Esat Pasha had Zalla arrested in 1914 and kept him in prisons of Durrës and then Krujë. Rebels of the Peasant Revolt in Albania got him out of prison and Zalla had to become the secretary of Haxhi Qamili, leader of an egalitarian and anti-feudal Peasant Revolt in Albania in 1914–15. Later he managed to leave Qamili and to go to Prênk Bibë Doda, the bayraktar of Mirdita, where he obtained protection under the Albanian besa. At the end of the Peasant Revolt, Zalla returned in the municipalities of Krujë, Prezë, and Ishëm, to teach, and, eventually, in 1927, settled down in the town of Shijak, where he continued to teach Albanian.