwing stones at the police and that the “boss” (he pointed to the ceiling) would decide my fate.
I asked to call the Dutch embassy, which was denied. Some hours in, I still hadn’t been read my rights or informed of my alleged crime.
Eventually an officer came in with a piece of paper: my rights. It was undated, without the hour at which I had received them, no doubt to be filled out later to match whatever time they booked me.
I signed it, the pain had removed any fighting spirit or righteousness I may have felt to resist injustice. Some other feeling had come instead: a terrible feeling.
The moment I saw the police officers coming toward me in front of Taiwan, I knew: I will write about this. Now I know how to end my book – in jail.
From that moment onward, despite the pain, my only interest was to remember details, to remember as many details as possible: the taunts of the police officers; the feeling of Joni’s leg against mine as the police car honked its way through traffic; the small steps to enter the police station; the five pairs of boots that I saw when I first could open my eyes; the wood of the bench in the cell, which was made from the same planks they use for cafe terraces; the door, carved with place names (Dibra, Kukësi, Has), nicknames, and a swastika; the exposed electric wiring; the toilet bowl full of cigarette buds; the table in the hallway outside my cell, with two officers, one still clad in protective padding, filling out my paperwork in clumsy handwriting without a single computer in sight; my bag and water bottle on the floor, my white helmet and gas mask on the table; Joni’s belt; the wrapper of the Milka chocolate I had eaten in front of the Ministry; assorted water bottles turned into ashtrays; a TV without connection showing the digital channel menu.
Photos of me were taken at multiple times by multiple officers, always with the personal phones of the officers themselves, and in different poses with and without my gas mask.
But at that point I had no interest whatsoever in justice for myself or anyone else. I thought of only one thing: how to write the opening paragraph of this text.
My psychoanalyst once elicited the insight that my writing is a coping strategy, and it seemed that this strategy had entered in full force as I was walking little circles in my VIP cell.
At some point the novelty of my arrival had worn off and I had signed a multitude of papers that any capable lawyer no doubt would have objected to.
During the following hours of idleness (they could keep me up to five hours) I tried to chat up the young officer that was my guard, let’s call him Bledi. Bledi was in his early twenties and from the south. He had joined the police forces only two months ago, and they had moved him to Tirana when the student protests started.
Our conversations where often interrupted by other officers entering the hallway, but once he was alone again he was kind and happy to talk. It was getting late and he was at the end of basically a 24-hour shift. On Monday he can go back home for two weeks.
A different face appeared behind the bars of my cell door, the English-speaking face of an officer of the judiciary police, Alba. She would take my statement. Alba asked if I wanted a lawyer, and I told her I wanted to call the Dutch embassy.
This caused a slight look of panic in her eyes.
Unable to get the embassy on the line at that hour, eventually they allowed me to use my own phone to call the secretary of the embassy directly. This seemed to have some effect, and I was eventually allowed to give my statement.
I followed Bledi upstairs, where at the end of the hallway a large window let in some fresh evening air. I paused to breathe it in. “Stay away from the window,” Bledi told me. “Last time, a rapper escaped through it and if you escape I might jump just as well.”
Alba’s desk was stacked with paperwork marked “secret” and “confidential.” Her internet connection didn’t work. The desk next to her filled with bottles of eye washing solution.
“I could really use one,” I joked.
“Confiscated from the protestors,” she told me. Who confiscates medical supplies? To prove what? On the wall was a socialist realist woodcut of a northern Albanian mountain-dweller stone-carving flowers around a communist star.
“Do you like that thing?” she asked me, when she caught me looking at it. “I wrote a book on communist monuments,” I confessed. Once the official paperwork was finished, the public lawyer asked me, with the police officers still in the room, what I thought of the protests. “Don’t worry,” she said, “she’s finished writing. We can speak freely.”
“You won’t like this final bit,” Alba told me. My phone would be confiscated as “evidence.” “Take a breather,” my lawyer told me. “There is nothing you can do. Just sign the papers.”
I was the last one that night, and Alba was happy she could finally go home, on two months of unpaid medical leave. “You are free to go now.” I received no copy of the undated rights document I had signed earlier, the proces-verbal, or any of the paperwork concerning the confiscation of my cell phone.
But I did have a post-it with the phone number of the lawyer. I could, of course, have tried to contact a more capable one. But I was tired, hungry, and wanted to go home. Our body always betrays us.
Bledi brought me back downstairs. He allowed me to sit in the hallway instead of back in my cell. “What now?” I asked. “Now we wait.” “For what?” “For you to be allowed to leave so I can go home.” Joni joined us for a cigarette. He had gotten a 5000 lekë fine for blocking the road. “Can you read what it says?” he asked me. His father was already waiting outside.
Now and then officers walked in and out. One of them had apparently handled Joni’s case and menacingly showed him all the paperwork, including high-res black-and-white photographs of the protests. “We got really good footage,” he teased.
“Did you get those with the drones?” I inquired. “Something like that, close to a drone!” The officer continued to intimidate Joni in the hallway. “Have you forgotten all the things Edi Rama has improved for us? Better roads, better wages, better education? Have you forgotten all this? You only shout ‘Rama, leave!’ after all he has done for you! You don’t even know what you want!” Joni was unfazed.
“I just want the government to change.” The officer turned to me, “You, writer, am I not right?” “What is the really interesting question,” I responded, “is why so many people appear to have forgotten all the good things Rama apparently has done for them. Why do you think that is?”
Some time later, when we were alone again, I asked Bledi, “Have been outside as well, or only in the office?” “Of course,” he answered, “this is actually my first day inside.” “How was it, to be on the other side?” “Adrenaline. A lot of adrenaline.” He paused. “What do you think will happen next?” He was not the first one to ask me this question that night.
No one can keep up this level of violence for prolonged periods of time, not the protestors, not the police. Everyone on every side is exhausted. There is still no horizon of political collaboration that will be able to break the stranglehold of the Socialist Party on power.
“There is no alternative,” the internationals say, as they acquiesce in the “stability” that Rama offers. And they are right: there is no credible alternative. There is no person or party who anyone believes is able to take over this monstrosity of a state, this gargantuan mafia organization whose every fibre and capillary is tinged with trafficking, corruption, and intimidation.
Albania is a Titanic of crime still in search of its iceberg.
Finally, exactly five hours after I had been booked I was released. I was welcomed by friends, bringing the leftovers of the festive dinner I had missed and big bottle of my favorite water. Together we walked back to Taverna e Kasapit to finish dessert.
The Albanian Mechanism will be published by early 2027 in an English edition and an Albanian translation by Pika pa sipërfaqe in Tirana. It will gather all the texts written for the Manifesto project as well as this afterword.
1. For reasons that are hopefully obvious, all personal details of others in this text have been altered to preserve their anonymity.
