I asked Nishku if there was any possibility that people would get their money back. He said, “No.” The capitalism I’d encountered on Wall Street was, said its proponents, all about freedom. Albania has lots of freedom. Everyone admires freedom. And, indeed, one of the best places in the world from which to admire freedom of every kind is the Hotel Tirana’s balcony bar overlooking Skenderbeg Square in the center of Albania’s capital city. Sheshi Skenderbej is an all-concrete piazza the size of a nine-hole golf course. A dozen streets empty into it. From each street come multitudes of drivers going as fast as they can in any direction they want. Cars head everywhere. Cars box the compass. They pull U-ies, hang Louies, make Roscoes, do doughnuts. Tires peel and skid. Bicycles scatter. Pushcarts jump the curbs. Pedestrians run for their lives. No horn goes unhonked. Brakes scream. Bumpers whallop. Fenders munch. Headlight glass tinkles merrily on the pavement. There’s lots of yelling. Until 1990, Albanians were forbidden to own motor vehicles. They didn’t know how to drive. They still don’t. Every fourth or fifth car seems to have an AUTOSHKOLLE sign on the roof, and not a moment too soon. Now there are 150,000 automobiles in Albania. If you’ve ever wondered why you don’t see beaters and jalopies on Western European streets, why there are no EU junkyards, it’s because the junk is in Albania. Elmaz said, “When we were first open to Europe, we bought used cars. Very used cars. After one year . . .” He pursed his lips and made the Mediterranean “kaput” noise. The bad cars of Europe are in Albania. And the hot cars. An unwashed Porsche 928 lurching inexpertly through the square just out of range of my highball ice cubes seemed a probable example. Its huge V-8 was being gunned to piston-tossing, valve-shattering rpms. Even a mid-1980s model 928 would cost an average Albanian sixteen years’ of salary. An American wire-service reporter was teasing Elmaz about used-car shopping: “I’d like to get a Renault Twingo, maybe. A ’95 or ’96. For about a thousand dollars? One that hasn’t been rolled.” “Ha, ha, ha,” said Elmaz in the kind of laugh that indicates nobody’s kidding. “I know someplace.”
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online