There's a bust of Sami Frasher that sheds shade every afternoon on the lake. Sami Frasher may deserve a bust in any town in Albania, but his relationship with Bella has a strange story, which Sami Frasher, until he died, did not know.

Before I tell the story, I must say that Sami Frasher was never in Belsh. He lived in Turkey, and as small as he was, he hardly saw many areas of Albania, except Permet, where he was born and Janina attended school.

When writing the book “Albania has been, what it is, and what will become “Sami Frasher created an imaginary city that should be the capital of Albania. According to him, this city should have three qualities: the first to speak Albanian, the second, to be new, to be built from the first and third, to be in the middle of Albania. He named it Skenderbega, in honor of Skenderbe, and in his book Belsh did not mention it at all, for he probably did not know it.

But, since Sami Frasher proposed that the capital should be in the middle of Albania, in Belsh they believed he was talking about them. And that's why they've set up a bust before which they pass every day stylish and tourists who don't know why that bust is there.

But could Belshazzar be Albania's capital?

As a man born and raised in Tirana, I believe that anyone who has thought of this opportunity has not been harmed.

Albania's story would probably be different if Belshi had been the country's capital. I think it would be a little softer from Belshi's virtues as a quiet town and those of Tirana as a wild city.

Starting name.

Suspects that the name Tirana comes from Tehran would have fallen or were there deaf, if Tirana hadn't become a capital. And since we are comparing names, imagine that the capital of Albania was called Belsh. Looks like Belle, so a beautiful town by name.

Unlike Belshi, who seems to come from the word beauty, Tirana has the word tyrannical at its root. And this city hath produced many wrong-doers. Tirana's Beylers have all been fierce tyrants, cruel murderers who killed and raped. Only the feudal battles between the Baltics and the bargyns, who have shed so much blood on the foundations of the buildings in which we live, should be sufficient that Tirana had not chosen the capital. But then there were other times and criteria on which capitals were not the ones of Sami Frasher.

Once again, when Tirana could escape the numerous disputes between Kruja and Tirana, fate was not with it. Kahamahmut Busatliu came from Shkodra to invade Tirana from the 1700s, but by the time he was about to attack and set up the cathedral, somewhere in Lapraja, where the Military Hospital is, a damn fly got into his ears and he died of torture and noise on his head. The doctors then knew how to draw swords from the bodies, but they did not know how to pull flies out of their ears. If this damn fly that got into the wrong ear had died of an accident, that's because of some tree crash, Tirana would have had another destiny. It would have been governed by cirdrans, not by horrible crustants like it happened in a couple of hundred years.

But let's get back to Belshi.

Not only by name, Belshi exceeds Tirana in many qualities. There it is dryer, winter is warmer, and Tirana's moisture, which gets us to the bone, is missing. In Belsh the sky is blue, there's less rain, and the romantics in Tirana writing dark-cloud poems would have a poorer life. Maybe they would have become fishermen, which is a trade that really misses Tirana, which only has an artificial lake of very bad fish that doesn't eat.

And Belshazzar has 85 fantastic lakes, most of whom are filled with lilies of obedient fish and wise birds, passing over the water like a clear mirror of sincerity. The lakes that are Belshi's greatest wealth could serve as a natural cure for citizens of the capital, who are usually depressed by traffic, noise, and lack of nature.

Imagine those born in Tirana and they say I'm from Ali Demi, I'm from Bannet, I'm from Kinostudio, from New Tirana, from the Black Bird, from the train, from Sauk, from Selvia, from the New Pazar, or from Vasil Shanto to say I'm from Lake Sami Frasher, or from Lake Fan Noli, from Lake Migen, from Lake Vangush Mio, from Lake Zela, Lake Frida Kalo, from Lake Charlie Chaplin, from Lake Co Channel, or Da Vinci Lake, or Victor Hygo from Lake Orka, or Bona deledo, or Reyonca.

The capital was to be organised according to lakes, around which were neighborhoods, offices, schools, universities, cinemas, shops, streets and avenues or boulevards. If the capital was lucky to be run by a man who could probably divide 85 lakes by function. Lake Administration, Lake of Commerce, Lake of Art, Lake of Sports, Lake of Bionetics, lake of hotels, lake of clothing, meat lake, dairy lake, lake of dairy, photo of electronics, photo of cinema, lake of theater, lake of war, lake of war, lake of gambling, lake of rich people, lake of papyrus, lake of embassies, lake of prisons, prison, lake of army, lake of elders, master police, Russian Lakes, Chinese Lakes, American lake of dead, lake of the dead.

For those who do not know him, Belshi is in the middle of Elbasan, Tirana and Berat. That's where you go to Corca in 2 hours and Vlora in an hour and a half. In Durres we're going 45 minutes. If Belshi were the capital, Elbasan would be his workshop or more precisely his iron, Lusnja would be his land, Cavaya would be the coast, Cerrik would be the airport, Pekin would be the porcupine, Corca would be his mountain and Berat would be his museum. Gramshi would be a hydropower plant while Lake Pogradec would serve as a refrigerator for pensioners in the summer. All those people coming from the southeast would have escaped the centuries-old Krabah hell to go to Tirana, which would be his jungle hidden behind the giant wall of Krabba.

Since many things would be different and I wouldn't have done high school at the Sami Frasher High School of Tirana, but at the Sami Frasher High of Belshi and instead of having my house at the Foreign Ministry, I could have had it at Lake Charlie Chaplin and with a little bit of luck I could have become a director, or at Lake Napoleon Bonaparte and probably would have become military.

Who knows, though? Belshazzar is a patient city, and his karst nature has been used to waiting for centuries.

Perhaps a long time later, when Tirana is overloaded and the surrounding hills no longer have room, Belshi may be Albania's reserve capital. The beautiful round hills of Belshi are hospitable and at the same time hostile to palaces. Low villas and service buildings that would not be allowed to cross the hills could be erected in their soft dunes.

Then from the low plain of Belshazzar, people would talk about Tirana as a metal town from which they fled because there was no room for birds and flowers to grow.

What a comfort it would be to the Lakes of Belshi, for many people in Tirana who, every time they come out in the afternoon on their balconys, are forced to watch football matches that sweaty men follow in front of the balconys. They could think of Belshin, the imaginary capital, sleeping comfortable in Tirana's burning heat. In your nap, dreaming about Bella, they'd be convinced that Tirana is a great, self-sufficient and complex city that allows you to think about replacing it.