Moikom Zeqo, the extraordinary of creative and study values, who left with the prayer « Remember me! »

By Albert Vataj

If he had foretold him, with a painful intuition that only great souls have, that in this place forgetting is not a consequence, but a mechanism. That here, sometimes with blind zeal, we forget the most sacred, those who gave everything for an ideal, for a vision, for a nation that loved it brighter, more cultured, more aware of themselves.
Moikom Zeqo fled, leaving a trust that had nothing to do with the glory, his name, but with the memory of the work, of this high and unrepeatable obelisk of knowledge and inspiration that he raised, with sacrifice, with genius. He left us as a call, as a silent prayer: « Remember! », Not to seek mercy, but to seek justice for what he represented.
Wherever the time asked, where his intellectual conscience called him, he gave the best, and more than that. Shone. In poetry where the metaphor was not merely decoration, but meaning, in the image that did not empty itself, but loaded the world, in the musicality that permeated the light of soul and thought. No one like him, neither ancestor, nor contemporary nor offspring, brought Albanian poetry to that beyond, where the language becomes the divine body of eternity.
He was not just a poet. It was a demanding. He was a scholar. He was an archaeologist of the word, of things, of memory. In his tireless research in archeology, ethnography, mythology and history, he brought to the light of Albanian recognition of our collective, previously unidentified spirit. With the scrupulosity of a saint of truth, he gave shape, name and life to data, things, events that had been lost in the dust of the centuries.
His publicity, essays, books, were always more than one literary product: they were a structure of thought, the landscape of knowledge, and the testimony of a conscience that never extinguished, neither when they exemplified, nor when they anathema, nor when they were silent. He was not afraid to think otherwise. And that made it really.
He was born on June 3, 1949 in Durres, a city that was not just his hometown, but a sacred land, the living root muse, a laboratory of spiritual archeology. He was formed at the Faculty of Language and Literature in Tirana, but soon exceeded the boundaries of a traditional academic. He built a galaxy of his own, where history, myth, symbol, and word flowed into a self -sustainable, universal system.
The literature it created was a universe in motion. He wrote over 60 works, in poetry, prose, essayy, archeology, philosophy. He traveled between the ages, making the language a medium of the eternal. His poetry is not a refuge for the sensitive, but the battlefield for those who dare to think. Works like « Medusa », « Zodiak », or « I do not believe in ghosts » are documents of one mind that has explored the labyrinth of being and has never returned as the same.
At the time of the dictatorship, he was expelled from the Academy because he dared to be free. But he did not stop thinking, asking. He became an archaeologist, not only of things, but of the time, of the forgotten. In the Archaeological Museum of Durres, he found not only amphorae and mosaics, but our roots. Inspirations.
After the 90s, he entered politics. Not for power, but to bring about a missing cultural sensitivity. He headed the Ministry of Culture and then the National History Museum – turning knowledge into the institution and representing a act of dignity.
His words traveled in many languages: English, French, German, Polish. He was translated not for the sake of fashion, but because he deserved it. International critics were compared to Dante, Eliot, but he remained Moikom. Single. Incomparable. As a code of authenticity itself.
Died on June 15, 2020. He did not leave as a exhausting man, but as a star that continues to shine beyond departure. He fled quietly, but with light. With that tranquility that only goes to the great sages, only those who have made peace with eternity.
On this anniversary, we do not only remember a poet. Remember a breath. A dimension of thought that cannot be defined, just feel. He was one of those figures who are not born often, and when they leave, leave the blank that cannot be filled, except with memory and gratitude.
Yes, Moikom Zeqo did not say « don’t forget » for yourself. He said about what he represented: about knowledge, of love for language and homeland, for honoring our identity. And our task is not only to remember, but to read, to learn, to inherit it. Because he is not only a memory, but a guide. A light that does not extinguish.
May his memory be a sign to those who dare to be special, free and true. Because there are few who, like Moikom, can say, « I don’t believe in ghosts … but I was one. »