Family
Through all this there has been the quiet story of my family. My wife, Rudina, who was born into a Military family, who knows how to run a house with a husband who disappears for days and comes back with mud on his boots and sleep in his eyes.
Our son, Lindi, was born in 1994. Our daughter, Ela, came later and brought a new light into the same small room. My mother, Fatim, and my father, Izet, have lived long enough to see a part of the world he dreamed about when he tuned the radio away from the national station. He is old now and he refuses to watch our television; he turns to the BBC or to German channels and I smile because a young boy once watched his father adjust an antenna and learned what defiance looks like when it is quiet.
My cousin, Vera, and my wider family carry their own scars from the years when a bad file could move your house and freeze your future. My cousin Tony lives in Dallas now, he runs a business and sends photos of pizza and grandchildren, and when he visits, he brings laughter and a memory of the day he took off one military uniform and put on another. There are uncles whose advice saved me, Mustafa, my father’s brother, who carried our family stories, and Hysen, my mother’s brother, who used his rank to protect me when the road under my feet was thin.
There is another part of family that is not blood. John Anderson, a British major with a firm voice and a warm hand, who gave me a heater for my children and a discipline for my work and a path for my life. Todd Anders, who taught me to climb with a heavy pack and to laugh at the end of a hard day. Uncle Murf McCloy, who stood in my living room and asked where the faces of my people were and made me change my walls. Lee Moroney, who asked me to help complete the mission when I thought I was done. These are the people who shaped me, while we all worked for change in Albania.
I am grateful for the men who stood with me and for the woman who stood beside me. To all of you, thank you for standing with me through thick and thin.
