Albanian Nights
In the darkest depths of hell I had found myself gallivanting, wandering, lost and found by fellow backpacking travellers - under the midnight sky, amongst the bustling bazar of an Albanian night market - me and my comrades for the night were on search for a shisha bar to entertain ourselves.
Smoking is something that I never do - yet my identity was fast evaporating, my character so thin that the universe can be seen before me, inside me, through me and the rest can be seen beyond me. As if my being had no essence or individuality itself - but had submitted completely into the fabric of the universe, in no heroic-self-sacrifice, but in an alive-undead suicide - where I was an alive, hollow vessel - one who once had a name, now lost in the underworld.
It was the fact that five gorgeous german girls on their way out of the hostel had asked me if I wanted to go to the shisha bar with them that I had found myself seated in the streets of Shköder, cherry smoke filling up my nostrils, laughter drowning out most conversations, most of my mind lost in someone I used to know’s memory lane.
Throughout the night I couldn’t decide in which of the sisters I had fancied - that’s what I hate about meeting sisters, there’s an overwhelming societal and moral pressure in having to decide right there and then - how the fuck am I supposed to know? I did the honest thing and openly, unashamedly flirted with them both. It’ll be a lot less hassle if they both decided to bin me off anyways.
The older one was mature, as you’d expect, studying Psychology - so we had plenty to talk about, yet hours later in the night, where I’d unexpectedly found myself in the nighttime streets of Albania - it was with the younger sister I found myself chirpsing with.
She was very pretty - typical. Bright blue eyes, straight, long brunette hair that fell either side of her shoulders, pronounced cheekbones that were consistently enhanced by her beaming smile. Blue Levi’s jeans, white top that exaggerated her summer tan that had spread across her face, neck, shoulders and arms. She was lovely and good hearted, life hadn’t beaten her down yet and she very much intended to enjoy this night to the fullest - as if it was the first, with the full force that it might be the last, where we had this singular moment to be backpacking travellers - away from home and the dogma - leaving only ourselves to be found.
‘You should do that, I really think you should.’ She said to me.
‘Do what?’
‘Get into politics, public service - you’d be really good at it, we need more people like you making the important decisions.’
Fuck me. Dumbfounded, mouth open, here I am trying my best to just get laid, thinking that I was showing off with my dedicated hours in volunteering, where any part of myself that had any ambition of doing something with myself was left behind long long ago, and this woman, here, right in front of me, has the audacity to say to me - despite how morally abhorrent I’ve sunken - that she actually believes in me.
Says that she believes me wholeheartedly, reminds me of my responsibility, the personal responsibility that I had once chosen for myself, the expectations that those I left behind would have had for me. Here I am - trying to immerse myself in the darkest depths of hell, exiled from my home colonising nation, abandoned by friends and family with only the shisha and socially convenient strangers to keep me company - yet in hell these pair of piercing, innocent eyes - notices that I don’t belong here, sees the light inside me and says that I need to go back.
16/08/22