Pending their visa for the United States, 916 Afghans fleeing the Taliban regime have been provisionally welcomed in Albania. In a hotel by the Adriatic Sea, they wait for their ticket to a new life. Friday went there.
De Lezhë (Albania) – At the time, they say, if they had had a map of the world in hand, they would have been hard pressed to locate Albania. They probably would have hesitated for a long time before finding her, sliding their finger across the plasticized surface of mainland Europe. But that was before.
In June, these 916 Afghan nationals arrived in this Balkan country, and since then their gaze has constantly fallen on the double-headed eagle flag, symbol of Albania, which flies here at every corner of the street. A country which is for them the intermediate stage of a journey which should lead them to the United States [ils devraient séjourner en Albanie douze à quinze mois, le temps de l’examen de leur demande de visa américain].
Because when President Joe Biden asked NATO members to temporarily absorb the flow of evacuees in transit to the United States, the government chaired by Edi Rama, leader of the Socialist Party of Albania, did not hesitated to open the doors of his country. He was then planning to take in up to 4,000 refugees.
Thus, today, the exiles – who are waiting for a visa to emigrate across the Atlantic – are accommodated in the rooms of the Rafaelo Resort, a luxury hotel complex in the heart of Shëngjin, a small seaside town in the district of Lezhë, in the north. from Albania. In summer, it is a pearl of concrete and sand, the Mecca of tourism that is barely developing in this country. But in the autumn gray, it is a deserted village swept by the icy wind which descends from the mountains towards the Drin river.
On the hotel’s esplanade stands a scale model of the Statue of Liberty, the plaster incarnation of the dream that haunts the daily lives of 916 Afghans. A police cordon guards the entrance to the complex. Its avenues, lined with sumptuous five-star establishments, are teeming with life.
“Now I have to start from scratch”
“I managed to escape thanks to several American NGOs that I contacted by email. I remember writing: ‘Our life is in danger, please save us.’ They came to our aid in Kabul, when the situation was degenerating at the airport. And they helped us here ”, says Laleh (some names have been changed), who arrived in Albania with her family.
She is a journalist and she had to go through a real obstacle course to find a job. “Now I
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Maurizio FrancoFilippo Poltronieri and Youssef Hassan Holgado
Source
The Friday supplement of The Republic.As its name suggests, this center-left daily supplement The Republic appears on Friday. The most famous pens of the journal keep weekly chronicles there, which
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