Biografi by Lloyd Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

The old town lay beneath the new lake in a valley which had been flooded for hydroelectric purposes. The hydroelectric plant was a happier subject for Mustaph.
    Work on the modern city had started in the sixties. People living down in the old town on the valley floor could gaze up to the cloud line and watch their future homes going up. They were promised playgrounds and hospitals, and in the evenings, Mustaph said, the old people would sit in their gardens and watch the last of the summer evening depart the concrete shells up there on the rise.
    One day in the seventies the people had all trooped up to the new town and where the new hospital was sited a park bench had been built for the elderly to sit and watch the water level rise below. It had taken months, years. First the streets turned a muddy colour, then the water rushed inside the small stone houses and rose up the walls until there were just rooftops to gaze upon like floating islands or garden stepping-stones across a lake. Finally the ‘stepping-stones’ had disappeared altogether, and now, looking upon the lake, I found it hard to believe that another city, with its quarrels, blood feuds and arranged marriages, lay beneath this calm blue surface.
    We booked into the hotel with a view of the lake. Anila went to bed. Teti was given the rest of the afternoon off. And with the economist and Mustaph giving directions we set off for the warehouse.
    Somewhere on our way through a housing estate a rock bounces off the side of the Landcruiser. Bill hardly raises a hair.
    â€˜Kids. Same the world over,’ he says, and Mustaph is relieved to hear this.
    The ‘industrial zone’ is on the other side of town and we are there in another five minutes. A woman in a blue cotton smock unchains the gates, and as we drive to the end of a yard we are chased by a crowd of thin gaunt figures in cotton and flapping canvas shoes. The moment we park, their faces press up to the window.
    â€˜Looking for gum, betcha,’ says Bill, and quickly forgets them. He’s busy fiddling with a tape. ‘What the hell has Teti done here…’ But then the deck receives the tape, and Bill sits back with relief. ‘Sharon put me on to this,’ he says.
    Bill removes his pipe. His eyelids close, to Patsy Cline. A pane of glass separates him from an old man whose toothless gums are barking something at the side of Bill’s deaf ear. When I check with Mustaph what the man is saying, his face creases into a smile. ‘He is saying, “Show me where the war is, I want to fight.”’
    I head off with Mustaph to find the person with the keys to the warehouse.
    Inside a loading bay we push through a door to a smoke-filled chamber. Four women who have been crouching around an open fire and warming their hands spring to their feet and cover their faces in giggling shame. Two of the younger ones run past us for the door. Mustaph smiles tolerantly.
    Across the yard the crowd is still pressed around the Land-cruiser and in the window I can make out Bill smoking his pipe, his head marking time, ever so.
    We have a wait on our hands until the person with the keys to the warehouse shows. Despite the cold, Mustaph refuses to wait inside the vehicle, but stands in the yard with his hands in his coat pockets, determined to deny the cold—as if one thing has to do with admitting to the ruin surrounding us.
    There’s nothing to do but walk to keep warm. I head off back along the road that brought us here. Old Russian trucks and mutant vehicles with Chinese and North Korean markings— the chattels of Albania’s failed marriages—splash through the puddles. Barrier gates with gaping holes wear heavy padlocks. Men huddle around in small groups.
    No one has anything to do. People have turned up to work out of habit. They watch me approach. They eye me, as watchful as sheepdogs, and as I pass, in unison they call out, ‘May your life be long.’