‘So, Mr Doda, you’re a poet,’ says her traveling companion, who has occupied the seat next to Hana on the plane for the last seven hours.
The line of passengers waiting to get through passport control at Washington International Airport snakes tiredly.
‘Not really.’ She tries to smile.
‘But you write poems, if I’ve understood you correctly.’
You can’t write good poems with a dry cunt, she says in her head. She looks away. A woman is touching up her lipstick, her husband watching with slight disgust, tapping his fingers on his passport. Hana catalogs the scene under the heading: ‘Man out of love, woman still hopeful, marriage ceasefire about to expire.’
You can’t write good poems with a dry cunt, she thinks to herself again, annoyed. Why the hell did she tell him she wrote? He pins her down with his look. It’s no good, she thinks, your enlightened male brain will never be able to guess. Hana smoothes down her man’s suit. The sports jacket is a bit big, but not too much.
Her traveling companion stared at her in the same way during the flight.
‘Here’s my card,’ he now says. ‘In case you need anything, information about the capital, any suggestions. If I’m not traveling around the world or at my house in Geneva, I’ll be in DC. Seriously, call me whenever you want, Mr Doda. I’d be happy to help out.’
Mark concentrates on his carry-on. On his shoes. On his cell phone, which he wants to turn on. I’m sorry, she pleads in silence. Hana reads the name on the card: Patrick O’Connor. The man is of Irish origin. She smiles. Christ, we country folk can sniff each other out.
Her left breast begins to itch. She tries to scratch herself without using her hand. She started feeling the presence of her breasts a year ago, as soon as she got her green card and decided to emigrate to America. She can’t seem to stop the itching.
‘Mr Doda,’ Patrick O’Connor calls, indicating with a nod of his head the passport controller’s narrow cubicle.
The line has moved on. Hana kicks her bag forward. Her brown shoes, one on either side of the bag, look like little hibernating bears.
‘What is the purpose of your visit to the United States, Ms Doda?’ the officer asks as he opens her passport.
It’s too late to go back now. Even the village knows he left holding the passport of a woman.
The village had observed, with penetrating, attentive eyes. The way he was dressed on the day he said goodbye was the object of quiet scrutiny; there were no comments. It was a dark time, and people had little energy to spare. Past glory had faded into the howls and excrement of stray dogs. Shreds of history; the moans of gangsters whose only law was the code of honor; suns that were afraid to set for fear of being surprised by death.
Patrick O’Connor – impatient now, the rhythm of everyday life suddenly printed on his face – holds out his hand.
‘It was a real pleasure talking with you. Too bad you don’t have a phone number here in the US yet. Maybe we can talk again before I go back to Albania. Look me up if you want, I really mean it. Well, good luck.’
Hana shakes his hand shyly. She’s a little sorry they’re parting ways. For seven hours this man was her safety net. O’Connor spent part of the time tapping on the keyboard of a sleek white computer with a picture of a bitten apple on its top. What a beautiful object, she had thought. Then he started talking. He was a great conversation-maker, not at all formal.
‘Use that phone number, really!’ O’Connor shouts for the last time, as he turns to leave. ‘I’m pretty sure you’ll need it.’
She gets through the first stage of passport control and breathes a sigh of relief. They point her to an office where she has to go through more formalities. A half-empty room with thin plaster walls. With her limited vocabulary she finds it hard to assemble answers to the officer’s questions, but the man is patient, and Hana is grateful to him.
‘Welcome to the United States of America, Ms Doda,’ he says at last. ‘That’s all we need to know. You can go now.’
She runs into the nearest men’s room, catapulting herself towards a washbasin. The face in the mirror is angular. Hana shifts her gaze to a man waiting to go into one of the stalls. Others, unabashed and hasty, relieve themselves at the urinals. The door opens and closes to the irregular beat of the travelers’ footsteps.
Hana takes a deep breath, hoping to tame her panic. The family is waiting at Arrivals. There’s her cousin Lila, her thirteen-year-old niece Jonida – whom Hana hasn’t seen since she was a baby – and their husband and father Shtjefën, as well as some other people from the village who emigrated years before. ‘Proud to be American,’ as they had said in their badly written letters. They’ve come from various places in Maryland, and from Virginia and Pennsylvania, and even from Ohio.
Hana had spent a great deal of time poring over a map of the United States, but her imagination had melted at the sheer size of the country. America is immense. She had been living in a village of 280 people.
Out! Now! She says to herself almost aloud. Get out and be a man.
That’s what the clan expects. They want to see what they left behind, a young man gone gray with the weight of duty, a much-loved relative but an oddball. Mark’s arrival is meant to bring them back to the mountains, to the smell of dung, to the splutter of guns, to betrayal, songs, wounds, flowers, to brutality, to the seduction of the mountain trails inviting them to throw themselves over the edge, to love.
Hana shakes her thoughts away. This restroom in Dulles International Airport is so real and tangible, and yet she feels so alien here. You need balls to deal with all this, she thinks, balls she doesn’t have. And that’s not all you need. Why balls? Why? Why me?
Get out of this bathroom, she tells herself. Get out of here, for Christ’s sake!
‘Do you need anything, sir?’ asks a voice to her left.
She turns around. It’s a boy of about fourteen. Or even fifteen, or sixteen.
‘Are you feeling ok?’ he persists, in an accent that sounds familiar to her.
Hana swallows, smiles, straightens up from the washbasin. Says she’s fine, thanks. Almost apologizing.
The boy looks at her, not as self-assured as before. A man – it must be his father, the resemblance is uncanny – comes out of one of the stalls, approaches his son and rests his hand on his shoulder.
‘Is everything all right, Hikmet?’
The boy’s face doesn’t look at all Turkish, or Arabic; he’s almost blond. The father, on the other hand, has a polished face but dark, marked features.
‘This man isn’t feeling well,’ says Hikmet.
Hana denies this, shaking her head, and says, ‘Hikmet? That’s a beautiful name. Turkish, right?’
The man doesn’t seem concerned that the stranger is feeling unwell.
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m Albanian.’
The man pauses a moment, granting a sliver of transient trust to the word Albanian, before doubt returns.
‘Arnavut,’ he says, looking for confirmation in Turkish.
‘Albanian,’ Hana repeats.
‘We live in London. I often come to the States on business and this time I brought Hikmet with me.’
She doesn’t know what to say. Her poor English paralyzes her. The boy is almost at the door.
‘So, you are feeling better,’ states the man, dropping the question mark.
Hana nods.
‘Good luck.’
‘You also.’
Father and son exit.
More time passes before she decides to face her family. She emerges from the restroom like a man on death row, like a fool in a flash of lucidity.
Arms are waving in the air; she hears a girl’s voice shout, ‘Uncle Maaaaark!’ Out of the corner of her eye she glimpses the threatening tail of a German Shepherd on a leash, held by a man in uniform. Her cousin Lila throws herself into her arms. There is much agitation.
‘Hello, cousin!’ Lila cries. ‘Here we all are. But where were you? Where were you? We thought you’d been sent back.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘How should I know? All the passengers from Zurich came out ages ago.’
‘Tungjatë, bre burrë.’2 Shtjefën Dibra, Lila’s husband, greets her with an energetic embrace.
‘Tungjatë, Shtjefën.’
‘Uncle Mark! I’m Jonida, do you recognize me?’
‘Jonida, you’re so big now!’
They order coffee, which is served in plastic cups. The coffee is sad, tasting vaguely like rainwater.
She’s had coffee like this in Scutari a couple of times, where the barmen save money on coffee grounds: one day you might get supplies from the other side of the border, from Montenegro or Kosovo, and the next day you might not. In Tirana, the capital, you can get hold of most things, but Tirana is remote and hard to think about.
Jonida pierces Hana with her look. She sucks on her orange juice, making too much noise, and is scolded by Lila.
‘Uncle Mark, now I get it,’ she says at last.
‘What?’
‘That you’re totally weird.’
‘Oh yes?’ Hana smiles. Lila shakes her head as if to say sorry. Shtjefën looks awkward.
‘Yeah, weird.’ The girl’s attack continues. ‘I mean, like, your clothes look borrowed. Nobody in America wears stuff like that. And you don’t have a beard.’
‘Jonida, shut up,’ Lila implores. ‘What are you doing? I begged you to behave yourself …’
‘If you keep busting your uncle’s balls, he’ll turn right around and go back to Albania,’ threatens Shtjefën, without much conviction.
Jonida starts laughing, shrugging her shoulders, free and stubborn. One of the relatives, Pal, belches noisily; his wife Sanìja’s cell phone rings.
‘He can’t go anywhere,’ the young girl argues. ‘And stop being such a know-it-all, Dad. How’s he going to go back with no money? The ticket costs like …’
She’s still laughing. Two amazing dimples in her cheeks. She’s beautiful, so different from the way Hana had imagined her.
‘Tell me, Uncle Mark – you don’t have the money to go back, right?’
‘That is right.’
‘And Scutari is the ugliest place in the world, right?’
‘That is also true.’
‘And half of the village has emigrated like us, right?’
‘Yes, that is true too.’
‘The north is the poorest part of Albania, right?’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘And you don’t have a beard, right?’
Sanìja gets up and moves away to finish her phone call. Lila blushes. Shtjefën is furious. Pal looks down awkwardly at his chewed nails. Cousin Nikolìn and his wife Rudina freeze to the spot.
Hana tries to change the subject. ‘So you know quite a bit about your country?’
‘The internet. Do you know what the internet is?’
‘A little, yes.’
‘But you really don’t have a beard!’
‘No, I don’t.’
The women stare blatantly, in silence. Lila smiles and murmurs words of encouragement to her cousin but avoids saying her name, though on the phone and in her letters she has always called her ‘Dear sister Hana.’
Hana feels calm now. She doesn’t mind her family; it was the limbo of expectation that made her feel sick.
‘At home I’ve made chicken pilaf and a chocolate cake,’ Lila whispers in her ear. ‘It’s typical American food,’ she adds proudly.
She expects Hana to be impressed, but Hana can only mutter, ‘Oh yes, that’s good.’
‘You’ll be sleeping in the kitchen, Uncle Mark,’ Jonida informs her. ‘So every time Dad gets up to smoke or have a snack he’ll wake you up.’
‘Yes, Shtjefën keeps strange hours. Sometimes he goes to work at three or four in the morning. It’s bad, so he can’t sleep like regular people and he gets up to smoke or eat. You know, at home things are a bit cramped – I already told you on the phone, right? But don’t you worry about a thing.’
How do I look to her? Hana wonders, stubbing out her cigarette. She observes mother and daughter; they don’t look at all alike. Lila has gained some weight, but her face is still pretty. She’s a natural blond, her eyes are a limpid blue, she’s tall and solid, her teeth are wrecked like most Albanians’. Jonida’s gaze is dark but warm, her hair long and parted down the middle, her eyebrows curved and bushy. Big mouth, straight nose and a really beautiful forehead.
‘So, Mark, why don’t we go, brother?’ Shtjefën suggests. ‘It takes over an hour to get home with the traffic the way it is, and you must be jet-lagged. And it’s almost dinner time.’
‘It’s up to you. I don’t know.’
‘Anyway, we’ll see you next Sunday for a dinner you won’t forget,’ says Pal. ‘Today was just to welcome you, now we really should …’
Under the communists, Pal was the elementary-school teacher in the village. Something in his voice has stayed nasal and pedantic. This is the first time Hana has seen Sanìja and Rudina, the cousins’ wives. Of course, they must know the whole story and be dying to fire questions at her, like rounds from a semi-automatic; but they realize that it’s not the right time or place.
Hana can’t take her eyes off Jonida. The girl winks at her.
‘Uncle Mark,’ she concludes as she gets up, ‘you’re the funniest guy I’ve ever met.’
‘Jonida!’ shouts Shtjefën. ‘From now till we get to the house you keep that mouth of yours shut!’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘That’s an order, in case you haven’t got the message.’
‘It was clear, Shtjefën,’ says Lila, trying to smooth things over.
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘It’s your uncle you should apologize to, not me.’
‘Sorry, Uncle.’
‘Forgive me, Uncle Gjergj,’ Hana had implored. ‘I beg you.’
Without lifting his head, he had only grunted, like a bear. Then he had shouted, ‘Get out!’
She had left the room shaking. Forgive me, she had implored again to herself, without even knowing why she was begging forgiveness.
The others go. The men take their leave in the typical style of the north, pressing their foreheads together for a second, left hand on Hana’s shoulder, solemnly pronouncing the formula: ‘May you remain in good health, man.’ Then the Dibras leave too, with Hana in tow.
The journey to the house is tense, like a rifle shot waiting to be fired. Hana sits in the back of the car, next to Jonida, despite Lila’s efforts to make her sit in front. Shtjefën drives well, fast and attentive, a dancer on four wheels in a five-lane highway with cars passing on both sides. But he is tenser than he was at the airport.
‘The Beltway is always stressful,’ he comments, handing Hana a cigarette. She takes it but does not light up.
Every now and then Lila turns and smiles. Jonida stares out of the window, music playing to her through earphones and isolating her from the rest of the world, while the movement of the knee on which her CD player rests marks the rhythm of her temporary sojourn in another dimension.
The sunset is incredible, like a blood orange. Hana understands only that they are traveling northeast, leaving the capital behind them. The interstate signs flash past like prison runaways in green-and-white uniforms.
Jonida drums on her knee. Hana sees her hand holding out a note written in block letters:
YOUR ENGLISH SUCKS. I’LL TEACH YOU AMERICAN. YOU CAN COUNT ON IT.
Shtjefën and Jonida have already gone to bed.
‘Here we are, alone at last,’ says Lila.
Hana looks at her affectionately. Her breast is still itching. Lila is incredibly tense. May God help us, thinks Hana. It can’t be easy; she wouldn’t like to be in Lila’s place right now.
‘Listen,’ Hana says invitingly, ‘why don’t we relax a bit, both of us?’
Lila perches on a stool, making her look even more vulnerable.
‘I want you to feel comfortable.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really, Lila.’
Lila hugs her abruptly, kneeling down in front of her. Hana feels lost in her embrace, ill at ease. Lila understands and breaks away from her, returning to her stool. The grating metallic sound of a passing train drowns out the awkwardness of the moment, reducing the tension.
‘No drama. Ok, I get it,’ says Lila. ‘And no more hugs.’
Hana thinks about it. She lights a cigarette. She feels suddenly exposed and ugly.
‘No, hugs are ok,’ she murmurs. ‘Every now and then. I think they might do me good.’
‘D’you want to go to bed?’ Lila says, changing the subject. ‘It’s past midnight and you must be beat, it’s six in the morning for you.’
‘No, I’m not sleepy.’
‘I am.’
‘You go then.’
‘No.’
Lila takes a cigarette from Hana’s pack and lights it. From the room next door they can hear Shtjefën’s rhythmic snoring.
‘He’s a good man, right?’ Hana asks.
‘Yes, he’s a good father, and always tries to be a good husband.’
Lila puts the fruit bowl in the middle of the table. She starts to pull grapes off the bunch and, rather than eating them, she arranges them in a row on the table.
‘How did you live alone all these years?’
Hana lets the minutes go by. ‘I wasn’t alone,’ she answers. ‘If anything, the opposite.’
‘What do you mean?’
Hana does not shift her gaze from the row of grapes.
‘Have you forgotten the mountains, Lila?’
‘The mountains?’
‘Yes. Mountains made of eyes that observe and forbid, mountains made of silence …’
Shtjefën stops snoring. Hana eats the first grape in the chain. The tablecloth is so white. The kitchen is reassuringly spick and span. Lila, sitting in front of her, is a stranger.
‘It would have been easier if I’d been alone,’ she says.
Her man’s sports jacket has been shed in the corner. All evening, nobody has dared to pick it up and put it away.
‘Do you want me to peel an apple for you?’ Lila offers.
Hana bursts out laughing. It’s a kind laugh, one that nurtures itself and keeps itself going. She gets up, straightens her shoulders and adjusts her baggy pants.
‘Stop treating me like a man who needs to be served! I’m just your cousin Hana, we’re the same age and you’re letting me stay in your apartment,’ she says, not holding back her laughter. ‘I can do things for myself.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m laughing.’
‘Why?’
‘I thought I was ready to take this step, but now I’m scared stiff … and so are you. That’s why I’m laughing.’
‘You really are weird.’ Lila runs her hand through her hair. ‘You always were. Were you like this even as a man?’
‘As a man I carried a rifle, drove a truck and was careful with my words. But what do you know? You had already gone to America.’
‘Can I hug you again?’
Hana doesn’t answer. They embrace with a slow and harmonious gesture and stay entwined naturally. Hana’s head barely reaches Lila’s shoulder.
‘You need to take off these men’s clothes.’
‘There’s no hurry.’
‘The sooner you get rid of them the better.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘I thought that was the deal. That you were coming here to go back to what you were.’
‘Yes, but there’s no hurry.’
Lila detaches herself and stares straight into her eyes. Hana smiles.
‘I’m in no hurry. And anyway, that’s not the most important thing.’
Her cousin is confused. Hana leans towards her and pulls the hair back from Lila’s face.
‘Jonida’s more important. I thought you had told her.’
Shtjefën appears at the door, pale and imposing in his light-blue pajamas.
‘Are you still up? … I’m thirsty.’
He goes to the fridge, pulls out a bottle, and drinks.
‘Sorry, I’m going back to bed.’
Suddenly Lila is overwhelmed by tiredness.
‘I can’t take any more, let’s go to bed too.’
‘I was talking to you about Jonida.’
‘I was never any good at explaining things to her,’ Lila says. ‘Around her I’m just a bundle of emotions. Shtjefën didn’t know what to do either. Then we both agreed. Who knows? If the Americans play some nasty trick on Hana and don’t let her into the country, there’s no point in upsetting the girl.’
‘Why wouldn’t they let me in?’
‘What planet are you from, Hana? A month ago it was the end of the world here.’ She crosses herself. ‘Security measures, fear of other attacks … all those things.’
Hana picks up her jacket and caresses it slowly.
‘We heard about September 11th, even over there,’ she says resentfully. ‘Even up in the mountains we have TV, what did you think?’
Lila laughs and puts the fruit bowl back in the fridge.
‘What’s wrong? You’re acting all offended now. I know you have TV, but it’s another world over there.’
Hana looks out of the window. It’ll soon be dawn. Opposite there are two buildings; down below, rows of parked cars.
‘Yes, we saw everything on the TV in the Rrnajë bar, but that day we’d drunk too much raki because Frrok had just married off his daughter, and the television was half broken, the sound wasn’t working.’
The idea of lying down on the bed is inviting, Hana thinks. What is the village doing now? What is every one of its 280 inhabitants thinking at this precise moment?
‘Come on, bedtime! I’m dying,’ orders Lila.
‘I feel tender,’ Hana says.
The stones in the river at Rrnajë looked like foam. She had observed them, in her meticulous and disciplined way. Then she had understood. They looked like foam because they were white, too white at times, when water danced over them in a fury. Hana didn’t like fury: it tarnished her peace. Even the mountains’ name left her ambivalent: Bjeshkët e Namuna, the ‘cursed mountains.’ The name was too definitive; it left so little room for hope. And yet, close up, the mountains were tame, you just needed to know how to take them. You just needed to learn to sleep there without thinking of the name, a name made up by an outsider, some traveler who knew nothing about the place. There’s no curse, just caution and silence. If you don’t attack them, the mountains, they’ll leave you alone.
She wakes at one in the afternoon and stays in bed a little longer. Then she gets up and looks furtively down the narrow hallway. The apartment smells of lemon, sugar, and coffee. Her imitation Samsonite suitcase, bought in the bazaar behind the great mosque in Scutari, has disappeared, and so have Shtjefën’s shoes.
Lila comes out of the bathroom, smiling and busy. Hana pauses and pats the top of her head, suddenly feeling naked.
‘Good morning!’ Lila greets her. ‘Why are you patting your hair?’
‘I dreamed they were shaving my hair off on sheep-shearing day.’
Lila laughs hesitantly to start with, then her laugh grows, in a crescendo she doesn’t hold back. Hana follows suit, comfortable in her funny baggy pajamas. Lila goes on laughing, and then she pushes Hana into the living room. On the table there’s a feast. Hana decides she must first stop in the bathroom, where a new toothbrush and tube of toothpaste await her, together with various little bottles and unfamiliar paraphernalia. Beautiful towels. She stares at them at length; she’s afraid to use them, she doesn’t want to ruin them.
A year before, back at the village, Maria had received six towels like these from her daughter, who had emigrated to Italy. She had sewn them together and made curtains for the guest room. They were nice curtains: they went well with the rifles hanging in a row along the wall. Ten generations of the Frangaj family men ranged across the wall. No male voice had been heard in that house for a decade, since the blood feud had taken away the last of the Frangaj men, Maria’s son. If she had accepted the offers made by foreigners passing through the mountains after the communists fell she could have made a fortune selling those rifles. But she never had.
She washes quickly and comes out of the bathroom with her face still wet. Lila is pouring the coffee. Hana decides to light up a cigarette. They sit in silence.
Now, in the daylight, the apartment looks beautiful.
‘They say that you’ve been getting stranger and stranger,’ Lila says, more to herself than to her cousin. ‘They say you spend your time writing and reading.’
Greenish smoke plays around Lila’s curls.
‘Does that scare you, Lila? I mean, the fact that I’m weird?’
Lila doesn’t say a word.
‘I took the animals out, I chopped the wood, I worked in the fields, I went to the village meetings and I drank a lot of raki. Nothing else counts.’
‘But this morning, who are you?’ Lila asks cautiously. ‘Have you decided to be Hana or Mark?’
Whatever happened the day after her arrival, Hana had promised herself she would not regret it. She had never regretted anything and she wasn’t about to start now, at the age of thirty-four.
‘For you, I’m Hana. For the others I’ll still be Mark for a while.’
‘Ok.’
‘Ok what?’
‘You’re Mark. I have to treat you like a man.’
‘I told you that for you I’m the same old Hana. Yesterday that’s what you called me. What’s making you change your mind?’
Lila explains that this morning she looks like a man: her dark skin, her morning hair, those baggy pajamas, her yellow teeth, her masculine gestures. She finds it hard to think of her as a woman. Hana plays for time. It’s strange, but hearing those words hurts. On the table there are those buns with a hole in the middle, three little jam jars, butter, orange juice, coffee, sugar, hard-boiled eggs. Stop making an inventory, she tells herself.
‘I’ve been a man for fourteen years.’
Lila tries to drown her gaze in the oily dregs of the coffee.
‘It’s not going to be easy,’ she says finally. ‘Not for any of us.’
‘Really?’ Hana says, with a hint of a smile. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Don’t start now. You’re the one with the education here. I just say what comes into my head.’
Lila checks the clock on the wall impatiently. It’s nearly two o’clock.
‘I’m as ignorant as an ameba,’ Hana says. ‘Education is a big word.’
‘Well, you went to college, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, but only for a year, before going up into the mountains and becoming a man.’
‘Well, I’m a cleaning lady, my dear.’
‘You were the top student in high school.’
Lila starts laughing. ‘And you’re the biggest liar in the northern hemisphere.’
Hana can’t seem to change gear. The pain is rising up inside her. She tries to react, taking ten long breaths. With every breath she feels the tension dissipate. But it’s not enough. Lila looks at her maternally.
‘Did I really use to tell lies?’
‘You bet. Any excuse and you were off making up some story or other. We would mention some guy’s name, and you’d start with some tall tale about him.’
‘There was no TV then. Somebody had to be the entertainer. Those were the days,’ Hana sighs, with a smile.
‘Except we were all practically engaged by then,’ Lila contradicts, spreading butter on those strange buns after carefully slicing them in half. Her fingers are odd; they’re too long and thin for her stocky body.
‘Bagel,’ she says, like a nursery schoolteacher. ‘They’re called bagels. They’re good. Try one.’
Lila spreads butter on one half, drips some honey on it, and takes a bite.
‘The truth is, you had a hell of a great time spinning those stories,’ Lila picks up from where she left off. ‘You got pleasure out of it, your face lit up, you could have gone on for hours.’
Hana imitates Lila, slicing the bagel, spreading the butter, trickling the honey, taking a bite.
‘Now I have to invent my own life,’ she announces when the bagel is finished.
‘Let’s start today. We’ve a lot to do. You’ve already wasted enough time.’
‘No, today no. It’s too soon.’
‘Jonida will be home from school any minute. School’s out at three, and the bus brings her home.’
‘How am I supposed to behave with her?’
‘Just be Mark. Or else, tell her everything.’
‘I think you’re right. Today it’s best if I’m still her uncle. Then we’ll see.’
‘Now, go take a shower. Do you have a change of clothes?’
She has everything, except the chance to get away from her own silence. Now she’s in Rockville, a suburb of Washington, DC. She can’t be rude. She can’t shut herself up in a room of her own and play around with poems of the past and the present. The dead are best. They don’t create problems for you. They don’t laugh in your face. The dead are polite. Goodbye, my brother sea.3 She suddenly thinks about the Turkish boy in the men’s room at the airport. She wonders whether he’s ever read a poem by Hikmet, his namesake. She misses Hikmet. Recently he’s been a friend, mixed in with a bit of Seamus Heaney and a bit of Pablo Neruda. Be normal, people say.
‘When are you going back to work, Lila?’
‘In three days … You’re not getting rid of me before that, you better believe it. Then for three more days Shtjefën will stay at home with you, and after that you’ll have to take care of yourself because you’ll be on your own at home. Now go and take that shower and freshen up – Jonida’s on her way.’
Later, while she’s taking a walk with her cousin and niece, Hana breathes in the afternoon air. The park is alive with brilliant colors. Hordes of mothers with strollers and children, their shouts in a multitude of languages helping Hana go by undetected.
Lila, not without pride, explains that this is a good area to live in. Sure, the houses are more expensive, and that’s why they’ve had to make do with such a small apartment. But a walk in the park is better than ten diets and three sessions in a beauty parlor. Hana thrusts her hands into the pockets of her pants and looks like any man in the street.
Jonida skips in front of them and chats about this and that, mixing Albanian Gheg with American English.4 She tells them about something she does at school called ‘social studies,’ and about her teacher, who talks too much and can’t keep the class quiet. ‘He’s a dickhead,’ she says three times, enough for Hana to learn a new word.
‘Uncle Mark, you look good in that white shirt, but I thought you’d be bigger. In the photo you look bigger, you know? You really have to tell me about the mountains. I need to know everything. Mom never tells me anything. Neither does Dad. They’re too busy working all day.’
‘If we don’t work then who’s going to feed you, sweetie?’ says Lila. The girl isn’t listening. She’s doing pirouettes. She’s like a gazelle, a comet, a love poem. She’s wearing tight-fitting, low-cut jeans, her belly button showing, a blue t-shirt with white writing on it, and underneath a red bra with thin shoulder straps just showing.
‘Do I look good, Uncle Mark?’
‘You’re beautiful.’
‘I want you to like me since Mom really likes you. She’s been talking about you so much with Dad these past months, and all Dad said was “Yes, yes, yes … ”’ She mimics Shtjefën’s voice. ‘There’s a secret, right?’ Hana doesn’t answer. ‘I have to find out the secret. If we’re friends you’ll tell me everything, won’t you?’
Lila has stopped. Hana is stuck halfway between Jonida and her mother.
‘What’s this place called?’ Hana asks.
‘Don’t try and change the subject.’
‘What’s it called?’
‘Rockville. It’s called Rockville. But don’t try and be clever. Are you going to tell me everything about you?’
‘Of course.’
‘And about the mountains?’
‘Whatever you want.’
‘Great! I can’t wait for the old folks to get back to work so I can have you all to myself after school.’
Hana laughs. Jonida rushes on ahead to say hi to a gang of friends.
‘Calm down, Hana. Relax,’ Lila whispers affectionately.
‘I’m very relaxed, I promise.’
The evening with Shtjefën isn’t as bad as she feared. He’s so tired that he doesn’t even take a shower before sitting down to eat. He says sorry a few times; he smells like highways and tar. His eyes are glazed and he talks more slowly than the night before. His voice is like gravel. He asks three times what the two women in his life have done today and if, by any chance, they have had time to think. ‘Of course we have, dear!’ Lila reassures him. ‘Of course you have,’ Shtjefën echoes. He’s part bear, part butterfly, this man. He goes on slurping his bean soup. ‘What about you, Mark? Did you get some rest? You look a bit lost, brother.’ Hana doesn’t answer. She holds on to her spoon and can’t decide whether she’s hungry or not. What’s for sure is that she doesn’t want to talk. She takes in the atmosphere: the gestures that warm the air, the rhythmic tapping of Jonida’s foot under the table, the shouts from the neighborhood children wafting through the open window, the uncertain dance of the drawn-back curtain.
Before asking for Lila’s hand, Shtjefën had been wiry and blond. His head was like a sunflower. The girls in the village said it was because of his height: he caught the sun as soon as it came out, long before the others, and was the last to lose it before sundown. His speech sounded rare and distant, like the glory that cloaked his family. The Dibras had been a great fis, a family clan that had been at war with the Turks for centuries. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the mountains had enjoyed a brief peace. But then the communists had come, decreed the downfall of the fis and executed their leaders, the bajraktar.
But that is the past and history is no longer important.
In the next-door apartment they’re still cooking. The clanging of saucepans mixed with children’s voices and spicy smells make her feel like she’s part of a giant communal soup kitchen.
‘Our neighbors are from Sri Lanka,’ Jonida explains. She smirks: ‘They have six kids.’
‘Did school go ok, sweetie?’ Shtjefën asks.
‘As smooth as anything, Dad.’
‘Good girl.’
‘And you?’
‘Me what?’
‘How did work go?’
‘There’s a lot of it, and as long as there’s a lot of it, I’m taking it, my little girl. If my boss knew how to organize things, it’d be even better. That guy’s a mess.’
‘Oh no, God save us,’ Jonida laughs. ‘Don’t start on the story of your boss, please.’
Shtjefën doesn’t take it hard; he shakes his head and shifts the soup bowl to one side. Lila’s fighting with the mashed potato and the qofte meatballs.
‘Now Mom and I have two men in the house, we need to rewrite the rules of household management,’ Jonida decrees.
Mother and father exchange smiles.
‘We’re in a phase of full-blown feminism here,’ Shtjefën tells Hana. ‘Since our daughter does absolutely nothing at home, she’s championing women’s rights.’
‘I do a lot, Dad,’ Jonida says as she attacks a meatball. ‘You’re never home so you never see, that’s all.’
Lila serves the other adults. Shtjefën pours some grappa for himself and for Hana.
‘Right,’ Shtjefën says. ‘Tell me what you do, smarty-pants.’
Jonida lifts her hair up behind her neck, then drops it, rolls her eyes to give herself an air of importance, and then rests her elbows on the table.
‘I’m your muse: I inspire you, I breathe life into you.’
The adults laugh.
Dinner is soon over and there is an atmosphere of tenderness. Hana offers to do the dishes.
‘Since when do men wash dishes?’ Jonida jokes.
Lila says, ‘No way, Hana.’
‘Look, all these years I’ve been doing everything around the house,’ Hana says, trying to convince them. ‘I know how to do women’s work.’ But Lila is adamant.
Shtjefën lights a cigarette.
‘Tomorrow after school, let’s go out just you and me, Uncle Mark,’ Jonida says, before going to bed. ‘I want you to meet my two best friends who live a block away.’
Hana wants to know why they would want to meet her.
‘What? Are you shy or something?’ Jonida exclaims. ‘If it’s a language problem, don’t worry – ok? You make yourself perfectly clear.’
‘It’s not a language problem.’
‘So what is it?’
Hana looks at Lila, who shakes her head.
‘You three are weird,’ the girl comments. ‘God only knows what’s going on with you.’
‘Listen, Jonida,’ says Hana, gathering her courage. ‘Before meeting your friends, you and I have to talk.’
‘Whenever you want. Do you like ice cream?’
Hana nods.
The parents, sitting facing one another, each look at the opposite wall. The young girl looks downcast.
‘It’s nothing serious, right, Mom?’
‘Not serious, no.’
‘Nobody’s ill or anything?’
‘No.’
‘Well, nothing else is important,’ Jonida continues, relieved. ‘So, Uncle Mark, now that you’ve put this idea in my head, how am I supposed to hold on until tomorrow?’
‘There are some things you can’t say just like that. Be a little patient.’
‘Ok. I’ll just go get my school bag ready, then I won’t think about it anymore.’
She goes out of the room. Shtjefën is worried and stares at Hana.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, brother?’
Hana smiles, with a hint of dismay.
‘Shtjefën, you’re going to have to get used to it sooner or later; you’re going to have to call me by my girl’s name.’
‘It’s too soon,’ he says. ‘Look, sorry, but all my life I’ve seen you as a man.’
‘I know. Let’s drink on it, then I’m going to take a walk.’
Shtjefën offers to go with her and Hana doesn’t say no. Jonida comes in and out of the kitchen, silently watching them from the corner of her eye. Whining fire sirens and rumbling traffic noises come through the window.
Finally, Jonida wishes them all goodnight and goes to bed. Lila goes with her to her room.
There’s nothing we can talk about, nothing that can be put into words easily, Hana thinks later on as she and Shtjefën walk, their cigarettes flashing like fireflies. The night is warm, with a light breeze. There are still joggers out in the park. Cars pass slowly. Shtjefën explains that on small roads like these the speed limit is twenty-five miles per hour, and that the Americans are really strict about these things because this area is a middle-class residential district where people are trying to improve themselves, and so … Shtjefën leaves the sentence hanging in the air. Hana lights herself another cigarette, unsure what to do with the stub of the first. In the afternoon, when they had gone on the same walk with Jonida, her niece had told her never to throw them on the ground, because if you do you’ll get a fine.
‘Here, give it to me,’ Shtjefën says. He wraps both stubs up in a paper hankie, which he then stuffs in his pocket.
He rests his arm on her shoulder and then hastily withdraws.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What about?’
‘It’s hard.’
Hana waits. Shtjefën takes his time before saying it’s weird, this knot of words that he doesn’t know how to get out. He says that in the last nine years the mountains seemed so far away that they didn’t really exist for him anymore. And now … Now finish the sentence, Hana begs in silence.
‘Now you come here to America and I don’t know how to explain that basically all this time I’ve been thinking of you as Mark in the village and at the same time as Lila’s favorite cousin. With all the raki you’ve drunk in your time, Hana. All that raki.’
Hana walks away and Shtjefën does not try to catch up. The distance between them increases.
‘With all that raki, Hana Doda, here you are.’
Hana stops and turns round angrily.
‘Are you drunk, Shtjefën?’
‘No.’
‘Well say what you mean, then.’
‘This is the way I speak.’
‘That’s not true. Tell me, are you scared? Did you say I could come just because Lila wanted me to? Do I embarrass you? Tell me the truth.’
She listens to her hostile, aggressive words and thinks that maybe she’s the one who is drunk around here.
‘Does my presence here make you feel strange?’ she asks, sweetly.
Shtjefën’s heavy body seems to sway.
‘With all the raki you’ve drunk and all the tobacco you’ve smoked, your voice still has something feminine about it. Jonida noticed. And anyway, no, I’m not scared of anything, not for me and not for us. But for you this is a hard place. America doesn’t give you anything for free.’
Hana laughs at this.
‘So you really have forgotten the mountains, Shtjefën. You’ve forgotten how hard it is.’
Shtjefën thinks about this.
‘You’re going to tell Jonida everything tomorrow?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it properly.’
‘She’s growing up so fast that it’s hard to keep up. Lila and I work like crazy and we can barely make ends meet. Sometimes I get back from work and Jonida’s already in bed, and when we’re having breakfast together at the weekend she already has new words in her head. In five years she might be in college, and I’m thinking, God, how am I going to … ?’
Hana is getting used to Shtjefën’s unfinished sentences.
Back then she didn’t know him well. She remembered that a long time ago he was the best dancer in those cursed mountains. Once he had even been sent to the National Folk-dancing Festival at Gjirokastër. His sword dance had won the men’s top prize.
Pictures of Shtjefën and the other guy dancing with him used to hang on the ‘Socialist Emulation’ notice board in the district hall, right in the center of the village. Their arms bearing the glinting swords were thrust up high, their felt skullcaps pushed back, their red and black vests open like wild roses. Hana remembers that it had not been long after the dance that she took the decision to become a man. At Shtjefën’s dance she hadn’t yet known.
Lila and Shtjefën had just got married.
When she had gone back to Tirana, where she had been in college, the village of Rrnajë seemed so remote to Hana it made her head spin. She remembered wondering what she had been doing in that dump. She remembered calling to mind memories of cities and abstract poems written by foreigners in faraway lands. She remembered feeling like a stone at the bottom of a dark well. Her uncle was sick and bedridden; her aunt had just died. Hana had only the animals for company, and the poems she used to write now and then.
‘Shall we go back?’ Shtjefën asks Hana. ‘I’m beat.’
Much later, when the Dibras are all asleep, Hana steps out onto the tiny kitchen balcony. She leaves the door open for a moment so the room where she’ll be sleeping gets some air. Then she shuts the door, lights a cigarette and smokes it as calmly as she can, leaning on the balcony, trying to empty her mind. When she is able to do this, it is a particularly pleasurable exercise. She leaves her thoughts out and lets the silence in. It is a great sensation; she is full and empty at the same time. Her head lets air in, and the air acts as a kind of fan that refreshes the inside of her mind. She becomes aware of the pulse of her existence. It beats in her weak stomach, pauses for a while in her kidneys, which have never given her trouble. It is a simple, quiet journey. She feels like a rather undemanding tourist, lacking all curiosity. There is nothing she doesn’t already know in there; nothing new to discover.
She runs her hand through her short, thick hair. Her shower that morning has softened it. Lila had urged her to use the conditioner after the shampoo and she had obeyed. She had even quipped something stupid like, ‘You’re already on a mission to civilize your cousin,’ which had annoyed Lila. ‘Don’t start that crazy stuff,’ Lila had answered. Hana had laughed.
Here you are. That’s how they say it. Here you are. Her first American solitude. Her first night in this suburb, so like the films.
It feels like centuries since she left Rrnajë. She feels the shoulders and then the collar of her shirt. Lila’s washer and dryer have already washed the smell of the mountains away.
She feels as though she is not herself; her name isn’t Hana, her name isn’t Mark. This feels like someone else’s journey. She is watching the performance of a surreal dream.
So we go as we came,
goodbye, my brother sea.
There is no going back. She’s been saying it for a year. If she leaves, there is no going back. At times, it sounds like a threat. At others, like a joke.
‘Show them who you are, Mark Doda,’ she had said out loud, on her own in the kulla that was slowly going to ruin.5 ‘Show them you have the balls.’ The metaphor had made her laugh. But since then she had repeated it over and over. Show them who you are.
She is trying with all her strength. All she has to do now is work out how to go on.
One step at a time. First talk to Jonida, and see how it goes. Then talk to Lila, and see how it goes. She listens to the night; it’s past three. There’s no cock crowing. There are no mountains. Just night.
Back at Rrnajë, the Rrokajs’ mad calf had started imitating the cock’s crow every morning, at three on the dot, driving everyone crazy. Its translucent hide was dazzlingly white and it had two red patches on its face and one on its belly; it was the kind of animal that justified the expression ‘good looking and stupid.’ Soon after it was born, it had tried to suck milk from a goat. The village children laughed their hearts out. The goat kicked the calf away.
‘What now?’ Hana asks the night. She can see dawn coming reticently, hesitant on the horizon. She stubs out her second cigarette, decides she’s had enough of these foolish thoughts and that now she can go to bed. She hears the balcony door open suddenly.
‘You’re not tired?’ Shtjefën asks her. ‘I’m off to work soon. So if you go to bed now, I’ll be disturbing you for the next half hour before I leave.’
‘No problem,’ Hana whispers. ‘I can sleep through anything.’
Shtjefën makes room on the balcony for Hana to go back in. He goes towards the bathroom. Hana closes the kitchen door, takes her pants and shirt off quickly and puts her light flannel pajamas on. She doesn’t have time to fold her clothes; she thinks Shtjefën might come out of the bathroom before she’s done. But he takes his time. She hears the shower running. She pulls the comforter up around her shoulders. Then she decides that tomorrow she’ll talk straight to Lila about the division of labor in the house, and falls asleep.
The next day it’s raining gently. This doesn’t seem to pacify the hysterical traffic and the regular wail of fire sirens. The water lands on the sidewalk and trickles away in dirty brown rivulets. The flirtation between the trees and the fall goes on. The green leaves are compromised by touches of seasonal sunset red. Only the heat never lets up. It’s relentless, obstinate, hard to bear.
Near the Dibras’ apartment there’s a supermarket, and there’s a post office on the other side of the road. Downtown is a few minutes away by car.
‘This location is great,’ Lila tells Hana. ‘When you need to go shopping or mail a letter, you can walk. For everything else in this country, you spend your life in the car.’
Lila blends in perfectly with all this, Hana thinks. She is clean and carefully groomed, and she’s used eyeliner.
There are pancakes for breakfast. Lila announces that they’re going to the mall to do some shopping, then starts firing questions at her incoherently. Hana listens.
She listens until Lila bursts out, ‘What’s got into you? Cat got your tongue?’
She shrugs. Her cousin points at the plate of pancakes, which has a transparent plastic lid on it.
‘Try some. They’re good,’ Lila says. ‘They’re like our petulla.’
Hana tries them with maple syrup and melted cheese. They each drink two big cups of coffee.
‘It’s so nice to have you here,’ Lila says with feeling. ‘I have girlfriends here but there are some things about us I can’t share with them. Now you’re here I feel less alone.’
‘But you have your family,’ Hana objects. ‘How can you feel alone?’
Lila empties her coffee cup.
‘Your daughter is your daughter,’ she answers. ‘I’m the one should be listening to her problems, not the other way round … but maybe from your point of view that’s hard to understand.’
On the wall there are photos: Jonida when she was little, Shtjefën and Lila on their wedding day with the whole clan proudly dressed for the occasion, a recent picture of Jonida during a volleyball game, Lila with a group of women. Hana wants to know where they were taken. Her cousin tells her about her nursing course and her graduation.
‘That’s as far as I got,’ she says with a sigh. ‘And I don’t think I’ll be able to go any further.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’d have to go back to school for years and I have a home to run and a daughter to take care of. I can’t afford to pay for another course. It’s too late now.’
Hana starts clearing the table and Lila lets her do it. They don’t say another word until they leave the house and get into the car, a rusty old Toyota Corolla.
‘I’m taking you to a great place now,’ Lila announces.
They get onto a road that’s called the 355 South, three lanes in both directions, more cars than she can imagine. Hana is overwhelmed with painful nostalgia for her old truck, which she sold to Farì, a mechanic she knew in Scutari. An old contraption from the days when Chinese cars were all there was, it wasn’t even worth the 500 euros she got for it. She was amazed she had made any money at all.
‘Tomorrow we’ll go and register for your driver’s license. You have to go through the whole works, eye screening, a knowledge test, and then your learner’s permit. I’ll take you out in Shtjefën’s car, which is in good shape, unlike this old clunker. Remind me later on, I’ll make a call.’
‘There’s no hurry.’
‘Yes there is. Next week I’m going back to work and I won’t be able to drive you.’
‘There’s no hurry.’
‘Stop saying there’s no hurry, will you?’
The mall is gigantic and sleek.
‘You can even go to the movies here,’ Lila explains. ‘You can come in the morning, buy anything in the world, eat, catch a movie, and go home after a good day.’
‘Is there a Barnes and Noble bookstore?’ Hana asks, before they go inside.
‘No, they don’t have one here.’
‘So it’s not true you can buy anything here.’
Lila pushes her through the door.
‘And how do you know about Barnes and Noble?’
Hana doesn’t answer. She repositions her man’s sports jacket over her shoulders. She likes wearing it without putting her arms in the sleeves. She looks broader in the chest that way, especially when her hands are in her pockets. She looks at the tips of her shoes. She’s a 5½, and it was hard back in Albania to find men’s shoes in her size. She always had to buy her underwear in the kids’ department.
‘We haven’t come here just to stand around all day, eh!’ Lila says, grabbing Hana by the arm. ‘Come on, I need some caffeine.’
Hana turns around and holds her gaze.
‘What the hell’s got into you?’ she asks. ‘Of all the cousins in your family you could invite over here, you had to choose the weird one?’
‘Is this something we have to solve here at the mall?’ Lila quips.
‘Why did you do this whole thing?’
‘We’ve been talking about it for a year on the phone.’
‘Answer me, now.’
Lila’s profile is suspended between weariness and exaltation.
She doesn’t want to talk, Hana realizes. All Lila wants to do is drag her into the depths of the mall and take her around the wonderland she thinks will help her to help Hana. Indeed, Lila doesn’t open her mouth. She pulls her towards a café with little tables, where they take a seat. Lila goes and orders two espressos and comes back with a tray.
‘You were not a happy man, Hana. That’s all.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Ok, then, you tell me why you came.’
Hana looks out at the people carrying shopping bags of every shape and size, kids holding hands in a circle, two oversized women with their belly buttons showing. She can’t believe it.
‘You were not a happy man and you know it, just like you know this is coffee we’re drinking. It’s Italian, and delicious. And anyway, let’s stop talking in this tragic way. I want to have fun today and be lighthearted. I want to enjoy you as you are now, in your last few hours as a man.’
Hana drinks her coffee in silence. The glass dome of the lobby lets in an uncertain sunlight that’s trying to get past the clouds. Americans use weird words. A shopping center is a mall. In Albanian, mall doesn’t squeeze money out of you, you carry mall around with you, you rock it gently in your arms. Mall is homesickness that consumes you, like saudades.
‘Now I’m going to show you a store where we can buy some of the things you need,’ Lila says, once again on her mission. ‘In the next few days we’re going to have to think about what to do with your hair.’
They walk into a huge store. Young assistants. Shrill voices. Dazzling smiles. Belly buttons of all kinds on show. Lila points out the fitting rooms, but then drops her arm. Her eyes betray her confusion. Which changing room? The men’s one, with women’s clothing? Hana looks at her, amused.
‘This whole belly button thing,’ she says, ignoring Lila’s perplexity. ‘It’s not always such a good thing.’
‘You and I have more serious things to think about!’ Lila is getting nervous. ‘Why didn’t I think of it before?’
Hana doesn’t want to try anything on. She’s only there because she doesn’t want to go against Lila’s wishes.
‘You can’t go around like this,’ her cousin says.
‘I’ll go around just as I’ve been going around up to now,’ she mutters. ‘Who’s looking anyway?’
‘I wanted to start doing something useful. Time shouldn’t be wasted,’ Lila answers.
‘We’re not wasting time. We’re together, and that’s what counts.’
‘Have you taken a look at yourself in the mirror, Hana?’
‘No, I never look.’
‘There, you see?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.’
‘You haven’t.’
‘I’m useless at this.’
There was no need for mirrors in Rrnajë. Hana would leave the house and the first person she greeted on her path would be her mirror. Tungjatë, Mark. That was it. She had men’s clothes and a flask of raki in her pocket, and these had also been her mirrors. She had needed nothing else. Up there in the mountains, time and place had been equal partners.
It is nobody’s fault if at this precise moment she’s so far away from there. She grabs her cousin by the arm and coaxes her up. They wander around the mall with no particular aim. It feels weird for Hana to spend time this way. She’s never done it before.
‘Tungjatë, Mark, bre burrë, a je?’
‘I’m sorry for all this, Hana,’ her old uncle Gjergj Doda had said.
‘Don’t say that, Uncle. It’s not your fault.’
‘Let me die. I’m tired. What is there for me to live for?’
‘You can live for me, you’re like my father.’
‘A father marries off his daughter, he doesn’t hang round her neck.’
‘You’re not hanging round my neck, Uncle Gjergj. You’ll get better. I’ll bring you your medication.’
‘You know there’s no cure. Hana, why sacrifice yourself? You have to get married. You should be the sunshine in a house full of children.’
Hana hadn’t said anything. Her uncle had hardly been able to breathe, there wasn’t a blade of grass for the animals to eat, and she, at nineteen, had Walt Whitman’s poems in her unopened suitcase. She wanted to get back to that book, but her uncle was there in front of her, more dead than alive. She was the only girl in the village enrolled in college. She hadn’t wanted children, all she had wanted was books. But in the mountains you couldn’t say these things if you were born a girl.
‘May God help us, Hana, my little girl.’
‘Amen, Uncle Gjergj.’
Her eyes are suddenly welling up and she doesn’t try to hide it. The tears run down and tickle her lips. She licks them and tastes her homesickness. A boy is running into a shop called American Eagle and a young mother is running after him. ‘Eddy, where are you going?’ and then more words she can’t understand. The way black people talk is hard for her to follow. More tears. She shuts her eyes, her jaw is trembling and she feels pain in the pit of her stomach.
‘Hana, what’s wrong?’ Lila is shaking her, alarmed. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. I’m ok.’
‘How can you say you’re ok? You’re crying.’
‘I’m fine, Lila.’
‘Why are you crying then?’
‘I don’t know. I feel like crying and so I cry.’
‘You must be really sad.’
‘Not even a bit.’
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘That is the truth.’
‘Don’t drive me crazy, tell me what’s wrong with you.’
‘Leave me alone, will you?’
Two Asian girls are following the scene without paying much attention, staring at Hana with their thoughts elsewhere. They speak to each other fast in a language full of vocal spikes. Hana tries to control her tears.
‘I’m starting to get worried,’ Lila says.
Hana moves closer to her.
‘You don’t have to worry. This is my battle, not yours.’
‘I want to help you. I want you to be a normal woman as soon as possible.’
‘You’re ambitious, cousin. Ambitious and impatient.’
‘That was the deal.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ she mumbles. ‘It’s my soul more than anything, and I can’t hurry my soul.’
‘You’re thirty-four,’ Lila says. ‘That’s no joke.’
‘It’s not even half of my life.’
‘You spent fourteen years as a man.’
‘They’re not lost.’
‘If you go on thinking about it, you’ll end up an old woman,’ Lila says disapprovingly.
Hana strokes her hair. The precipitous voices behind her fade away. Turning around, she sees the two Asian girls have left. She turns back to Lila and hugs her, holding her tight. The two girls are replaced by a slim black woman with dreadlocks. Her tight dress is bright orange with pale-green embroidery round her ample cleavage. She looks beautiful, a goddess. Hana, wrapped in Lila’s embrace, observes her. When they let go they both feel better. The woman in the orange dress allows her goddess aura to melt away as she pulls a CD player with earphones like Jonida’s out of her bag. She fixes these in her ears and starts moving to the beat.
‘What about another coffee?’ Hana suggests. ‘Then you can take me to that bookstore, Barnes and Noble. A guy on the plane told me about it. O’Connor, the journalist. Remember? I have to buy a dictionary.’
‘I’ll take you to the bookstore if we at least buy you some underwear first.’
‘That’s blackmail.’
‘That’s exactly what it is.’
Hana laughs, but Lila is serious.
‘You don’t have to try the underwear on. I’ll just get some socks, underpants and something to go under your jacket – here they call them “tank tops.” Ok?’
Hana shrugs. Lila gets up and sets off on a mission. She comes back with two bags of stuff.
‘Now you won’t have to worry about anything for a while,’ Lila says as she settles back into her chair with an expression of victory on her face that Hana doesn’t understand. It must be a woman thing, she thinks.
‘Can we go to the bookstore now?’
‘Tell me,’ Lila insists in a tone that leaves no room for maneuver, ‘what about bras? Have you ever used one?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have any idea of your size?’
‘No.’
‘But your breasts are small, right?’
‘So it seems.’
‘Does every little thing have to be such a problem? Soon Jonida’ll be back from school. We’ve been here all morning and look what we’ve got to show for it – a few pairs of panties and not much else.’ Lila opens the bags as if to prove her point.
‘My small breasts have helped me not to stoop.’
‘I get it.’
‘No, you don’t get a thing.’
‘You may be right.’
‘I love you, Lila.’
‘Well, you tell me when you’re ready then. I thought what you looked like on the outside would help you a little bit on the inside, but maybe I’m wrong.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘I thought that if you saw yourself from the outside …’
‘I love you, Lila.’
‘Ok, ok, I love you too.’
‘I haven’t said those words to any living soul since Uncle Gjergj died. It’s hard not to be able to tell anyone you love them for so long. As for everything else, let’s take it easy,’ Hana begs. ‘There’s no hurry.’
‘The thing is, you look like a guy trying to act effeminate,’ Lila says, as if this were the last card in her hand. ‘Your voice is odd, your face is rough. No one will give you a job if you look weird. People don’t want problems around here; all they want is employees who are as normal as possible. You have to understand.’
‘I’ll tell them I’m a woman with a difference.’
‘It’s not so easy.’
‘I can’t go so fast, trust me.’
‘Why not? You’ve had a whole year to think about it.’
‘If I hurry, I feel terrible.’
She doesn’t know a thing about the road they’re on, but she stares at the road signs anyway. Lila turns the car radio on. Jazz. Hana looks out of the window. She then tries to memorize the junctions as they pass them on the 355. ‘Is this normal life?’ she wonders. She’s been wondering for years what it would be like. The music is beautiful. She knows nothing about music but she knows she likes this.
Soon she’ll be driving too; she just has to be patient a while and she’ll have her own rusty old car. She has the money. She’s saved up everything she earned taking wood down from the mountain to the town. She can’t wait for the day she has her own car. She wants to tell Lila but she doesn’t know how. Because I’m an outsider, Hana thinks. Just because I’m a cousin it doesn’t mean she knows me. It just means I’m a cousin.
‘Remember, Barnes and Noble is at the junction of Rockville Pike and Hubbard … Look at this, will you? I can’t believe I have to take a hillbilly to a bookstore when she’s only been in town for three days.’
Lila parks the car. On the left there’s a café, on the right a homeware store. Hana is trying to memorize everything.
‘Listen, Hana. Do you mind if I don’t go in there with you? I don’t know what to do in a bookstore.’
Hana says that’s fine.
They split up and Hana goes in to explore. She looks around. Nobody seems to be paying any attention to her. She tries to relax but it’s no good. To the right there are the counters where people are in line to pay. In front of her there’s a huge table with new books on offer. Right behind her, the escalators.
She is frozen cold. It could be the air conditioning; she’s not used to it. There are lots of people sitting in armchairs and reading near the store window. She hides among the shelves. Some readers are sitting on the floor and Hana decides to copy them. She dives into a narrow corridor between two bookshelves. The carpet is brown; her shoes are ridiculous. There are dictionaries all around her now. You’re ridiculous, she tells herself. You’re scared, you’re still scared, but no one’s looking at you. To her left there’s a young woman, a student maybe, balancing a pile of books in her arms. She’s wearing a pair of really nice glasses. She’s dressed a bit like Jonida, only more sophisticated.
‘Do you need any help?’ she asks, after a moment.
‘I need an English dictionary.’
‘You’ve just arrived, right?’
‘How do you know?’
The girl smiles. Her hair is thick and black. She’s holding a pen, her nails are long and manicured, varnished silver.
‘Five years ago I was going through the same thing. I was terrified, and I could hardly speak a word of English. The first thing I bought was a dictionary … They’re right behind you,’ she says. ‘You’re leaning on them.’
Hana turns around and sees them. She strokes them for what feels like a long time.
‘Have you found anything?’ Lila asks, tapping her on the shoulder.
‘I’ll get this. There’s forty percent off. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know a thing about it, sweetie. Ask me about fabric, washing powder, drugs, how to make a bit of extra money on the side to get to the end of the month, anything, but leave books out of it. You don’t think you’re going to get a job here in America using books, do you?’
‘I’ll be a construction worker, don’t worry.’
‘They don’t take women in the construction business.’
Lila checks her watch. They step onto the escalator. Hana steadies herself.
‘I could be a taxi driver,’ she says, gathering courage. ‘There are women taxi drivers, right?’
Lila is tense. She looks at Hana, trying not to show it, and then reaches out to her, resting her arm on her shoulder. There’s not much left of the pretty girl she once was. Back in the mountains there had been plenty of young men secretly in love with Lila. She is different now. She’s got a frenetic look in her eyes. She’s a bit homesick, which she tries to hide. And she’s got enough love for her daughter to nourish the whole world.
On their way home, Hana is filled with a sudden euphoria. This is the third time she’s taken this road – the 355, or Rockville Pike – and she feels as though she’s known it for a long time. The rest won’t be that difficult. All she has to do is talk to Jonida, explain things. All she has to do is turn into a woman, for real. All she has to do is learn the language. All she has to do is get a job and a room of her own. All she has to do is be normal. All she has to do is forget.
Forget.
Solitude; the death of glory in the mountains; her poems that would never become books; her last memory of her parents fixed forever on a winter’s day.
‘Where are you going to talk to Jonida?’ Lila asks her.
‘In the park we went to yesterday.’
‘You don’t want me to come with you, do you?’
Hana stares ahead.
‘I want to be alone with her. Let’s see if I can still spin a good tale.’
The park is almost empty. A couple in identical jogging pants runs by. A man jogs past them, pushing a gigantic three-wheeled stroller. Hana says it is four o’clock in the afternoon, just to say something. A family of ducks is standing in the middle of the lawn. The road behind the park is called College Parkway. It has taken Jonida and Hana ten minutes to reach this point.
They sit on a bench.
‘So, Uncle Mark,’ Jonida kicks off, a flicker of fear in her eyes. She crosses her long legs and her high ponytail catches in the wind. ‘I’ve been thinking all day about what you’re going to say, about all those things my parents hide from me, but I’ve guessed anyway, though I haven’t said a thing to them.’
Hana gets her cigarettes out, but Jonida grabs them.
‘They’re bad for you.’
‘What have you guessed?’
‘We’re here because you have to explain things to me, right?’
‘I want to smoke.’
‘It’s bad for you.’
‘I’ve smoked for fourteen years. One more cigarette isn’t going to kill me.’
‘Promise you’ll stop soon?’
‘Look, I’m not your father, ok?’
Jonida smiles for the first time and takes out one cigarette for Hana, then puts the pack away in her own pocket.
‘So who are you in real life, Uncle Mark?’
‘I’m your auntie, your mother’s first cousin.’
Embarrassed giggles. Jonida suddenly uncrosses her legs and jumps up, facing Hana without actually looking at her. She looks beyond her, staring at the road.
‘I know you’re gay,’ she says in an intimate tone of voice. ‘That much is pretty obvious. But—’
‘Wait a minute,’ Hana interrupts her. ‘Me, gay?’
‘What’s the problem then? Why is everything all hush-hush around you? You’re homosexual. That’s what I thought the moment I saw you.’
Hana bursts into laughter, but the smoke chokes her. She’s laughing and coughing at the same time. She gets up too and they start walking. Jonida acts like she knows everything.
‘You haven’t done the operation yet, right? I mean, sexually, you’re still a man?’
Hana hides behind her laughter.
‘No,’ she says finally, ‘I’m not a man. And I’m not gay. Not even a little bit. I’m a woman. I’ve been a girl since the day I was born.’
Jonida slumps down on the grass. She’s managed to find a spot where the newly cut grass doesn’t prick her legs. Hana sits down next to her and puts out the cigarette she still hasn’t finished.
‘I’m not gay and I’m not lesbian,’ she repeats. ‘I know I look strange, a kind of hybrid, but I am a woman.’
‘Where are your boobs then?’
‘Here. Not very big ones, but I wear baggy shirts, as you can see.’
Jonida is silent. Hana gives her time to digest the information.
‘Now I don’t understand a thing. Starting with why you dress and act like a man. And how you managed to pass as a man, even though you were weird.’
‘It’s a long story,’ Hana murmurs.
It is such a long story. She’s already tired. To their right, a group of kids heads towards the big field where there’s an oval of well-trodden earth.
‘They’re going to play baseball,’ Jonida explains. ‘Last year I was on the softball team but it was so boring I left. Now I play volleyball.’
Some clumsy kid hits his leg with the bat instead of hitting the ball. The coach makes him lie down. They all huddle around him.
‘What do you know about the mountains, Jonida?’
Her niece thinks for a minute and then answers, pronouncing every word carefully. She knows that the mountains are really poor, that they’re always shooting each other, that there are blood vendettas and family feuds. Her parents don’t talk about it much. Lila says they’re American now and should live in the here and now. She also knows that a boy from Montenegro in eighth grade at school speaks Albanian, not Serbo-Croat, which means there are Albanians in Montenegro, but not that many. She knows she’d like to go there some day, to see it with her own eyes. She’d like to engage with her country, some day.
‘Maybe my story’s not as complicated as it seems,’ Hana says.
Her parents had both died in a bus accident while they were on their way to a wedding in the city. Those dirt roads were made for animals, not for trucks. Hana had been orphaned at the age of ten.
‘Wait a minute,’ Jonida says. ‘You’re going too fast, you’re making it too … ’ She leaves the sentence hanging in the air. That’s how she takes after her father: her sentences made of air, hanging on invisible hooks. ‘What’s the death of your parents got to do with you deciding to be a man?’
Hana scratches her forehead.
‘It’s not that hard to be a man, you know?’ she says. ‘I swore never to get married. It’s a tradition that exists only in the north of the country. Let me explain: when there are no boys in a family, one of the girls swears to behave like a man and to remain a man for the rest of her life. From that moment on, she has to play all the roles and take over all the tasks of a man. That’s why I became the son my uncle never had. Uncle Gjergj was my father’s brother; he took me in and brought me up after my parents died.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘I just gave you the basics.’
‘I don’t get it. Why doesn’t the girl just do the men’s stuff without having to turn into a man? Why can’t she just do what she wants?’
Jonida’s voice sounds alarmed. Hana feels guilty. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.
‘So? Why can’t she?’ Jonida urges her on, realizing that her aunt is troubled by the question.
‘Only a man can be the head of a family. Men are free to go where they like, to give orders, buy land, defend themselves, attack if need be, kill, or order someone else to be killed. Men get freedom and glory along with their duties. Women are left with obedience. And the girl I once was had a problem with obedience. That just about sums it up.’
She says this looking Jonida straight in the eyes, her words like sharp pins, accusing. But it’s no good. Her niece can’t be blamed for anything, except maybe having made her bring forth this perverse fairytale.
‘I was a girl until I was 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.
‘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.
‘Why couldn’t you go back to being a woman after he died?’
‘There’s no going back.’
‘Why not?’
‘Just because. It’s the law; it’s tradition.’
‘And if you do, what happens?’
‘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.’
‘Did you like guys when you were a girl?’
Hana smiles, tired to the bone.
‘Albania in those days was not like America now. We lived in the mountains. Things were different.’
‘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.
‘Just use my name. Forget the Auntie stuff. Call me Hana.’
‘Mom’s not going to like it.’
‘I’ll deal with Mom.’
‘Right, cool.’
‘Can we go home now?’
‘You haven’t told me everything yet.’
‘It would take a lifetime to tell you everything, Jonida.’
‘Well, that’s exactly what we have: our whole lives.’