A cool spring night had just fallen over the Albanian coastal city of Saranda. A pleasant breeze blew on the balcony. The Greek villages of Corfu glowed faintly from across the coal-black sea.
They were in lockdown over there. Here was one of the few places on earth you could still walk around unmasked and at will these days. A mellow aura of freedom diffused the neighborhood. It was a good time for a beer. I half-tied my shoelaces, threw a jacket on me, and left the house for the shop. As soon as I hit the orange-lit street, I ran into my neighbor.
It was that junky who lived somewhere nearby. He was scraggy; you couldn’t see the outline of his legs inside his sloppy jeans, but you could clearly see all his facial bones. I often came across him during the last few weeks I was living there. He was usually smoking crack on the narrow, dark concrete stairway that led to my yard door, where I had to almost jump over him to pass through.
But now he was on the pavement. He stood lurkingly in the shadow of an orange tree. The already faint orange streetlamp hardly illuminated his facial expressions; enough though to discern in them things like agony, lust, restlessness, affliction…
Every time I passed him, he would whisper English words like smoke, weed, grass. This time he seemed particularly distressed, and he rather yelped them than whispered. I’d been ignoring him every time so far, but this night I was gripped by a beguiling wistfulness. I halted and told him: “If it’s something good.”
Hope glowered mightily from deep inside his cavernous eye sockets. With a complicated, improvised, partly-English, partly-Albanian articulation, he basically asked: “How much money do you have?”
I told him I could spare the Albanian-currency equivalent of five dollars. He tried to raise the stake, first at twenty, then at ten, until he accepted the original proposition. We walked down the street towards the shop for the beer and his supplier for the pot. The supplier popped suddenly out from the shadows in the form of another junky, as scrawny but a quarter shorter.
They conferred privately with each other, shouted a few things in Albanian, and he dashed back to me, pushing his hand under my nose with urgency. He held a tiny little foil wrap containing hardly a morsel of cannabis. It smelled alright, though. “This is a sample, we walk down the stairs, you give me the money, and I give you the stuff, good amount,” he explained in his peculiar language.
We entered a particularly dark patch of shadow. He produced an oval plastic wrap, but wouldn’t loosen his grip on it when I tried to snatch it. “The money first, the money first,” he insisted. When he understood I wasn’t going to part with a dime before I make sure I want what he has, he let me have a closer inspection of the item between his fingers clasping it.
Whatever the content, it was cloaked with several layers of transparent adhesive tape. I could barely discern something greenish in there that could have been leaves or grass, but certainly not marijuana.
“Are you a bloody idiot, man?” I told him off. “What the dickens is this? Did you really just try to hoodwink me?”
He seemed embarrassed and agitated. He said something on the line of “Nonono, it’s okay. Just wait a bit. He’ll go fetch it for you now. You just wait one minute”.
His countenance radiated distress like a star does light. I sympathized with him and pitied him. Plus, I’d warmed up to the idea of having a spliff tonight. “Alright,” I conceded.
“Vraaapo!” he then howled as he swiveled his torso to face the other guy standing by the top of the stairs. I correctly guessed that the word meant run!, seeing the chap taking to his heels at once.
The two of us remained on the same spot, waiting. I then told him that I’m from Greece after him asking. A trace of excitement surfaced from deep down his emotional abyss. He told me that he used to live in Greece until some twelve years ago. He had toured several of the country’s prisons. His two brothers were still there on life sentences. His Greek was pretty decent. We’d found a common language to communicate a bit more properly.
“You on crack, eh?” I said conversationally.
“Hm, crack, yes, only crack,” he returned, sort of apologetically.
“And how about heroin? Don’t you use smack? You look like you do,” I pried curiously.
“Heroin? No, I don’t use it,” he replied unsurely…. “Well, not for a long time. I’ve been clean for eight whole weeks. Only crack now,” he added after registering my incredulous stare.
He went on to narrate snippets of his life story…
A long time ago, he used to work as a kitchen carpenter. Still a young boy, he moved to Greece to join his two older brothers and work to save some money. He originally intended to exercise his profession, but he soon found out that the drug-pushing business was a much more lucrative occupation.
He made good money at first, but as his addiction to his own merchandise grew ever more voracious, in the end, he was pushing for merely affording his doses. He eventually got arrested and did a few years. Heroin was scarce and dear in the slammers. He would occasionally get a shot, which he’d inject with a makeshift syringe made of a Bic pen, but for the most part, he’d have to suffer on sober.
He was resolved to change his life after he got released. He returned to his hometown and picked up his old profession. It only took months till he got sacked because of stealing for fixing his doses. He never worked again ever since.
Now he was going through one of his countless undertakings to quit smack. And it’d been one of his most successful ones ever. He’d enrolled in the state rehabilitation program and was on methadone sustenance. He claimed he hadn’t had a single heroin fix in nearly eight weeks. Only crack.
But crack has a unique money-hoovering quality that not even heroin can match. He held that he needs a minimum of 100 euros per day to provide for his self-detrimental habit.
“How do you find this money?” I asked, rather dumbly.
“How do I find it?” he echoed my question in a heavy tone and terrified demeanor that aptly answered it…
Selling his methadone surely contributed a part. The problem with that, though, was that the opiate cold turkey kicked in together with the crack craving, making his ordeal all the more unbearable. He kept complaining about his aching muscles as, in the meanwhile, we had started walking down the street in search of his pot supplier.
The short chap was apparently more late than his edginess could handle. We meandered through some narrow, inclined, gloomy streets and stopped at an inconspicuous crossroad, where several other junkies hung out. He asked one of them for a rolling paper and rolled the cannabis morsel he’d been carrying with him all along. We smoked it together, and he became testier with every toke.
His last drops of patience had dried up by the time he tossed the burning crutch in the sod beside the road. He set off trudging up and down the street, shouting the chap’s name among other Albanian stuff I could not understand, but to no avail… The road was as dead-quiet every time one of his cries faded out into the night.
I also began to grow impatient. I wasn’t eager to wait the whole night to buy a bit of weed. “Are you sure he hasn’t gone back another way?” I suggested.
He could well have, he realized after giving it some thought. He metaphorically dragged me back to the main road and towards the neighborhood. Along the way, he did some preliminary work on his begging backup plan, just in case the chap had gone missing.
“You must help me,” he said. “You must understand me. I’ve not had my methadone. I’m in pain. Show compassion. You give me some money; I bring you pot tomorrow. In the morning. I promise.”
To his great luck – as there wasn’t much of a chance he’d get a penny from me for nothing – his friend was there, indeed, waiting all the while. He frantically swayed his arms up in the air as soon as we appeared around the corner, and they jogged towards each other along the street like two reuniting lovers.
When I reached them, ambling over at my leisurely tempo, he turned around and handed me a thick handful of marijuana. It was good and much more than I expected; an absolute bargain. I searched my pocket and produced a few coins together with the pre-agreed 500-lek note.
“A tip,” I told him as I placed the money in his expectant, open palm.
Joy flared in his eyes. “You’re a good man,” he said and patted me on the shoulder. He turned around, ready to sprint, but the other guy cut him short with a squeal. He told him something in Albanian, and he turned back to me. “Will you give me a joint?” he requested hastily. I untied the bag and handed him a good bud. “You’re a good man,” he repeated, and this time, he went off running unstoppably at full speed.
I went upstairs and prepared my spliff. As I was puffing it on the balcony, I could imagine the man sitting on the stairway, behind my building, smoking his seven-dollars-or-so worth of crack. He would be content for about an hour.
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.
