Driving over the mountain roads in Albania recently, the tops dusted with fresh snow, reminds me of warmer days depicted in Chapter 1 of The Silencer, and evoked here in photographer Peter Wilson’s beautiful photo.

Chapter 1

South of Tirana, Albania.


Pic. P.Wilson.

Away to the west the view opened out before him. The ridgelines of mountains, light brown and then deep brown into shadow, rose beyond each other for over fifty kilometres fading into the blue haze. The sun was falling lower over them tingeing the dust with an orange-pink. Jude leant forwards to see and felt pleasure well up. There was an eruption of birdsong from beneath the old man’s jacket. He reached inside it methodically and Jude watched half-expecting him to draw out a canary in a protective caress. He lifted a mobile phone to his ear.
“Alo. I’m on the Krrabë road! What? Wait, I said. I’m coming!” he shouted. All eyes turned to glower at him. He sniffed and seemed oblivious to it.

Jude turned around to drink in the view through the rear window. A dark blue ‘90s Mercedes with a broken headlight was drawing up behind them. The van driver now began to accelerate as the road levelled out along the top of the ridge. He tapped out a cigarette from a pack on the dashboard and slipped it into the corner of his mouth, glanced in his side mirror, and squared himself at the wheel. The Mercedes pulled out to the left and began to draw alongside. A sign with white arrows on black indicating a sharp turn left was coming closer. An old, Chinese truck came rasping around the bend with its horn on. Jude tightened his grip a little on the seat in front. The Mercedes braked and swung back sharply in behind them. He could see a faint grin of pleasure on the van driver’s face in the rear-view mirror as he touched the lighter to his cigarette. He manoeuvred the gears upwards.

A line of pylons marched up the mountain’s flank and across the road ahead of them. In seconds, the wires few over their heads. A white stony riverbed snaked away on the valley floor, perhaps five kilometres away, the water catching the sun and flashing its message. The driver’s mobile phone rang with the Nokia tone and with one hand on the wheel he put it to his ear.
“E, mo!” he shouted. ”What’s up?” As they took the bend the van tires began to sing on the road surface. He dropped the phone and the cigarette into his lap and gripped the wheel. Jude ran his hand through his hair and felt his heart beat quicken. The driver began beating the burning tobacco off his lap.
“O, zoti Schumacher? Take it easy there!” Jude called to him. The youth turned around and grinned. The Mercedes pulled out to the left for another attempt to pass and began to pull up level. Jude looked down at the two men sitting in the front. Both wore clean, blue shirts and sunglasses. The passenger looked up at Jude, and then seemed to nod to his driver. The road swung to the left over a narrow bridge and the Mercedes was forced back again in behind the van beating on its horn.

Whitewashed, stone walls, holding back the mountain dirt behind them, streamed past stencilled with logos and sprayed with graffiti: ‘Albanian Exhausts’, ‘Geri’, ‘LSI’… Then came a café plastered with Nescafe posters, a man selling ice cream from a scratched refrigerator, and an old man bobbing sidesaddle on a mule laden with white sacks, flicking its rump with a stick. The old man in the cloth cap called something to the driver but he didn’t respond. Jude could feel touches of cold sweat on his palms. He took his glasses off and cleaned the condensation with his T-shirt.
“Lord, keep us on the road!” he prayed under his breath. He glanced backwards. The Mercedes was right up to the van’s bumper. It swung back to the left and pulled parallel, the driver hammering his horn. Then it touched the side with a metallic grate.
“Zot i madh! God!” shouted the driver, jerking his head to the left and back to the road ahead. The youth pressed his face to the glass angrily waving the car to pass. The road forced the Mercedes back.

Old concrete telegraph poles flashed past, tilted, fallen and then gaps, some with scraps of wire hanging down. Below them were short white posts topped with a red tip that looked to Jude like cigarette sweets. A policeman standing in a dirt lay-by vainly lifted his traffic lollipop and then stood back, hands on his hips and cap pushed back. Jude leant forward to see if he could catch the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror. The speedometer was past 120 km/h…

From Chapter 11

With his cheek pressed deeply into the pillow Jude lay on his front. He could not get into a comfortable position. He reached for his mobile phone on the bedside cabinet and checked the time. It was 4.08am. He held its lit face over Alex and saw she was sleeping deeply. He slid it under the pillow and dropped his head. He thought about how the culture had worn her down as she tried to help the women economically as well as spiritually. His mind moved to Spiro: would Mehmed’s book be ready for the biennial conference? It drifted to Valon’s daughter, Kela, in Shënvogël and if the local doctors would really help her. He spun over and lay on his back. He heard a man singing drunkenly down in the stairwell, and somewhere the raised voices of a couple rowing. A taxi van rumbled down May 5th Street, hunting for passengers for its early morning Tirana run.

On the dressing table was a photo in a clip frame that Alex had taken of light shafts on the grey sea off the cliffs of Bournemouth, where her parents had run a bed and breakfast establishment. Streetlight came through a gap in the curtains and reflected off its glass surface giving a point for the eye to fix on. In that moment, the noises around seemed to fade down. The curtain fluttered by the open window. The particles of air seemed almost charged with something. Alex turned over and sat upright.
“Jude… I just had a dream,” she said breathily. “It was very vivid. Can you get me a glass of water?” Jude kicked off the sheet on his side and felt the floor with his feet for his slippers. He switched on the side lamp and watched Alex push herself back against the wall. She wiped her face with her hands, her magnified shadow moving against the orange glow on the wall. He felt his way through to the kitchen in the darkness and fumbled for a glass in the cupboard. He filled it from the tap and returned. He handed it to her and sat down on the edge of the bed. “So what was it?” he said.
“Wait,” she said. She was breathing heavily. She drank several gulps and then caught her breath. “There was a man trying to wrap himself in a flag… as the breeze seemed to lift it off him. It was a red one… but not the Albanian flag. It had a white crescent and a star on it.”
“It’s the Turkish flag,” said Jude.
“I also saw one of those blue glass ‘evil eye’ charms they sell in the market here. Only it was big, like a moon… and it was riding through the night as it passed over the lights of towns below it… Alexandroupoli, Xanthi…” She seemed to pause mid-sentence.
“Those are Greek towns,” he said.
“There was a man looking at a name on a computer screen… It was your name Jude.”
“The same man with the flag?”
“They had no clear form. I don’t know.” Jude ran his hand back through his hair. “And what do you make of it?” he said as he looked at her. She held her gaze forwards as if looking beyond their bedroom. She cast him an anxious glance sideways.
“Let me pray. That’s all I can recall of it,” she said. She lowered herself under the sheet and closed her eyes. Jude lay down on the bed beside her. He felt her reach for his hand and he slid it to her. He turned off the side lamp and looked up at the ceiling. He knew that God had used dreams to speak to Alex in the past. He remembered her ‘Clapham Junction’ dream when she came to faith, but what did this one mean? Did it mean anything at all? How on earth was he to know? When he fell asleep, before Alex, sometime around 5am, the dawn light had crept into the room.

From Chapter 27

Shpetim fastened the buttons of his white shirt, took his mobile phone and a slate grey suit jacket, and left the house immediately after Jude’s phone call. It was now urgent, he felt, to find and confront this Sheref Dushman. In a town of 30,000 people, he knew he could locate him given time, maybe not too much, unless he chanced upon him quickly. He decided he would check out the three main hotels, though he knew there were dozens more and some that didn’t even sign in their guests. He made some calls to local contacts. Then he walked repeatedly between Shënomadh County Police Directorate and the high street watching.

At 10.55am he took a phone call from his SHISH director ordering him to return to operations monitoring the civil disturbances. He rubbed his temples lightly with his thumb and middle finger. The consequences for him if he delayed would be very serious. He walked out into the centre of the high street and looked both ways searching. His phone vibrated in his hand. He took the call.
“Alo,” a man shouted. “Bledi Shehu jam. You came yesterday? My grandmother just told me. She’s not as she was… her legs, her ears, her head… you know.”
“Bledi… police. You brought a man up from the border on Tuesday morning. Where did you drop him?”
“Po. By the hotels on Rruga e Gështenjave… what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I’ll be in touch.” Shpetim hung up. He looked down the high street to the top of the avenue of horse chestnut trees around 200 metres away. He began to jog towards it.

He turned the corner and ran on until he came to the side street. A woman in a white cleaner’s jacket sat on a chair outside the first hotel. He took out the folded print out with an enlarged, grainy passport photo of Sheref on it and showed it to her.
“I’m looking for this man. Have you seen him?” he said authoritatively.
“Yes… he checked out about two hours ago.”
“How did he seem to you?”
“He paid his bill… what can I say?” she shrugged. She smoothed back her tight, purple-black hair considering something. “He had strange eyes, though… when he took his sunglasses off… cold, cloudy… huh, like a fish left too long out of the water.” Shpetim stood thinking as he stared at her. She began to shuffle uneasily. Maybe he had just moved on to another town, he thought. Or maybe this is his final day?

He spun on the ball of his foot and walked back onto the avenue. He began to walk quickly past the trees as a wind started to churn their leaves. A shower of chestnuts drummed down onto the tarmac scattering as he crossed over. He jogged past the sliding doors of Banka Alpha where an LCD clock read 11.30 am. He lifted his phone to his ear and pressed a speed-dial option.
“Luan, can you get over to May 5th Street, Jude’s block,” he said. “Yes… I know Burim’s got the Mercedes!” He slung his jacket over his shoulder and the holstered pistol wrapped inside it thudded into his back as he moved. He jogged along the pavement of the main road clipping a café chair with his hip knocking it over. He stopped and ran back to pick it up apologising to an angry waiter. He jogged quicker now breaking into a run along the edge of the road.

Copyright Paul Alkazraji. Highland Books Ltd. 2012. All Rights Reserved.

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