The fencing went up on Tuesday. The razor wire caught the morning light on the Zvërnec peninsula. Flamingos feed in the lagoon; sheep graze near the water. A man who has claimed the soil since 1933 walked to the wire. He was beaten and dragged through the mud by hired guards. Jared, the dirt is on your hands.
In 2024, the Albanian legislature authorized five-star resort construction in environmentally protected zones. Prime Minister Edi Rama shepherded the law through, calling it essential development for one of Europe’s poorest nations. Kushner Companies, partnering with the Al‑Khayyat family of Qatar and Asher Abehsera, pursued a five‑billion‑dollar luxury complex across the Zvërnec peninsula and the former military island of Sazan. The Main Street Independent documented the swelling protests earlier this month, as villagers and environmentalists marched for weeks against displacement. Albania’s special prosecutor has now opened an inquiry into the land transfers that enabled the acquisition. The European Union’s executive arm issued a formal warning that dismantling environmental protections threatens Albania’s accession to the bloc.
Petraq Balliu, sixty‑one years old, has litigated for this property since 2003. A court recognized his ownership, but subsequent rulings left the land in the hands of larger claimants. “I don’t want to build a resort,” Balliu said. “I just want my land back.” He kept the deeds in a tin box. He reached for the soil with hands calloused from mule reins, and the security guards pushed him into the mud. A video of him being roughed up and dragged through the dirt has circulated widely. In response, Abehsera called the video “horrific” and said the fence was a bad decision by a third‑party contractor.
Edi, the dirt does not wash out of the knees of a sixty‑one‑year‑old man who only wanted his grazing land back. You called the project an economic boon. You called it a gift to Albanian tourism. Your mouth found the words easily. Your throat did not tighten around the salt of the lagoon that will be drained into a resort pool. Your chest did not register the weight of the deed that was forged, the land that was taken, the family that will not get it back.
While you spoke, Petraq Balliu’s hands were in his lap. His hands remember the feel of the land he used to graze sheep on—the same land your law handed to investors. Your hands, Edi, are not on the land. Your hands are on the press‑release stationery, on the cup of coffee, on the steering wheel of the car that takes you past the protesters. Your hands are warm. Balliu’s hands are cold. They have been holding court papers for twenty years. They will not hold the deed again.
When the guards threw their weight against the villagers, you pointed at contractors. When the European Union warned that the law imperils your country’s future in the bloc, you called it progress. The razor wire was a choice. The fencing was a choice. The contractor is not invisible to the one who pays him.
The dust is in your throat when you step to the podium, Edi. You swallow it and call it opportunity. You taste it in the water you pour for the camera. It coats the back of your neck in the midday sun while the bulldozers idle behind the wire. The taste does not leave you. The aching in your lower back at night—the ache that you carry to bed and cannot stretch out—is the ache of every Albanian who has watched the government trade public land for private luxury. The taste of metal under your tongue when you raise the spoon to your mouth at breakfast is the taste of the lagoon’s water, already turning brackish with the runoff your environmental‑impact statement will later “mitigate.” I see the mud on Petraq’s face and I will not look away.
Jared, the lagoon at Zvërnec is calm when you visit it. You look at the water from the yacht. You talk to Rama at Davos. You see a five‑star resort. You do not see the razor wire catching the light on a Tuesday morning. You do not see the man being dragged through the dirt before a single environmental‑impact statement has been finalized. Your jaw aches when you tell Abehsera to handle the locals. The ache is the weight of the fence you ordered.
Picture your youngest child walking that beach, Jared. Picture your daughter’s sandals in the sand where the flamingos feed. Now picture the spike of the razor wire. Picture the private security guards who are paid to ask no questions. Picture the fence going up while a podcast records in a quiet room in New York extolling five miles of beachfront. You would not let guards drag a stranger through the mud in your own yard. You are letting them drag Petraq through the mud in his.
Asher, your throat closes when you say “dialogue.” The word catches in the back of your throat. The dust never caught there for you. It caught in Petraq’s mouth. You say the fencing was a bad decision. You say it was a bad decision made by a third party. The guards were beating a sixty‑one‑year‑old man. You were not in the dirt with him. Your voice is not in the mud. The dirt knows the weight of the boot and the heel of the guard.
Ramez, your stomach turns when you say the Albanians will decide once they see the benefits. The benefit is the razor wire. The benefit is the dirt under the fingernails of a man whose grandfather bought the soil in 1933. You are small men behind a fence. The dirt is real. The mud on Petraq’s face is the only thing you have built.
The flamingoes will leave when the dredging starts. The sheep will be gone when the villas go up. The coast does not need your villas. The water does not need your five‑star permit. The lagoon does not need your third‑party contractor. Petraq needs the land back. The deed is in the dirt.
Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field till there is no place for you, but that you may dwell alone in the midst of the land! — Isaiah 5:8
The field is being joined. The lagoon is being fenced. The poor are being pushed into the water. The coast will not remember your names. The dirt remembers.