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When I was growing up in the 1980s in communist Albania, there was very little to do in warm summer evenings except for the xhiro. The xhiro (pronounced jee-ro and derived from the Latin girare or the ancient Greek γῦρος, literally going round in circles) was what other Europeans might more dispassionately call a passeggiata, or a promenade, or a Spazierengang. But there was more to the xhiro than any of these words can capture: a ritual of hope and resilience, as if you did not care that there was nothing else to do apart from the xhiro, as if among the myriad of non-existent alternative activities, the xhiro was the best in any case.
What did the xhiro involve? In the case of my hometown, Durrës, on the Adriatic coast, people would wear their best clothes and, as soon as the sun set, stroll through the city centre until they reached the waterfront. But explaining where the xhiro culminated is somewhat misleading. One risks making it sound as if it had a purpose: to go somewhere, or to meet someone, or to get something done. The truth is: there was none. The xhiro was an end in itself. It had its own rules, its own symbolism, even its own rhythms. Not too fast (since that would have implied one was trying to arrive somewhere) nor too slow (since that would have provoked a human congestion and caused everyone to stop).
In many ways, the xhiro was like the European enlargement process. It went on forever, it went on in circles, and the question of where exactly it was going seemed like a singularly inappropriate one to ask. In its circularity, in its predictability, in its formulaic monotony, it was both hopeless and hopeful, joyfully defiant and miserably resigned.
But there are also other elements that make me think about Europe in connection to these youthful strolls. In Durrës, going out for the xhiro was like taking an imaginary tour through European history. One would typically walk past a small, run-down, archaeological site, where broken columns evoked the ancient days in which the city was called Epidamnos, a name the Romans later changed perhaps because there was something of the damnos – or damnation in it.
The exiled oligarchs of Epidamnos feature prominently in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, one of the foundational texts of European civilisation, and one of the first lessons about power and realism in the international realm. They also feature in Aristotle’s Politics as an example of the degeneration of oligarchic rule: the rich turning against the poor, the poor wrestling control from the rich, the birth of demagogues. Power, wealth, realpolitik: if that all sounds familiar, it’s because the cultural heritage of Europe is made of universal values but also of universal violations.
Just a little beyond the ruins, there was a Roman amphitheatre (or half an amphitheatre, since the rest is still buried underground, in hope that one day it might be resurrected by EU funds). It is the largest amphitheatre in the Balkans, built by emperor Traianus in the second century AD. Although, to be more specific, Traianus only commissioned the works; the stones were laid by nameless slaves. It is not just that violations and values, coexist, it is that sometimes one is a pre-requisite for the other.
Further into the xhiro, just behind the amphitheatre there were the city’s Byzantine walls, erected after an earthquake by the eastern emperor Anastasius Dicorus, himself born and raised in the city. And on the other side of the wall, there was the Venetian tower, from the time in which Durrës was known as the Duchy of Durazzo, a colony of the Republic of Venice recovered from the Normans, later contested between the Anjous, the Serbs and the Hungarians, before the conflict was decisively resolved with the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Of which, oddly there are only a few traces: an old mosque, converted to a youth centre during the communists’ forcible embrace of atheism, some houses, a couple of shops.
When the Cold War ended, everything changed. The xhiro became longer. It took people beyond the archaeological ruins, beyond the city walls, beyond the water, into a different part of Europe, into the European Union. European soldiers, once mobilised to conquer foreign lands, were now policing its outer borders. European institutions became preoccupied by the question of whether these new, aspiring, Europeans were the same as the old successful ones. Did they deserve to come? Did they have valid claims to travel? On what grounds could they settle? Were their values compatible with European ones?*...
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