Review: Rene Karabash is graceless in « She who stops »

Kanun is a collection of custom laws that have ruled the Albanian tribal community for hundreds of years. According to one of these laws, the father should put a cartridge in his daughter’s bridal coffin. It should shoot the groom with the bride if she turns out to be innocent. Teenage Bekia is involved in something that makes her set the wedding at the last moment with the man appointed for her. Instead, she becomes a « sworn virgin », removing chastity promise and is now considered as man. But the groomed groom must, so the law says, kill a man in Bekia’s family. The revenge spiral spins.

Bekia tells her story in Rene Karabash’s novel « She who stops ». Karabash is a Bulgarian writer, theater director and actress who has, among other things, directed a play by Marguerite Duras, whose name is also mentioned in one place in the novel. It is no coincidence. « She who stops » is a suggestive monologue reminiscent of Dura’s novels, especially their peculiar mix of empathy and distance in the depiction of love. The passion affects in an unguarded moment, fundamentally changing the lover’s life, while watching herself as if she was standing next door.

Blood revenge Harvests Bekia’s father already on the first page. She will remember many times how he is killed before she finished with his story. Only late is it clear that some of it is recorded by a female reporter who came to the village to interview the last « sworn maid ». The tradition is being dissolved, but Bekia has been burdened by it all her life, ever since she became aware that her father wanted a son, not a girl. She has lived as a father’s boy, even since she got a little brother. Neither does the son suffice in the father’s eyes, too wicked, too girlish.

But unlike Bekia, the brother is not the illiterate, and the best friend Dana reads aloud from the world literature for Bekia. The literate leaves the village, they do not want to live under the law. Bekia remains, cuts off her hair, swearing the oath, then also lives the mother alone with a cow and some pigeons, to a day when she is allowed to read the letters she received so many years ago, from those who did not stop. Then she opens the bird cage.

A woman in Albania is worth twenty oxen, but she must not leave home, at most take the milk to the dairy.

« She who stops » is a story about women’s oppression that avoids all simplifications. It is written in a prose, by Hanna Sandborgh transformed into a poetic Swedish, who speaks directly to the reader with a desperate self -awareness. A woman in Albania is worth twenty oxen, but she must not leave home, at most take the milk to the dairy. As a sworn virgin, Bekia has got a rifle and a clock, she has learned to stand broadly like a man and walks on the tavern. She has left one world for another, there is no return. Only in memory can she travel back to childhood, to the brother, her friend and life in the village until the day when it occurred that decided her destiny.

The most expensive metal In Albania, freedom is in two places. The sworn virgin is alone, but tells that freedom is more important. However, she clearly sees that even men’s freedom is unconditional, it is limited by the law, Kanun, which men love more than their sons, wives and daughters. The freedom the law gives the man is a prison and when Bekia finally releases her pigeons she knows that they will not fly away, they stay where their wings were once cut.

It is a graceful existence Bekia describes, but her voice is strong and breathes hope: she has saved herself, affirmed her feelings and her desire and made her decisions with open eyes. In other words, she has used the law but unlike the father did not put it higher than love. Becoming a sworn virgin looked like a victim but gave her power over her feelings and her life – and a story that lasts a long time.

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