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Caleb's Column
WHERE WOULD we be today without the Republikka Popullore e Shqiperise? Albania, to you. A veritable Balkan Rock of Gibraltar, an anchor of stability in a roller-coaster world.
It was 45 years ago this month that the Albanian Communists seized power through political chicanery. For 41 of these years one man, Enver Hoxha, held his two million countrymen in an iron grip. The regime has defied both the great Western powers and its own nominal allies in the Communist camp. The very epitome of immutability.
Shabtai Zvi died in Albania, then an outpost of the Turkish empire, whither the Constantinople authorities had exiled him. Although nominally a convert to Islam, his death wish was that his body not lie in a Moslem cemetery. He was buried in a remote part of the coast.
It was on the coast of Albania, known in ancient times as Illyria, that Shakespeare set the opening scene of his Twelfth Night. Perhaps some student of literature somewhere, desperately seeking a topic for a doctoral thesis, might hunt for parallels between the sad...