I am sitting in my cladded prison in Deptford overlooking the barbed wires on the building across, paralysed with thoughts of desperation and gloom as I listen to James O’Brien show, who has been a key factor in keeping sane in the last few years. The interest rates are up, recession is looming, I probably won’t be able to sell the cladded cage. I love Deptford, regardless of the barbed wire; I love London; strangely enough, I love England too.
I am sitting in front of the computer, trying to write a document as part of my well-paid job; writing it should be automatic as I am fully versed in the jargon that is needed for such documents but the fingers don’t move – I am overwhelmed with one thought only: I need to escape. I need to leave England as soon as I can. I feel deep sorrow and loss that clouds my usually optimistic outlook that always seeks (and finds) a silver lining! The sense of loss and foreboding is familiar because this has already happened to me in the early 90s in Kosovo! This is total déjà vu! The same, feeling of hopelessness took me to the promised land, to England, which I had idealised and fantasised about since I was 15 years old.
Twenty-eight years later, I am full of disappointment, sadness, regrets, uncertainty, anger but also hope although I am not yet quite sure what to hope for. I am careful. Hope is great but it’s not enough. I am convinced that this seemingly downward spiral of the country I embraced even before I arrived cannot continue to spin downwards for much longer but I am finding it more and more difficult to see she will find a way out of the mess. ! My déjà vu doesn’t help either. My country of birth spiralled to madness 30 odd years ago after ten years of very similar rhetoric that we’ve been served since 2015-16! A rhetoric that puts a wedge between everything and everyone offering simplistic solutions to very complex problems…
After 12 years of listening to Farage, Rees-Mogg, Widdecombe, Bridgen, Francois, Leadsom, Patel, and now the new monstrous home secretary Suella Braverman I feel exhausted. I even fear I may have PTST! The most special place in the list of these deranged national-fantasists belongs to the one and only Boris Johnson, or as I usually call him the Clown-Swine! I detest this obscene little man so much that I never mention his name in conversation! Even writing it feels like defilement. History will have a very special place for him in the panel of shame and infamy, which is great, but which doesn’t help us, here and now, to rectify all the ills he has made possible due to his depraved appetite for power and attention. The cracks and wedges have gone too deep for us to be able to simply put a fresh lick of paint over them.
I am writing this as I listen to hysterical reporting all over the media about the ‘invasion of Albanians’ in small boats. I am not entirely sure if the number of young Albanians justifies the hysteria but I do know that there are unscrupulous criminals who promise young men in (predominantly) northern Albania quick riches in the promised land where they will build skyscrapers, roads, tunnels, etc.; these young men will soon be disappointed and stuck in a cycle of debt to pay the gangsters! I want to hug them and tell them to go back as soon as possible because this is not where they want to be. I want to tell them I am HOPING to move to Albania as soon as I am able to sell my flat. I want to tell them I want to leave my good job because living in a country that is tearing itself apart is not a good place to be but I know they won’t listen to me. I wouldn’t have listened 28 years ago either.
Hope of moving to Albania is the only thing that keeps me going at the moment despite being fully integrated in the UK. My sensibilities are much more English than Albanian as well as understanding of the culture, history, humour, politics, literature, music… etc. I’ve cried for England every time it got kicked out of the Euros and World Cup. Except the last one because something had snapped! Most of my close friends are British, albeit I am feeling more and more estranged from them because we seem to have less and less to say to each other, sadly. I don’t blame them. I’ve been shouting and screaming for too long now but I somehow feel it is my duty to shout and scream because of my fears that my adopted country is going towards a precipice due to being poisoned by the same failed ideas that pushed former Yugoslavia over the edge in my late teens and early twenties. I truly hope I am wrong!
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