Albania Winter 2000

February 3

     Qamil (Jamel) remembered the day! It was in the fall, he said, maybe October but certainly the year was 1944. As a 10 year-old his job was to bring the sheep home to their barn. On that evening the German soldiers came to his village. With noisy, green, camouflaged tanks, the soldiers quickly overtook the hamlet. They started on the east, working west, burning all the village houses as they went. With his sheep in front of him, he did his chores with the back drop of WWII close at hand. He remembered the charred smell of his house, he remembers sleeping under the stars outside that night (there was no inside), but his senses of reflection peaked when he said the German soldiers had killed his father.  
     Qamil leaned back in his chair, looked across his field and said, "So, now you want to talk about God?" 

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