It is an open wound that is becoming barbaric; the more time goes by. It is a complicated issue to summarize it in two or three paragraphs. Until independence, in 1912, Kanunes were the only internal Albanian mechanisms of legal nature. It functioned in particular in Northern Albania until after WWII, and during communism, it was banned entirely. After the 90s the old killings, especially those that during communism were controlled through the legal force of the state and law, somehow required revenge. The word is gjak=blood and marrje=to take. I have the holy and legal right to take the blood (to kill) of the person who did the same thing to my family. This law, among others in the Kanunes, was written over 500 years ago. It was implemented as a law that controlled and regulated social life when there were no institutions to regulate and punish crimes. Women and girls, as well as children by the Kanun, are forbidden to be killed.

After the 90s it restarted all over Albania but with higher rates (even now in 2021) in the North. The problem is that even women and children are being killed, making it very difficult for families to survive or have a healthy life. You know, over a year with Covid I see people around the world complain about a curfew or an extended quarantine that does not allow them to go to the hairdresser… There are families here that have lived confined within their homes for years, decades even. There are families only with women who live isolated because all men are abroad or dead. There are families where the father and the sons have not left the house for years, even decades. To ask one of these children why they don’t go to school and get a very normal answer because they are afraid to be killed, it shatters your soul into a million pieces.

During these last 30 years, more than 10,000 people were killed due to blood feud revenge, and thousands are in isolation. Thousands more have required all over Europe the asylum status living their home behind forever. Even the word used to describe the process ‘ngujim’ [there is no proper word in English to translate it] doesn’t make you think about isolation or quarantine. It sounds like stone, you know? As you become part of the rocks of your house, you are the house; you can’t kill a house, right? A form of purgatory. It is all becoming so complicated. There is no need to use the Kanun today because there is a state; there are laws and prisons that regulate a crime such as the killing of a person. The state doesn’t seem to bother though considering that the numbers are growing.

There is this unusual case, for example, of an older woman who was raising her two nephews. They loved each other, growing up together most probably not realizing that they were actually ‘in blood’. To be ‘in blood’ means that one family member has killed the member of another one. These two families are in blood with each other, one living member of the second family has the right to kill someone from the first one to ‘take the blood’, to revenge the killing. And the killing never stops. In the above case, this would mean that at the age of 18, one should kill the other to either revenge or worse, to restore honour. I don’t know how their story went, and honestly, I am terrified to know.