SKENDER MINXHOZI is on the run from President Sali Berisha's "Democratic Party". Ferit Duru has lost everything in a fraudulent investment scheme. Gilda Kromic spends most of her daylight hours in the Church of the Sacred Heart praying for President Berisha who is a Muslim. Peter Rama is old enough to believe that people should "calm down and stop fighting with each other.

I met Skender Minxhozi in the lobby of one of Tirana's best hotels. He had slept in different beds for each of the past four nights because he had heard the government did not like him. Minxhozi is the chief editorial writer of the country's most popular newspaper, Koha Jone, which has been critical of the regime.

Minxhozi, in his early 40s, is one of many independent journalists who have gone into hiding since armed civilians burned out Koha Jone's newsroom last weekend. Some have had threatening phone calls, others have been stopped on the streets by strangers and told they were in danger, all have vowed to cease publication until censorship has been lifted.

Albania suffers from a combination of the problems which caused demonstrations in neighbouring Serbia and Bulgaria, Minxhozi says. The Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade because they had no democracy. The Bulgarians protested in Sofia out of economic desperation. The Albanians, he believes, had economic desperation and no democracy.

"We need new elections because, as everyone knows, the ones that put in the current parliament were rigged. A date should be set immediately and in the meantime there should be a contract between the political parties and a broad coalition government," he says.

Outside on the avenue of the Martyrs of the Nation (formerly Stalin Avenue) citizens of Tirana stroll in the sunshine. A glass and concrete wigwam which was once the mausoleum of the dictator, Enver Hoxha, is now a "palace of culture" and is known to locals as "the pyramid" after the pyramid investment schemes, the collapse of which heightened public anger against Mr Berisha's regime.

AT THE end of the avenue the "restorant Pizzeri Kumanova", run by Albanian refugees from the Serbian province of Kosovo stands where the huge statue of Stalin once stood. Across the street the great effigy of Lenin has been replaced by the Admiral Poker Machine club.

Around to the right and down a dusty potholed laneway a crowd of men hang out in front of the Democratic Party's headquarters. One, a fierce-looking peasant in his 70s, refuses to give his name. He carries a Kalashnikov sub-machine gun. He says only that will defend himself against "the communist bandits".

Close to the central Skenderbeg Square the city's largest mosque prepares for the afternoon prayers of the Muslim sabbath. More than 70 per cent of Albanians are, theoretically at least, adherents of Islam. Moving away from the centre the roads and footpaths disimprove dramatically.

About 100 men at a street corner are trading in a sort of informal bourse. The houses and farms of the disinherited are being bought and sold. Two of the more primitive-looking marketeers tell me to move on. I do.

Around the corner to the right, in the shadow of the Tirana International Hotel where the world's TV crews are stationed, stands a pleasant tree-lined square. The large grey house with a top-floor balcony was once the home of a young man who was in the distant past the local correspondent of the London Times. When political convulsion broke out, the story goes, his editor telegraphed demanding to know why no reports were being sent. His reply contained just four devastating words: "Am king. Yours, Zog".

There is nothing regal about the large crowd nearby at the headquarters of VEFA Holdings, one of the investment schemes still able to pay out some money. Here the faces are taut with anger and frustration. Men and women wait for the daily list of numbers to be read, identifying investors who will get some of their money back.

Ferit Duru (75) hopes to get some cash. He looks older than his years, is bent from hard work, his face with its high cheek bones and skin turned almost to leather is archetypal of the Balkan peasantry.

The end of communism benefited him at first. He became a private farmer, a landowner, a man of property. Then the pyramid fever caught hold. Investors were promised incredibly high interest rates and Ferit thought that this new capitalism was the thing for him. "I sold my house. I sold my farm and my cattle and my sheep. I sold everything for $35,000 and put it all in VEFA. I come here every day to see if I am going to get something back."

A man in his 60s, who will identify himself only as "Dishnitsa" had saved $7,000 sent to him in remittances from two of his sons who worked in Greece, but seems resigned to all of it being lost.

There is no sign of resignation in the face of Ismet Vruxhe, a wild-eyed man who sold his house and stands to lose $14,000. "If VEFA collapses, there will be fighting here in Tirana like there is in the south and I will be one of the fighters," he said.

Back across Skenderbeg Square, past the former party building with its mosaic of heroic Albanian revolutionaries and down another dusty road, Gilda Kromic an elegant lady in her 70s, breaks from her prayers in the Church of the Sacred Heart. About 10 per cent of Albanians are Catholics. She springs to President Berisha's defence. "He brought us democracy. All the things that have gone wrong are the fault of the communists. They have been digging holes in the roads and water pipes to make life difficult and put the blame on our President.

"They started these pyramids themselves to cause trouble. I would have nothing to do with them ... Everything I have I earned by my own sweat. Those who are against our President are nothing but dirty communists."

Just 50 yards away a former gymnasium is now a home to the Albanian Orthodox Church, whose adherents comprise 20 per cent of the population. Peter Rama bad called in to pray. He is a dapper man in his 83rd year, his shoes burnished to a brilliant shine. "Berisha is for his people. Those who are against him should be calm and stop fighting. Our holy Orthodox Church tells us it is our duty to support our leaders."

On the way back to the hotel the youngsters thronging the cafes and bars in the Park of Youth seem closer in their views to old Peter Rama than to anyone else. They look calm, as though they know nothing of the fighting which rages in their country.

But appearances in Albania can be deceptive. The headquarters of the SHIK (secret police) is near the Park of Youth. Burly men in leather jackets bearing the moustachio trademark of their occupation wander everywhere. Everything is under control. Literally.