BEKIMI I NENES / A Mother’s Blessing

Within these pages, entitled Bekimi I Nenes, A Mother’s Blessing, Jack Hirschman and Idlir Azizaj present a translation of Jusef Gervalla’s poetry. This is the first time this collection, originally published by the Naim Frasheri Publishing House, in Tirana, Albania in 1983, is translated in the English Language. In 1983, a year after the original publication in his native Kosovo Albanian, Jusuf Gervalla, his brother Bardhosh, and comrade Kadri Zeka were allegedly murdered by the Serbian secret service in their exile in Germany. Gervalla was known as a journalist and a musician as well as a poet, novelist, and founder of the Marxist-Leninist group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo. For the first time, Jusuf Gervalla’s poetry, including selections from his three books: They Fly and Fall, Green Stork, and Sacred Marks, can be shared by the english speaking population.