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OP-ED

Why does Edi Rama want a role even in death?

Politiko 2025-11-03 20:00:50
Why does Edi Rama want a role even in death?

Alfred Lela

Fatos Nano may have lived an Epicurean life, but he died a Shakespearean death.
A tragicomic mist fell over the three days of mourning for Albania’s three-time Prime Minister, saying, of course, much more about the living than about the dead.

It was both amusing and painful to watch how the media, more absorbed in the gossip of the funeral than in the death of a former head of government, made a mess of the women around him. At one point, they reported that Rexhina (the ex-wife) was present, then denied it; at another, they confused V. Nushi for Rexhina, or even Sh. Ngjela.
Naturally, for everything that has to do with the old Socialist-Communist Bloc, one must open the “Window of Xhunga and Hila”: since the days of Nexhmije, every story about the widows of the Left is found there — precise and merciless, like an execution decree signed by Enver himself.

Once that was settled, the grotesque reached its brilliance. Left-leaning portals, instead of showing piety for the departed, rummaged through his life in search of the shadow of their archenemy, Sali Berisha.
It was as if Nano had not died in a hospital bed, but had been carried there lifeless on the shoulders of Flamur Noka, having collapsed in Berisha’s arms — struck by the heartache of their prison years and a dinner of wine and memories where, once again, “the Doctor’s trick” had triumphed.

The socialist Caesar and the democratic Brutus stood once more face-to-face in the Forum of the PissMilet, while every internet citizen with a social-media account played Mark Antony.

Berisha, surely, is unbothered. He must long ago have made Andreotti’s famous quip his own: “In this country they blame me for everything — since the Punic Wars onward.”

But every tragicomedy needs a mourner to close the play and lead the chorus before the curtain falls.
For some time now, that role has belonged to Edi Rama — the Prime Minister de vérité.
In the North, at deaths that carry some weight — a young man in his prime, a clan elder — a group of mourners gives meaning to a meaningless end, replacing the absent song of the highlander laid on the wooden bier. In his quest for a role that includes all roles — poet, singer, minstrel, standard-bearer, tax collector, and treasurer — Edi Rama has begun to appear at great funerals as chief mourner and chief lamenter.

He took on the part with Kadare, to whom he read the eulogy, but never found the grave.
He did not delay with Nano either, though theirs was an uneasy history — as uneasy as any state funeral can be. Still, he appeared: head bowed, dressed in black, grief like an hourglass that can be turned whichever way he pleases — smothering another man’s death under the shadow of his own performance.

For Kadare, they said it was Helena who had asked him. Others, more spiteful, whispered that Rama seized the eulogy himself — in exchange for the grafting rights to a grave on the “Capitol.”
As for Nano’s farewell, perhaps Xhoana knows more… or the window of the widows of the Socialist-Communist Bloc.

And finally, a word for the Democrats. They, too, add their touch of frenzy to the tragicomedy — when they fail to understand that the dead are no longer to be fought, and that the time for peace has come.
Let’s be clear: the time for peace with oneself, above all. For on the edge of any grave — your own or another’s — the greatest blessing is to find peace.
If not there, you will find it even less after death, neither in battle, nor in bitterness with your opponent.

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