Elton Ilirjani was invited to the “Gallery” column in E Diell, where he rarely talked about his private and professional life.
Asked how his father found out about his sexual preferences, Eltoni says that he told him himself in 1991. He told his father that he likes a classmate and it initially shocked him beyond measure. According to Elton Ilirjani, his father gave him a very valuable advice that served him and made him who he is today.
Elton Ilirjani: My father passed away in 2010. I had a relationship with him that was both difficult, exciting and beautiful, but also very demanding on his part. If my mother told me “shelegu” all day, my father was the one who prepared me for another step in life. In ’91, I went and told him I like my classmate, I like the bags. I saw that he was shocked, even though he is a very controlled man and he tells me in long conversations several days, he sat me down and talked to me and said: There is nothing wrong, it’s just more difficult. You have to study harder in school and become very rich to buy your freedom because no one else will love you, not your sisters, not your brothers, not your cousins, we love you and you will be abused , they will throw you, they will curse you, you will get sick and you will die.
The only way for you to escape from this discrimination, hatred, exclusion, is to become rich and buy your freedom. When there were discussions in my teenage years that this man is neither male nor female, “let him become a female”, said some of my family members. Stupidity comes from ignorance. My father asks me, “will you be a man, or will you be a woman”? I told him I want to be a Chun, and he told me “if you are going to be a Chun, you must learn that Chuns like you will buy freedom”. Now I understand what he said, when he died in the coffin I took a picture of his eyes and they were the most beautiful and shocking eyes because they were eyes that spoke to me and had a smile. I was the last to touch it. My father was a very strange and strong man, he chewed a lot to have a child like me in those years.
