The strategic smile

Taulant Balla looked at the photograph and understood that the answer had finally arrived for all those who asked why Edi Rama had returned from America without an announced meeting with the American administration.

In politics, he thought, not everything is settled with a meeting. Some things are settled with a photograph.

Then someone brought him the collage: Trump with Vučić, Trump with Kurti, Trump with Mickoski and Trump with Rama.

Taulant looked at it carefully.

The problem was that Trump looked almost the same in all four. The same smile, the same tilt of the head, the same body position and almost the same finger gesture. It looked as if the American president had been frozen in place and only the Balkan leaders took turns beside him.

But that was only what the ordinary eye saw. Taulant immediately spotted the difference: with Edi, Trump was happier.

The analysis began. One MP thought the corner of Trump’s lip was raised a little more in the photograph with Rama. A patronage-network activist spotted an extra tooth. Another said the American president’s left eye looked warmer.

Then the finger was analysed. In all the photographs it was in almost the same position, but that did not discourage the experts. On the contrary. The more the photographs resembled each other, the more differences were discovered.

With Vučić the finger was protocol-like. With Kurti, neutral. With Mickoski, institutional. With Rama it was spontaneous. Someone else added that the tie and the jacket had different folds in the different photos. “There, he said, look at the V they create.”

The order was given to distribute only the photograph with Rama. The one with Kurti — absolutely not.

Within a short time the photograph began to circulate. Ministers clicked “like”, MPs added flags, patronage activists discovered the “personal chemistry” between Trump and Rama. Someone wrote that the photograph was the best proof of the excellent Albanian-American relations.

In the satirical version of the operation, a second order also arrived: now that the friendship with Trump had been proven, people had to be reminded how bad Biden and the Democrats had been. The patronage activists got back to work. Some of them, who a few years earlier had distributed photographs with American Democrats with the same enthusiasm, now discovered that those Democrats had long been the main problem of Albanian-American relations.

Taulant was pleased. The question “who did Rama meet?” was gradually being replaced by a much more useful question: “Do you see how much Trump is smiling?”

By the end of the day, the collage had taken on the look of a children’s game: Spot the differences.

Trump had the same smile. The same hand. The same pose. The same backdrop behind him.

Taulant was looking once more at Rama’s photograph. In all four photographs it was not Trump who had changed. Only the person waiting his turn beside him had changed.

Then he took his phone and wrote in the group: “Do not distribute the collage. Only our photo. And keep cursing Biden. He has betrayed us!”