CHRONICLE ON ASPHALT/ The rise and fall of Bella B.

2025-11-07 17:20:05Patronazhisti SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Bella at the former prime minister's funeral

Ukraine seeks long-range missiles. The country's former prime minister left us this morning. A doctor is arrested for asking his patient to remove his clothes to examine his tonsils. Diella V. is summoned to court after being accused of casting a spell on colleagues at work. Execution. The famous singer gets engaged and breaks up within a day. The addresses of the city's butchers. We inform readers that not every light at the end of the tunnel is for the better. Ferry departure times to Bari. Rain is forecast for today.

"If you're feeling weak," the lawyer sister told him, "you should get some fresh air; go visit one of those public works sites and freshen up."

He always liked to go out to construction sites. He would wear a yellow vest and teach the Hun engineers how to drill into the mountain, level the gravel, and lay asphalt. The directors would take notes and then go to jail. Other directors would come, take notes in front of the cameras, and nod their heads in approval, knowing they were going to jail.

It had this effect on the directors. As if it cast a spell on them. They were as if they were lost, in a daze. And so, dazed, they sang through their teeth even when she returned to Tirana:

Eight o'clock at night

I went to the gate.

I heard Bella's voice.

You said 'My head hurts'

Why Bella's head ached at eight o'clock every evening, the directors didn't understand, but it was a simple and beautiful song. Playful. Such songs had not been heard in Tirana for a long time. There, I Gjati would pound her head with those tired, almost brilliant speeches, with overused metaphors and allegories that brought her intestines to her throat. While they sang a hundred kumrije to her. Sometimes she felt like catching those imaginary kumrije and cooking them with a pinch of butter with pilaf, eating them together with the directors and telling the naughty birds: Sing now if you want, kukumjaçka!

***

The tall peacock. I came exactly at eight, as we left. But not at eight in the morning, I said, but at dinner, because that's when my head starts to hurt. The director's point! The Turkish engineers have arrived, when will we meet them? Lexington at the bottom of the sea. German troops fight heroically on the banks of the Dnieper. The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant resumes work. In the eulogy for the former prime minister, the prime minister tells an idiotic joke about the Chinese from the metallurgical combine. Croatia blocks tangerines with pesticides. Real Madrid wins.

She thought to herself that there was no greater happiness than adding 30 million euros from nothing for a tunnel built by the Turks, to stand on the backs of some coastal villages that the Greeks also claim. What good did I do to the pigs, she said to herself. She had worked cleaning houses and keeping shacks for the wealthy in Athens, but she had told the world that she had completed high school. Even when she came to Tirana, she still worked with Greeks, but she didn't like them. Ever since she became the spokesperson for their mobile company at the Golden Cage, she felt like she was in a cage. And she wanted to fly, oh my God, how she wanted to fly. That's why she went to command Rinas' planes, how they took off and how they landed. There were also those who accused her of eating Yunan's bread and making the Sultan's dua, but that was all she did.

Sometimes she would dream of her grandfather Abu Beqir, whom she called Babazot.

- Babazot, will you teach me Turkish too? - she begged, - because I want to talk to this old man with a mustache from the Turkish company without a translator.

- I know some Russian and a little bit of Shepherd, - Abu Beqiri replied - but leave the Turkish, be careful of that Tall One, because we as a tribe have not fared well with these boyars!

He would wake up drenched in sweat from embarrassment and mumble, "What the hell is he pressuring me to do?"

***

Old man Dine Çiço is summoned to court for building an aircraft without a permit. SPAK's drivers are famous throughout the empire. Police seize battery-powered scooters: "They are the devil's tools". 80 square meter apartment for sale, one million euros, bargain. Doctor has threesome with interns. Price of bread increases. Congratulations on the job, but be careful, complete secrecy and consult me ??for everything.

SPAK called him. All of Lali's episodes appeared before his eyes, as if in a movie. At first, the directors put him in jail, then they started calling him for explanations. Then the Tall One started to stay away from them. Then details from cell phone conversations trickled down to the press (apparently neither SPAK has green energy insulation, nor caps). Until one fine day, Lali was called but was not allowed to leave.

That's what was happening to her. The directors, despite their notebooks, fell into seven windows. At the funeral of the former prime minister, people believed that she was the one in real mourning, and not the family of the deceased. The tall peacock kept her away as if she had the plague.

Then the most terrible thing happened: The high constitutional judges decided that Lali was being held in prison for nothing! What horrors would they hear with their ears?

Grandfather Abu Beqir's warning still echoed in his head: Be careful, beware of the tall ones...

Note: Patrona?isti is a satirical column with occasional Kadarejan motifs. 


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