The cartridge in the dowry…

2023-05-01 21:22:00, Opinione Ardi Stefa

Ardi Stefa, education expert

A mountaineer decided to get married when he was old enough. Betrothed by the family from the cradle to a girl, he went to look for her officially for marriage. In the ceremony held on that occasion, in the presence of the two families, as well as the matchmakers, the girl's father, along with the dowry, gave her a cartridge wrapped in a handkerchief. It was "the bullet in the dowry". With this cartridge, the groom gained complete power over their daughter and his future wife. With this cartridge he had the absolute right to kill her if the woman returned her word, if she betrayed him, if...

And with this cartridge, the mountain groom had the right to kill his wife on the first night of the wedding, if he did not find her a virgin. And although the girl's parents and family were convinced that their daughter would neither return her word to the groom, nor betray him in the future, since, according to custom, she would be confined to the house and wherever she would went would be accompanied, they had a concern. Their only concern was that their daughter-in-law was not a virgin on the first night of their marriage. That's why they waited anxiously and sleeplessly for the groom to hang the bloody sheet the next morning, which would be the most absolute proof of their daughter's honesty.

After the wedding, the groom entered the room where the new wife was waiting for him to spend the first night. He had also taken the rifle with him, in which he had put his father-in-law's cartridge. The wedding night passed and not a single crack was heard. The next morning, the bridegroom hung the bloody sheet on the turret of the tower. The girl's parents saw her and breathed a sigh of relief and went through the village with their heads held high and proud.

But the story doesn't end here...

On the second night of the wedding, while everyone was sleeping, in the silence of the night from the tower where the wedding had taken place the night before, a dry and powerful crack was heard. Everyone stood up surprised, but also scared. They hurried to the tower to find out what the vaki had done. They soon found out that the new groom had killed his wife. The shocked father asked the groom why he killed the young bride. And the groom with an unprecedented sincerity answered that on the second night after the wedding, he had not found the bride as she was on the first night: A virgin!...

This story in the form of an anecdote is being told everywhere in the last few days in Albania, although here for 30 years it is, in fact, a tragedy.

Just who is the groom and who is the bride, each of the sympathizers and militants of the political parties, or their military, decides and names according to their own wishes and political convictions. For a significant part of ordinary citizens, it is not disputed that in all cases the bride is the people. But there is also an equally large part of ordinary Albanian citizens, who are convinced that the bride is nothing but the Albanian political leaders and the groom is the people who kill them with their vote...

Except this time in Albania, Albanian citizens no longer fight with fists or Kalashnikovs to defend their belief about who is the bride and who is the groom. They only need to state their arguments... (The problem remains, were Albanian political leaders ever virgins?)

Both claims seem correct to me. Personally, I reserve my position in the dilemma of who is the groom and who is the bride. Anyway, the essence does not lie in defining and naming the characters, but in the essence of this story-anecdote, at the same time tragedy...