Supposing that we do decide to excavate the wreck, what happens to the objects after we map them and raise them from the seabed? This is what I spent yesterday morning discussing with Professor Dr. Frederik Stamati — the director of Albania’s conservation laboratory in Tirana. I had offered to meet him in Tirana but much to my relief he volunteered to come down to Sarande. He took the night bus; it arrives sometime in the wee hours of the morning. I figured that he would nap in his hotel room upon arrival and we would meet sometime in the afternoon but no, this gray-haired man met me at a seaside café at 8:30 AM, dapper in pressed linen. He, I, Dr. Anastasi, and Auron Tare spent several hours discussing the challenges and possibilities raised by the commencement of underwater archaeology in Albania, starting — if all goes well — with the excavation of our wreck next summer. I cannot here recount the many twists and turns of the conversation but I am relieved to report that in the end we came to a mutual understanding. In short, the objects we raise will not have to make the journey to Tirana; rather, we are responsible for establishing a (temporary) conservation lab in the vicinity of Sarande and training (an) Albanian(s) (eventually) to oversee it. It is a big but necessary addition to our protocol. I feel both relieved and burdened.
The winds kicked up again in the afternoon — a sign that fall is approaching — and we could not go out to sea. Instead, the WID team made an excursion to Gjirokastro, an hour’s drive over one mountain range into a broad inland river valley.
Gjirokastro sits in a controlling position mid-valley; to the north, a mountain pass marks the ancient trail from the Adriatic to Macedonia. The town happens to be the birthplace of Enver Hoxha, the Communist leader of Albania from WWII until 1985; it also happens to be the family home of my host, Auron Tare, and completely by chance Auron’s wife's sister married a man living in America whose family comes from the house next to Auron’s. I tell you all this because the town is famous for its tight clans and it is startling to see those connections continue through generations and across continents. Coincidence? (Ismael Kadare, the Albanian novelist best known in the west, winner of the first International Booker Prize, wrote a novel about Gjirokastro, titled "Chronicles in Stone").Gjirokastro’s known history starts in the 13th century AD and it has been lived in continuously since then. I cannot believe it will not become a major tourist destination and I am happy to explore it before the boom of large busloads of jabbering tourists crowds its narrow, still quiet streets.
We saw perhaps a dozen other foreigners during our seven-hour visit. We arrived late afternoon and climbed directly up to the castle that dominates the heights; a friendly entrance guard told us, in excellent English, the legend of a medieval princess who jumped to death with her baby rather than surrender to an enemy. In modern history, the castle functioned as a dungeon. And sometime soon after WW II an American plane was shot down/ran out of fuel (depends on the storyteller) and was put on show here in demonstration of the might of Hoxha’s power. It still sits on a parapet, keeping lonely watch with an array of dismembered cannons. No picture I took conveys the panorama: steep mountains frame the broad, fertile valley; the manors of Gjirokastro clustered on the hilltops that bubble up around the castle, connected into a town by winding stone-paved streets; the center of town a huddled mass of gray slate roofs. The sun set as we walked and the town that had baked into silence in the strong midday light came alive in the mild gold of evening. Children played foreshortened games of soccer in the small spaces left by odd turns of the steep streets, old people and families brought chairs to their front doors and watched the occasional traffic; we were a special sight.
Curious to me that the town lacked the trails of bouganvillea (I have no idea how to spell that word!) and the jasmine perfume I would find in such towns elsewhere in the Mediterranean. But no lack of figs — (how to write the words to convey the sweet delight of biting into a fig just plucked from the tree, squelching its syrupy innards, still warm from the noon sun?) — and great clusters of grapes hanging deep. We plucked and munched our hors d’oeuvres as we walked towards the restaurant.
I shall not torture you with a description of our meal, in a family restaurant set in a courtyard beneath tall trees, the cooling night air now and then streaked with sparks from the fire, the juicy lamb, the fresh trout, farm cheese, home-made wine and raki, greens and fruits just from the fields and trees, cold spring water.
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