It was sometime midway between sunset and sunrise of a summer new-moon night at a secluded beach somewhere in Greece. Due to the moon’s absence, the sky, the earth, and the sea were veiled in deep darkness. Only the dim lights of a cluster of villages across the bay and the countless radiating other worlds of the Milky Way overheads were interrupting the absoluteness of the enveloping gloom.
A campfire was burning at one of the beach’s ends, illuminating a limited piece of surrounding space in warm orange tints. A bunch of some 15-20 teenagers – one of whom was I – formed a circle around the fire, passing around a large number of joints, joking and laughing, and enjoying the magic of the summer night.
This same course had been repeated for many a consecutive preceding night at the same spot. Nothing would have been exceptionally memorable about that night to distinguish it from all the previous ones. But a human silhouette did then appear within reach of the firelight, heading straight for its source.
Who could our impending visitor be? all wondered during the first few moments of silence that followed the strange figure’s appearance.
“Just a bypasser,” an indifferent voice said. “Maybe some friend,” another curious one followed. “The police, guys! Hide all the stuff!” a paranoid one begged…
All three suppositions had to be ruled out… The beach border, which came after the fire, was a dead-end; nobody could be passing by. We didn’t expect anybody, and no-one unexpected could know where we were. Lastly, the silhouette’s paraplegic-like gait – shoulders hanging forward and feet warped outwards Charlie-Chaplin-style – could not belong to a policeman, no matter how hard he tried to pretend not being one if he was. All speculation failed. We’d have to see to find out, any moment now.
He was a dumb-looking Albanian bloke. Without showing the slightest sign of hesitation, he found a vacant place for him in the circle and sat comfortably on the ground. He made his entrance in such an easy and confident manner that he obliged everyone to assume that someone from the company must know him.
For something like half a confounded minute that followed, he kept staring at the fire and the sky alternately, whereas all the rest looked at him and one another in expectant silence, waiting to see who knows that mysterious bloke. It had started to become evident that no-one knew him when the silence was finally broken…
“Who the fuck are you?” asked one of the guys.
“Who? Me?” he enunciated in broken Greek.
“Yes, you. Who are you?”
“Me Deejay.”
“We don’t care if you are a deejay. What’s your name?”
“Yes. Me name Deejay.”
“What in hell are you talking about, man? You cannot be called Deejay. You must have a real name.”
“Yes. Real name! Me all know Deejay!”
“Alright then, Deejay,” he said resignedly. “And what do you want?”
“Me want smoke. Me come Albania. Me walk. Smell and come smoke.”
How he had forcibly invaded the company, without even bothering to introduce himself or something, and demanded to be given to smoke was rather rude. That initially urged many from the company to harshly refuse his request. Tensions arose. A couple of them got so offended that they needed to be appeased by the rest to not oust him by force.
But in the end, as he seemed to be an okay and, most importantly, funny chap, the impression of his insolence, seen as the result of cultural differences and his inability to communicate well in our tongue, came to be mitigated and forgiven. That led to his wish being fulfilled. The leftovers of a joint finally ended up in his hand.
His countenance radiated with joy. Without dawdling for a moment, he brought the spliff to his mouth and, applying the fullest of his lung capacity, sucked two or three consecutive deep drags. That was all there was to it. He was then expected to fling the butt in the fire. But no! What Deejay then did still accounts for one of the best laughs I’ve so far had in my life.
He fixed the crutch of the joint in one of his nostrils, shut the other with his finger, and got to maniacally inhale the burning paper. Wow, the bloke was insane, utterly mad! He took a deep sniff, then stopped for the half-minute or so it took him to repress the severe coughing and choking, and he repeated the process over and over again, feeding the crutch with the lighter while sniffing until there was nothing more he could grip. His face had turned red to the point you thought his veins might crack open, and his eyes were tearing a stream. Ours did the same due to extreme laughter.
Deejay settled in our company for the rest of the night. Many joints he smoked (and sniffed) and high as a kite he got. Slowly and painfully, making use of his poor Greek and gesticulations, he told us his story…
He came from a small village in northern Albania. He recently had run into trouble. The law and a mafia family were after him for several infringements. Threatened by prison from one side and death from the other, he managed to escape and make his way to the Greek border. He crossed clandestinely over the wild mountains and, ultimately, a few weeks prior to our meeting there, wound up in our city where a cousin of his lived. He now intended to get a job and start a new, peaceful life.
However, his life in our city did not turn out so peaceful after all. He soon got hooked on heroin. He got involved in a variety of shady ventures: drug-pushing, pimping, burglaries, robberies… He managed to get by with the police for some time, working for them as an informant, but he consequently gained a bad reputation amongst the city’s crime circles, Greeks and Albanians alike, so that he was forced to live and act surreptitiously, like a mole. He wasn’t going to last long.
The last I saw of him was only a few months after his initial appearance in the city. It was a late night at a quay. I was chilling there with some friends. Two local blokes I knew were smoking pot a little further away. Deejay, together with another Albanian dude, showed up suddenly and joined the two blokes. They seemed to be conversing in rather friendly (at least not hostile) terms for the time being. The two Albanians, at an unsuspected moment, stood up and started walking hastily away. I did not know what had caused the startling events that followed during my attending them. Only after, I got to know that Deejay attempted to steal something from them.
The two Albanians must have walked no more than fifty steps when the two offended blokes realized that their goods were missing. They abruptly stood up and started running after them. They, in turn, noticed them right away and started running, too, down the quay to get away.
The second Albanian proved swift; he vanished like a bat out of hell. Deejay, though, could not – and didn’t want to – fly like a wimp. He was left alone against two. When he was just about to get caught, he plucked up a leftover beer bottle, smashed it against the concrete ground, and clutching the razor-sharp remainder of the glass bottle tightly in his fist, he turned around to confront his persecutors.
He wasn’t quick enough. They seized him, removed the glass from his hand, and beat the hell out of him. For a length of time long enough to make me feel pity for him despite him having clearly asked for it, the two enraged blokes kept violently kicking and punching his bleeding, writhing, begging, and cursing body. They only stopped after I managed to convince them that “guys, okay, it’s enough, you are going to kill him, he’s learned his lesson,” upon which instance they shoved him off the quay, three meters down the rocky shore, and walked away.
That was the last time I saw Deejay. I later got to hear that he spent a good two weeks in the hospital with a head injury and several broken ribs; and that he then came out and started looking for trouble once again. What may have become of him, I have no idea. But I suspect he must have either ended up in prison or in a grave.
The story you've just read is a part of my "Real Stories of Real People" collection, wherein I narrate my encounters with various remarkable characters I've run into while traveling around the world. The entire collection is published on my blog and may be read here. But if you'd like to get them with you to the beach in your ebook reader or as a physical book, and very appreciatedly support my creative activity, go ahead and grab your copy from Amazon for the cost of a cup of coffee.
