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OPINION / Albania would be much different if Sabile Risha had studied to be a tractor driver...

2026-07-18 22:02:02Patronazhisti SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Over the past 35 years, many Albanians may have wondered what their lives would have been like if things had turned out differently for Sabile Risha. Would they have been richer? Happier? Would the country have been at war with North Ossetia?

One thing is certain: Albania would be a completely different country if Sabile Risha had won the tractor driver competition back in 1962.

We probably wouldn't be in this position if the history of that damned competition had taken a different path; if the doors of a tractor driver's career hadn't been closed in the young Sabile Risha's face because that position was to be taken by the scoundrel of a powerful man in Bajram Curri; if meritocracy had won and not friends.

In fact, perhaps we would not have removed what we have removed, if Sabile Risha had advanced in his craft, with his iron will, becoming a distinguished tractor driver working for the year 2001, and receiving the title of Hero of National Socialist Labor.

Imagine for a moment what the Bashkimi i Kombit newspaper with New News would write about the young man from the village of Paracetamol in Tropoja, who had just received his first tractor. 

"…And here we meet Sabile, the young tractor driver from the village of Aspirinë who works two hours a day. They wanted to take him to Tirana against his will to study to become a heart doctor, but he chose the profession of the heart, digging the earth. Here's what he tells us: I guarantee you… definitely, yes… this is the tractor of freedom, the tractor of the party…”   

Think of what an inspiration he would be to other young men in the area, who would no longer be forced by their father to work in the private garden, chasing personal comfort, but would get on tractors and plow the fields, making them fertile like the mountains. And when the tractor broke down, they would run to fix it with all their passion, while their parent would ask them sarcastically, "Hey, did you fix the tractor?" You know what happened next.

Forgive me for delving into the fantasy of "Albania as it would be," but when I think of the shortcomings we have removed in 35 years, and which, for a whim of history, we could have avoided, I feel sad.

Would people have become a nuisance over their property, over property that wasn't theirs, over property that should have been theirs but isn't to this day?

Would 96, 97, 98, and all the other years have happened? Would we have experienced the psychological trauma of Nuli's recognition as a public figure under other circumstances, in an alternative universe?

I don't know. Maybe I'm daydreaming, but I imagine Sabile Risha in 1992, as one of the first refugees in Italy, suffering those initial hardships, working diligently to fix the lives of his children, Argjila and Shpërbleni, finally opening a pizzeria in his native village, Paracetamol, and giving interviews to the media, how he would like his grandchildren to learn the trade of a tractor driver.

Albania would have become a member of the European Union in 1997, a member of NATO in 1998, and among the top 5 countries on the continent in terms of welfare levels and per capita income. Today we have levels, but not welfare; while income goes to some, the rest are left breathless.

But things didn't work out that way. The young Sabile Risha came to Tirana to study medicine. But he arrived disfigured, angry, and vowing revenge for not being allowed to become a tractor driver.

"You will wear whatever the homeland needs, period!", the authorities ordered him, and from then on, his anger towards the system only grew.

Full of anger, he studied to be a cardiologist, became a communist, was appointed a medical lecturer, and kept a pair of scissors ready in his pocket to cut off the long hair and cowboy pants of dissolute students, as if to remove from his body the toxins produced by the unfulfilled dream.  

The political system changed, but the toxins only increased, while the scissors were replaced by the rubber baton, the cane, the tanks... And here we are.

PS Sometimes I think where Albania would be today, if the boy Eri Dama had been really talented in painting or basketball, and not dealt with other things...

Note: The Patronage is a satirical column that sometimes has dreams of a midsummer night. Surprisingly, this happens more often in the summer…


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

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