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POLITIKOFF

"They gave me a passport like Victoria Marini"/ Parashqevi Simaku confesses for the first time the reason for leaving Albania

Politiko 2025-05-29 22:23:09

"They gave me a passport like Victoria Marini"/ Parashqevi Simaku

The iconic singer of Albanian music, Parashqevi Simaku, has told for the first time her story of leaving Albania, in a sincere and touching interview for the show "Opinion". A personal story filled with emotions, difficult decisions and sacrifices, which sheds light on an unknown chapter of her life.

Simaku said that it all started with her mother's desire to visit her brother in Italy, one of the many Albanians who had emigrated in the early 1990s. But the road to Italy was not easy.

"I went to the embassy with my friend. The Italian ambassador knew me from the Christmas party evenings. I said, please... 'You are Parashqevia,' he said! They promised me help. They brought me the diplomatic car. I didn't have a single lek! It was all a gift," the singer confessed.
But the stop in Italy was just the beginning. Soon, she would find herself faced with the decision to finally leave Albania. Thanks to an Albanian couple from Dibra, Macedonia who lived in New York, she secured a purchased Italian passport.

"It was a Calabrian passport, in the name of Victoria Marini. I spoke Italian, I looked Italian," Simaku said with a bitter smile.

On March 9, 1992, she arrived in New York.

"I was shocked when I arrived. The first thing I said was: why is the sky so high? In Albania, we have those clouds like hats. It felt like I had entered another world. The Albanians here loved me very much," she concluded, excited.

Parashqevi Simaku's story sheds light on the vicissitudes of many Albanians of that time, but also on the courage and will of an artist who sought to survive and keep her dream alive, far from the place that raised her as a singer, but which could no longer offer her the freedom she sought.

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