Peaks of Shala

by Rose Wilder Lane

“In three nights we were at the house of Asif Pasha in Elbassan. No, nothing disturbed us on the way, except that we were obliged to kill with our hands the dogs that sometimes came upon us from the villages. The Serbs were everywhere, and we could not use our guns. When we came to the house of Asif Pasha, the chiefs of Kossova with Ahmet slept in one room, and I sat with Asif Pasha by the fire in another room. Elbassan was held by many hundred Serbian soldiers. At midnight five officers with thirty soldiers came to the door. They came in, and would not take coffee. They stood, and said: ‘Who are the twelve men who sleep to-night in this house? Do not lie, for we know that they are here.’

“Asif Pasha said, ‘This is one of them.’ I said, ‘I will tell you who they are, but I beg you not to let them know that I have told. I am only a servant, and they are great chiefs. They are byraktors of five villages of the Mati, three villages of the Merdite, and three villages of Shala and Shoshi. They have come to Elbassan to talk with the Serbs. They have come secretly, hiding from the other chiefs. I do not know why. I beg you not to tell them that I have told, for they are tired and dirty, and they are sleeping while the women clean their clothes so that they will be clean to-morrow when they go to speak to your chiefs.’

“The officers sat down then, and one of them wrote. He wrote the names of the chiefs as I gave them to him, and he wrote what I said, that the Malisori were tired of fighting, and had little ammunition, and did not like their chiefs that made them fight. While he wrote, Asif Pasha gave them rakejia, and more and more rakejia, but no coffee. When the Serbs had become foolish I went to the other room where the chiefs were listening with their rifles in their hands, and I took them all by a way I knew, out of Elbassan.

“So we came to Valona, to the house of Ismail Kemal Bey Vlora, the same who had been Grand Vizier of Abdul Hamid. He had come on an Austrian warship to Durazzo, and there they had tried to kill him, and he had come secretly, as we had come, to Valona. Valona was the only free village in Albania then, except our mountain villages. There was a council in his house. Chiefs of all the tribes from Kossova to Janina were there, and when the council was ended Ismail Kemal Bey brought the flag of Scanderbeg, which had always been hidden in his house, and with a rope he made it run to the top of a pole on his house. It was the red flag with the two-headed black eagle on it. I stood in the street and saw it go to the top of the pole. The chiefs were on the balcony, and Ismail Kemal Bey wept. Many men had tears on their cheeks. In the streets they cried, ‘Rroft Shqiperia!’ and embraced one another. They said that the spirit of Scanderbeg lived, and that Albania was free. But I said, ‘The time has not come when I can hang my gun on the wall or cut my beard.’

“The next night I started secretly back through the Serbian lines with Ahmet and the chiefs of Kossova, to come to our own mountains and kill the Serbs. We had been twenty-two days in Valona, and for those twenty-two days I had not been a comitadj. I was glad to be one again.”

For the moment the fortunes of war were with the drangojt; the heavier clouds had been driven away, and a pale sunshine fell on Shoshi, which looked like a water-color picture in a gray frame. Our side of the valley was in shadow, but the rain had ceased and we should have been going on. I was held by a still unsatisfied curiosity about that bandit.

“I thought bandits were highwaymen,” I murmured, and, unwilling to ask interpreters to put the question that was in my mind, I laid the burden on my own lame knowledge of their language. “You kill Serbs?” I asked. “How do you get money?”

The whiskered face seemed to smile broadly at this boldness. “I get it on the trails,” he said.

“From Albanians?”

“I get it where I can,” he answered, indifferently. “The Austrians had money, and there were many Austrians in Albania. This rifle came into the mountains on an Austrian officer. I gave his clothes to a naked man of Dibra who was fighting the Serbs there. I got four Italian capes and trousers in one day, on the road north of Scutari, and there was money on their bodies, too. As to Albanians—there was a rich Albanian once, whom I met riding out from Ipek. Why should a man of Albanian blood ride in the eyes of the Serbs with gold in his pocket, while true Albanians are dying of cold and hunger? I took from him everything he had, and left him on the trail as naked as he came to the cradle. I said to him, ‘You are the Sultan, and I am the Grand Vizier. In your name I will give these things to your people, and they will be grateful.’”