A Dictator's Birthday Present to Himself

 It’s safe to say that I won’t live touse a time machine. And not because I didn’t attend Stephen Hawking’s time traveler party, I have bigger fish to fry than that. No, the reason I know I’ll never use a timemachine is because when I was thirteen years old I sent a letter professing my undyinglove to a girl in my class, only to then blame a friend the moment that she rejected me. And If I ever encountered a time machine,that would not be a memory that I still have. 

But today’s episode is not about my failed love life. It's about giant letters in a hill. It’s about time. You can’t erase the past. It’s a lesson that's surprisingly hard to learn. They say those that don’t know history are doomed to repeat it but I’d argue that we're doomed to repeat it regardless. Few people really want to look back on history,because that’s where the lessons are, and almost none of us really want to learn a lesson. We’re kind of like Calvin on that camping trip with his father dreading what it takes to build character. But we need lessons. Traumatic lessons. Heartfelt lessons. The ones we push away to allow ourselves to keep on task within our imperfections. The past may be a lemon, but it’s there for us to squeeze. 

And here in Albania, the recent past is chock full of lessons. Having been through one of the world’s most extreme forms of isolationism, abject poverty both communist and capitalist alike, and a current government that hugs the line between politician and mafioso, you’d be forgiven in wondering if much had been learned at all. But for all the problems that exist here,there are clear signs of people rewriting the future. Sometimes, quite literally. In 1968, Communist dictator Enver Hoxha did what any leader espousing equality among  all people would naturally do. He demanded his name be written into a mountain. It was a birthday present that he was giving himself.

 And I mean, who wouldn’t want their namewritten into a mountain for their birthday? You’d be flattered, admit it. The difference between Hoxha and us is that he had the power to make it happen. As an ardent Stalinist, it isn’t surprising that he tried to literally write himself into the landscape. Be it through ego or ideology, I suspect he genuinely believed increasing his cult of personality would somehow indirectly benefit the people. Or he didn’t, but it didn’t really mattereither way, because he had the backing of the secret police and a near total control of the government. “What’s that you say? A mountain? Your name? Ah sounds very useful, sir.” A few kilometers outside the city of Berat, a local farmer named Sheme Filja led hundreds of soldiers carrying buckets of white paint high into the hills and began creating a work of art that would last for decades. 

Each letter is nearly a hundred metres talland spans the entire ridge of the mountain. On completion, beaming out over the picturesque countryside below, it read out his name for all to see, “ENVER”. But despite being written in stone, it wasn’t to last. Oddly enough, the creation of this undeniable work of art also somewhat coincided with the high water mark of Albanian communism. 

For the next twenty years, as it would loomover the town below extolling people to love their leader, or at the very least recognize he had a name, Albanian society got undeniably worse. As his paranoia grew, Hoxha peeled away international friendships. With virtually no incoming aid and an economy focused on total self-reliance, the post-war successes that had afforded a generally decent life came to a close. Just like in North Korea, the economic stagnationof Albania came at almost exactly the time when their free market neighbours startedcatching speed. While their economic system was never meant for growth, everyone could tell that there was less food than before. 

And as things worsened, intense cultish propagandawas forced to fill the gaps that reality couldn’t. The further the rift between the two, themore oppressive the dictatorship became. Information about the outside world, alreadyhard to get, became nearly impossible to come by. Bunkers were constructed in the hundreds of thousands. The only thing that mattered was carved into that hillside. People would love Hoxha, whether they liked it or not. But all bad things come to an end, and in 1985 Hoxha died. As the Berlin wall came crashing down andEastern Europe began ripping itself apart at the seams, the earth shook between thistiny nation’s feet. 

Violence took the place of order. As Communism fell, the people turned on thesymbol that had come to define it most. Hoxha. Despite being in the ground for six years,his memory still loomed over the country like a shadow. Large scale protests saw his statues torn down in Tirana and Durres, the nation’s two largest cities. Having seen Romania’s Ceauşescu murdered in his home by angry mobs demanding a capitalist future, the new leader of Albania decidedhe’d prefer to keep living, thanks. Rather than find himself on the chopping block,he began the rocky process towards democratization and rejoining the international community. And just like that, Communism in Albania became a thing of the past. The cult of Hoxha which was once so strongwas now on death's door. But around the country, hundreds of thousandsof symbolic reminders remained. With the help of hundreds of thousands offrustrated citizens from around the country, the government began the long road towardsremoving the vestiges of the past. Bunkers from Hoxha’s paranoia were ripped up and repurposed, statues dedicated to his glory were torn down with ancient heroes erected in their place. Buildings around the country saw their starsswapped for the double eagle. 

Yet, no matter how many bunkers they tore out, the biggest reminder in this country remained untouched. A massive, looming, mountainous work of art. It had to go. But that wasn’t so simple as it seemed. Despite all those that were ready to bury the past, there were still a number who wanted to revel in it. With Hoxha’s cult of personality still survivingin the minds of the true believers, there were some who saw the writing on the mountain as a beloved memory. 

A legacy for their lost leader. Even among those who didn’t care for the past, his name had been carved into this hill for an entire generation. It was a unifying feature that everyone knew. A birthday present a dictator gave himself. But at the very least, it was unique, and in that uniqueness it became a genuine symbol of the past for better and worse. Having his name left in the hill forced peopleto remember the things he’d been capable of. 

A tainted memory of structure looming over the shaky new world. And as the new democratic government increased its control over this country, it became clear they’d have to solve this problem once and for all. But they had no use for the past. They wanted to destroy it. And just like me attempting to delete an amorous email I sent an hour before, it wasn’t quite as successful as they’d hoped. 

In 1994, they lit the mountain on fire. Soldiers dropped napalm from planes, trying to burn away the memory where it stood. The plan had been to blacken the rocks and makethem harder to read from a distance, forever solidifying his name in the hillside, but nearly invisible to those passing by. The past would remain, just darkened overby the anger of the present. A physical representation of the fledgling government’s inability to entirely root out the ideological problems they've inherited.

 If this were a fictional story, I bet an editor would have circled this section with a note saying “ham-fisted symbolism”. Yet it was real. But to make that symbolism even stronger,it didn’t work. The past came bubbling back almost immediately. True believers of Hoxha paid the original artist to climb right back up that hill and repaint those rocks. Ideology dies hard. ENVER would live again. But not for long, though. Eventually someone realized that there are better ways to resolve problems than simply lighting them on fire. You can’t win if you fight the past, butyou can learn from it and build a better future. 

The second attempt to solve the problem didn’ttry to destroy the writing, it adapted it. At the behest of a documentary crew, that same local farmer was given the task of reworking his art once again. And for a third time, he climbed up the mountainto write a message to the world below. And for a third time, he’d write those samefive recognizable letters into the hillside. Only this time, with a twist. They’d swapped the first two letters. And from now on, the mountain would say NEVER. An ingenious take on an old idea. Rearranging the failures of the past to speak to a better future. 

Hoxha’s new legacy in the eyes of the people. So okay, yes, you can never travel back in time. Teenage me will always be a monument to hormones and shame. I could cover it up, deny it happened, tell you I was the coolest kid in school. But it wouldn’t change a thing. You can napalm a mountain, but the words are still there. The only real way to change the past intoa brighter future is to adapt it into something new. To rewrite the words on that mountain. To say NEVER. This is Rare Earth.