cult of virginity fades slowly in albania __ balkan insight.pdf

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Cult Of Virginity Fades Slowly In Albania :: Balkan

Insight

Altin has come home to find a virgin.

Tall, good-looking and in his thirties,

he is back from Britain where he has

worked for more than a decade,

seeking an appropriate girl to marry.

But three weeks into his stay at his

hometown of Korce in southern

Albania, the hunt is proving

frustrating. Its been weeks since I

came here and in four more days Ihave to go back, he complains.

Altin says his relatives and friends

promised to find a good selection of

virgins that he could meet during his

visit.

Despite high expectations, the search

for his virgin bride has so far been fruitless. The virgins were just not

what he expected.

Theyre either too young or just inappropriate, he declares with a

shrug, smoking the Gauloises cigarettes he brought with him from

Britain.

Gazing into the sunset, he does not try to conceal a general sense of

discomfort. What if I just picked one of them and then found out thatshed been touched? he asks. What should I do then, send her back?

In London, where he is a waiter, Altin has been involved in several

casual relationships with local girls. But these liaisons were never

intended to lead to marriage. An Albanian wife, he says, has a different

role and other obligations.

Shuke Deda, meanwhile, is definitely a virgin, though hardly of prime

of Virginity Fades Slowly in Albania :: Balkan Insight http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/cult-of-virginity-fades-sl

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marriageable age.

Aged 90, she wears long woolen white socks, a symbol of her untouched

status. She has lived all her life in Theth, a village in mountainous

northern Albania.

I didnt like the candidates they proposed for marriage, so I decided toremain a virgin for the rest of my life. That is the custom, she whispers

almost inaudibly, her words partially translated by her sister-in-law.

Sworn virgins

Shuke is a classic example of the survival of the ancient Albanian law

code known as the Canon of Leke Dukagjini.

The code declares that if a girl refuses the candidate proposed to her -

and no extraordinary mitigating circumstances are in place - she must

remain a virgin forever.

She had been living with her brother but since he passed away, his

widow has been her only companion. Shuke still lives in the same house

that her parents lived in, an imposing two-floor stone structure built

more than a century ago, which embodies traditional architectural styles

and motifs.

Like her ancient, dignified dwelling, Shuke herself is a museum piece, a

relic of a disappearing world. Today, even in remote parts of Albania,

where customary taboos have held sway for centuries, the sexual

dynamics are changing.

Histories of Albania have long dwelled on the importance of virginity in

society. From the 19th century onwards, foreign writers in particular

put Albanian marriage codes, blood feuds, religion, hospitality, as well

as such phenomena as sworn virgins - women who obtained male

status by pledging eternal virginity - under a spotlight.

They portrayed the Land of Eagles as an untamed and archaic society,

cut off from the modern world.

Albania has changed a lot since then and today it aims to join the

European Union. But fragments of the old cultural codes have survived.


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Ancient code of conduct

In mountainous rural Albania, the loss of a womans virginity to anyone

other than her husband remains a taboo, thanks in large part to the

continuing influence of the Canon of Leke Dukagjini.

Nebi Bardhoshi,an expert in Albanian customary law and professor atthe European University of Tirana, explains that what is conventionally

known as the canon represents an evolved set of rules and values

updated over centuries by several authors, lawmakers and local or

national leaders.

Although this set of rules,

commonly referred to as the

canon, exists mostly in

northern Albania, identical or

similar values still exist in

other parts of the country,

bearing the same origin and

legacy, Bardhoshi notes.

The canon comprises a

complex framework of

regulations, ranging from matters of communal concern to sentences forcertain offences for some of which the canon demands the death

penalty.

Referring to demands for the death penalty in the event of breaches to

the sexual code, Bardhoshi clarifies that such severe punishments were

mostly confined to cases of sexual relations between blood relatives. The

death penalty did not necessarily apply to cases of lost virginity.

If a bride was found to have been deflowered on her marriage night,she would normally be taken back to her family and confined to the

house for life, or remarried to a lower-status husband, he says.

Aferdita Onuzi, an Anthropology professor at the University of Tirana,

says that in terms of Albanian custom, virginity did not represent a

moral issue alone. It traditionally played a practical role, defining the

status of institutions such as marriage.


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From my own observations, particularly in rural areas, almost half-a-

century of communist rule and the imposition of its values failed to have

much impact on existing moral customs and values, she says.

A moral revolution

Traditional values may be holding on in country areas but since thecollapse of the communist regime, rapid change has become evident in

Albanian approaches to sex.

Urbanization, the deeper penetration into society of the media and

migration are all playing a significant role in changing Albanias

morality.

In a Tirana nightclub, Artemis floats alone, lost in bossa nova rhythms

and oblivious to the insistent glances coming from the masculineaudience seated at surrounding tables.

The smooth music and low, smoky lights create a sense of intimacy in

the Charles Bistro, a mainstream club in the centre of the capital city.

The band is not that great, but you can still dance, she says, emptying

whats left of a Cuba Libre cocktail. That is her first and last drink for the

night. She is feeling sad, having broken up with her boyfriend more than

two weeks ago.

My mother knows about it all but we dont really talk that much; not

about these matters, she adds. Now 23, Artemis has been living in

Tirana for about ten years. Before then, she and her family lived in the

much smaller, more conservative district of Kukes in northern Albania.

Her father, now a businessman, used to be a primary school teacher,

while her mother was a housewife. Artemis feels lucky that her family

moved to Tirana, or she would have remained hostage to the tight

traditional restrictions placed on Albanian girls that her cousins have

had to live with.

Both my uncles daughters are already married, or are engaged, even

though two of them are younger than me, she explains, adding that girls

in her hometown rarely go out. As for being caught in a physical

relationship, he had better be your future husband or else, she says.


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You have to be a virgin and preserve your honour intact, so you can

marry a suitable husband, she explains, and that is the only man you

will ever be with for the rest of your life.

Back in Kukes, things are not

yet done as they are in

Tirana. Here, after sunset, itis still rare to see

unaccompanied women. Bars

are often busy, but the

clientele is overwhelmingly

male.

Ahmet Merguti, [pictured

right] a father of six who is

now in his eighties, has lived

to see the rise and fall of communism in Albania and watch new values

replace old ones. He has witnessed old orders falling apart and new

conventions being put in place.

But throughout all these tumultuous changes he has always upheld

traditional Albanian codes of morality, especially regarding marriage

and virginity.

None of his sons and daughters has married without his consent and

active intervention. I was the one to decide, for I know what they didnt

know and Im aware of whats best for them, he says.

Merguti now has a dozen grandchildren. As the oldest member of his

clan, relatives come to him for counsel. But times have changed and that

doesnt please him at all.

Its gone beyond what I would have ever imagined, he complains. I'veseen things [being done] in public that are hard to tolerate.

He feels a sense of shame about some of the things shown these days on

television. They think they discovered freedom, or that maybe they

invented it, but what they are following is false, he says.

Ahead of their time


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The 2006 book Tri motra ne nje qytet (Three sisters in a city) tells the

story of three Albanian sisters who were born in Australia but came to

live in Kukes.

Enticed by communist propaganda about the happiest country in the

world, the book tells the tale of how the sisters moved to the land of

their ancestors and what happened then.

Although the book is fictional, the author, Petrit Palushi, says it is based

on a true story. They arrived in the 1970s and lived in a house by the

Black Drin River, he explains.

Palushi, now director of Radio Kukes, adds that while the story is

authentic, he changed the names and most of the events in his book for

ethical reasons.

One of them used to teach me English, when I was just a little boy, he

recalls. Many people in Kukes also remember the sisters, partly because

they came from abroad, but most of all because of their disregard of

traditional moral conventions.

I remember they were so pretty, they dressed differently and

conducted a life that was antagonistic to communist values, Palushi

says, adding that they at least two of them had boyfriends, which was

unthinkable in such a town at that time.

Their modern lifestyle cost them a good deal. One of the sisters was

jailed for five years on charges related to agitation and propaganda.

Another fled to what was then Yugoslavia. The third stayed in Albania,

not in jail, but living in miserable conditions, until the regime collapsed.

All three are alive and now back in Australia.

They used to bathe inbikinis in the river and

people would watch them.

They hated them and desired

them at the same time,

Palushi recalls, emphasising

how the women wrought a

quiet sexual revolution in


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their dozy northern town.

Their way of life was shocking

to the people of a region who had fused traditional Albanian values with

communist moral conservatism. There was a clash of civilisations and

maybe it was somehow premature, Palushi says.

But if such an exercise in sexual freedom was premature in the 1970s,

not everybody agrees that the recent rapid change in Albanian moral

codes has been an unmitigated success.

Gjergj Sinani, a professor of philosophy at the University of Tirana,

stresses that a gradual process is necessary if people are to adapt to new

values. The process of taboos collapsing may find people unprepared to

build their lives on new values, he says.

Change comes to Sicily

Sicily was once like Albania, a traditional patriarchal society where

women were expected to go their marriage beds untouched.

Today, the streets of Sicily are as loud and vibrant as they ever. But in

recent decades the island has undergone changes in terms of moral

conventions and social regulations even more radical than those in

Albania.

In a small caf near the centre of Santa Flavia, a village near Palermo,

Caterina, the grandmother of two cheerful little girls, explains that

traditional values have undergone huge alterations since her youth.

Relations between the sexes have been transformed.

Before my husband and I married, we sat five

metres apart from each other, she recalls.

Now these youngsters do as they please and noone cares.

She feels unhappy about it. Since women

gained independence and equality, things have

gone bad in households, she continues. They

always ask for more and have abandoned their

role in the family.


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Santa Flavia is not what one would expect of a typical village. The

commune is very urbanized today. In fact, little of what might be

considered purely traditional remains anywhere on the island.

You might have more luck if you went to Hollywood, jokes Michele, a

young financial expert, referring to the American film industrys

nostalgic obsession with old-time Sicilian culture.

In front of the church of Santa Ana in Santa Flavia, Salvatore Troia, a

man in his seventies, offers a guided tour. There, among other striking

religious exhibits, visitors can peer at the remains of Santa Colomba,

exposed in a glass container in a corridor.

Troia expressed similar concerns to Caterina, though he maintains that

some values have survived in Sicily. Marriage is still seen as important

and even the young respect it. Last Sunday, for instance, we had two

weddings in this church and this is a tiny community, he says.

Young people in Sicily do indeed respect traditional values - even if they

only partially practice them. Giuseppe Commande, a young bus driver,

agreed that marriage was important, as long as it did not conflict with

enjoying life and having girlfriends.

Things have changed, he says, but it doesnt mean we should deny

our inherited values with the excuse that we live in modern times.

In Sicily, as in Albania, the other side of modern sexual freedom is the

rise of a more egotistical society in which there is also more social

isolation.

Change must come at a gradual pace, Professor Sinani says: Freedom is

quite a heavy meal and the main question is whether our stomachs are

ready to deal with it.

This article was produced as part of the Balkan Fellowship for

Journalistic Excellence, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and

ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative

Reporting Network, BIRN.

Excerpted from Cult of Virginity Fades Slowly in Albania :: Balkan Insight

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/cult-of-virginity-fades-slowly-in-albania


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