Letter from Albania: Into one of Europe's last dark corners

[Makedonia25]

Letter from Albania: Into one of Europe's last dark corners

by Jeffrey White

Jun 25th 2008 @ 11:00AM


The car rounded a bend heading south, a bit outside Fier, and there he was in the middle of the road: dressed in a red shit, a white crusher on his head. He had no legs, just two stumps that poked out of his jeans.

The road looked baked in the sun. He lunged at passing cars, hands cupped. A large bus bore down on him from the other side, and passing I looked back to see traffic in both directions and him not moving. Where could he go?

It was a fruitless, and dangerous, way to beg for money. He was stuck, doing what he could, being passed by, life having dealt him rags.

In that man I saw something of the desperation of an entire country in miniature.

I have come to Albania. Not many do, even today, 16 years after this country emerged from a particularly isolated horror show. Tourists are expected any day now, I was told, and there was justification for that optimism: Farther up the coast to the north, Montenegro was rapidly seeing its coastline cede to Riviera-style hotels and villas.

Albanian does promise some of the last unspoiled coastline in the Mediterranean. Seeming to anticipate this, places like Durrës along the coast had become a confusion of construction, haze and dust, giving way to tall, colorful tenements -- hotels? -- most seeming unfinished.

Guidebooks padded entries about Albania by saying it had "a few rough edges" or with phrases like, "Sure, it has is problems, but..."

Yet really, Albania was a ruinous country -- and probably the most interesting and least artificial place in which you could travel in Europe today.

I was with a German who said, "It's the last dark spot on the continent. "

Albania was also one of the weirdest places I'd ever been to. I'm not just talking about the stuffed animals that hung like totems on unfinished houses to ward off spirits, or the dystopian sight of thousands of small concrete bunkers dotting the countryside everywhere you looked. This was the country that gave George W. Bush a hero's welcome last year, putting it in rather small company indeed.

It was something of a travel cliché to call Albania a joke. It was, after all, the country the United States went to war with to draw the public's attention away from a presidential sex scandal in Barry Levinson's 1997 satire on the Clinton Administration, "Wag the Dog."

Albania was not a joke. It was just sad. There was no comedy at all here, and if this were some kind of Hollywood production you could conclude, passing through towns and seeing all that was unfinished and piecemeal around you -- the decapitated homes, the roads, the husks of cars in so many roadside chop shops -- that the director had told the crew to pack it in, abandon sets and change locations.

But Albania commanded headlines -- real ones.

In March, the country received an invitation to join NATO, and the European Union affirmed its commitment to see the country within the bloc sooner rather than later.

That same month, in the Tirana suburb of Gerdec, a munitions factory -- Albania was a giant weapons depot -- blew up, killing 26.

That was one of the only factories working in Albania.

Nothing was manufactured or built here, aside from elaborate, brightly colored gas stations that are everywhere, most complete with a hotel (EUR 20 a night), restaurant, bar and market, all catering to the Albanians' obsession with cars.

"Albania is not a place where industry is very developed," Tomë Therçaj, an adviser in the environment ministry, told me one day in Tirana.

He seemed positive about this. "We don't have these problems with greenhouse gas emissions."

He told me that a 2008 United Nations survey ranked Albania 25th among 144 countries in terms of environmental friendliness.

Then what was behind this air? It was dusty, choking, redolent with diesel fumes and smoke in Tirana.

Elsewhere, in Durrës, Vlore, and Shkoder in the north, the air was a hot, whiskey-colored haze and if the breeze was right, it brought waves of stink from roadside garbage piles.

Farther south and inland, breathing was easier, but then you saw the dry river beds. What were once great flows of water now were reduced to no more than wet ribbons along which some trucks drove.

Albania has some spectacular scenery: deep canyons; scree cliffs that plunge thousands of feet down into the Ionian Sea; meadows and hillsides shaded and fragrant with eucalyptus and olive trees.

But it was hard to balance scenes of environmental splendor and squalor.

It was also hard to balance the Albanian people.

Who were they? They rankled at being compared to Greeks (despite a sizable Greek minority along the southern coast and in places like Gjirokaster). Their music seemed Turkish, but that's where those similarities stopped.

Albanians, of course, were Albanians, members of an old ethnic group whose pride seemed to belie its size (the country has a population of 3.6 million, though the Albanian Diaspora is significant).

They were contradictory. Albanians were generous and kind, and I was to see many live up to their reputation of hospitality; yet they were also barbarous and vengeful, practitioners of blood feuds that trapped whole families in their homes. They were fiercely nationalistic; yet they were also the very models of tolerance: In Albania, three religions coexist largely in peace.

The only joke associated with Albania was what had been perpetrated on its people, and it seemed to me they were still shaking off their dark years.

Albanians had been invaded by the Greeks, the Turks, the Italians and then communism. They spent more than 40 years in utter isolation, forbidden to travel, forced to take up arms against invisible enemies, made paranoid and afraid, all thanks to a lunatic leader.

Communism's collapse let in some light, and also lawlessness and corruption. And the people were then cheated again: The country teetered on the brink of civil war in the late 1990s after tens of thousands lost their life savings in a state-sponsored confidence trick.

Albanians still don't trust the government. There were rumors nearly every week of misappropriated money and graft. Perhaps there was something to this: Despite receiving some of the highest aid per capita that the European Union gives out -- $110 million this year alone -- Albania still ranked as the second poorest country in Europe, behind Moldova.

Albania could seem desperate, but it was also hopeful and the people seemed to know the score. In conversations there was no delusion about the state of the country, and even simple statements could be imbued with a faith that the country, one day at least, would find its way.

"The roads are terrible here, but the government is really trying to improve them," Leonard Boduri, 20, told me in Tirana one day, exhibiting some of that optimism.

I found all of this fascinating.

If Europe had become staid and predictable in many places, travel in Albania was the antidote. Horrible in many places, wonderful in others. But real.

I showed up purposely having read little about Albania. I wanted only to look, think and react. That seemed to me the purpose of travel.

http://www.gadling.com/2008/06/25/le...s-dark-corner/

[TirAlb]

So what's your opinion Makedonia?

At least his approach is positive,and i liked his conclusion:

If Europe had become staid and predictable in many places, travel in Albania was the antidote. Horrible in many places, wonderful in others. But real.

[Makedonia25]

Originally Posted by TirAlb

So what's your opinion Makedonia?

At least his approach is positive,and i liked his conclusion:

To be honest.. I thought it was a poor effort.. Clearly, Albania has a lot more to offer.. I just thought I'd post it here to see what u guys had to say

[Truth Bearer]

Good answer Makedonia25........

[Bardas]

Might be relevant to the topic

At home with Albania's last sworn virgins

Dan Bilefsk meets the women forced to swap gender to enter a male world of mastery and blood feuds.

Pashe Keqi recalls the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father's baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

For centuries, in the closed-off society of rural northern Albania swapping gender was considered a practical solution for families short of men. Keqi's father had been killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir.

By custom, Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority - including the obligation to avenge her father's death.

She says she would not do the same today, now that sexual equality and modernity have come even to Albania, with internet dating and MTV invading after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Girls here do not want to be boys anymore. With only Keqi and some 40 others remaining, the sworn virgin is dying out.

"Back then it was better to be a man because before a woman and an animal were considered the same thing," says Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide and relishes shots of raki. "Now Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful. I think today it would be fun to be a woman."

The tradition of the sworn virgin can be traced to the kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct attributed to a 15th century prince and passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania. Under the kanun the role of a woman is severely circumscribed: take care of children and maintain the home. While the life of a woman is worth half that of a man, a virgin's value is the same: 12 oxen.

The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death. If a patriarch died with no male heirs, unmarried women in the family could find themselves alone and powerless. By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry weapons, own property and move freely.

They dressed like men and spent their lives in the company of men, even though most kept their female given names. They were not ridiculed but accepted in public life, even adulated.

"Stripping off their sexuality by pledging to remain virgins was a way for these women in a male-dominated, segregated society to engage in public life," says Linda Gusia, a professor of gender studies at the University of Pristina, Kosovo.

"It was about surviving in a world where men rule."

Taking an oath to become a virgin should not, sociologists say, be equated with homosexuality, long taboo in rural Albania. Nor do the women have sex-change operations.

Keqi, known in her household as "the pasha", says she decided to become the man of the house at the age of 20. Her four brothers had opposed the communist rule of Enver Hoxha, who led Albania for 40 years until his death in 1985, and were either imprisoned or dead. Becoming a man, she says, was the only way to support her mother, her four sisters-in-law and their five children.

Keqi lorded it over her large family in her modest house in Tirana, where her nieces served her brandy while she barked out orders. She worked construction jobs and prayed at the mosque with men. Even today, her nephews and nieces say, they would not dare marry without their "uncle's" permission.

When she stepped outside the village, she enjoyed being taken for a man. "I was totally free as a man because no one knew I was a woman," Keqi says. "I could go wherever I wanted to and no one would dare swear at me because I could beat them up. I was only with men. I don't know how to do women's talk. I am never scared."

When she was admitted to hospital for an operation, the other woman in her room was horrified to find herself sharing close quarters with someone she assumed was male.

Being the man of the house also made Keqi responsible for avenging her father's death. She says when her father's killer was released from jail five years ago, by then a man of 80, her 15-year-old nephew shot him dead. Then the man's family took revenge and killed her nephew.

"I always dreamed of avenging my father's death," she says. "Of course I have regrets; my nephew was killed. But if you kill me I have to kill you."

In Albania, a majority Muslim country, the kanun is adhered to by Muslims and Christians. Cultural historians say the respect for medieval customs long discarded elsewhere was a by-product of isolation. But they stress that the traditional role of women is changing.

Some sworn virgins bemoan that. Diana Rakipi, 54, a security guard in the seaside city of Durres, in the country's west, who took the oath to take care of her nine sisters, looks back with nostalgia on the Hoxha era. In communist times she was an army officer, training women as combat soldiers. Now, she laments, women do not know their place.

"Today women go out half naked to the disco," she says.

"I was always treated my whole life as a man, always with respect. I can't clean, I can't iron, I can't cook. That is a woman's work."

But even in the remote mountains of Kruje, about 50 kilometres north of Tirana, residents say the kanun's influence on gender roles is disappearing.

"Women and men are now almost the same," says Caca Fiqiri, whose aunt, Qamile Stema, 88, is the last sworn virgin in his village. "We respect sworn virgins very much and consider them as men because of their great sacrifice. But there is no longer a stigma not to have a man of the house."

Yet there is no doubt who wears the trousers in Stema's one-room stone house in Barganesh, the family's ancestral village. There, "Uncle" Qamile is surrounded by her clan, dressed in a qeleshe, the traditional white cap of an Albanian man. Her only concession to femininity is a pair of pink sandals.

After becoming a man at the age of 20, Stema says, she carried a gun. At wedding parties she sat with the men. When she talked to women they recoiled in shyness.

Stema says the oath was both a necessity and a sacrifice. "The truth is I feel lonely sometimes, all my sisters have died, and I live alone. But I never wanted to marry. Some in my family tried to get me to change my clothes and wear dresses, but when they saw I had become a man they left me alone."

Stema says she will die a virgin. Had she married, she jokes, it would have been to a traditional Albanian woman. "I guess you could say I was partly a woman and partly a man. I liked my life as a man. I have no regrets."

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/...e#contentSwap2

[Truth Bearer]

That story is so twisted.......

[Bardas]

From what I read of his posts he see TirAlb seems like a level-headed guy. Grace, on the other hand, seems a tad more-- let's say-- overtly patriotic.

Just to clarify I haven't got anything against Albanians. When I was in Greece recently I got to know a few since a cousin has got many of them as friends. Despite all the negativity/stereotyping I found them quite resourceful and especially vital since they do the jobs the Greeks don't want. Also, many of them speak Greek without an accent and listen to the latest Greek pop music. In short, any animosity that Albanians percieve re the Greeks I certainly do not share. And anyway am in all the way down in Melb.

So my intention by posting this article is just to highlight that if you want your country to progress you really have to get rid of these politicians:

PM threatens to kill minister

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha threatened to kill an opposition member of parliament during a debate over ministerial appointments, local media reported today.

Mr Berisha decided to ditch his coalition partner, the Christian Democratic Party, in favour of the Republican Party of Albania (PRSH) in his fourth cabinet reshuffle since his Democratic Party won the election in 2005.

Mr Berisha tangled with Taulant Balla during a late-night session when the Prime Minister disclosed his plan to appoint PRSH leader Sabri Godo's daughter, Anila, as health minister.

The move was widely seen as a reward to Mr Godo for entering into a partnership with Mr Berisha's party.

"Now that Godo's daughter Anila has been appointed minister, the Prime Minister will have problems at home because his own daughter will ask to become a minister, or even a prime minister," Mr Balla said.

Stung by the comment, Mr Berisha launched into a tirade against Mr Balla and his family, finally threatening to kill him.

"You should know that I'll kill you! You won't make it alive into parliament again! I will kill you!," screamed Mr Berisha, pointing his finger at Mr Balla.

After the outburst, parliamentary speaker Jozefina Topalli stoped the live broadcast of the session.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/pm-th...0723-3jva.html

[YaunaTakabara]

I think I found that story quite moving. Besides how interesting the gender-swapping thing is, and how it is respected by the others, it's also a great sacrifice to make for what was considered to be the good of the family.

[YaunaTakabara]

Originally Posted by Bardas

Just to clarify I haven't got anything against Albanians. When I was in Greece recently I got to know a few since a cousin has got many of them as friends. Despite all the negativity/stereotyping I found them quite resourceful and especially vital since they do the jobs the Greeks don't want. Also, many of them speak Greek without an accent and listen to the latest Greek pop music. In short, any animosity that Albanians percieve re the Greeks I certainly do not share. And anyway am in all the way down in Melb.

I too don't really have a beef with the Albanians. A Vorio-Epirotis I used to board with explained to me that if you have an Albanian as a friend, he'll stick by your side to the bitter end. Now that was back in the mid 1990s when he told me that, when both he and they were still fresh from the Old World. Things may've changed in the meantime.

[Grace]

personal opinions about me aside:
you can go into any country and find faults. many others would disagree with that guy. The PM didn't threaten to kill him, it's more of a stupid bar brawl insult: "I'll rip your heart out," it is not to be taken literally. Of course it doesn't belong in the parliament but...

As how Greeks (broadly speaking) feel about Albanians: I think we know. Let's hope things change as Greece becomes more like the people in this forum and less like Youtube or your church.

Regarding the virgin: In Albania there is a sense of sacrificing everything for the good of the family and that includes honor. Honor is everything: you kill for it and you'd rather kill your son then turn back on your word, at least in the old times. if one disrespected the hospitality of someone, the entire clan would rise to avenge. The same goes for "besa," or word of honor to help each other, truce etc. The Serbs, Montengrins and Turks found out the hard way way (until Russia armed them) what that meant as 10,000 people would rise within a day and cowardice it to etternally embarras your family.

Originally Posted by Bardas

From what I read of his posts he see TirAlb seems like a level-headed guy. Grace, on the other hand, seems a tad more-- let's say-- overtly patriotic.

Just to clarify I haven't got anything against Albanians. When I was in Greece recently I got to know a few since a cousin has got many of them as friends. Despite all the negativity/stereotyping I found them quite resourceful and especially vital since they do the jobs the Greeks don't want. Also, many of them speak Greek without an accent and listen to the latest Greek pop music. In short, any animosity that Albanians percieve re the Greeks I certainly do not share. And anyway am in all the way down in Melb.

So my intention by posting this article is just to highlight that if you want your country to progress you really have to get rid of these politicians: