Walking around Shkodër

It’s Friday night which meant the square, streets, and parks were full of life. The city was smaller than Tirana and looked more quaint and more affluent. The brick houses looked more maintained and the shops looked more upscale than the ones we saw in Tirana. Everyone of all ages were out and about, walking around, sitting on benches by the park or the main promenade, or sitting in the cafes nursing their drinks as slowly as possible. The ubiquitous cafes and their misting equipment (which I thought was quite pointless) and men and their coffee are what I’d remember from Albania.

It seemed that we just missed the demonstrations in Tirana. At the restaurant the newscaster on TV was reporting on what looked like a large political demonstration in Tirana. We recognized some of the buildings where a large unhappy crowd had gathered with their banners and signs. Our waiter didn’t really want to tell us what it was all about except to say that “It’s normal. Don’t worry.” I wanted to explain that we weren’t worried as much as curious about the esprit du jour of Albania; what caused people to march on the streets? But he just smiled politely and nodded. Maybe he just didn’t want to get into politics at work.

We later learned that the protesters were demanding the resignation of the prime minister who allegedly rigged the election in 2017. It seemed that the fall of communism did not mean democracy and equality and progress for the people of Albania. Instead, it’s the select few who managed to wrestle the power at the top, creating a kleptocracy with often autocratic leader that rigged elections, demanded bribes from businesses, controlled all the important and profitable sectors (such as tourism), meanwhile unemployment increased and prices rose and people became disillusioned by the promise of liberal democracy that never came to be. I often thought of the bunkers we saw in Tirana and how the exhibits were slightly too eager to portray the communist regime as oppressive and inhumane, which might be the case. But it’s also too easy to paint a simple brush stroke of “Communist = Evil” and “Democracy = Good” especially for the benefits of tourists who were already primed to feel wary and apprehensive about the Communists after descending to the dark sunless bunker. But I wondered if people’s lives are truly better now with the fall of communism.

On our walk back to the hostel after dinner, we walked past two girls, around twelve or thirteen, who saw us, looked at me and said loudly, “SUSHI!” and sped away to catch up with the woman who was walking next to them. I looked at Gabriel and shrugged. “What did she say,” I asked Gabriel, not quite sure if I heard them. “Sushi?”
“I heard sushi too,” I said, somewhat puzzled.
If it was meant to be a racial epithet, that was a new one I haven’t heard before. I’ve had a girl in Dublin shouted “China!” when she saw me, but sushi is a new one.

I found this kind of racial encounter amusing. It felt naive and innocent, and absurd. And for all I knew, these girls’ only encounter with Asia and/or Asians was through Japanese food. In which case, I doubt she had any ideas what racism even meant and she was only blurting out related word in a way that someone playing word association game would have shouted “SUSHI” to the word “JAPAN”. I’m not Japanese, but I wouldn’t expect her to know that, the same way she wouldn’t expect me to be able to tell an Albanian apart from a Serb or a Kosovar.

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