The Pillars of Hercules

“I suppose that’s my problem—asking questions,” I said.

“In Albania we have learned not to talk too much,” Adrian said. And he suggested we get back on the road.

It was a poor road, lined with rows of tree stumps. The trees, Adrian explained, had been cut and used for fuel. There were few other cars on the road—some carts, some horses and dogs and chickens, and people had the habit of walking in the road. The houses were much poorer than ones I had seen in Durrës and Tirana. But they had the same doomsday look, as though at a certain point in the growth of these villages they had been stricken. The people were not ragged—no beggars here—but there was a definite look of deprivation: women carrying water in tin containers, families hoeing, groups of people selling small piles of vegetables or fruit by the side of the road. At the town of Fier we stopped and walked to the market, where Adrian bought a pound of cherries. They were in season. We sat and ate them, and then set off again.

Remembering what the American diplomat had said to me about the besa and the blood feud, I asked Adrian.

“You’re confusing two things,” he said. “First of all, besa means a promise that has to be kept, no matter what.”

“Give me an example,” I said.

“All right. Suppose you give me your telephone number in New York and I go there, because you invited me and you gave me your besa. In that case, you meet me, you take me to your house, you feed me—because your besa was given with your invitation. You would never leave me on the street. You would look after me no matter what. You cannot abandon me!”

He was driving in a swerving fast-slow sort of way. If private cars had been banned in Albania until 1990 that meant no Albanian had been driving for more than three years, and most of them much less, or not at all. The inexperience certainly showed.

“Revenge is another matter,” Adrian was saying—gabbling in Italian and swerving to avoid potholes in the rutted road. “We call it hakmari or jakmari. Hak means blood, mari means take.”

“Does it always involve killing?”

Adrian took both hands off the steering wheel and cupped them, a gesture that meant, “The answer to that question is so obvious I do not believe it is worthy of a verbal reply.”

I said, “Please give me an example of Albanian hakmari.”

“All right. Someone does something to your brother. So you do something to him. Or, you just killed someone in my family, you miserable Pig—”

Adrian became shrill and definite when he personalized these examples. I was uncomfortable again, as I had been when illustrating besa he had said, You cannot abandon me!

“In that case, I kill you,” he said, his jaw set. “Never mind how much time passes. It could be twenty years later. By then you are happy. You have forgotten what you did. But I have not forgotten. It is there, the pain in my heart. One day you leave your house—happy! It is a nice day! I go to you and”—he whipped his fingers against his throat—“I kill you.”

“Is it better if some time passes?” I said. “In English there is a proverb that goes, ‘Revenge is a dish that is best served cold.’ ”

Adrian smiled. He liked that. But he said, “Anytime is the right time for hakmari.”

I saw from the map that we were approaching Vlorë, where I had been intending to stop. I mentioned this to Adrian. He did not react. His mind was on other things.

“My grandfather was a victim of hakmari,” he said. “He had an enemy. One day the man killed him. It was my mother’s father, about 1952 or so.”

“Was his death avenged?”

“What could be done? Nothing. Because there were no men in the family. My grandfather had three sisters and his wife and only daughters. Women don’t kill.” He kept driving. He said, “That was in Scutari.”

“Why weren’t you told to kill the man?” I asked.

“I couldn’t kill him. I wasn’t born until 1966. By then it was too late. I was the wrong generation. The matter had been forgotten.”

“I see. So vengeance has to be carried out by someone in the same generation as the victim.”

“Exactly,” Adrian said.

“Was hakmari practiced during the Hoxha times?”

“No, not in the Hoxha communist times. But in the past few years I have heard stories. Not a lot but definitely there are families ‘taking blood.’ ”

We stopped for the night at Vlorë. We had gone more than half the distance to Sarandë, and it was now late in the day. It was not a good idea to be on the road after dark in a country so inadequately provided for. Anyway, Adrian had a friend here, he said. Remembering my liking for the cherries he had bought at Fier, Adrian asked several people in Vlorë where we could buy some. Thirty cents got us a pound of ripe cherries.