Smoke and Tea

Old Town Skopje


Erdwan led Mike and me away from the mosque and into a small Albanian tea shop, where tobacco smoke hung like fog from the ceiling and men in leather jackets pretended to not notice us. We pulled up chairs to a wooden table while he ordered cappuccinos. His brother brought them over.

Our new friend looked both old and young at the same time. He is in his 30s and has a wife and baby. He rubbed his stubble of a beard, inhaled from his cigarette and blew out a blue line of smoke. He was a likable honest man with a challenging life. He talked a while.

"Most people here are unemployed," he said. One of his relatives teaches high school for $400 per month. "The government spends millions on putting up statues but is content for us Albanians to be second class citizens who can't get good employment."

Judging from what I'd seen so far, this was true.

"I and my family have spent our lives here. We want a better life. This is like the Gaza Strip," he said while Mike and I sipped our coffee.

Erdwan had worked as a translator for NATO 10 years ago and hoped for the chance to move to the West. He was a window into the reality of a repressed minority lacking the political power or resources to better its life - motivated but powerless in a region where the strong prey on the weak and fight wars to become stronger.

"Inshallah" (if God wills), "we'll move to Canada or the US."

Erdwan prays five times a day at the mosque around the quarter. When we visited him again later in the week, he anointed our wrists with a fragrant ointment "because of the angels" he said with a twinkle in his eye as he took us back to observe afternoon prayers.