When I was a child, one of the people in my home was a smoker. For that reason I have always detested smoking and have understood cigarettes to be a form of antisocial selfishness. I can remember eating out at restaurants and pinching my nose with the fingers of my left hand while lifting a fork to my mouth with my right. To this day I have to check my judgment when I see someone having a cigarette. The impulse to take exception with that person is still there. I don’t know how Freud would characterize this ingrained reaction to another person’s behavior.
In Albania, every man I know will have a cigarette from time to time. People who have a cigarette here are not necessarily to be labeled as smokers. Most of the men I work with will have a smoke or two after an exceptionally upsetting or stressful day on the job, but will typically only smoke once in a great while. My view of the cigarette was challenged directly today, and because of this experience I do not expect that I will view smoking in quite the same way again.
I was at the church property with Stephanie Plagenhoef, Ervis Reka and some sundry other building functionaries and specialists. I saw our neighbor Astrit from a short distance away and went to greet him. Astrit was the guard of our property until April of this year. Astrit has not been physically on our property since his nephew Ardi threatened to kill him. I might give reasons for this threat having been made, but then that would insinuate that I found them “reasonable.” Blood revenge for any number of offenses either real or merely perceived is an Albanian tradition as timeless as this peoples’ very language. Astrit finished his business over a prompt conversation on the steps of the church, and then he left the property. As I was seeing Astrit to the gate, his nephew Ardi drove past our properties entrance in his van. He stopped outside of the gate for perhaps ten seconds to observe the presence of his uncle before driving on.
I was not afraid, Ardi and I are on speaking terms and he seems to be cooler of head these days. But I did take an interest in Ardi’s activities after he drove past. Ardi’s house is located less than 100 meters from the church and so I was able to keep an eye on him without drawing attention to myself. I watched as he parked his van, spoke with his wife, and made his way down the street toward the church property. Ardi walked past our property to the property of his father and after only a few minutes he was headed back in our direction. I positioned myself near the road so that his drawing closer would seem like a natural reason for me to take notice of him. And there he was.
I shook his hand and asked after his well-being and the well-being of his family. After exchanging pleasantries Visi was there beside me to extend his hand. As we spoke, Ardi offered me a cigarette, which I naturally declined. Visi wasted no time taking the white devil from Ardi’s hand, allowing him to light the beast for him before taking in a few long savor-filled drags. As the conversation progressed, I squated close to the ground. At that time Visi and Ardi also sat, there in the driveway of the church, each smoking a cigarette and enjoying the conversation however it went.
The cigarette, when offered from one man to another, assumes a contract if it is accepted. The cigarette is an offer to invite someone to have a conversation for as long as the cigarette lasts. It is like a coffee that you keep in your back pocket, a front door to a conversation about anything or nothing at all. As Ardi and Visi spoke, I found that for the first time in my life I was honored to have someone extend the offer of this awful, cancer-causing, mouth and lung rotting demon. Ardi held out a cigarette in the physical, but the metaphor was one of a wish to have time with me, to have friendly words with me, to lock me into a meeting of a few minutes in which we both enjoyed one of the pleasures of life together. Today’s cigarette was an answer to prayer, and an agent of peacemaking. Is our God not marvelous?
albaniacalling 