Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones Page A

nineteen,’ Hana goes on. ‘Uncle Gjergj and Aunt Katrina loved me.’
    Jonida pulls Hana’s cigarettes out of her pocket and hands one to her aunt.
    â€˜Then Uncle Gjergj got cancer. I had to go to the city to get his drugs once a month. I couldn’t go if I was a woman. It was a matter of honor, morality, a woman’s inviolability, and so on. I can’t explain everything now.’ Hana sucks on her cigarette. ‘So I just started dressing like a man. Then Uncle Gjergj died, and here I am.’
    Jonida fiddles with a button, plays around with the cigarette pack, rests her arm on Hana’s shoulder, but she can’t get comfortable. She gets up and then kneels down in front of her.
    â€˜Why couldn’t you go back to being a woman after he died?’
    â€˜There’s no going back.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜Just because. It’s the law; it’s tradition.’
    â€˜And if you do, what happens?’
    â€˜You don’t do it, and that’s that. If you break your oath they can kill you. Anyway, it has never happened. A sworn virgin has never broken her oath.’
    â€˜Did you like guys when you were a girl?’
    Hana smiles, tired to the bone.
    â€˜Albania in those days was not like America now. We lived in the mountains. Things were different.’
    â€˜But did you like guys or didn’t you?’
    Hana repeats that up in the north things were different. They don’t say anything for a while, eyes fixed on the baseball players. Then Jonida asks Hana what she should call her from now on.
    â€˜Just use my name. Forget the Auntie stuff. Call me Hana.’
    â€˜Mom’s not going to like it.’
    â€˜I’ll deal with Mom.’
    â€˜Right, cool.’
    â€˜Can we go home now?’
    â€˜You haven’t told me everything yet.’
    â€˜It would take a lifetime to tell you everything, Jonida.’
    â€˜Well, that’s exactly what we have: our whole lives.’

‌ ‌ 1986
    â€˜Thank God you’re here,’ Uncle Gjergj says. ‘You made it with all this snow.’
    The electricity is down. The snowstorm has stolen the light from all the houses in Rrnajë and the rest of the region. The power lines sag under the weight of the snow. Adults sink to their waists in the freezing mantle, children to over their heads. There isn’t a living soul outside. Just silent snow falling, accompanied here and there by the distant ringing of a bell tied to the neck of some lost goat.
    The hurricane lamp casts Uncle Gjergj’s shadow onto the stone wall of the kulla .
    â€˜Welcome home, dear daughter,’ Aunt Katrina says. She is tall and wizened with age, her hair hidden behind a white headscarf. She looks like Lawrence of Arabia, without the desert, Hana thinks. She saw the film back in Tirana. Aunt Katrina looks like a female version of Peter O’Toole.
    â€˜Are you hungry, my love?’ Katrina asks.
    â€˜No, thank you.’
    â€˜We’ll be eating soon anyway.’
    â€˜That’s fine. Can I give you a hand?’
    â€˜No, sweetie. Your uncle needs to talk to you. I’ll get dinner ready.’
    Katrina disappears into the darkness of the kulla . Uncle Gjergj is lying down, which is not like him. If it weren’t dark she would see his pallid complexion. But she doesn’t see it. He is strong and handsome. The wrinkles on his face are a carefully drawn map.
    â€˜Did you bump into anyone in the village on your way here?’
    Hana shakes her head.
    She had seen the sea before coming to the village. Blerta, her college roommate, had come north with her. She’s from a little village by the sea, near Scutari. Hana slept at her house the night before catching the bus that would take her home. The sea had been rough. Giant waves had vented their multi-hued rage.
    Hana slept really well at Blerta’s house. Wild horses wandered along the deserted beach; the sheets smelled