Translator: Peter Douskalis Reviewer: Chryssa R. Takahashi
Good evening.
Thank you very much for coming.
My job is to narrate stories of my own and of others,
and today I will try to recount
and share with you some of my personal thoughts and stories.
Starting with my name.
My name is Gazmed Kaplani.
Does anyone here know Albanian?
This is what is like to not know foreign languages, correct?
(Laughter) (Applause)
I was born in Albania in August of 1967,
when the communist regime of Emver Chotza
was at the height of its paranoia
and religion was banned by law.
Religious names were banned,
therefore my parents and other parents who gave birth to childern during this period
-because thankfully life keeps up even in a tyrannical regime-
they had to create a new name.
My parents therefore created the name Gazmed,
which is a compound Albanian word,
the 'Gaz' which means joy
and the 'med' which means spirit,
therefore I am a joyful spirit.
Kaplani, as you may have heard, is a common international last name.
One may trace it in Greece, or in Albania,
with the Turks, Serbs, Bulgarians and a bit further,
in central Europe, with the Polish,
you find it even further with the Arabs, also with the Jewish.
With a quick search of the word's etymology on Google,
between all the others, I discovered that 'Kaplani' means tiger.
By the way my sign is Leo, therefore I carry the whole jungle inside me!
For those who know and read the fine Greek literature,
Kaplani will perhaps remind them of something,
Kaplani from "Wildcat Under Glass" by Alki Zei,
where the facts that are narrated by Zei in the book,
occurred in dictatorship,
but of the fascist kind.
Amongst others there is a segment,
where the grandfather, presents a set of humanity's struggles to his granddaughters
and he says: "However, dictatorship is the worst."
And me, since I outlived it, I feel this phrase under my skin
and I think that it is the worst,
because the dictatorship loathes personal freedom and the freedom of creation
and tries to implant in people's mind,
not the courage to create,
but the courage of catastrophe and self-destruction.
To me that I have experienced a dictatorship,
it is impossible for me to think of courage of creation,
without the freedom of creation,
Because the desire of our freedom makes more creative
and many times the need to create gives us more freedom.
To have the honor to find myself in front of you all here today,
I had to pass the borders that deprived us from freedom,
back 20 years ago.
I passed them not far from here,
and whoever crossed them in that era,
found in front of them solders, who were holding Kalashnikovs,
and found themselves in front of wire-fence.
They didn't know if the solders would shoot them or not.
Therefore the crossing of the borders was an act of freedom.
Οn the other side of the borders luckily there were no soldiers with AK-47's
and wire-fencing,
however there was a very difficult freedom.
Because freedom is difficult, when it comes from a lack of freedom,
because a lack of freedom exhausts you,
you get exhausted.
Secondly, you find a very different world
from that which you have built in your isolation.
Thirdly, because when you enter like this,
you are often incomprehensible and undesirable.
We people are strange beings
and thankfully we are, because us authors wouldn't have jobs.
We are strange beings, because we search for freedom,
but when we have it, it scares us.
We want to flee
or search for an authoritarian father to relieve us
from the weight of personal freedom,
of the personal responsibility towards freedom.
Those who remember the movie:
"The Shawshank Redemption"
will remember perhaps what the condemned do
when they leave prison.
Sometimes they commit suicide, because they lose their grounding,
freedom is unbearable.
I say this because personally
-and I do this with the heroes that I write about in my books-
when I found myself in front of this unbearable and difficult freedom,
I had not only the physical temptation to commit suicide -thankfully-
but the societal temptation to commit suicide,
and by this I mean to close myself in a shell,
confront everyone as an enemy,
to play the victim.
It is very convenient to play the victim,
it is a very convenient position, a great temptation,
but you will never find the courage to create,
if you comfort yourself in the victim's position.
Because creation, in my opinion, has a necessary requirement,
to tell yourself: "I am the only one responsible
for my fate and my actions."
Now, since we started on immigration,
when I speak with readers, who ask,
"But did immigration change you?"
I think that I would be an unsuccessful person, if I did not change.
There is a book by Bertolt Brecht, "Stories of Mr. Keuner",
where Mr. Keuner meets after many years someone he knows
and he sees him and says "Mr. Keuner, how are you?
You haven't changed at all."
And Mr. Coiner, writes Mr. Brecht, went pale.
Because there isn't a bigger insult than to be told,
after years and travels,
that you haven't changed at all.
Only statues and tombstones remain the same.
To not change, means to not expose oneself
and whoever does not expose themselves, does not create,
because they don't take risks.
Now, I have the impression
that perhaps some of you
want to ask me specifically about the subject of immigration,
what I think of it.
I personally dream, after so many years of immigration
and after so much research,
I dream of a world without migrants.
I don't want you to misunderstand me,
because I like very much to travel,
I like very much for people to travel,
however to travel as equal citizens, to travel as tourists,
to travel curiously, even adventurous.
Because when you travel like the Greeks did at the beginning of the 20th century,
or as the Afghans did at the beginning of the 21st century, or as others do,
you are by definition in a weak position
and the weak people in this world,
may have others feeling sorry for them, but no one respects them.
How many things do you lose, when you live in a country as an immigrant.
You lose so many things and many times you lose the best things.
At the same time though, I do not believe a world without migrants is feasible,
because that means the world would be free of tyranny and poverty
and the world would be free from the desires of people to improve their fate.
The bottom line is, the history of humanity
is a history of migration and impurities.
So, when someone asks me: "would you take this journey again?"
I would answer: "A thousand times YES!"
Το me it was a very productive journey.
When you take this journey,
you enrich your identity,
One gets to obtain different insights
and not just one single insight,
cultural or not.
This way you understand that the largest virtue of humankind
does not have to do with genes or skin color.
It has to do with the ability to learn and to change.
It has to do with the courage to create.
You learn that the secret of creation
is so simple and so difficult.
To not be bored to live.
You learn that others, deep inside, are a mirror,
where our nightmares and virtues are projected in large scope.
When you feel good with yourself,
you feel good with others.
When you feel creative,
you build a creative relationship with others.
When you feel like a failure and unsatisfied,
you will see contact with others as a historical accident
and you will make yourself and others miserable.
Now, authorship itself is a form of migration,
in terms of travel.
Because those who write, know that you know where to start,
but you don't know if you will ever conclude, it is a risk.
Either you start to end up at some destination
and you end up being in uncharted waters.
You become a hostage of the heroes that you created.
Also, to me, one becomes an author
rather than to be born an author.
The English have a saying about authors that says:
"The writer who waits for the inspiration to come,
is not a writer, he is a waiter."
Talent is a spark,
the rest is very hard work,
creation doesn't exist without hard work.
What happens though when you write in a language
that is not your native language,
as it has happened for me,
that 24 years ago, no, 21 years ago I didn't know a single word
in Greek.
A lot happens, and for this I have written my second book,
but I would like to dwell on two instances,
it happens when it doesn't come to you,
when you lack inspiration, talent, when you are not creative,
you accuse the foreign language of being the reason you cannot write.
It becomes your scapegoat.
On the other hand though, because it is a language you weren't born with,
you obtained it, with a lot of trouble, zeal and passion,
the relationship with it is always open, unending.
It is a relationship that never ends,
it never becomes routine.
You search for it and it searches for you continuously
and it has a reward, meaning that
not only does it raise your adrenaline to write,
but you also don't become arrogant,
as many times a native risks becoming,
who believes that the language rightfully belongs to them.
You don't become arrogant and you don't become a know-it-all.
Because you know, know-it-alls are incapable of creation,
know-it-alls know only how to give directions.
So...
As I told you, 21 years ago I didn't know a word of Greek
and there are some books, which I read a lot,
of which I took the unknown words,
and among these books there is one that I especially love,
It is the book by Yiorgos Theotokas, "The Free Spirit"
and if there were ever a book that I would put on the top of the list,
of the books that gave me the courage to create
in an unknown country and in an unknown language to me,
I would put that one on the top of the list
and I would like for you to humor me for a couple more seconds
so I can read you a segment from the book.
I'm not used to reading segments, but I think I will read this one:
"We need to tell the young people, with every opportunity,
in the world of spirituality, nothing good ever happened
and cannot happen without freedom.
We need youth with strong backs, that take life seriously,
that feel happy with toilsome work,
in abrasive battles, dangerous travels,
that love challenges, because they have the strength to be wasted.
The challenging and disruptive era that we live in
goes well with these types of people,
it offers them an exhaustive walk of beautiful action."
I had 18 minutes to say all this, there are still two remaining, though,
I have finished,
So what should I say... I'll tell you an anecdote.
Do you remember there was... (Laughter)
a racist anecdote in the beginning of the 90's
that goes: "Why does an Albanian go at the theatre?"
You know why, to steal the show.
(Laughter) (Applause)
Thank you very much.
Those who create therefore, that is what they try to do,
to creatively steal the show.
Good luck going forward.
(Applause)