Albanie XXXIV : “retour au pays du « Seigneur des anneaux “

Avant d’écrire mes petites histoires sur l’Albanie, je fais toujours une recherche sur internet afin de vérifier si je ne fais pas trop d’erreurs et je suis toujours surpris de l’absence totale d’information sur ce pays, comme si tout ce que je raconte n’avait jamais existé. Les lieux, les gens, les sites industriels, tout semble effacé. Je me pose chaque fois la question, est-ce que cette histoire n’est pas simplement le fruit de mon imagination ?

Je vais donc vous raconter une nouvelle « histoire imaginaire » qui se passe au cœur de ce « pays oublié », comme le nommait le magazine GEO il y a trente ans

“Il était une fois”… un petit pays au cœur des Balkans dirigé par un méchant dictateur paranoïaque, Enver Hoxha alias « Sauron ».  « Le seigneur des anneaux » voulait changer le pays, en faire une contrée imprenable couverte de bunkers. Un pays  où l’on forgerait le cuivre et l’acier. Pour cela il devait d’abord  créer des surhommes parfaits, sociables, prêts à se sacrifier pour leur seigneur, « des hommes nouveaux », sans Dieu, à part lui. 

Pour assouvir son ambition, le dictateur avait décidé d’ouvrir une mine de cuivre au cœur de la jolie plaine  de Lac où il ferait travailler les anciens paysans qu’il avait dépossédé de leur terre pour les transformer en prolétaires, pour en faire la nouvelle élite de la nation, « ses hommes nouveaux ».

Je n’ai pas été autorisé a entrer dans l’usine de “Sauron” pour à voir de mes yeux la marche triomphante de l’industrie lourde et émancipatrice. Le rêve s’est effondré à la mort du dictateur en 1985.  

Before writing my little stories about Albania, I always do some research on the internet to check if I am making any mistakes. I am always surprised by the total absence of information about this country, as if everything I recount never existed. The places, the people, the industrial sites, everything seems erased. Every time, I wonder: is this story merely a product of my imagination?

So, I will tell you another “imaginary story” set in the heart of this “forgotten country,” as GEO magazine called it thirty years ago.

Once upon a time, there was a small country in the heart of the Balkans, ruled by a paranoid and ruthless dictator, Enver Hoxha, known as “Sauron.” The “Lord of the Rings” dreamed of transforming this country into an impregnable fortress bristling with bunkers, a land where copper and steel would become the pillars of a new society. To achieve this vision, he first had to forge perfect supermen, sociable and devoted, ready to sacrifice themselves for their lord: “new men” without God, except for him.

To satisfy his boundless ambition, the dictator decided to open a copper mine in the beautiful plain of Lac. There, he put to work the former peasants he had dispossessed of their lands, transforming them into proletarians, the new elite of the nation, “his new men.”

I was not allowed to enter “Sauron’s” factory to see with my own eyes the triumphant march of this heavy, emancipatory industry. The megalomaniac dream collapsed with the dictator’s death in 1985. The dreams of grandeur dissipated, leaving behind the ruins of an immense ambition and the memory of a people shaped by decades of tyranny.

In 1990, long ago, in the previous millennium, I ventured into the kingdom of Lac. The magic had vanished from these lands. Lost souls wandered, tattered and aimless, amidst the collapsed buildings in a world that seemed to have suffered a cataclysm, mirroring the rest of the country. It was the end of an era.

In 2004, I returned to Lac. The curse seemed to have lifted. Brand-new buildings, painted in vibrant colors, had sprouted over the ruins, nourished by the humus of the old world. But scratching the surface revealed that the former world was still very much present. Beneath the fresh layers of paint, misery still oozed, and pollution threatened to overwhelm this surreal universe, a stark reminder that the shadow of the past was never far away.

In 2018, I passed through Lac again, to see. The ruins of the factory had melded into nature, becoming an integral part of it. Grimacing shadows emerged amidst a lunar landscape. And always that lingering taste of the end of the world.

But the ruins inspire me. If I were a filmmaker, I would have loved to shoot a science-fiction film there. But I am just a photographer. So, to create an imaginary universe, I doodle on my overly realistic photos to depict another world, cheerful and colorful, far from the sad reality.