Translation Petrit Latifi

Summary

The text is a heartfelt letter written in 1989 by Martin Çuni from a Serbian prison to his wife, Mrikë, on her birthday. He reflects on love, distance, memory, and the meaning of life, expressing how separation deepens his affection and longing. Martin values simplicity, kindness, and harmony, while criticizing jealousy, hatred, and moral decay in society. He finds comfort in memories, dreams, and images of nature, imagining future moments together. Despite imprisonment and suffering, the letter carries hope, emotional warmth, and spiritual strength, showing how love and inner faith help him endure hardship and maintain his humanity.

Yesterday was my wife, Mrikë’s birthday. Here is the letter I had written to her in 1989 from the prison in Nish:

Dear Mrikë, there is something that a person remembers with more desire and more longing. They say the farther from the eyes, the farther from the heart. How strange. If it were so, then with me, it’s something special, something extraordinary. I think it’s not exactly as they say. If you truly have someone in your heart, you never forget them; on the contrary, if you’re far away, then you love them even more, and the longing for them torments you and never lets you be at peace.

Every sign that reminds you of that person pushes you even more to think about them, to suffer for them. Mrikë, we haven’t had a life of anything special, but we have had a bit of simplicity (I really value simplicity), and it has been good for us, in our poor but beautiful nest. A kind heart makes life more beautiful. A kind heart makes life happier, more loving, and forgets everything else.

Many things around you, even though they are not good, somehow, from the blurred eyes, you don’t see them or overcome them. The blurred eyes are the love for those you love, for those who lessen your suffering in life, for those who look at you with a good eye and with kindness, who don’t see bad, fear, and hatred in you, which should be foreign to a person who is truly human. And a true human is one who does not hate from jealousy or greed.

Mrikë, I have seen many in life, or at least that’s how it seems to me. I have encountered many characters, especially recently the most varied, some of whom have fallen into the hell of darkness and evil, never to come out again. Many things I wouldn’t have imagined if I hadn’t heard and encountered them myself. What becomes of a person born without badness and without backward direction, but from them comes the evil which is hard to imagine.

All this due to the lack of proper and true education, due to the neglect of the person, wherever the winds take them, just like a leaf blown by the wind, sometimes this way and sometimes that. It seems to me that I have written about these things once before, but I’ll leave it here…
In this darkness, sometimes I feel the absence of you more. I feel the most lack when I think that in some cases I should have at least shaken your hands and said a word of greeting from the heart full of noise for you.

Look, your birthdays are not far away, and I would have loved to be by your side, even if just for a few moments. The day will come when we will be together. I say yes, but it’s beautiful far away. How can I say it’s far, when what you have in your heart is far even if only a few minutes separate you, let alone the years that are centuries that can never return to life.

Dear Mrikë, what can I say to you for your birthday from afar? There are no words that could express all my wishes and desires for you that I have in life, along with my little ones. I have kept you deep in my heart as I did before, when we were alive, when we were both alive in our world as we built it simply but with the most valuable treasure of life, harmony. Treasures, precious stones, and wealth don’t mean anything, but if you don’t have life as you want it, the harmony in life with the loved ones near you with whom you should live, life by force is not life.

Life cannot endure that, and then we cannot call it life but hell. I know that folk saying about how brothers lose their peace and joy when they give away their coins? They stop the song and the joy ends. As soon as they realize the cause, they return the coins and continue their happy life in harmony.

Yes, is there an ideal life? No, there isn’t, because there’s jealousy. It’s the biggest enemy of harmony between people, everywhere, even in families, alongside interest.

How many words I have to say, Mrikë, so many…? But if I say them, they will lose their value… The best treasure is safe when others don’t know it. If they knew, they would misuse it for their own evil interests against the good. There is a spiritual treasure that must be protected more than other treasures because it is only for those, not for others. It is of little value to others, while it is great for the ones who possess it.

Therefore, we will keep our memories buried inside us as our sufferings, as our longing. Let them boil inside, as they once did, until the time comes for us to recall them beneath the veil of our closeness. Every kind-hearted person has such an untouchable treasure, without jealousy. Everyone has their own bright star in the sky of realized or unrealized desires in life.

A friend once told me about his star, how it had appeared only before death, in the flower of youth. He had never thought about it before, but it had appeared so close to him, to depart into two worlds, one a bitter reality, the other abstract, without life, an apparent desert, but in truth, a transformation of matter, a return to nature, like an unfinished dream.
Mrikë, was our short life an experienced dream? I, for myself, don’t call it life, but a hell, or a human catharsis that a person has managed to create against themselves like the son of Cain, because even he has his descendants. As long as the seed he has sown is able, jealousy and human evil will find good ground. It is hard to sow the seed of human goodness.

Nevertheless, our life was a beautiful dream, although short to mourn. Since mourning doesn’t work, we can only remember it. You probably remember it too, since nothing else remains, but to rock the memories like the wind rocks the leaves in autumn. I always carry myself this way, and I can’t tell you what I should because it would lose its value for us, and only for us.

Mrikë, I know that a letter doesn’t fall into your hands twice, but there’s nothing to do. As I have told you, it feels like I’m talking to you. Even with thoughts, I’ve escaped the reality that surrounds me, though only for a short time. A special day for you, I remember, I gave you flowers. I love them very much because they are truly something beautiful that nature creates.

How isn’t there a contest for the beautiful things in life, just like flowers compete for beauty? Each one with its own characteristic beauty, also completed with an intoxicating fragrance. I love chrysanthemums a lot. It’s interesting how they have thorns to protect their beauty, if someone wants to pick them. People often work against themselves, and sometimes they act against the flowers.

But dead beauty dominates our cities, and concrete blocks have become ornaments that distort. So little space is left for flowers, so little space is left for the life of our new buds, the flowers of life.

Even now, for your birthday, I would give you a bouquet of fresh flowers, not from any garden surrounding, but from some meadow on the hillside, where nothing limits the sun’s rays, nothing prevents the butterflies from flying freely, and the free bees that collect the nectar.
I would pick the flowers one by one, slowly so as not to hurt them, although it is a crime to pluck them, but since they are for you (and I must give you something), I would do it willingly.

We would go outside the city that day and wander in nature, in the mountain where I used to go as a child. We would go to the spring of the ash tree with pure water, as fresh as the dewdrops, and as cold as the snow water in the valleys. Who knows, dreams sometimes come true, this one could easily become a reality in the life we still owe a little.
This is my wish, and maybe you have other wishes, and I am making plans without the “hunchback,” as they say.