Autobiography of JOHN CHIKA On April 12, 1893 (a date of fond memory . . . at least in the opinion of my wife), I was born in the village of Borsh, in the Kurvelesh district in Southern Albania. At the age of four, my father started a trend in my life that continued to persist through most of it: we moved! First to Parga, where my father worked as a telegraph operator for the Turkish Government, and again, two years later, to Paramithja, a city in the Chamoria section of Turkish Albania . +. the beginning of a long series of moves Both cities had been usurped by the Greeks . . . an old habit of theirs . . . in the Balkan-Turkish War. All of which tended to give it a prominent interna- tional atmosphere, which even then, I was beginning to absorb. In Delvina, I attended a Turkish school (Rushdije), an approximation of our Junior High here in America. In 1910, at the age of seventeen, I graduated and obtained a Civil Service position as a telegraph messenger. The appoint- ment was to be served in Chimara (Berg Detit), an Albanian town tha! was tom by the three-way political policies of the Greeks, Turks and Albanian in- terests, all of which were churning there. As a fanatic Albanian Nationalist, I soon found myself embroiled in it all, for through the Church, the Greeks were endeavoring to Hellenize the Alba- nian-Christian Chimar-Yotes . . . another very old habit of theirs .. . the re- sults of which methods later came home to roost like a ton of bricks upon the head of that unhappy country in World War Il. On the other hand, unwelcome Albanian propagandists were also hunted down quite ruthlessly by the Colonel of the Turkish regiment then stationed in Chimara. And, unfortunately, I was caught in the net. By the grace of God, I was just barely saved from being beaten to death through the intercession of an Albanian-Turkish Major (also of fond memory), who graciously pleaded my extreme youth as a reason for concession, and to whom I no doubt owe my life. With dire warnings to “cease-or-be-hung” ringing in my ears, I fled to the mountains where I continued to oppose the spoilers of my nation. Through an amnesty given me six months later by the Sultan of Turkey, my telegraph position was restored to me and I returned once more to Chimara. But all the old fears, now joined by new ones, were raging there, for Turkish cruelty was a by-word of the period. Christian and Muslem alike was afraid to be seen even talking to me for fear of reprisals. In 1912, the black clouds of the approaching Balkan Storm loomed alarm- ingly over the land, and it was apparent to even the meanest peasant that war was inevitable. Albanian officials were fearful that the country would be caught in a divided position, and definite efforts were made toward unifica- tion, With this in mind, and under the leadership of professor Dervish Hima, 2students, from the universities of Constantinople and Salonika fled to Curfu Island, the northernmost Ionian Isle just off the shores of Greece and Albania. There they were to form a guerilla and propaganda unit that could effectively slip over the nearby Sardanda-Albanian border and operate sub-rosa among the people .. . to inform, and if necessary, to protect, and certainly to unite. Through the underground, I learned of the movement, and slipping out the window of the Telegraph Office one night, I made for the port near the city. There I hired two men and a boat to take me to the Island, where we all armed ourselves with guns and ammunition. In a Balkan move against Turkey, Greece was preparing to partition Albania to be divided with Serbia. Any attempt to unite her southern and northern factions, therefore, were vigorously opposed by them. Hence, when our mis- sion became known to the Greeks, we were immediately ordered to leave the territory. Therefore, one night a short time later, I and 33 other revolutionaries slipped over the border at Brutinto, Albania, and ran smack into a Turkish Gendarmes detachment. After a short skirmish, which did little but open the pass, we made our way into the mountains, and for the next six months, we continued our work there, traveling from village to village, sleeping days and moving out at night. From that humble and small beginning was laid the foundation of the eventual unity that later drove the Germans and Fascists into the sea, to benefit the whole world by their demise. On August 15, 1912, after the Turkish Sultan offered amnesty and many con- cessions to the Albanian people, the five hundred revolutionaries that had gathered at Ghirocastra finally disbanded. Turkey had, however, refused to give Albania her full freedom, and knowing the Turks, I boarded a ship at Pirea, Greece, and arrived in this country on September 6, 1912, to continue my fight from this vantage point. For the next five years, I worked very hard to obtain recognition for the Albanian cause, hoping to awaken the world, and to alarm this nation to the dangers there, that were so soon to engulf it. In 1917, there was only one thing left to do, fight. Therefore, on April 4, 1917, I enlisted in the American army, remaining with it until 1925, at which time I was honorably discharged. During the next two months, the late Kosta Chekerezi and I joined forces in New York, and decided to return to Albania to see the situation there. Five months later, we arrived in the capital then being ruled by King Zog. A fact which did not appear to have improved the situation by much that we could s00. I obtained work as a Civil Service Technician in a radio station, which gave me ample opportunity to see the dangerous trend Albanian affairs were taking under the tutelage of Zog and his Italian cohorts, Fears which were subsequently to be proven more than justified in the events of World War Il. Later, in 1945, I was privileged to write for tho New York papers about the wonderful heroism of a UNITED Albania people, who single-handedly andParadise On Earth by John Chika Asim Khan, the son of the Emir (governor) of Hunza, was a member of my class at the University of Cairo, Egypt, a young man of 18, in the spring of 1911, and given to regaling us with what we considered tall-tales of his home- land. This, he said, we'd have to see first; hence, Asim Khan invited Kasim Shahin, a native of my birthplace, and me to accompany him home after our summer examinations, and be his guests. We could, then, judge for ourselves. Hunza, is a part of the Pakistan-Moslem country bordering Afghanistan and China. The country, itself, is about 100 miles long, and half a mile wide... a few small cities in a valley surrounded with sharp-pointed, peaked moun- tains. In fact, the word “hunza” in Thrace-Illyrian means just that . . . “sharp- pointed, mountain peaks.” A country which is the result of a freakish turn in history. After our examinations in the first week of July, 1911, we three classmates left Cairo for Pakistan, traveling by steamer, rail and mule when necessary. After twelve days of varied accommodations we reached the final leg on & toad, about which we had heard many frightening tales of dangerous en- counters with Chinese and Afghanistan robbers and murderers. Nothing could have been further from the truth. It was a hard, treacherous, but peace- ful route over which we struggled. An enchanting pass, 25,000 feet high. Suddenly the vista opened, and there a half mile below us stretched the Hunza Valley in all its beauty. Blue-green fields bordering the twisting river that wound down its length. Our journey through the country was a delight to the mind and senses. The population consisted of about 35,000 honest, healthy people living the life of kings on the top of Asia, many of which are active and vigorous, although well over 100 years of age. It had no police, no army, no money. No one was rich; no one was poor; no one was sick. It was a nadir of govern mental achievement. The language was the Thrace-Illyrian, the oldest lan- guage on the European continent, a direct Indo-Iranian origination . . . the language of Alexander the Great, and the modern Albanian! The Physiog- nomy of the people, living in the midst of Asia, is not Asiatic, but European: Tall, slender and fair, with large Pelasgian eyes, and thin noses. ‘At the beginning of our journey, at the lower end of the valley, was the village qf Mishgar? which in Thusce-fllysion means “young cow." A place of about jouses, which is the dairy-center of the country. Thousands of cows, sheep and goats are owned by the citizens of the village. Here wore the slaughter-houses of the country, using a more superior method of drying and preserving meats than any in Asia; a meat-curing technique that is older than the time of Alexander the Great. The village is a beautiful place, situated in the vinculation of two streams whose waters flow into the Hunza River. From the balcony of the guest- house, where we were lodged for the night, we could see the union of the two wide courses flowing on both sides of the village converging into rapids about 1,500 feet below, billowing around the mountain rocks, its wide foamy spray shining in the dying sun, a living fresco. 2B