RtE: Didn’t you have any old relatives who believed in God?
Julia: On my mum’s side the family was Muslim. My mother was brought up completely
without God like everyone else, but her background was Muslim. She and her relatives never
spoke about it, even at home. They couldn’t or they would have been persecuted, and the
mosques had been closed down just as the churches were. But, a few months ago she told me,
“I remember my grandmother, who was Muslim, praying at night, saying “Kyrie
Eleison!” I was astonished. My God, can you imagine! She was such a humble lady and I am
so grateful that I was alive during the last years of her life.
RtE: Do you think she was a secret Christian?
Julia: Well, the thing is you never know about Muslim people in Albania. We were an
Orthodox country for centuries, but when the Turks invaded in the 14th century many
Christians had to change their religion. I think that Christian principles, the Christian
faith, somehow remained inside of them, though, and that is why many Albanian churches and
monasteries, and even the relics of saints, were preserved by these so-called Muslim
people. I mean, it is fascinating, because you would think, “If he or she is a Muslim,
they would never save Christian churches or artifacts,” but I believe that if someone
has had even a distant Christian background, although outwardly he may be a good Muslim,
he could do such a thing.
So, my mother said, “Well, let’s go and see this mosque.” But the mosque, which
is in the center of Durres was, centuries ago, the Orthodox metropolis [cathedral] of the
town. I was told that during the Turkish occupation, when they converted some of the
churches into mosques, they built another wall inside the metropolis to cover all the
frescoes. When you enter the mosque now it is just bare walls, but inside those walls
there are icons! This was done very secretly, without the knowledge of the Turkish
authorities.
RtE: So they actually built a second wall, they didn’t just plaster over the
frescoes?
Julia: No, no. They built another wall, took the cross down and turned it into a
mosque. But they built the wall to protect the icons, not to destroy them, and the Turks
never learned that this had happened. The architect the Turks had chosen was a secret
Christian.
RtE: What century was this?
Julia: Probably in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. So, my mother said,
“Let’s go to see this mosque.”
RtE: Had you told her you were interested in religion, or did she just suggest it?
Julia: Well, actually, they had also quietly begun looking, without our having shared
this with each other. It was very natural for her to say, “Let’s go see,” because we
all had to find out. So, we went to the mosque on the feast-day of Ramadan, and they were
giving out sweets. We looked around and we greeted them, and they greeted us, and that was
it, actually. In Tirana there was a metochion, so to speak, of another mosque, and by this
time I had learned some other prayers, the “Our Father,” and few other things. I went
to this metochion, and as I was facing exams, I prayed to the Lord…
RtE: In the mosque.
Julia: In the mosque! I remember that when everyone was praying it clicked in my mind,
“I am praying to the Lord in the wrong place. I mean, what does Jesus Christ have to do
with this?” I had learned that Muslims didn’t accept Christ as God, so I left
immediately thinking, “Oh, what did I do?” I never went back. At that point I was
really down. I wasn’t finding what I wanted and I thought, “Am I going to be left
without a God?” So, I went back home and said to my Dad, “Listen, now this, this and
this has happened and you are the only one who can help. You have to help me.”
RtE: Why did you think your father could help you?
Julia: I don’t know. But I always refer to my Dad when I have a problem. Throughout
my whole life he has been a tool for God to use to help me. So I said, “So, what can I
do?” He said, “Listen…,” and that was when I learned that my Dad had been baptized
in an Orthodox church when he was a child, that he was born in Athens!
RtE: In Athens!
Julia: Yes, I had never known. He simply couldn’t speak about it. “I was
baptized,” he said, “and my parents were Orthodox.” I said, “Is there an Orthodox
church here?” He said, “There is a church at the top of the hill dedicated to St.
George. If we want to, we can all go there.” So we went as a family, and I remember it
as if it was just a moment ago. Entering the church made me swallow inside - I had a
miniskirt on - not a terribly short one, but still a mini, and a T-shirt, and when I
entered the church I just looked at myself and realized without anyone telling me that it
wasn’t decent for me to go in like that. The priest met us at the door and welcomed us.
After we spoke for a while, he said, “It would be better for you to come on a Sunday,
then you will see what this is about.” So, we thanked him and left, and I thought, “No
way, it can’t be here. The church can’t be here.”
I was shocked because just a few years before, this church building had been a
club-restaurant with an outside courtyard, and when I was ten we had danced here in
traditional costumes. I thought, “Oh, no, I danced at the church.” Of course, we
hadn’t danced inside the building, just outside, but I was still horrified. So, we went
on Sunday and it was amazing. I had barely put my foot inside the church when I felt from
inside myself, from my heart, the question, “Will you accept me?” I really believe I
was like the prodigal son returning to his father, and saying, “Will you accept me?” I
cannot describe the feeling. But the great happiness for me was when I saw the icon with
the face of Christ. It was the first time that I faced the face of God. I was amazed and
thought, “Yes, yes, there He is, there He is!” I didn’t need to ask anything.
…….. Let me digress for a moment, and say, first of all, that Albania is an amazing
country - beautiful landscapes, rivers, lakes and wonderful mountains. During Roman times
Illyricum was a great geographical area - up to Montenegro or Bosnia and down to
Thessalonica and Ioannina, including Ochrid and Prespa and the lakes. Although it was part
of the empire, the inhabitants were native peoples, and Illyrians at that time were known
as great fighters and great merchants as well. There were a lot of links between Illyricum
and Italy, Spain and other European countries. They had an amazing port and did widespread
shipping. In the Benaki Museum here in Athens there is a helmet of an Illyrian soldier
from the Roman times and you can see how much more sophisticated it is than the Greek one
beside it. They were very talented people. Physically speaking, they were tall and strong,
with blond hair and blue eyes.
During the time St. Paul preached in Asia Minor and Greece, he mentions Illyricum as
one of the places he passed through, and perhaps even preached in.
RtE: If Illyricum included Thessalonica and Kavala, then he did preach there.
Julia: Yes. And when he passed through on his way to Rome, he crossed the borders of
what is now Albania. In my town of Durres, there is an ancient tradition that his foot
stepped on the land of Durres. This was transmitted from one generation to another and
because of this Durres has always been called a “second Jerusalem,” a real holy place.
Let me say that it is even a blessed place. During our civil war of 1997-8 Durres was
almost the only town left untouched.
So St. Paul passed through our land, and his disciples taught Christianity to the
people there. At that time many of the people were still very pagan, they didn’t even
have a concept of the Roman or Greek gods, they were still worshipping the spirits of
trees and rivers.
RtE: They were more like animists.
Julia: Yes. And these people were the real natives of these places, they weren’t
transplanted or relocated there by the Romans. There were no borders during the Roman
times, though, and people moved freely within the empire. It was long after that the
boundaries were set. During Byzantium the entire region was Orthodox Christian until the
Turks came. It was then that our country came to be called Albania because of the
white-capped mountains. In the Albanian language, however, Albania is called Shquiperia
(pronounced Ship-a-rea) which means “the place of the eagles.” It had to do with the
many eagles in our mountains, but even more because the Albanians themselves were eagles -
we had to be to protect our country, traditions and culture. So, in Turkish times,
Illyricum vanished as a political entity and became Albania. With the Turkish invasion
people often had to change their religion to Islam, and what I am going to say about this
might seem a paradox. I believe that one can be forced to change his religion, and yet
inwardly remain a Christian. I believe it has happened. Also, let me say that I believe
that God will judge people according to their intention, and the intention of people in
those days was to save not only their lives, but those of their children. Probably they
hoped that a temporary submission, or living outwardly as Moslems would be temporary. I
don’t know how much one can call this apostasy. People say, “Oh, but they could have
died as martyrs,” but we cannot judge it, we cannot say.
RtE: The Church fathers say that martyrdom is a gift from God.
Julia: Yes. Of course, and you can’t take it on yourself so simply. This is why
today’s Albanian Muslims are not Muslim. They are Muslim with a Christian background.
This is why in our days “Muslim” people will come to church for Pascha, for Christmas,
for the blessing of the waters, for feasts of the Mother of God particularly. They will
take holy water to sprinkle their houses. How can a Muslim person do this? Particularly
when we have Great Lent or Easter, they have their own feast, and it is Islamic law that
when celebrating a Muslim feast they cannot even put their foot into a Christian temple.
But in Albania this does not apply. “Muslims” come to the church, light candles, pray.
That is why Archbishop Anastasy says, “We have hundreds of Muslim people coming and
being baptized in the Orthodox church because they are finding their roots.
RtE: Even if those roots are from six hundred years ago?
Julia: Yes, as I said before, if you find your past you won’t want to lose it again,
because it is part of your life, your soul, a bit of you. People do come back to their
roots, and that’s why, when people say, “Oh, you have a lot of Turks in Albania,” I
think, “For God’s sake, how can you say he’s a Turk? Because he’s Muslim doesn’t
mean he’s a Turk any more than saying, “Because he’s Orthodox, he’s Greek.”
Orthodoxy has its own geographical roots far away in the Holy Land. Christianity passed
through Greece as it passed through other countries, it didn’t originate there, and I
feel sorry when I hear Greeks saying, “Oh, if it’s Orthodox, it must be Greek.”
RtE: Part of that feeling may be because the Greeks are still recovering from their own
five hundred years under the Turks.
Julia: Yes, but God gave Orthodoxy as a gift. What we have to be grateful and proud of,
as St. Paul says, is the Lord Himself, not what we were born into. I can become an atheist
in a second if God leaves me. Whether we are in Albania or Greece or Romania, it is all
passing.
So, in Albania there are no Turks, but there are Muslims who are more Christian
sometimes than the Christians, because it was these people who protected the relics of
saints and the churches. They would turn the churches into storerooms to protect the
building from destruction by the communists. In some places they even continued secretly
lighting the lampadas. They also protected many of the monasteries and we don’t know how
many of them lost their lives helping monks and nuns escape from the communists.
……… Another interesting story is that of St. John Vladimir. He was a king of
Serbia and was martyred in Albania in the ninth or tenth century, and his relics were
protected by the village of El-Basan. The whole village was a Moslem village. After the
destruction of the church - I’m not clear if this was during the German occupation of
World War II or by the communists, they found his relics floating in the river passing by
the village. They opened the coffin and saw they were the relics of St. John Vladimir. One
of the villagers put them in his house, and throughout all the years of both the German
occupation and the communist regime, they saw that the village itself was protected.
After the German occupation, the Serbs found out that the relics were kept in the
village, and came to take him as one of their Orthodox kings. But what is interesting
about it is that when the Serbs came to take his relics they did it with prayers and a
procession, but as they started off in procession with the relics (both Moslems and Serbs
were carrying them) the coffin became so heavy that it was impossible to go any further
and the Serbs themselves said, “No. He doesn’t want to leave.” They begged him, they
did a paraclesis and prayers saying, “Come, please come, you are the king of Serbia.”
The saint appeared (or somehow told them) “You Serbs will take three or four of my
fingers, but the rest of me you will leave here.” So, we had the saint back.
They wanted to call the village after Saint John, but during the communist times it
wasn’t allowed, so they made a contraction of the name and called it Shenionn. Now they
have amazingly made a beautiful church - many of the Moslems have been baptized - and they
are planning to restore the monastery. They have taken his relics to the Metroplitan
Cathedral in Tirana, but they take them in procession also to the village.
Now, when I went with my family to venerate his relics in the village, during the time
when the church just had the outside walls standing and nothing else, the relics were
inside the church in the place where the altar had been. People would come there to
venerate them . (There was a nearby family who kept the relics in their home at night, and
took them to the ruined church for people to venerate during the day.) We had a vigil
there and it was a wonderful thing. People would go to pray and their prayers would be
answered.
……..Could we change the subject a little and go back to your earlier comments about
Muslims? I’ve asked this in other interviews because it is an immediate issue for many
European countries who are facing a great influx of Moslem immigrants - some people who
are aware of political and social currents are fearful that Islamic influence is spreading
very quickly in the West? What do you think?
Julia: Well the situation in Albania, as I said before, is completely different from
the Arab countries. I think that if a strict Arab Muslim would come to Albania he would
kill these Albanian Muslims who go to the Christian church to pray during the services, or
come to light candles to the Mother of God. But I have to tell a story to show the
difference.
In a town in southern Albania called Korcha, we had very beautiful churches. Now those
churches were protected not only by Orthodox but by Muslims as well, and during all those
centuries, the churches were left untouched by the predominantly Muslim population. Now,
after the fall of communism, some Arab Moslems came to build Muslim schools for the
villagers. As fundamentalists they taught a few adolescents that “this country should be
Muslim, and you must follow traditions, etc.” And these young children went and
destroyed the frescoes of the saints in these churches. I saw the ruined frescoes myself.
But that was something that was incited from the outside - it could never have come from
our own Albanian people. You can see, it just took foreigners coming from the outside to
destroy not only our church tradition, but part of our culture as Albanians, and to set us
at odds with each other, where there hadn’t been conflict for generations.
RtE: Did any Muslims speak out?
Julia: They couldn’t speak out publicly, but they did testify in private that the
desecration had been incited by these foreigners.
I think that not only fundamentalist Islam, but any fundamentalist religion is a
threat. Western Christian fundamentalists have done us a lot of psychological harm here.
They have even made thinking people become atheist. Although I think it is pointless to
fear another religion, with fundamentalists others should take precautions to protect
themselves physically and psychologically - praying more about the situation is one thing
that comes to mind.
RtE: I know this is a huge subject, but can you tell us how the Albanian Moslems and
Christians viewed the conflict in Kosovo with the Serbs?
Julia: It has the appearance of being a religious conflict, but it is deeper than that.
It includes the whole history of when the Albanians first came there and why Kosovo was
separated from Albania. It is a political and historical issue as well.
RtE: The Serbs complain that they are a badly treated minority.
Julia: It is so difficult to pull out the threads of history from a book. There are
thousands of circumstances and factors that decide things, of which we have no record.
Personally, I don’t care whether it is Albanian or Serbian land anymore. Just leave
other people to live in peace. We are in the 21st century and the fact is that we are
still fighting over land. Instead of people looking hard at how not have conflicts, our
human nature continues to fight itself. This conflict doesn’t have any logic.
During the war the Orthodox Church in Albania went to Kosovo with food, with clothes,
even though our own people were so desperate at the time. I was studying in England then,
and my mother wrote to me and said, “It is such a pitiful situation seeing these mothers
from Kosovo on the streets with their young children, without a shelter, without food
even.” This is not an image that makes you feel happy or victorious. Americans in this
century, and people in northern Europe since World War II have not seen the misery of war
in their own home. These are tragedies and one cannot stand aloof. Albanian people felt
very sad about the whole thing. It is political chaos, and when there is chaos, you can
say nothing, the best thing you can do is to just start helping.
RtE: Did the Church help both Christians and Moslems?
Julia: Everybody! I am so amazed at the work of our Archbishop Anastasy, because he
opened refugee camps up and down Albania, and the last and largest refugee camp which is
still running is run by Orthodox Albanians. He also opened a very good medical clinic for
people in Tirana, and this free clinic is open to everyone, both refugees and people from
the town, no matter what faith they are. Now, only a person of love can do that. If we
live in the image of our fallen selves we will have many questions in our mind as to why
this war began, why this, why that, but if we live in the image of God we will no longer
have questions, just solutions.
I had a discussion with a Greek who used the analogy of the Holy Land - I think it is
important for us to have those holy places where Christ was born and crucified, and the
Serbs consider Kosovo their holy land, but for me that leaves a question mark. If I have
to resolve a conflict like this with bloodshed, is it Christian?
When we entered the church where the faces of the saints had been destroyed by the
adolescents, I and everyone with me cried. This is not just a part of our artistic
culture, this is living and for me especially, that image was so important because that
was the beginning of my Christianity. “Yes! God has a face!” So, my point is, is there
any other way that we can resolve the problem without shedding blood? Isn’t there any
other possibility? If we knew that they were coming in a week to desecrate our monastery
do we have enough faith to pray to the Lord, to the Mother of God, and do whatever we are
enlightened to? If we are to be martyrs, so be it, but if God wants us to do something
else, He will enlighten us.
[reprinted from magazine "Road to Emmaus"]