By Violeta Allmuça
The Albanian writer Sabije Dervishi Veseli, originaly from Struga has published in the United States five books in English language. Her works have gained popularity and attracted the attention of American public where the author has revealed those events that unfolded in the history of Albanians, the wars for freedom, love and human secrets which encompass horrific histories. War and death through these dreams have set the tone in these works where human life is explored. Veseli works and resides in the State of New Jersey.
Reflections on the Novel “Why did you fell in love with me” written by Sabije Dervishi Veseli
Human beings even in a dreaming state of mind experience special emotions while living an inspiration up until writing the words which in their castle they mark a genuine literary work, where a dream becomes as real and provides a guidance as much as life on earth.
The connection between spiritual life and words has been the main communication between Sabije Dervishi Veseli and life, especially with her birthplace where the novel “Why did you fell in love with me” has been inspired. The reader understands right at the beginning that this work deals with the vision for life, pain for the fatherland, a global man, who appears through an inner fantasy even outside the author’s safety net.
While bringing this impressive book on human events which appear only once in a lifetime, while embracing the past and future of events, or in the return through missions of dreams which take the author right there at the fatherland of ancestors, covered with blood color from the war for freedom, the author reaches the return from life to death, in the resuscitation, where a dream in itself develops the context of this novel.
I have always believed that life begins with a dream, which is born in interesting times; it arrives in a true fashion in a system of human thoughts with the rapidly evolving depth of creation, while thinking, and that a dream may be saved within itself just like its own part of reality. This has all heartedly happened with Sabije Dervishi Veseli who has been always depending on dreams and has exposed from inside everything that is sacred on the white letter of writing. “Writing is nothing more than a guided dream” once wrote Jorge Luis Borges.
The author believes in dreams and has a special love for their preservation in humans’ memory while believing in truth, up to a stage which becomes into an ally that connects with her home country, traditions, proudness, testimony, loyalty, freedom and the wars in the Balkans as part of this reality. The Author knows that the human world begins in itself; therefore she never forgets that the creation of a literary work ends at the reader. The art of creation of a history, so that people around would know it as a history born from a dream, in front of the reader it becomes a tangential reality, perhaps the fragile reasons of a dreaming time may be a state of passion even in its dreamlike forms of memories.
The author defends her ideas as the heritage theme of the truth. In her novel “Why did you fell in love with me” she juxtaposes the events in a place with power for peace, where characters even though without a life come out to see the world of the living, so the personages are naked from their infinite life while becoming a piece of life which swallows the living in front of the cemetery in the core of which life has a different form. The guiding principle of this story is that Sabije Dervishi shows to us that life never remains in forgiveness, but it has an additional reason to be covered with a human veil.
The dialogue between different lives from the dead to the living or from the living to the dead is dissolved in a spiritual dialogue, where the souls of characters speak among themselves. In the space of life and death even though the dilemma between the living and death is exposed, the dilemma of souls remains a reality where the world’s living men, trust those souls that are gone away. With this imagery the author goes towards the other world in which there is a permanent connection with the ancient dreams. The other dilemma of Veseli is: Why war exists? This belongs to a just idea of hers, just like it belongs to humanity, where the true fatherland turns into a genuine soul. While comparing the world of the dead with the world of living, Vukovar with the birthplace of the author in order to transcend a human will, an ancient reality of Albanians known in the tradition of our people, described greatly in the masterworks of Ismail Kadare’s “Who brought Doruntina” even at the writing of Veseli the idea of loyalty and “besa” remains in the center stage of Veseli’s book, until the end.
This particular tradition of Albanians who would swear for “Besa” before the black and red flag is an interesting intertwinement where the author reflects it with the connection of human spiritual love. Even though humans in time live great events in their lives, the dilemma of their breathing storytelling among Albanians in two opposite worlds it seems to be not only a life story but also a horror story. While standing amid the two opposites Sabije Dervishi Veseli shares the lively attitude even when nights and days pass by, while exploring a hero of past times who has become a war victim. While living in a horrific event in modern times and listens to the prayers of a re-born soul that belongs to the eternal living we are connected with the feelings of love for life.
The author unravels the special characters of the novel, the officer from Vukovar with an inner world and deep awareness, who listens the voice of a narrator who is asking to have a candle lit for his soul, in the nights turned into darkness.
The genuine question, “Why you fell in love with me?” has the long lasting meaning that humans cannot live without love, because in the world the most beautiful think that happens to humans is love itself. The traveling of this novel’s characters just as they were in a reality similar with the past, bring the current time, where the history according to the author is repeated and where the fighting soldiers are turned into victims of war while praying for peace to prevail and not war.
This history under the reflexes of dreams is turned into book pages as a prayer with global dimensions in the fields of war. Under this solemn reflex, the will and “besa”, loyalty given to tranquilize the soul of the hero, who sees the victory as a re-birth of every soldiers’ soul fallen in foreign lands until the eternal returns in their homeland, remains a spiritual request. The direction of freedom winds towards the spaces, where earth of soul is found in the unknown depth where is done a daily prayer for the return of the small temple of grave, in which humans must rest for life.
The emotional language which accompanies the novel “Why did you fell in love with me” remains an inspiring language, which makes us to believe that the author has had a desire to use the beautiful language of her fatherland in order to give us a masterpiece with values, beginning with her fluid language and with her soft and well organized phrases, which are exposing before us a full composition of structure in the discourse of contemporary novels. The closing of the novel with the safeguarding of loyalty “besa” assured by Albanians, shows that this writer, first an Albanian writer, then a global intellectual, reveals us in much depth the time of our national identity as a nation which remains always thirsty for freedom.
Violeta Allmuça, Albanian writer and literary critic
Translated by Peter Tase
