albania

i am sitting in a cafe after posting two books off, reading helene cixous’s revoir, i open the book, read a few pages and then write a few sentences about reading (which for some reason has begun to concern me). there are two old men, in their 70s and perhaps 80s, who can tell. i listen to them between sentences. after a banal discussion about long dead sportsman… they end up speaking of Albania and Albanians… Albanian gangsters taking over Soho, travels to Albania and Yugoslavia in the 60s by their parents, trips by them driving around parts of Albania in a land rover in the early part of this century. “I don’t know the names of the places we went to, he said to some Albanians he met in Watford…” Listening to them Iiunderstood that their bodies travelled to Russia, Albania and Yugoslavia but their minds never left england.