Artan Lame passed away today in Munich, Germany, at the age of 58, after a heart operation.
Even 8 years ago, he underwent a difficult heart surgery. After it, he talked about facing death and how his life changed.
"After the health test, everyone thought I would never come back, but I did. One of the consequences of the illness was that it made me lose my fear of death. I really have lost it, even though anything can happen. I thought that after what I went through I would become calmer, but I have become more impulsive. I value every moment I spend and lose more. Two or three media outlets had already written about my death, for them it would be a normal thing, pretending not to know... but it is now a past story," Lame said in an interview.
While in a long note two years ago, he shared his experience.
Lame's Note:
RETURN, VI
Today marks 6 years since I set out to go where I can no longer go, and the Almighty who has us all in his hands brought me back on track, and I don't know why or what he had in mind to bring me back. And like every year on this day, let me try to understand and tell you something.
Listen! He is one of those who in today's language we usually call oligarchs. He is around sixty. Before the overthrow of the '90s, he did other work. Then he changed his profession, started dealing with trade, then with construction, where he made his fortune, year after year and government after government.
My work has connected me with him since the years of the Municipality of Tirana, then at the Ministry of Construction and now at the Cadastre. Always calm, persistent in his own troubles, he never engages in conversations outside of bricks, properties and the price of construction.
Today he has what he doesn't have, so much so that he doesn't even know how much he has. He doesn't have just one thing, his health. He just got over heart disease, a problem for all Albanians, he also got over stomach problems, this problem for most Albanians, he probably also suffers from colitis and, from the way he moves, maybe even arthritis. To top it all off, he had a hard time with Covid and it left its consequences on his lungs.
He calls me and asks to meet me. I tell him to come whenever he wants and I make an appointment at the office. That afternoon he arrives in his huge black car that takes him almost a minute to enter the narrow courtyard of the Cadastre. He gets out and it takes him a few more minutes to make the few meters from the gate to my office. He enters, his face pale and yellow. He hasn't shaved in days. Even though he's been through Covid, he's scared. He's wearing a mask and won't shake my hand. He sits down with difficulty on the uncomfortable couch in the office and breathes hard. He's wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt over them, because the illness, or rather the illnesses, don't let him take care of Luk.
After the how are you, illnesses, house, office, which continue for about 10 minutes (not that we say a lot of things but because he barely speaks), he moves on to the trouble. He is in a property conflict with someone else. They cannot agree on a problem that started 14 years ago. They used to be partners in construction, but now they are broken and have become a mess. They have had trials, hearings as long as they can remember, a court of fact, then an appeal, then a high court, then a lawsuit, a countersuit, a seizure, an insurance claim, blockages, lawyers, notaries, witnesses, then another lawsuit and again and again. They have not been able to agree on the percentages of dividing a piece of land where a building will later have to be built.
He talks and talks, telling me about the meetings he's had with mortgage employees over the years, about foreclosures, unforeclosures, property cards, oh my god, how long.
As I listen to him slowly, taking in a gasp every 3-4 words, I mutter to myself. He has millions – no, billions – of endless properties, there are mansions under construction, others built but unsold, and others built but sold or rented out, there are plots of land where he is planning to build other mansions, there are villas on the coast in Lalëz, in Golem and in Dhërmi, there are production plants and luxury cars, there are hundreds of workers and dozens of bank accounts, he has his own television and radio, he has percentages in banks and insurance companies. But what the hell does he want those 8% of that piece of land between the two mansions in Durrës, where he wants to build the next mansion that he won't even get to see, but will simply make the lives of some other residents worse!!!
He can see a movie, go to a concert, have a picnic, go to the forest, go for a walk on the coast, see a movie, engage in a hobby, smoke a cigarette quietly on the veranda of the villa in Farka, do everything beautiful in this world, but no. He drags himself from office to office to get 12% as he claims, not 8% as the other person gives him. In the end, he drags himself out of the office, with his driver holding him by the arm. I promise to follow up on the problem and in fact we verify it with our specialists, but there is no solution without a trial.
Don't be fooled by his name. There are many like him. Oligarchs who have it all and can't get enough of it.
They have one more thing in common. They don't know they're going to die. Yes, yes, realizing that you're going to die one day is not easy, even though it seems like we all know it. This is one of the great beliefs of monotheistic religions and one that they have done their utmost to make us aware of.
Religions have generally stood on the side of spiritual values, against money. Christianity began its existence by expelling merchants from the Temple; while both great faiths, both Christianity and Islam, unconditionally condemn usury. The rich man was constantly reminded that he would die one day; that no matter what he did, he could not take more than 2 meters of land with him; every week at Sunday mass or Friday prayer, he was reminded of death with its images; ritually, day after day, week after week, angels of heaven and devils of hell, skulls and crossbones, cemeteries surrounding the church and mosque, everywhere images of death in the place of prayer. All for one purpose, to remind man of his inevitable end, and thus to restrain him in his gluttony, in human greed.
We Albanians, in this last half-century, have also lacked religion. Religion as a source of values began to decline with the triumph of atheist ideology in 1944, to be finally erased without a trace or a trace after 1967 to 1990. Generations of Albanians of that period were born and raised without this hammer hanging over their heads that makes them really understand what death is, and how close it is to us at every step. They grew up not only without the fear of God, but also without the real meaning of death. This has made them psychologically unable to understand that one day they will die and leave this world, and this makes them fight tooth and nail for everything, as if they will have it forever.
This made him fight even that oligarch who, bent over and breathing hard, would descend my stairs in the cold. He was raised and formed during the religious desert of Albania in the 70s-80s. He is mentally incapable of understanding that he could die tomorrow and will leave without being able to understand what it means for you to not be there tomorrow, while the world continues to enjoy the same without you. And everything he has today, money, property, villas, palaces, cars, firms, land, within a second will no longer be his. It is useless to explain it to him. He will never understand, neither he nor many others like him. They will continue to stretch their claws over everything, until that second comes that will take it all away from them. In that second, they will realize that they have wasted their entire lives collecting things they cannot take with them, but this will only serve to make them leave this world in despair.
(A2 Televizion)
A2 CNN Livestream
MUND TE LEXONI GJITHASHTU
