Yesterday, I went for a walk in Ali Demi. You might read this and think, of all the places in the world, why is she writing a blog about Ali Demi?
The truth is there was something I liked about this area of the city. Situated between the banks of the Lana and the University quarter, Ali Demi provides a fascinating spectrum of different kinds of Tirana inhabitants.
Nestled between the imposing post-90s tower blocks are countless crumbling, terracotta-roofed dwellings with gardens full of olives and slowly decaying lemons. The tin roofs of their outhouses play a monotonous tune as the spring showers bear down upon them. With rickety, slanted fences covered in ivy that threatens to topple them completely, each one is a tiny oasis within a sea of urbanization.
I stop at one where I can see cobalt blue walls peeking through the gaps in the fence. An olive tree dangles its harvest over the fence, depositing the occasional fat globule of purple-black flesh onto the pavement below. A single tendril of blue smoke curls from an unseen woodstove and an elderly woman crouches amongst the vegetables in the garden, hard at work planting and pulling, planting and pulling.
I can’t help but think that the inhabitants within have put up a fight against having their homes demolished and replaced with ‘luxury’ or ‘modern’ apartments. Sadly this is the case in many parts of the city where residents are removed, often by force, and are made to watch their worlds be destroyed under the tracks of a bulldozer hired by an oligarch.
Ali Demi is a maze of winding streets, some that are paved, others that are not. Some were once paved but are now pockmarked with holes, rocks, and in some cases, boulders. Communist-era apartments in varying stages of repair are the main source of color. With flaking paint in shades of green, yellow, blue, orange, and even pink, they are festooned with multicolored buntings of laundry suspended from every balcony.
Two stray dogs snooze in the road, momentarily curious about a passing cat. There are lots of coffee shops here with dark windows and sparse interiors, full of men sipping coffee and the obligatory tumbler of raki. They sit, oblivious to the pandemic with the news blaring on the screens above them, complaining and cynicising about the world around them. Skinny young waiters, always male, scuttle between the tables and commiserate with their patrons.
While there is no sign on the door, these cafes are very much ‘men only’. There are of course cafes that everyone can enjoy. You can identify these from their stylish interiors, artwork on the walls, and loud Albanian RnB emanating from the stereo. Groups of impeccably groomed Albanian youth sit crowded around tables, the women with their sleek angular faces and the men all sporting the same half-shaved haircut.
This part of town is also home to a huge number of second-hand clothes shops. Dingy shop fronts give way to cavernous warehouse-like rooms with floor-to-ceiling piles of brightly colored clothing. Fake fur coats, musty communist-era suits, 80s sequin shirts, dog-eared fake Louis Vuitton handbags, and strings of fake pearls and plastic beads hang from every available peg. All of these shops have a distinct smell- a mix of stale washing powder, faded perfume, damp, and cigarette smoke. You need at least two hours per shop to reveal what treasures lay inside and everything is priced between 100 and 500 lek.
Heading towards Student City is one street dedicated to food vendors. Multiple stalls line the street, each presenting huge containers overflowing with fresh produce. Tomatoes, mandarins, potatoes, various root vegetables, apples, pears, and more are here in abundance. You can also buy honey in unmarked glass jars, murky green olive oil in old water bottles, and fresh milk bottled similarly.
There are also a number of unofficial vendors that perch on the pavement, herbs, spinach, eggs, and leafy greens spread on a cloth on the floor. Sometimes the municipal police come and remove them, stamping on their products, trashing or confiscating them, other times they leave them be, allowing them to wave their wares in my direction, promising me how wonderful they taste.
There are fishmongers, butchers, ateliers, and fabric shops. There are also plenty of electrical goods shops with hundreds of bulbs illuminated and flashing LED signs blaring through the thickness of this rainy afternoon. There was once an electrical bazaar here- tens of tightly packed electrical shops in single-story wooden and tin buildings, with enough illumination to be seen from space.
Sadly, only a few remain, clinging desperately onto the pavements or the corners of other properties as construction continues around them. The Mayor of Tirana bulldozed the entire market to turn it into what appears to be just a wide expanse of concrete.
The people of Ali Demi were curious about me. A 6ft 2 woman wandering through the neighborhood taking photos of dead palm trees and crumbling walls was bound to arouse suspicion. Three people stopped me at varying stages of my journey to enquire where I was from and what I was doing. Two of the three were overjoyed to hear I was English and loved their country. There was much nodding and smiling and a lot of “marshallahs” when I said I had a half-Albanian daughter. Satisfied and content that I was here with good intentions and a great lover of the country, they went about their business. The third wasn’t quite so appeased and he shuffled off muttering under his breath.
Ali Demi is one of Tirana’s oldest neighborhoods, but not much of it remains. Asides from the doomed villas, and layout of some of the backstreets, you wouldn’t know that this was once one of the main hearts of the city. The area gets its name from an incredibly handsome Albanian WWII hero who was killed while fighting the Germans in Vlora in 1943. Unfortunately, he was also a communist but didn’t live long enough to see the brutal destruction of his country and its people under the Enver Hoxha regime.
Laden with bags of fruit and vegetables, some second-hand fabric I will turn into curtains, and fresh fish for dinner, I walked home feeling strangely enamoured with this part of town. From its trees that bend under the weight of freshly blossoming blooms to the political slogans scrawled on backstreet walls, competing with each other for the attention of passers-by, it’s perhaps the closest you will get to ‘real Albania’ in the heart of this ever-changing city.
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