by Feri Arifi. Translation Petrit Latifi

Emli Hamdi Ibrahim was born in the village of Tanushë in 1917 in a moderately wealthy family of the time. He grew up and was educated with a patriotic village. He was always in the rooms of uneducated men who talked about the wars with both Turkish forces and Slavic. As soon as World War II started and the clashes between the partisans and the forces of the National Front began, he became active as a fighter for the unification of Albanian lands.

Several times with friends he went to get ammunition from the well-known commander, Sulë Hasip Hotla. He carried out this task together with Hesat Bektesh, Mejdi Veli Xhaferi and Selim Sinan Arifin. He carried out this task during the period 1944 until the end of the war, when he was seriously wounded in Bajashnica, with Idfriz D. Arifin, there at Kroi Bajashnica, where this battle took place.

Emliu was seriously wounded on October 24, 1944 on the front line together with Idriz after his comrades saw their graves and said that Emliu would not survive this wound. But the opposite happened, Idriz died and he survived. So wounded, his comrades in the war, such as Rexhep Dauti, and others, take Emliu and send him to the village, because at that time the hospitals for Albanians were closed and it was even worse if he went wounded.

If it happened that the wounded Albanian was sent to such hospitals, the chances were that he would never return from the hospital alive. Rexhep Dauti, heals him with folk remedies and saves him from death. After a six-month recovery, he is again involved in the “people’s police” of the village of Tanushë. He and his friends stop the infamous partisan-Chetnik brigade that had come out to massacre the village of Tanushë. This stop was made in the Lakine e Eperm.

In a conversation with the Albanian deputy commander, Avdulla Shaqiri, and by order of Rexhep Dauti, the partisan-Chetnik commander is told that there is no way to enter Tanushë because the people’s assemblies have been formed in the village and that there is no need for other help. Thus, this brigade is forced to withdraw from Tanushë, escorted to Letnica, through Kopilaçë, by Emli Hamdi Ibrahimi, Mejdi Veli Xhaferi and Selim Sinan Arifi, taking on the “advice” that these people who are in the escort should not find anything

It is understood that the brigade had returned without completing its mission, which Emliu, who had followed them, tells us that when they talked among themselves about whether the work with Tanushë was completed, the Commander told him no, no, that they had set off: namely, for revenge against the people of Tanushë for the war they had waged against the partisan units.

Emliu was also involved in guarding the 1st-3rd congress of the NDSH, which was held in Tanushë on 15-16 August 1945. Emliu died in 2006 in his native village, in Tanushë. But even today, his boys buy everything they buy in Kosovo, like those doors, windows, trees for decoration, and many other things, even though they were compromised by the government.