Foreword
“We tell stories to help preserve the world”
—Gary Snyder
Women and their strong, capable natures have often been oppressed in many places and times—we all know that. But it is nonetheless shocking to learn that a young, enamored woman has been indeed deprived of her gender via a traditional ceremony performed by the elders of her own Albanian village. Her hair badly cut, her breasts tied, and dressed in her father’s old pants, Alida, the protagonist, is forced to pledge that she will remain a virgin forever and take on a man’s name, Marson. And it is her mother, Beshmira, who performs the material acts of such an operation.
When I read this fascinating novel, I imagined it was set in the early 20th century, no later than that—if not far before that. Instead, the author told me, “Unfortunately, we are talking about the beginning of the ’80s, in the 20th century.” (In 2002, it was estimated that 102 Albanian women were still living in such conditions.)
The Albanian code of honor, the Kanun, like the codes in force in several mountainous regions where life is hard and difficult, does not allow a woman to own any property, the right to vote, the possibility to do men’s work, or to go to the market and sell the few products of the land.
So, when her father is kneecapped out of a matter of honor, leaving him disabled, Alida’s mother—who has no sons but only three daughters that she also has to support—has no doubts: her youngest daughter will have to become a burrnesha.
When people without a voice and a lack of documentation is all we have, literature can work as our guide: since only a great leap of the imagination can guide us into the heart and head of a slave in 1850s Kentucky, as Toni Morrison did in her 1988 Pulitzer Prizewinning book Beloved. And this is exactly the great effort—full of compassion—which Gabriella Guidi has done.
It is the small details that remain etched in our minds. The seemingly moss-covered teeth of the man who rapes the slave, Sethe, or the bandages around Alida’s breasts, which seem to take her breath away, and the smell of urine in the barn she has to clean.
It appears that, in the past, some Albanian women have actually “chosen” this path, which offered them a freedom otherwise impossible to achieve for women, but what we are told here is not at all a choice, but an imposition. And Alida is in love.
The scene of the first meeting with Leck, her man, is very delicate. This novel has a strong cinematic impact. When Alida’s lowered look rises, it instead meets the young man’s “sincere, bright, almost intimidated” smile. Such a love as theirs is strong enough to overcome even Alida’s deprivation of her female being.
Leck and Alida, despite their complete lack of means, embark on a heroic journey toward freedom, using their courage and inventiveness. When they escape, Leck gives Alida a gift, something he has secretly carried with him throughout the journey, and which represents a blessing from her mother: that very mother who seemed so unloving. The author is here truly brilliant in getting her mind around all the protagonists, without exceptions.
This tough mother made me think about the women interviewed by Nuto Revelli in “L’anello forte,” a survey among peasants living in the countryside of postwar Piedmont. While men preferred to starve in their farms rather than going to work in the
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
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.
Irfan brought her back to reality. “Alida, aren’t you coming for dessert?”
Leaving the doll where she was, Alida turned around and joined Irfan, Matt, and Leck at the kitchen table. Four small plates were already lined up and a slice of a finely decorated cake was on each one of them.
Alida looked at Matt, who was devouring the cake. With his head bent on it, he was scraping his spoon on the plate making strider sounds.
“What’s wrong?” Matt asked barely looking at her.
“Nothing, I’m just a bit tired,” she replied half-heartedly while stretching her legs under the table.
“We’re celebrating your birthday,” Irfan noted, “and you’re not even toasting with us.”
Only then did Alida notice the glasses, half filled with Italian prosecco and its fresh, fruity aroma. She raised her glass and said, “Happy birthday to me: to the one I was, and especially to the one I am again.”
Even though the doll had remained behind her, near the window, she realized that the memories it carried had followed her, and that they wouldn’t leave her as long as she kept lingering on her personal war. She needed to forget her suffering and start to take life lightheartedly. After all, she was in Chicago now, far from the world that had snatched her youth away from her.
Once the party was over, she walked Irfan and Matt to the door, said goodnight, and got ready for bed. Side by side, they embraced while walking out, and this was how she had always seen them: their steps synchronized, their bearings soft and silent. She had known them since her school days. They lived not far from her, in a house identical to hers. She would meet them early in the morning, on the path running to school along the mountainside. They used to walk along that stony road, down to the first valley, chasing and teasing each other.
As she had already noticed back then, there was a deep chemistry between Matt and her dear Irfan. They would speak looking each other in the eyes. Both had long eyelashes and dark eyes. Matt was lanky, his hair short, and his physique snappy. Irfan had her hair tied in a braid and her cheeks were always cracked. Every time she looked at them, Alida thought that it was as if they were drawn toward each other—lightly. They always walked close together, and Matt would often do somersaults over some willow logs uprooted by snowstorms to impress her. In turn, she would always look at him half bewilderedly, half worriedly. “Irfan look!” Matt used to say taking a run-up. Then, with a thrust of his legs, he would spin past the lacustrine area jumping in the air. She would always find herself with her eyes wide open as she tried to reach the other shore clinging to the bushes.
Alida lay down on the bed, waiting for her husband to join her. Christmas was approaching and the temperatures had dropped well below freezing in Chicago. In the next room, a tree decorated with blown-glass balls acted as an anticipation of the grand parade, from North Michigan Avenue to Wacker Drive, due in the following days.
Her memories kept going back to her mother’s battered doll and Theth, many years before, when, at wintertime, all they had on the table were chipped bowls filled with water and a few pieces of boiled potatoes. At dinnertime, Alida, her sisters Drita and Mirena, and their parents Beshmira and Gojiart would gather around the table. Her mother used to sit with her head bent over the plate. The signs of a life made of hardship and sacrifices were all over her face. It was marked by wrinkles as deep as furrows: they looked like the tracks of those cursed mountains. Her hands were red and swollen—those of someone who had only known hard work. She mirrored the weariness of a difficult existence that had drained her
body, making it thin and curved, like a dry branch bent by winter frost that is ready to snap at any moment.
It was a spring day and Alida was running into the woods to reach the little goat that had strayed from their home: their kulla, in northern Albania. Winter was almost over by then, the first buds were blooming on the trees, and the days were getting longer. The sun, lighted and warm, had started to heat up the air.
“Lina stop,” Alida shouted to the little goat. “Stop, I said!”
But the little goat didn’t pay any attention to her, running from Alida as if she was chasing at it just for fun. A little farther on, Alida saw Leck sitting on a boulder. He had tried to stop the little goat with a leap but without succeeding. Leck was the son of Ana, a widow who lived on a plateau to the north, not far from the river and just a few miles away from Alida’s house. Ana had three sons.
“Lucky her,” Beshmira used to say every time she mentioned Ana with her husband Gojiart or her daughters. Beshmira and Gojiart hadn’t been as “lucky”: they had three daughters. A misfortune.
Alida had compounded their lives even more. The midwife had warned Gojiart to avoid another pregnancy because of the complications caused by the last-born, who had arrived two years after the delivery of the twin sisters. There was no hope left for a male. It was as if Beshmira had become defective because of that child. Gojiart had withdrawn into himself for months and in a sort of mourning condition as he was covered in shame, to the point he dared not look at his countrymen in the eyes. Three daughters: a condemnation, a curse.
While Alida was trying to reach for the little goat, Leck had looked at her with an amused smile. The young girl had immediately lowered her eyes while drawing her hands close to her lap, stretching her legs and back. They had attended the same school and she had known him all her life, nonetheless she was standing before a man. She waited for him to say something: she had no right to speak to him unless he did so first.
She thought that he might be smiling because he hadn’t managed to catch the little goat. Any of his schoolmates would have caught it, but he had never been as strong and fast as they were. Leck had always been a little clumsy. In addition, he always wore his older brothers’ pants, which were at least two sizes bigger than his size: he used to roll the pants three or four times at the height of his ankles and tie them around his waist with a string of jute, which now was completely worn.
Alida was about to turn around so as to backtrack. She couldn’t be alone with him. She was afraid to lose the little goat, but leaving in the hope it would come back looking for food was far better than risking being caught with a boy. There was no one around. Leck could do anything he wanted to her, showing the same disposition everyone else had.
Since they were kids, when they used to walk the same mountain track leading to school, Alida had understood that Leck was different. But it didn’t matter now: they had grown up, they had changed, and they had lost sight of each other in the meantime. And perhaps she could no longer trust him, as she had done as a child. Being alone with a man was dangerous for a woman.
Given that she had lost the little goat, Alida thought that she could endure her mother’s words and her father’s slaps, while taking the risk to learn what that child had become now that he had turned into a man of the mountain was far too much. She had heard stories, she knew what happened to women, and she had seen the marks it left on their bodies; and she had also imagined those branded in their souls. She didn’t want to know that pain.
But as she had turned to walk away, her eyes had met Leck’s. Alida gasped: his smile didn’t resemble to any of the smiles— sneers—she had seen on men’s faces. His smile was sincere, bright, almost intimidated.
Alida was caught off guard and, recklessly, kept looking at him for a little longer than she should have, uncertain whether to say anything or not. She knew that she wasn’t afraid of that boy. She
understood that time hadn’t passed for them, that it was as if they still were those two children walking the mountain tracks together. For the first time, standing before a man didn’t scare her.
Then Alida did something she had never dared to do before. “Hello,” she said, speaking to him directly, but immediately regretting it. She felt short of breath.
At first, Leck had looked at her without saying anything. Alida felt a shiver of fear, but then she had noticed the small, red, strawberry-shaped birthmark that Leck had on his cheek: it blended with his red face, which had flushed due to the mountain coldness, or, perhaps, due to the embarrassment. Alida looked at him in utter astonishment.
“Do you need help with Lina?” Leck managed to ask in a low voice, avoiding her gaze. He knew he had blushed, so he felt even more embarrassed: a man is not supposed to be intimidated by a woman who talks to him. He frowned to himself.
Alida hadn’t answered; she didn’t know what to do. What if he was setting a trap? What if he told everyone in the village that she dared talk to him?
But then she thought that he wouldn’t have done that, or he would have gotten into trouble too: if his clan was to know that he had done nothing against such insolence, the both of them would have been beaten.
Why was he talking to her, then? Why was he so kind to her?
Alida began to walk down the hill in small steps, and in silence. Leck, in silence too, followed her.
Then he said, “I like this place.” His voice was gentle. “There’s no one around here. I feel like I’m somewhere else in the world.”
“I’m sorry if I disturbed you. It wasn’t my intention,” Alida said in a low voice.
“Oh, you didn’t disturb me, not at all,” he added, doing all he could to persuade her, worried as he was that she might feel offended.
