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really exist for him anymore. And now … Now finish the sentence, Hana begs in silence.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜With all that raki, Hana Doda, here you are.’
    Hana stops and turns round angrily.
    â€˜Are you drunk, Shtjefën?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Well say what you mean, then.’
    â€˜This is the way I speak.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Does my presence here make you feel strange?’ she asks, sweetly.
    Shtjefën’s heavy body seems to sway.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜So you really have forgotten the mountains, Shtjefën. You’ve forgotten how hard it is.’
    Shtjefën thinks about this.
    â€˜You’re going to tell Jonida everything tomorrow?’
    â€˜Don’t worry, I’ll do it properly.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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