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OP-ED

Toptan hideouts: in the end, like Kabul, but they could not but fall into the hands of the Taliban

Politiko 2021-08-17 12:33:00

Toptan hideouts: in the end, like Kabul, but they could not but fall into the

Alfred Lela

Among the Toptans, by Esat Pasha at least, the connection was originally with the Topiaj, the Arbnor princes of the Middle Ages. It does not matter much. In Albania, layers are invented if they are not and disappear if they exist. More or less, this is what is happening with the Saracens of the Toptans in Tirana, a layer that still is, but apparently not for very long.

The Toptans, when even their last tower has fallen, will be remembered for the infamous Esat Pasha, for the huge shopping center in the middle of the city, and, perhaps, for the tribal connection with a celebrity of our time, Blendi Fevzi. The only authentic seal of their presence in Tirana has suffered, last night at midnight, the final blow: a fire coming out of the hand of insidiousness, betrayal and greed.

After the siege of the Clock Tower , the 'legal isolation' of the Clock Bar , the transformation of the Dajti Hotel , Sarajet are the only sign in that block of the capital that speaks to Albanians from the past. Everything else is a product of greed (which they also call progress), exercised by several hands, chewed by many mouths and accepted by many eyes.

Intentional arson last night is just one of the solutions in the already illustrative repertoire of tools used to provide the expiration date for buildings of character and history, and with the ‘misfortune’ of the position, a real estate scandal for the builders sect.

The most efficient form has been the pressure of time: leaving them abandoned, unrepaired, villas and other monuments of the past have fallen under its own weight. By letting them stumble and ugly, demolition intervention has been more acceptable. Another form has been 'the right to property and its conversion'. Thus, suckers of large families have sold villas or residential complexes of their glorious ancestors for two apartments and a garage. More or less, it does not matter.

At times, it was state arbitrariness, as in the case of the National Theater, some cinemas, and others, that used the Taliban ransom to erase parts of the city's mosaic. What is happening to Tirana under this pressure is painful: the Ottoman and Italian / Zogist strata are disappearing and are left sad, stereotyped, uncharacteristic: soc-realist and demo-surrealist.

The palaces are probably the last gemstone falling from the crown of another time, to give way to the palaces of the young pashas of the capital. Since an alternative source derives the surname of the Toptans not from the noble Topias, but from the word top , claiming that the family owned a cannon, at a time when this weapon was a rarity in our area, even better for the symbolism.

New concrete pashas are also entering the city with cannons. They can win the war with the city, even aided by traitors in the citadel, but history never loses track. Not even the signs of laughter of some of us, no matter how little, that we see in their complexes, both in the houses where they live and in the graves when they die. Cotton monuments that strive to replace, as the case may be, phallic or spiritual dimensions.