Meeting Parashqevi and Her God / Ilnisa Agolli reveals what the icon of Albanian music told her in Manhattan

Journalist and TV host Ilnisa Agolli has met the icon of Albanian music, Parashqevi Simaku, in New York.

“Meeting Parashqevi and Her God” this is how Agolli describes her meeting with Simaku, as she reveals their conversation.

Among other things, the journalist shared a photo from the dinner, where the two are seen smiling.

“I can say that in the post-apocalyptic dinners across the usual chaos of the Balkans and Europe, something unforgettable happened one night in New York.

It was the last one for me.

I am a journalist one who is used to facing deadlines in life, every time she travels.

Which doesn’t surprise me much. But the strange thing happens. America throws you face-to-face with both your times: how I live and how I should have lived.

After wandering the East Coast and the West Coast, between the Atlantic and the Pacific, I understood the importance of peripheral luck that luxury is not worn because of fate, but because of the people that fate brings into your life. Even when fate is blind, life becomes softer, just as freedom does.”

In my case, the opposite happened.

A person is born with a mission, and time limits cannot truly be defined, I thought. I was passing by Radio City on 5th Ave, heading toward Elton Ilirjani.

I hadn’t even been three days in New York, yet the streets of Manhattan already felt familiar. Elton is like a good exercise for poets when they cannot produce anything but when they can, they turn their subconscious into experience.

Fully aware of what I wanted to avoid discussing with him, there was Parashqevi.

This is because I separate the private from the professional, the human from the non-human, and this keeps me from exploiting the extraordinary sides of my profession when facing the ordinary humanity that I see as poetry poetry I write only when the situation simplifies itself.

Apparently, after my gentle distancing, without putting my brilliant friend in an uncomfortable position a friend who, through me, seemed to once again notice the contrast between small Albania and America the unexpected happened. A dinner with Parashqevi by my side. A meeting which fulfilled not only my own delight but also the tales “from the past,” surpassing even the thousand and one nights of world classics.

I arrived about fifteen minutes late.

Elton, unmatched in nobility, was sitting at the table with Parashqevi. Milos, the restaurant, was inviting. The appetizers and wine were already served.

Parashqevi stood out from afar because of the beret she had chosen. When I shook her hand and sat down, I felt the prophetic aura she carried. She shone with those kinds of sparks that pierced straight into my mind, like a crown that never saved her from the fate of a woman in the Albania of song. Once, she sparkled and ironically, just a year ago, she gave fame even to the stone in the middle of Times Square, living quietly, making no noise.

Ilnisa, she said to me, with a warm and calm voice.

“I’m happy that you are an Agoll, and I still remember Dritëro throughout his visit to New York. Just like you, he didn’t want to meet anyone, and Elton told me that you hadn’t asked for any meeting with me. Why?”

“Because I have tact,” I told her. “And God never abandons you when you have tact.”

She was very beautiful. She spoke slowly. A sweet Albanian, with the same delicacy as in the inspiring art she left us for decades. Suddenly, with an unexpected restraint, she stopped at God. “He,” she said, “is the savior.”

It seemed Parashqevi had built a special connection with Him throughout all these years, where only His mercy comforted her not the mercy of the hypocrites with gaping mouths the moment they could get a bit of attention ever since the first day Elton kissed her hand. There, in the middle of Hudson Yards, he knelt before the icon, without opposing her harsh past on the streets of New York, and as a result, warmed her soul without taking anything in return.

“Oh dear,” I thought, “what outcome could all this have had if Albanians changed their approach a little, and if online portals abused less with this inspiring yet painful story. If there were less exorcism all around and even fewer lies, and if all this were allowed to develop and heal.”

“Repeat after me,” she said to me and Elton, before we ate. It was a prayer. A prayer that, let’s say, did us good.

We talked about America, about its beautiful and difficult sides, and about my deep desire to be there. In New York, where the magical becomes possible.

At the end, when we left, we stopped to smoke a cigarette. With the same peace, she told me:

“Ilnisa, I want to baptize you with the name Becky Saint Alban. That’s what I want to call you, and let’s move forward, because New York is harsh in winter, my dear, but wounds find healing in the corners of fate or of the palace.”

So, her instinct the one that had guided her through the cold of abandonment and the same wind as that night once again unfolded that piercing model in my eyes, always finding the safe corner. This was the Parashqevi I met, and she, in my eyes, had clearly decided never to reveal sadness just like her God.

Who, in fact, appears to us constantly in different shapes and forms. I don’t know which of the two came first, but I can say that I read the meeting with her as a work of art. And I liked that!

Agolli expressed.

“KORÇA BOOM”