Michelin factory, these strong women recounted the tremendous hardship of their work saying, “I’ve always worked like a man,” and also told him about the many childbirths and infants’ deaths, as they pleaded with their daughters “not to live the life as a mother,” and not to marry a peasant, thus depriving their male children of the hope to find a wife, unless they looked for a woman in Calabria (a region of southern Italy) who, out of misery, would move north at any cost.
At all times, even when they had to face a hard life, women have indeed looked at the future and have had the courage to pass on to their daughters that very creativity and true independence they needed to live well. It clearly appears that Gabriella Guidi has a deep understanding of the female soul.
Etain Addey
Gubbio (Italy), September 11, 2023
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Standing in front of the window, Alida was looking at the silhouettes of the skyscrapers on the horizon. She caught a glimpse of Willis Tower, covered by huge glass windows. She imagined the employees’ frantic bustle on weekdays.
Then, the rag doll resting on the dresser caught her eye. It had a pink, round face, and its only blue eye left stood out on its face. Its arms and legs, filled with dried corn leaves, seemed a bit too long. Its woolen hair was as dark as Alida’s, but the doll’s was shaggy. She had no clothes on. The doll’s expression reminded her of a hurt and helpless child. It was the hand-sewn rag doll that her mother had made for her when she was a child, in Theth, her hometown.
Theth is in the Albanian Alps, in the middle of the northern mountains and in a gorge made of deep, narrow valleys with waterfalls, rapids, canyons, and ravines covered in a vegetation rich with beech and pine trees. From time to time, you can catch sight of tracks leading to distant villages, but only after several hours of walking. Life is simple up there and marked by the rhythm of the seasons, the alternation of day and night, and the roar of waterfalls. There are no squares or places meant to bring people together; darkness and long distances make it difficult for people to meet and socialize. Relatives and neighbors normally only gather at weddings and funerals.
Recalling her homeland’s hostile winter gave Alida cold shivers. She could still hear the hiss of the wind slipping under her sweater.
anything, to imagine who they were going to be, what they were going to wish for, what life they might live. They dreamed of being themselves, the very thing they were forced to hide and protect when they were among others.
He felt that he didn’t belong to those mountains, and for Alida it was the exact same. He wanted to move to the city, to Scutari, and become a mechanic. Alida dreamed of going there too. She wanted to discover the world, to see what other people’s houses hid, and what adventures the noise and din of the streets held. She longed to find out if other women also lived the way they did.
On that boulder, every day, every minute spent together was a minute they spent choosing each other. Leck was with her. And Alida was making some room in her thoughts, the only place her family could never go.
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Ever since she had met Leck, Alida fell asleep with a shy, hidden smile curving her lips, making sure it passed unnoticed by her mother and sisters. She was convinced that her mother would have never allow her a chance for happiness. Just as she hadn’t known that hope, she couldn’t accept that her daughter deluded herself or had what she had been denied.
Beshmira had married Gojiart at 17 without knowing him or having seen him before—not even in pictures—in an arranged marriage organized by their parents. A piece of paper had ratified their union. She had been unable to evade it, unable to ask or say anything about it, falling under yet another act of violence. A mute violence, carried out by the hands of men. First, those of her family’s men, then her husband’s, who had forced her to abide by the duties of the “good” hausfrau. Subjugated, above all, to the general opinion: to the judgment of the townspeople.
Beshmira had engendered children, girls unfortunately, she had raised them and looked after the household while working in the fields at the same time. She had fed the animals, she had gathered and carried firewood to warm the house, and she had worked the land while courteously welcoming guests to her table for dinner—or just for a cup of hot water—always keeping her head down, never hearing anyone pronouncing her name, nor a compliment or a “thank you.” She didn’t exist in anyone’s eyes or voice.
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Gojiart would have surely returned home late in the evening and a little drunk after having had quite a bit of reiki with his usual friends, a distillate made from corn and plum.
Alida was putting away the few chipped dishes they had on the shelves. The wind was so strong that night that she could hear its blast through the walls of the house. She could also hear the sound of branches breaking under the weight of snow, when, all of a sudden, she perceived a very sharp sound, like a gunshot. Driven by terror, she rushed out of the house, slipping on the fresh snow that was getting into her shoes and then her socks, wetting her feet and legs. Not too far from the house she saw her father lying on the ground. His face and arms had sunk in the fresh snow. When she got closer, she noticed a blood stain slowly widening on his brown jacket.
She called his name at the top of her lungs, but all she heard was the echo of her own voice bouncing from mountain to mountain. “Dad! Dad! Answer me! What have they done to you?” she screamed in terror.
She could feel the fast-paced beating of her hearth in her throat as she tried to catch a glimpse of something around her, but the fog and the snow were so thick and heavy that she couldn’t see anything aside from her father’s body. All she heard was the hiss of the wind rushing by and slapping her face with icy snow.
“Call for help...it was them...they’ve arrived...” Gojiart managed to say before losing consciousness. His warm blood reddened the snow.
Alida ran toward the house. She fell, she got up, she ran again, but not a single word came out of her mouth. Only when she met her mother’s still and dismayed eyes, only then she managed to make her understand that it had just happened what everyone feared.
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Years earlier, when Alida and her sisters were just little girls, their father had lent his rifle to a close friend of his, Jerin, so he could use it to have his revenge. Therefore, according to the laws of Kanun, Gojiart had fallen into the “penalty of murder”; sooner or later, and to his detriment, it would reach him.
Jerin lived in the first village on their way down to the valley, where the mountain became gentler and some small, flat clearings appeared here and there. He was a lonely and silent man, and his manners were somehow gentle. Were it not for his shapeless clothes and large and calloused hands, he could be mistaken for a wealthy man of the city.
Both in summer and winter, he used to wash himself with ice-cold water from a well he had built beside his house using a small spring that was close by. Every now and then, when Jerin saw Beshmira coming down to the valley with pitchers on her head he would invite her to take some water from his well, saving her a lot of efforts and many miles. No one other than Jerin had ever been so kind to her. Beshmira had never dared to accept Jerin’s completely disinterested invitation in order to avoid any possible judgments and the condemnations that would have certainly followed.
The plots had no owners before communism. But the war had brought divisions, and after that, the locals had divvied up any vacant piece of land to grow potatoes and beans. It was precisely
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his authority, his strength, his honor in just a few days. At present, he looked like a dried-up leaf leaning on his chair, deprived of all his manliness.
“It will be you,” Beshmira said, looking at Alida. She turned toward her mother. She knew exactly what those words meant. She hadn’t had the courage to cry in front of her mother, who was now looking at her as if calling her to arms. Going against such a terrible sentence was out of the question.
Beshmira had never been an affectionate, sweet, or loving mother: the Kanun and the mountain had deprived her of any feelings. Alida had often wondered if her mother had ever felt love—if she had ever known tenderness. If she had ever felt that slightly warm breeze that used to pervade her body when she talked with Leck.
Alida’s gaze climbed over the severe wrinkles of her mother’s face, which showed no emotion. Once she reached the peak of her cold eyes, she was certain of it: no feelings, no emotions could be found behind those soulless eyes. Beshmira’s gaze was fixed on her daughter and Alida’s blood froze. She had had the final proof now: her mother would have never spared her any pain. Her mother was the mountain: cold, hard, dark, hopeless. She was stuck in her trap.
“You’ll become a Burrnesh,” she had finally sentenced in a flat voice.
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It felt like dying. It was as if her mother had sentenced her to death.
Her thoughts immediately turned to the boulder, to Leck. An excruciating pang went through her chest as she realized that she was going to lose him. She lost the future she had dreamed of for her and for Leck, quite different from her mother’s and her sisters’, and free from the rules of that mountain, so nefarious and unjust. That future, smothered by her mother’s words, was disappearing. She was going to lose herself.
She knew that she couldn’t go against her mother’s will: she was a daughter. Her mother’s will came before her will—hers was the family’s will. But above and before all, there was her father’s will—the will of men.
It was as if Alida had never been a person. And not being a person, not having a voice, rights, and the chance to rebel, to run away, or to kill herself either, meant no one could save her. Not even death.
The Kanun, the mountain, men, her father, her mother, and her sisters had created this environment. In the absence of men, women had to become the man—the thing Alida feared most.
If women relied on death to free themselves from such sufferings, they would have inevitably condemned the entire family to death, and their inheritance would be forfeit. Choosing to fight meant killing. She would have sentenced her father Gojiart
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hands so tightly that blood had fled away, leaving them white and pale.
When her mother approached her again, Alida trembled: the woman who used to weave her long braids when she was a kid, adorning them with bows made of jute or white straw, was now making her scalp pale and round.
Once she had finished, Alida felt cold. She had never realized to what extent her beloved hair had been sheltering her from the cold of the mountain. From now on, she would have had to wear a woolen hat too, one similar to Leck’s.
Leck.
What would he have thought if he had seen her at that moment?
Her mother left her alone again as she went to put the scissors back on the table, and Alida felt like an orphan, abandoned amid the unwelcome looks of those men. She didn’t have the courage to meet anyone’s eyes, even though she felt theirs on her.
When her mother approached her again, she was holding in her hands one of Gojiart’s old outfits: a pair of pants made of a gray cloth completely worn-out, a white flannel shirt, a pair of black suspenders, and a woolen, handmade vest.
Alida took off her clothes and slipped into those her mother had handed her, struggling to prevent the pants from falling off her despite the suspenders.
The Twelve Men went out of the room and fired several shots toward the mountain, so that all the inhabitants knew that a man was now in the house again.
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Ithad only taken a quarter of an hour for Alida to turn into Marson. It felt like ages. But Marson didn’t fit the man she was supposed to become, nor the woman she had been. She was only 20 years old and a teenager who hadn’t even fully become a woman yet, and they had already ripped away the life she had just come to know, giving her one she had never asked for.
They could cut her hair and make her dress her like a man, but she was no man. She no longer felt a woman either. That person had poured out of her; she had gone away the moment Beshmira had tightly clutched the bandages around her breasts, taking her breath away. With each turn, tighter and tighter, Alida felt as if she was leaking out of her pores, as if, by losing her femininity— her essence, her soul—she was losing the ability to have feelings as well. When she glanced at the braids still on the floor in the center of the room, she had no more tears: it was as if she was looking at someone else’s life.
Alida pronounced the oath looking every man in the face. She would have remain a virgin forever, at the risk of her own life should she break it.
Beshmira, out of relief, had her eyes fixed on Gojiart’s, who, in turn, had bent his head toward the clan leaders.
Alida went to the kitchen. Her mouth was dry and she felt as if the words she had uttered were stuck in her throat. She longed
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smoke was coming out of her mouth with every word she uttered. She ended the evening with a Raki-based binge. She had never drank so much in her whole life—she had never drank at all. Women were not allowed to drink. It was a privilege granted only to men.
At first, she drank because she was forced to do it. She was surprised to find that Raki was strong but sweet. She had always thought it would be disgusting, but when it had gotten the better of her, her senses became duller and slower, and she understood that its sweet taste would relieve her of all sufferings, giving her exactly what she had longed for since the morning—nothingness, absence.
She wished she didn’t exist. And Raki granted her that for the rest of the evening.
That evening Alida disappeared along with Marson, losing her senses before reaching bed.
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WhenAlida woke up the next morning, her head was pulsing. She was still wearing her father’s clothes and the bandages around her breasts were suffocating her. She struggled out of bed and walked to the window. The day was beautiful, and the clear, deep blue sky allowed a glimpse of the mountain peaks, otherwise hidden by fog. The white rocks bathed in the sun and the majestic limestone cliffs reflected on the waters of the lake. To Alida, they seemed like a ring of walls from which it was now impossible to get out. She went down to the kitchen where her mother and sisters were keeping house as usual. Beshmira was peeling potatoes: as she went on peeling she placed them in a green enameled container with white edges. Drita was putting Gojiart’s blanket in order. He had already been placed in his wheelchair by the window so that the sun would warm him.
Mirena, on the other hand, had just returned from the yard. She held an iron bucket on her forearm and was rubbing her hands as they had frozen because of the water she used to do the laundry. Alida looked at them one by one, but none of them turned toward her. They were acting as if a man was in the room. The metamorphosis was accomplished. Alida was a man, she was Marson.
In the following days, Alida strove to behave according to her family’s expectations. She tried to walk and move with a masculine bearing, but each step felt fake. The timbre of her voice had to
Alida looked at her sisters with sadness. She put a cigarette in her mouth and made the tip of it glow orange. She inhaled until her lungs felt airless, then she created a white cloud in front of her face. That gesture was becoming more and more natural each time she made it, and her throat less and less scorched.
The life with Leck she had longed for was fading away, like that cigarette.
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SEVEN
It had been months, but Alida still was not used to the heavy work she had to do in Marson’s role. Her sore back was starting to bend, but she tried to straighten up. When evening came, even if she was dead tired from the day, she couldn’t help but thinking about Leck. It was as if in her room, in her bed, once Marson’s clothes had been taken off and her chest freed from the tight bands, she was allowed to breathe again. A slender and fearful Alida allowed herself to be reborn, getting lost in the bittersweet illusion of a dream. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror for fear of destroying that sweet hope of hers.
My home will be full of children and love. I’ll be able to walk Scutari’s cobbled streets smelling the fruit and listening to the clamor of vegetable vendors calling out to customers while praising their produce, hearing the livestock on the main street of the village. She imagined Leck was holding her hand after shopping, walking back to their warm and cozy home just outside Scutari. She dreamed of him kissing her while stroking her back gently, and then making love as gently as he used to look at her on their boulder.
But then she would hear noises from the kitchen. Her mother always brought her back to the present this way. Her life had turned into a punishment. Her father died one morning in June in his sleep. It was Beshmira who found him while drawing closer with a basin of water to wash him.
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any sense since you can’t be someone you are not,” she said, though hating herself for having just disavowed everything she had tried to believe in up to that moment.
Leck was looking worriedly around them to see if anyone had heard her.
“This is our reality Leck.”
At that precise moment, Leck saw that Alida’s body was transforming again: her gaze had become hard and shy. Marson was back.
“I cannot be weak,” she told him while tightening the rope. “The punishments reserved to women would be inflicted on me, even if they say I am a man now.”
“They would punish me too, Alida,” he said softly, almost ashamed for saying that.
“I have to go now. Stop following me, or we’ll get in trouble.” She was furious. “Leck, I just can’t.”
“You can, now. You’re a man now. You have to benefit from this. In any crowded or open place, if we keep at a normal distance, we are just two men talking. Now you can talk to me without fear, Alida.”
“Stop calling me Alida to begin with.”
A spark of joy went through Leck’s eyes: there was still some hope left. His lips bent into a happy smile. “Can we meet at the boulder? You know there’s no one around there. It’s a safe place,” he added in an attempt to persuade her.
Alida fell silent for a few minutes. Allowing herself to hope was dangerous. Letting Leck stand so close was a gamble she couldn’t afford. Spending moments of freedom with him, again, would have also made her even more aware of all the things she could no longer have.
“See you tomorrow at the boulder,” Alida told him, yet unable to allow herself a smile. She might have just signed her own death warrant.
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Though disguised as Marson, she arrived in front of her house out of breath—as she had never been before—since she was terrified that a part of her, a part of Alida, even the slightest one, was still there: in her eyes, in her smile, and in the movements of her body. The thought of being discovered by her mother’s inquiring gaze frightened her. She feared she might guess from the look on her face what had just happened in the woods. She would have never forgiven her—she was certain of it. Once in front of the house, Beshmira greeted her as usual. Alida observed her for a few seconds, trying to detect any change—in the tone of her voice or movements—which could suggest that she knew, that she had seen, that she had understood something.
She abandoned the log on the farmyard and swiftly wiped her shirt and pants, shaking off some grass and dirt. She walked past her without a word and entered the house heading for her room. Maybe she had gotten away with it.
Little by little, Marson was eating away what few and small parts were left of Alida. Like a snake abandoning its old skin to take possession of a new one, she was adjusting to an existence that seemed the only one possible. Yet, all it had taken was a single moment, just one simple embrace with Leck for those scales to peel off one by one, revealing that, hidden underneath that skin, there still was a soul.
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mountains, who is still alive. My brother moved to Italy, and it was a disgrace for my family.”
Alida’s gaze was like fire. No one would have been able to stop her. “They are not coming back because no one wants to live here, and they don’t talk about it here because they don’t want us to wish for something else. They have to kill the idea of freedom or everyone would leave, like your brother did.”
“What are you going to do with your family? And your mother?”
“She had no mercy. Drita and Mirena will take care of her.”
Even if she was saying such harsh words, Alida knew she was abandoning her mother as a coward, and this caused her such a sense of shame that she could say no more about it.
“I’ll ask some friends to show us a way, a way to flee.”
“No,” she said fearfully. “We can’t tell anyone. We can’t trust anyone.”
“I’ll find another way then,” Leck said, while holding her trembling hands.
They looked into each other’s eyes, excited and frightened at the same time by what they had just decided to do.
“Will you come with me, then?” she asked him.
“Sure. I want to spend the rest of my life with you away from this place.”
Leck too was now ready to risk everything in order to live under the light of a sun that would allow them both to exist for real.
“It’s settled then. We shall talk about what we’re planning to do only in this place. We can’t run the risk of being discovered.”
Leck nodded. He wished he could run away with Alida at that very moment.
“See you in two days, okay?” she asked him full of hope.
“See you in two days, Alida. I’ll wait for you,” Leck told her putting his hands on her lips.
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NINE
Alida was radiant. On the way home, she could smell the scent of pine trees and earth, and she could hear the stream gurgling and the sound of the fronds rustled by a gentle breeze. The mountains looked beautiful. She felt life was being reborn in her, and down there, at the bottom of the valley, she saw the gleaming of the sun as it flooded into a door: a new possibility that just waited to be opened.
Once again, she had to force and compel Alida into a cold and forgotten hole, taking on Marson’s features and movements, along with his grim expression. Then, as she was approaching home, she forced the smile Leck had given her to fade away.
What did it take to plan the escape? And where could they go? Leck and Alida had never left their homes or been anywhere else, except Scutari. Alida knew Scutari even less than Leck did. She had only had the chance to explore it after she had become a man. It was as if the boundaries of their lives could be enclosed within the embrace of their open arms, shrouded, as they both were, in a fear of the unknown and of the mystery lurking beyond those mountains.
They had neither been told nor seen what was lying beyond the mountains. Every now and then, distant rumors would come, but they were immediately mocked, extinguished, killed, so that the possibility of raising any sparks of curiosity or knowledge was immediately crushed.
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Alida’s eyes flashed, and her hands trembled. She read the address twice, even though she was certain she hadn’t misread it. Chicago, United States. How was she going to reach that part of the world, even with a letter? Alida slumped to the ground, but then summoned all her strength. She had to look on the bright side. A way out was within the grasp of her hands.
Once at home, she filled the lamps with some oil and removed her boots. When she looked at her mother, all she felt was contempt. Perhaps that poor woman didn’t deserve to live the last years of her miserable life in shame and dishonor. After all, she too was a victim of the mountain.
Alida’s choice was going to cause her further pain. She would become the perfect offering—a tale of warning—for the clan leaders. She couldn’t simply give up her life though for their sake. She hoped that Beshmira, deep down, might understand and envy her for the courage she was showing. Alida was sure she would publicly condemn her, but hoped she would proud of her as well. This was Alida’s only comfort.
She went to bed early. Wrapped in the silence of the room, she tried to imagine Chicago. She imagined it was similar to Scutari, just a bit bigger. She wondered if there were mountains, animals, wide and green meadows, and bunkers. The only way to know was to go.
She could not sleep so she got up, took a piece of paper from an old notebook, and started to write a letter to Irfan. Alida asked for advice on how to get to the United States and to make it through all the countries she needed to cross to get there and for a loan to cover her trip expenses, promising to pay every single penny back as soon as she had arrived in the United States.
When day broke, she rushed to Leck and gave him the letter. He was shocked to hear that Irfan and Matt were in Chicago. Leck sent the letter. If anyone saw him near the post office, the fact that his brother lived in Italy would shield him from prying questions. While waiting for a reply, Alida went on with her life, occasionally meeting Leck at the boulder.
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TEN
Thefirst thing they had to do was to figure out how to get out of Scutari. If they had left together, they would arouse suspicion. Someone would covertly follow them, and once their intentions had been exposed they would have stopped them. They agreed on doing it separately. Alida had Marson’s freedom, so she could move freely in the surroundings of Scutari.
The second step was to get bicycles. On foot, they would not make it far. They had to reach Tirana by daytime. A bicycle was the only personal property that the regime allowed people to use as a means of transportation to reach Bulgaria, where—according to Leck—fake passports could be bought.
He went to work immediately, searching for and finally finding two bicycle frames from an ironworker. Leck had secretly been repairing them in a dark corner of his barn. He also had to watch out for his parents, not only to protect himself but to protect them, too, from the plan Alida and he had devised.
He searched for parts everywhere, trading eggs and cheese for saddles, wheels, and tires, which he pieced together using nuts and bolts. During those seemingly endless weeks, waiting for Irfan’s answer every day, Leck had turned into Alida’s rock. He always tried to reassure her, despite his own lack of confidence. And Alida inspired strength in him so he would not lose hope. One way or the other, they would get to Chicago.
