The issue of national identity is taken seriously by Balkan people – including the least serious among them.
Smoke on the Water
| 09 May 2008 | By Besar Likmeta in TiranaA man walks into a bar, and asks for a pack of cigarettes. The waiter duly returns with a Marlboro Lights, with the insignia: “Smoking Causes Cancer.” The customer suitably unsatisfied asks to change the pack of Marlboro’s with another one. The waiter returns again with another pack of Marlboro Lights, this time stamped with the message: “Smoking Causes Impotence.” The customer alarmed of what he reads, calls the waiter grudgingly for a third time and orders him to return his cancer smokes back.
It maybe that this warned out joke has few people laughing out loud any more, maybe they never did, however it does provide little bits of insight on a smoker and his pack of, mouth-washing, stench-spilling, god-blessed cigarettes.
What’s pleasure and pain used to ask my Ancient Philosophy professor in college?
Well a 13-hour flight to Singapore, baggage check, passport-stamped until in the distance a room filled with people sporting bad skin is spotted. You rush and light up before you get lost once-again in a white cloud of filtered nicotine.
As a chain-smoking Albania reporter who plans to quit before 30, I took the news of the application of smoking ban on public places in Albania, more than a year ago, a bit lightly. I thought to my self that this is just one of those EU laws that parliament adopts but with vigor never implements.
Another “sterile hybrid,” of a communitarian law, from a community of nations toward which Albania is marching with a speed of a turtle on vacation. My left and right brain started a heated debate. Was I gone be dead before we join the European family, with 2.5 children and a hybrid car, or will the EU be defunct by then.
One thing it’s sure, if I don’t meet my 30 celibacy date with smokes, I will never be able to find out. However, due diligence to the law, after the stroke of midnight on April 30th 2007, a group weirdly dressed Albanian burochrats popped up at my favorite bar, and after a beer or two, slapped the owner with a €500 fine.
I was appalled and started getting really nervous. If such thing is happening, Europe must be around the corner- I thought. My sense of convulsion and apocalyptic fear got worse the next morning. “Four-Elements”, the neighborhood café, was plastered with no smoking signs.
The idea that I was about to become a European citizen was hard to fathom. Imagine-no more lines at the break of dawn at embassies that after my birth certificate, deeds, paycheck, bank statement, family history back to homo-erectus and my girlfriend’s cell number glorify my existence with a three day-visa.
Where else in the world could you get such royal treatment for €35 in fees?
Scary stuff right! Well, Thank God that I live under the swampy rule of a government that yes, breaks its own laws all the time, but goodhearted as it is- leaves enough space for the ordinary man to break one or two also.
After a week of virginal white at “Four-Elements,” the no-smoking sign turned again into a nicotine-spammed grayish.
With Deep Purple rocking in the background and a cup of java for company, I could not stop but wonder this morning that my poor citizen-like, unlawful lighten cigarette was just a “smoke on the water”- or otherwise “the fire in the sky. ”
