Today the “musketeers” of Tirana, the most-read writer of recent decades Ben Blushi and the most-watched TV moderator Blendi Fevziu met and posed together. After this meeting Ben Blushi wrote: “I had a very nice conversation with my friend Blendi Fevziu about the novel Historitë e Cmendura të Tiranës.
Unlike other times, he interviewed me in the center of Tirana, right where in 1614 Sulejman Pasha Bargjini founded the city by building a bakery, a hammam, an inn and a mosque.
Walking on foot, we remembered the people who built Tirana with their follies, ambitions and battles: men, women, adventurers, Albanians and foreigners, without whom this city could not have become a capital.
Blendi Fevziu is one of the best connoisseurs of Tirana, and every time I meet him I agree with his alarm that the old city is disappearing because of a blind passion for demolishing everything that has existed and for erecting new buildings that, in most cases, are ugly multi-storey blocks.
He is right.
Although Tirana has a strong sense of self-regulation, as it is proving these days when without traffic lights there is less traffic, once again it is facing the latest challenge.
Will it be able to resist the thirst to build everywhere and without limits?
Blendi Fevziu and I belong to a generation born in Tirana, who lived the urban coexistence of three eras: the monarchy, communism and the transition.
This harmony of buildings that made Tirana not only interesting but also human is being destroyed today.
Human Tirana is being demolished, while the new Tirana is very savage.
Out of the need to revive stories and people who are losing themselves under the weight of brutal modernization, I wrote Historitë e Cmendura të Tiranës.”
