In March 1962, Emin Lamçe Tafani, an Albanian immigrant from Cërriku living in Belgium, wrote to Enver Hoxha about the fate of his family interned in Lushnje. In a few lines, the letter reveals an unusual story: along with the children, the regime had also interned the two wives Tafani had married, the first and second.
On March 27, 1962, from an address in Brussels, Emin Lamçe Tafani sat down to write a letter to Enver Hoxha. He had left his children and two families from his marriages in Albania. They were all in exile, while he lived in Belgium.
Tafani was originally from the village of Bejlik in Cërrik, in the Elbasan district. In the letter, he acknowledged his departure from Albania as a mistake, using the language of repentance that the communist regime demanded of those who had chosen to emigrate.
"I and many others like me made the mistake of leaving our dear homeland and taking the path of emigration, taking our own lives and our families with us," he wrote.
After these words came the story of his family.
Tafani reported that family members, including his two sons, Petrit and Xhevat, were interned in an agricultural enterprise in Lushnja. But in the same letter he also revealed an unusual detail: the two women he had married were also interned.
"Along with the boys, in this company are also my 2 wives, named 1st Fatushe Tafani and 2nd Hadije Kamoni," he wrote, after explaining that he had been married twice.
From the way he lists the names and marriages, it is clear that he was talking about his first and second wives. Both were in exile, along with their children.
The communist regime had included in the punishment both the family of Tafan's first marriage and that of her second marriage. Two women with different marital histories, but with the same fate, exiled because of their husband who had emigrated.
In communist Albania, the internment of family members of fugitives was a form of collective punishment. Children grew up far from their homes, mothers spent years in forced settlements, and their futures were determined by the political biography of a family member.
In Tafan's letter, this practice takes on specific names: Petrit, Xhevat, Fatushe, and Hadije.
From Belgium, he requested that his family members be allowed to leave Albania and join him.
"Please allow me to emigrate here in Belgium to be with you so that I can see it with my own eyes once more," Tafani wrote.
The letter closed with another plea to Enver Hoxha, asking him to forgive his previous actions and order the relevant bodies to take action on the request.
The document also shows the seal of the Central Committee administration, proof that the letter had reached the government apparatus.
There is no answer in this document about the fate of the Tafani family. But the history of internment in communist Albania shows how little hope there was that a fugitive's family would be allowed to leave the country to join him.
More than six decades have passed since that letter. It is not known how many years Fatushja, Hadija and the children remained in exile, nor what happened to them afterwards.
What remains is a yellowed page, written by an immigrant in Brussels, and the story of two women who, despite having been married to the same man at different times, ended up suffering the same punishment.
In Enver Hoxha's Albania, even a completed marriage was not enough to escape the man's biography.
