They walked in a row, sedately, hands behind their backs, and after them marched their escort, a single row of soldiers. They walked down from Government House, the square two-storied building behind a half-ruined wall; they walked past the Tirana Vocational School and, turning in front of the painted mosque, by the two Cypresses of the Dead, they went past the block of little shops that is Main Street, past the cemetery filled with toppling turbaned stones, past the large white barracks where soldiers sang of Lec i Madhe, and out on the Durazzo road. Then they came slowly back, and slowly went out again. With them on this same way walked all the men of Tirana, for this is the custom at the sunset hour. And we walked, too, saying at intervals: “Long may you live! Long may you live!”
THE PAINTED MOSQUE IN TIRANA, AND THE LOW WALL ON WHICH, ALL DAY LONG, MEN SIT AND DISCUSS POLITICS
It was on the second evening of our walking that, counting Their Excellencies as they came toward us, I said: “Where is the other one? Who is he?” For we had met them all except the Minister of the Interior, and suddenly I realized that he was unknown to us. And Rrok Perolli, who, strangely, was no longer with the government, nor talking much of politics, but living quietly upon an inherited income in Tirana, replied, “He is Ahmet Bey Mati.”
The name awakened a thin, faint echo in my mind, an echo mixed with a remembered sound of rain. But, “Long may you live!” I said to Their Excellencies, and for a moment we stood talking in French.
“The disarming is going well in the mountains, Your Excellency?”
“Very well, very well. No trouble at all. Tout est tranquil, madame.”
I did not believe this, knowing that to a Gheg his rifle was his honor, and either dearer than life. But there is a convention which exempts the words of statesmen from measurement by the Decalogue.
“Then we can soon be starting for the mountains?”
“Certainly, certainly, madame. As soon as we can find proper guides and horses for you.”