"But I converted to Christianity at that time." - "That was at the same time?" - "It was before that. And simply: I know that God exists. That it was a major life change for me. My life was given logic. I'm not a Catholic, but I'm an evangelical. And I believe God's word, I believe the Bible, and I have friends among Catholics. I have friends among... my best friend lives in Tel Aviv. She's the one I write to, I talk to on the phone, I go to Israel. And so, that's how I'm a Christian. So this Marka [Míková] and I got together like this because I found God. So even the C.S. Lewis thing seemed to me quite [like] a logical show that I really wanted to be in. My conversion, again, took me even further away from the irony or the kind of mockery that went along with the whole... Even today, maybe my middle son will tell me that Čestmír and I are ironic. And it actually bothers me terribly, because I'm glad that I can live a real life, that I can have a normal conversation with people without using any irony or mockery. And so I think it affected the whole Prague Five a lot, and then - I don't know, I think in general, yes - I think most of all my Recitation Group Forward, because Lumír really made fun of everything, he really didn't leave out anything and anybody."
"Some strange things started happening. So my dad had already arranged - in advance, when he was here, he had arranged with my mother that if something happened, if Hoxha closed the border... Because he was still waiting - my father - when he would leave for Bohemia. He and my mother had already agreed that my mother wouldn't be a housewife in Albania, that I wouldn't be brought up there. So when he... Because it was an exposed position, he couldn't just leave, so he was waiting for some opportunity. The opportunity came when the border was closed and not a mouse could slip through. So my dad, because he was counting on it, I guess, remotely, he arranged with my mum to write letters saying he had urinary tract cancer. This diagnosis can't be... nobody can disprove it, there was no diagnosis for it in Albania, nor were there any experts there who would say, 'No, you don't have cancer.' So he started describing the symptoms, writing to my mother that he would probably die soon, that he would never see her again, and that the borders were closed anyway - and what would they do here, watching him die... and so on. I guess it was very literary. He hoped the letter would be censored - which it was, he hoped rightly. Hoxha called him in and he said, 'Hey, are you ill?' 'Yeah, I'm ill, I'm probably going to die.' He said, 'But I need you as a doctor still.' He said, 'There's no means here for anybody to see me and treat me.' And Hoxha says, 'Well, take your choice, I'll send you abroad somewhere.' And he offered him Vienna or Paris. So my dad may have already known the maps, so he knew that Vienna was closer to Prague, so he said he would go to Vienna."
"I found Albania incredible - and very romantic. I had a grandmother there who took care of me. I remember that she was in black, that she had black braids. And my grandmother was totally illiterate. She only signed with three crosses. She got married when she was 14, my grandfather chose her. He was in his thirties and he liked her and chose her. There was some matchmaking going on. And she saw him for the first time at the wedding. She was actually maybe so simple that my father... She had three sons, my father was born as the third son, and she wanted a girl so badly. So she braided his braids. She grew his hair, dressed him up in little girl clothes. Just like that, what I would call, spontaneously. I don't want to say simply, just the way she felt she wanted the little girl, so she just made my father a little girl. My dad said he was surprised afterwards when he went to first grade that he had to wear pants and that he got his hair cut and went to the boys' bathroom. That he played with little girls too, peed like a little girl - so maybe that was terribly interesting to me. An interesting story that's part of my life or my identity."
Actress and teacher Arjana Shameti was born on 10 April 1959 in Slaný to a Czech mother and an Albanian father. Her father, Servet Shameti, was the personal physician of the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha and met his future wife while studying medicine in Prague. Arjana grew up with her mother in Czechoslovakia, while her father remained in Albania until 1962. At the time Hoxha began executing his associates, Servet Shameti faked a serious illness, was sent to Vienna for treatment, and then fled from there to Prague to join his family. In communist Czechoslovakia he received asylum and a flat, and his wife became head of endocrinology at the Bulovka University Hospital. Arjana became interested in theatre and after graduating from grammar school she studied acting at the People’s Conservatory. She worked first in the A Studio Rubín and then in the Recitation Group Forward, which together with the Sklep Theatre and three other alternative theatre companies formed a community known as the Prague Five. She also collaborated with Nina Vangeli’s movement theatre. She studied special education and worked in education: as an after school clubs teacher, a teacher of dyslexics and children in children’s homes. In 1986, she married Čestmír Suška, an academic sculptor who belonged also to the Prague Five. After the Velvet Revolution, she converted to Christianity, and then collaborated theatrically mainly with Marka Míková. Currently (2024) she runs the Bubec Theatre, which is part of Studio Bubec founded by her husband. Since 2013, the couple also manage the Suška-Shameti Foundation. They have raised three sons and at the time of the interview, in 2024, they were living in Prague.
