An Albanian Fear

Zafo crossed the Albanian border in a Yugoslav JAT IL-18 aircraft. It was a June day in 1972. The sound of the propeller engine joined the creaking of the lids and sheet metal. It was his first time flying, but the loud starting noise of the small plane did not impress him. He was satisfied that the plane was gaining altitude and that no one would come to pull him down, that is, they would bring him back and he would not go to China, but to another one, one of those office darlings. This outing of Zafo abroad was an enigma that no one had discovered even now, after so many years.- Get ready! You are going to China for specialization.The sentence was short, but the thoughts that would come to Zafo's head would be long, covered by the shadows of doubt and, later, those of fear. The doubts throughout the time he prepared his passport papers at the ministry were terrible. Zafo's fate was tied to a kind of perpetual fear, not the kind that defines men as cowards. It was a kind of fear of the intelligent system, a fear that had gripped most intellectuals in the days of the monist system.