“I was sent to Spaç. I meet my friends, Nasho, Qani. Qani takes me, he says: come have a coffee. I nearly fainted. They were allowed to have coffee. Petrit, Muharrem’s brother, brought his dinner. We stayed for around ten days and then they sent me to the mine. When I got there, we were in what they called an advancement, when I entered the mine and to the furnace, because you would go for kilometers, it was dripping there, it smelled of mold.
“Oh mother, I said, now will I get out alive? I saw there…, oh Great God!” I almost cut my hand. Thank God for that miner, when I turned the wagon, I would have cut it. In the end, I still didn’t escape. Once I had filled the wagon, which is on wheels, that flatbed. He had put the pipe askew, as I stood, the wagon turned on me, it broke my hand. Luck had it that it didn’t hit me in the chest. It weighed a ton itself, a ton of material, two tons, it hit me there. I go outside, a friend of mine wraps it with cardboard, one Fadil from Shijak.
They keep me for a month. They say: “You broke your own hand!” I was working at 125 percent of the quota, not because I wanted to, but to make a kilo of sugar, becase I had none, my wife was alone, my mother was old, no pension, nothing… Sometimes I would get 1500 leks. And they told me: “You broke it yourself! You’ve done this on purpose!” I even wrote a letter to the camp commander. He was old and seemed to reason a little. I tell him: “Mr. Commander, this is the issue”. “Yes, go”, he told me.”